LITMIR.BIZ

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daily fare, but he is unaccustomed to driving about with passengers holding guns at the ready the way she does. Armed passengers who quote from Paradise Lost.

      Later that afternoon, someone knocks at his door. When he opens, he finds Bubbles on his doorstep.

      “Man,” she says, “sorry about this morning. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

      “You still owe me an explanation,” he says.

      “I brought you something,” she says, holding out a small package. Hesitantly, he takes it. It contains two tapes.

      “Something to listen to,” she says, taking a packet of Camel Lights out of her top pocket and lighting up.

      “Tell me,” he says, “was the weapon just for show, or would you actually use it?”

      “Why not?” says Miss Bubbles Bothma. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

      “Which is what, in this case?” he asks.

      “Look after her own interests,” she says. “No one else is going to do it.”

      After she leaves, he listens to the first of the two tapes. It’s a how-to, a guide for the dark night of the soul. For the confrontation of the self with forces leading it profoundly astray. The first step, says the woman, is the identification of false voices. Voices that lead the self along a false path, away from its ultimate destination. (Radiant wholeness? Aaron wonders.) The second step is to cultivate patience and endurance, says the woman. Patience kneads and knits the soul, while endurance allows it to rise up, to the surface.

      He is baffled. Is Bubbles playing the fool with him? Does he need this in his life? No, he doesn’t think so. He’s not going to start trying, this morning, to identify false voices. Even less is he going to try working out what’s leading him most astray. And for the time being he’s satisfied with a soul that is still uncultivated, hidden like a frog in a shallow, muddy pool.

      *

      Some parts of his studio are visible to his neighbours, from their kitchen. This much he knows. It was never a problem before, but now he suddenly feels he’s being watched. How else would the woman know exactly when to pounce, just when Mrs Sekete is not there to protect his privacy? He doesn’t like to think he’s being observed. Not at all.

      *

      The package he’d gone to collect from the post office contains two T-shirts sent to him by his elder daughter. On each of them, Eugenie has embroidered a text, lines of verse from William Blake. The Beggar’s Dog & Widow’s Cat, / Feed them & thou wilt grow fat, she’s embroidered on the one, and The Poison of the Honey Bee / Is the Artist’s Jealousy, on the other. He finds her choice of texts puzzling, but he is moved by the gift. Precious, he thinks. A precious gift.

      CHAPTER 2

      On a Sunday morning in the middle of June, exactly seventeen days after Knuvelder’s visit to his studio, Aaron finds himself reading a newspaper interview featuring the selfsame Eddie Knuvelder. In the interview, Eddie talks about his Berlin exhibition to be held in the coming year. He mentions the names of certain promising and important artists whose work he is considering for the exhibition. Aaron Adendorff’s name is not among them.

      As he reads, blood drains from Aaron’s face. So this is how it is, then, he thinks, may the pig burn in hell.

      The interview includes a large picture of a smiling Knuvelder, with those fucking Eskimo chops of his. May damnation descend upon his head. The picture was taken at a recent opening at Knuvelder’s gallery, a solo exhibition by one Jimmy Harris. In the picture, Knuvelder’s two assistants, Mr X and Mr Y, stand on either side of him. Aspirant curators, curators in training. Possible heirs to the throne. The three of them stand there, like Pope Paul III with his two fawning nephews flanking him on both sides.

      He should have known. He should have realised that Knuvelder’s behaviour during the studio visit was pointing to something like this.

      Still, it feels as if someone has winded him.

      Must his face now be rubbed in the dirt, too? Eat shit!

      And this on such a low, miserable day in the middle of June.

      Later in the afternoon, there’s a knock on the door.

      It’s the woman from next door. Her sense of timing is spot-on – she’s probably the last person on earth he wants to see right now.

      “Greetings!” she says, with one hand held high. “Greetings in all the languages of the rainbow!”

      “What?” he counters.

      “What’s up with you – you look like you’ve just stared straight up your grandmother’s arse,” she says.

      “I’ve had bad news,” he says curtly.

      “Death in the family?” she asks, lighting a cigarette.

      “Worse,” he replies. “Betrayal and backstabbing of the worst kind.” (He has to pour his heart out to someone, after all. A bloody disgrace. The damnable miscreant, the flagrant …)

      “Bad luck,” she says. “Can I come in for a second?”

      “No,” he says.

      “I just want to borrow a cup of flour, man,” she adds. “Violet’s making pancakes.”

      Every few seconds, she flashes a glance over her shoulder.

      “Are you on the run or something?”

      “Not on your life,” she calls out, as if aggrieved by the very accusation, but she doesn’t allow this to hold her back. She brushes past him roughly. Once in the kitchen, she sits down at the table and lights up. Every now and again she steals a glance out the window, looking up at the top of the stairs.

      “I mean no harm,” she says. “Peace. Vrede. Ukuthula. How about a nice neighbourly cup of coffee?”

      His hair’s almost standing on end from sheer irritation. “Don’t smoke in my house,” he says. “And you should especially not smoke if you’ve got asthma.”

      “Sorry, man, sorry,” she says, stubbing the cigarette out in the sink.

      Unwillingly, he makes her a cup of coffee, hardly even hearing what more the woman has to say for herself.

      He’s almost certain those two assistant curators had something to do with Knuvelder’s choice of artists for the Berlin exhibition. Ever since he appointed them a few years ago, Aaron’s felt he couldn’t trust those pushy buggers. Both of them visually illiterate, he thinks; in fact, they’re visually ineducable. Always so excited about anything that might be so-called avant-garde; if you can call it “cutting edge”, then it has to be good. Not that those two myopics would know real avant-garde if it smacked them in the face. Idiots. And Knuvelder’s a whore, though he’s always had a good eye. If only he’d use it. If only he’d stop letting those two pimps whisper bullshit in his ear.

      “Who is this person?” she asks him.

      “What person?” he asks.

      “The one who’s backstabbing you and so on.”

      He fetches the newspaper. Lays it open before her; taps loudly on the picture with his fingernail.

      She stares at it, long and hard.

      “Looks like a big-time prankster to me,” she says. “Do you want me to take him out for you?”

      “Take him out?” he says.

      “Man,” she says. “Take out, like remove from the scene.”

      He laughs, a bitter little laugh. “If only it were that easy.”

      “It is! No problem. Easy as pie.”

      He stares at her. Where’s this woman crawled out from?

      “You

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