alone. Like something from a secret lover or a gift from far away,” she had said when she had started talking to me.
I felt guilty each time, because it was a little of Tumi I was leaving behind. Was this one of the small lies that led to the big lies, the often talked-about slippery slope to disaster and separation for grieving parents? I did not think so; not because of this, anyway.
We were silent for a long while, holding hands like shipwreck survivors on a disintegrating ice floe. There are things too vast and deep for normal words.
After a while she asked me about her construction business. I stressed the difficulties and problems to make her want to get out of bed to go fix them. She was not one to let things get out of control when she could do something about them. She smiled and said, “You are exaggerating. My people were here in the morning and they say everything is fine, except that they can’t wait to get out from under the thumbs of the new tyrants.”
“We all want you back. And who are these tyrants anyway?”
“I mean your gang of smooth thugs – Thekiso and Ditoro.”
“Ah, hell. I asked them not to tell you.”
“Hey, hey, hey! I’ve come a long way with these people, starting from nothing. Before I even met you.”
“Ah, hell.”
“Ah, hell, you too. Anyway, I will be there as soon as I can. This weekend I’ll be home, as I told you. Fetch me on Saturday afternoon. These disgusting bruises will be better.”
I myself had long stopped giving much significance to those livid bruises.
“The baby . . . ” I whispered.
“I’ll be home just to see if everything is all right. But I am coming back straight here on Sunday. I have arranged for a private room for both of us. It is expensive but, ah, hell, as you say.”
“That’s better. Your business runs itself anyway.”
“That is not what I want to hear. No business runs itself !”
On that explosive note I bid her goodbye and speedy health.
“Ah, hell,” she said when I kissed those unsightly bruises.
Of course no business runs itself: hers and mine included, and I would be attending to hers after clearing the last of the deadweight files from my desk. Lesego was getting contracts from government but she was wary, as she should be – as we all should be. The money was good but it came with tangled strings attached. It was a delicate tightrope that she was walking on – in the overall scheme of things, she was both irrelevant and expendable. A rainbow-nation showpiece.
The new file would be my bedtime reading. There had been a regulation against taking files out of the office, but I don’t exactly have sleepless nights if I sometimes depart from the rules.
On reaching the Bedlam Building in upper Pritchard Street, where we have our offices, I was just in time to intercept Thekiso on his way out. As usual he was wearing one of his dark, mismatched and outsized suits that make him seem smaller and more decrepit than he actually is. They hide his tough-as-a-cowhide-whip body so well that many have regretted their rash assumptions about his strength and agility.
“Are you through for the day?”
“Maybe,” he said cautiously.
“You see, I myself had thought of leaving early to check on Lesego’s –”
“Not necessary. I’m going there.”
“I could come with you.”
“Pointless. Finish what you are doing and get into that file. Anyway, I’m meeting Ditoro there.”
“Which site?” Lesego had two building crews working in the field. Having previously worked for a large multinational construction company, she was now an independent small builder with a few government contracts for some minor but profitable projects. It was a form of gender and racial advancement. Being reliable and hardworking, she did not need to kiss anybody’s ass to get these contracts. But she was proud of her reputation of always delivering – and on time.
“Both, but we’ll start with the library in Katlehong. It’s more urgent. Ditoro and I are enough for that.”
What he meant was I would only get in their way. After observing my incompetence in getting things done, Thekiso had with his usual diligence turned himself into an instant if still haphazard expert on the construction business. He took care of the gaps in his knowledge by getting people who knew what they were talking about to assist him.
Also, with me around, he and Ditoro would not be free to put on their full-blown act of terrorising those poor workers; I was always too ready to tolerate and excuse. He wanted to finish the library in record time, ahead of schedule. Snail-pace, official timetables were just a useful cover for malingering and evasion, was his decided opinion. The nation-building bug had bitten Thekiso and if given free rein he would have filled the whole country with bricks, cement, an army of press-ganged workers – and a lot of angry worker unions. There was the fanatical glint in his eye of a man who had at last found his true mission in life.
He walked to the basement garage next door to get his car.
“We need a new girl at the front desk,” he said over his shoulder.
I . . . what did I think then?
“Tumi is getting married and leaving us next month. Try and think of someone suitable, not just anyone.” His voice was swallowed up by the unceasing growl and grind of the traffic.
Chapter 3
I climbed the stairs to our third-floor offices, arriving hot and speechless. Tumi at her front desk looked at me, brightened up and smiled. I usually enjoyed that smile but this time I just nodded and walked past her without a word of encouragement or appreciation.
It was rude of me but boundaries had to be re-established, I said to myself, and anyway she could see that I was hot and stressed. She could also see that I had come from the direction of the stairway rather than the lifts. So I had a practical excuse. All the same, boundaries had to be . . .
Who was I fooling? I had got used to her being there. She had not told me anything about leaving and I had thought we were friends at the least.
I got stuck into it at my desk. I had to put all my records and notes as straight as possible. They had to be immediately understandable if they were to be passed on to someone else. I did not want someone phoning me every few minutes asking for explanations. We have these four enthusiastic freelancers, our modest tilt at unemployment – three young men and one young woman who do most of the preliminary research, surveillance and legwork and who are the source of endless headaches, mercifully tempered by their contagious optimism and easy laughter. Ask, don’t assume – Thekiso had dinned that mantra into their recalcitrant young heads until they knew it by heart and often mimicked him. He pretended that it was beneath him to notice.
We also have this prim but embittered old hatchet we all call Mama Mary, who runs everything and everyone out of a shoebox-sized closet next to Thekiso’s office. I suspect we are all secretly a bit afraid of her silent disapproval and the unwavering eye that sees through closed doors. At least I am, although I call it respect. Fortunately, I seldom see her as she always has her door shut and inviolable. I understand that she was once a well-regarded manager of a gospel-music group until a plagiarism stink enveloped one of her rising stars. She hitched her waning star to Thekiso’s uncertain phoenix after he helped clear her name. But she had been finished in the gospel-music business by the time that reprieve came.
I left at five-thirty with a half-formed idea of going around to one of the building sites, but then rejected it. I would only end up countermanding Thekiso and creating confusion and doubt amongst the workers. And anyway there was that construction supervisor Thekiso had found after Lesego’s accident – an experienced man who had lost his job at a major company after getting hopelessly entangled in