Madness
1
It had been seconds since I had moved
and even longer since I had noticed people were screaming. The fine
mist of my guide's blood remained stuck in the scorching and humid
African air of the Songimvelo game reserve where I stood, emotionally
and physically unmoved, as something furry and ugly and mean cracked
his ribs in its teeth like Kit Kat wafers. I hadn't intended to
write about our guide through Songimvelo at all, but now I had to.
Not out of respect for his passing, but to give some sort of name to
the monster's food. T'challa? Mofongo? I resolved to just see if
it was in the paperwork I had back in my email and if not, I decided,
I'd just Google common South African names and use it when I wrote my
article.
The monster's fur was spotted so maybe
it was a leopard? I turned to ask my photographer, another South
African named something else unpronouncible, but he was gone. I
threw my hands up in frustration. This would have been a good
photograph for National Geographic if my own employer, Vice, didn't
buy it. This motion alerted the beast to my presence. I reasoned in
the moment before it attacked me, that I must have been so still for
so long that the spotted bloody cat thing had dismissed me as a
threat or a meal he needed to kill before focusing on our guide. I
wondered the reserve's refund policy as the cat pounced on me. I
threw up an arm and it sunk its teeth between my radius and ulna
bones and twisted its head, dropping me to the ground with lightning
shooting up my left side. Spotted cat thing had a circle on its
forehead between its eyes the size and damage you'd expect from
someone grinding a hot car cigarette lighter into furry flesh. I
reached up to put my dirty right thumb in the beast's glassy left eye
when it disappeared, vanished in a blue blur.
I looked around and saw my salvation.
To my left, kneeling on the grass was a white lady superhero type.
She was dressed in all navy denim. Jeans, vest (with tasteful
neckline), and even the cape was denim, though it was in strips that
hung to her ankles. I could only see the back of her head and the
dirty, twig filled ebony hair that curled and swayed on her
shoulders, but I could tell she was staring down the cat she had
tossed that stood its ground a few feet away, growling. She glowed
and for a flash her skin took on that spotted leopardish coloration
before returning to a Midwestern American pale skin. How did she
maintain that color in Africa? She was gone. So was cat thing. I
started digging through our guide's soiled pockets and bloody gear
for a satellite phone. No luck.
I was repacking the gear and preparing
for a walk when the denim queen returned to check on me. I handed
her a business card.
"Levi Rucker, Vice Magazine.
Thanks for saving me."
She hesitated and asked if I was hurt
in an accent I wanted to place as Kansas. I showed her the
sabretooth marks in my arm, which she healed with a wave of her
hands.
"Flight, strength, healing, and
whatever that glowing was? You got a lot of powers, Miss...?"
I trailed off in that way that prompts the other person to say their
name, but she didn't bite at it. She said I was acting too calm for
someone who was almost killed, covered in blood, lost in an African
jungle.
"You're not the only one with
powers. I'm a bonafide metahuman."
She looked at me and her eyes went
white and I swear I was looking at myself for a moment when she
glowed.
"Oh, that's terrible," she
said.
I laughed and told her if she copies
powers, mine is one she'd want to throw away.
"We don't all get to fly around
and play God. Some of us just get brain damage."
We talked for a few minutes. I think
she pitied my "power" in contrast to her own. She claimed
to be Amelia Earhart, crash landed on Gardner Island in the Phoenix
Islands in 1937. Said she found a cave and an ancient guy that gave
her the power to copy other plants and animals and elements and
metahumans and so on with a doomsday prophecy (which ancient wise men
typically have), pressing her to preserve the information of our
world in herself. I called her a back up drive, but I guess there's
no computers in ancient magic caves because she didn't know what I
meant. I didn't believe her, but I believed that she believed it.
Smart money's on the ancient wise one stealing her collection of
powers and trying to take over the world. She asked me not to write
any of this down as her mission was a secret one, but I had slipped
my recorder to the on position way before she said this and she'll
never read this in her cave. I was brainstorming proper superhero
names for her as she flew me out of the game reserve towards
Swaziland. Decided on Blue Ribbon.
"Was there someone else with you?"
she asked.
I hadn't forgotten about the
photographer. I just assumed he was lost or dead. Blue Ribbon
spotted him though, running in the jungle, lost, but at least headed
to the east like us. Blue Ribbon swooped down and snatched him up
and I caught him up to speed while we flew through the air above the
reserve, each under the superstrong arm of a goddess, copping a feel
through denim and pretending I was just holding on.
She dropped us a half mile from the
Swaziland border. I tried to persuade her for a full interview, but
she turned invisible and left. Or was still standing there. She was
invisible after all, so I held my tongue and didn't comment on her
cleavage to my photographer until we had walked to the Josefdal port
of entry, passing a rusted and failing trailer the border guards
lived in.
My South Africa photographer tugged at
my khaki safari shirt when I started pushing my way to the front of
the line since he wasn't used to working with real press, resigned as
he was to the silly South African rag that loaned him to me. The
other Africans said things, but they all sounded like "Swati
swazi swazi swati" to me and I couldn't tell what they were
trying to communicate in those noises. I held out my passport to the
armed officials checking papers and showed them my impressive
credentials, stamped as they were with marks from countries around
the world, wherever there was an opportunity to expose my readers to
the grimy underbelly of the back alleyways of planet Earth.
A stamp from Singapore from a visit to
a transgender slave market. A stamp from Afghanistan where I
pretended to be an arms dealer and a little village showed me from
start to finish how they craft guns by hand in under a week. A stamp
from Japan where I took my readers to "cuddle cafes". I
was proud of a stamp from Czechoslavacia (back when it was a
country). It was a long time ago, but I think they were selling
girls into sex farms or sex houses or sex something. The dim looking
guard in the admittedly well-laundered uniform didn't smile or raise
his eyebrows impressed as he was showing my press pass and passport
and letter from the office of King Mswati III inviting me to extoll
the virtues of Swaziland tourism to his equally dim looking partner
who was sitting at a small fold up table with a stack of papers and
the rubber stamp that I required for entry.
"My photographer is back there,"
I said and pointed to the back where Mofongo or whatever was being
meek. They didn't respond so I asked, "Do you speak English?"
The standing guard turned back to me.
His name tag said, "Ntombi". I remember it because I spent
a few seconds trying to pronounce it in my head while he was talking
to me, saying that he spoke English and they were calling it in and
yada yada. En-tom-bi? Nit-om-bi? En-tomb-i? Maybe the T was
silent. Or maybe the N. It took all too long for them to call me in
and get verified, but at least it gave Mofongo time to grow a pair
and push passed the Africans and catch up with me.
Finally, the stamp. Thump. I was
allowed to leave the South African side line by the game reserve and
enter the Swaziland side of the line. They were explaining, more to
my photographer than to me, that we were entering as a pair and must
leave as a pair and he was only being allowed into Swaziland because
he was with yours truly. For a second, I entertained a joke of
renegotiating his fee once inside the hellhole since he couldn't
escape without me. He didn't find it amusing. Swaziland sucks.
The Kingdom of Swaziland is a tiny ink
stain of a "country" (and the quotations are very
appropriate as it lacks just about everything that defines a
nation-state). It's situated inside of South Africa, surrounded on
all sides. How they've managed to exist in the 21st century is
beyond me. Most people live on less than a buck twenty-five per day.
Everyone's a farmer. Most farm food, the rest drugs. Highest
incidence of AIDS in the world. Lowest life expectency in the world.
The dumb ones speak siSwati/Swati/Swazi. It's one of those. I
think they're interchangable. The smart ones at least know some
English. Not that the guards who closed the gate behind us were
smart. They probably had to learn enough English to interact with
civilization since they were on the border. I had hoped to find a
car rental or scooter rental shop once the road went from ugly dirt
road to ugly paved road, but no such luck.
We walked a mile on the cracked and
failing road and the hills got larger and the grass turned from
yellow to green. Ecologically, it's less of a hellhole than you'd
imagine and I had Mofongo (I called him that in my head even though I
know that's a food. Out loud I never said a name and just said,
"Take a picture of those hills" but as it was only us
within talking distance, I figured he wouldn't notice.) snap pictures
of the more scenic views. In the town of Belembu, I stopped and
assessed my surroundings. A better choice of paint colors, some
roadwork, and some blue checked window treatments and a picture of
Belembu could have been mistaken for a rustic village in France where
I did a piece on anti-freeze laden wine.
Mofongo talked to the clerk-owner of
the Belembu Lodge while I looked around.
"Swati swati swazi swazi."
"Swazi swati?"
"Levi Rucker, Vice Magazine.
Swati."
"Swazi swazi swazi swati."
"Siswati swati?"
"Swazi."
"Swati."
I ate my murdered guide's sandwich
without guilt. Whether this was due to the calicification of my
amygdala brought on my "superpower" or the logical
conclusion that he wasn't going to eat it and I enjoyed roast beef on
home baked bread, I don't know. If I rationed the supplies from my
own backpack and the scavenged food from the backpack of the
deceased, I could go two more days without eating Swazi cooking.
Three if I conserved it, but the bottled water wouldn't last that
long.
Mofongo wouldn't leave me alone that
night. I could tell the monster and the whole bloody scene had
gotten to him and it was annoying. I took his hand into mind and
pretended to care. I've had a lot of practice pretending to care,
pretending to be interested, pretending to be in grief. People look
at you strange if you don't seem sad at a funeral. Sunglasses are
the key there. Doesn't work at weddings though unless they're out
doors, but faking a smile is much easier than faking grief. I rubbed
the back of my sweaty hands against his skin as inconspicuously as I
could and my secretion started to work right away. He calmed down
and decided it wasn't that traumatic after all and said good night.
I knew that my calming secretion was weak and short-lived though, so
I locked the door after he left and immediately turned out the
lights. I could hear him pacing less than five minutes later in his
own room. The results of a low dose. Just a passing hand. It's a
footnote as far as superpowers go, but it's been helpful in my role
as journalist, lowering the inhibitions of people guarding secrets.
Works on women guarding their chastity. It's not like it would make
someone do something they didn't want to do.
The night was sticky and hot and there
was no air conditioner. I know I made it worse putting up my
mosquito netting, but Africa is covered in mosquitos that would enjoy
nothing else than my juicy American blood. I feel asleep finally
after adding half a fifth of Canadian Mist to my hemoglobins. A
banging in the night woke me up and I looked in the direction of the
noise, the wall between my confining, sparsely furnished room and
Mofongo's, which I assumed was just as badly supplied with furniture.
The banging was loud and I reasoned that if it continued much longer
it would be worth the effort to get up and put on my pants and talk
to him. There was a crash and I made out the clerk-owner's voice, so
I rested my head again and left him to it. There was some talking
for a few more minutes and then silence and I went back to sleep.
I should have gone to see what was the
matter because when I awoke, it was to the clerk-owner knocking at my
door and informing me that my photographer had left. I didn't have
to worry about paying the check. Vice took care of that. But I did
have to find a new photographer. Mofongo's mysterious and violent
disappearance was especially tragic to me as I was a terrible
photographer. I had a camera, but my sense of framing and
composition was nowhere near magazine quality.
"Not leaving the country without
me," I said to myself, packing my backpack with Mofongo's travel
papers that he had left. The other option was to leave them at the
shack of a hotel with the shifty clerk-owner. His hands would twitch
at the sight of money and I had no reservations in mentally accusing
him of the hypothetical sale of Mofongo's papers to aid some Swazi's
escape from their totalitarian regime. Better to have Mofongo's
papers with me. He knew my itenerary. If he wanted them, he could
catch up with me.
The clerk-owner-asshole's English
suddenly dried up when it came to the subject of a refund for
Mofongo's room, which I felt entitled to. He likewise stonewalled my
attempts to rent anything with wheels in the squallor surrounding his
establishment. So I began to walk, reminiscing the seats of the game
reserve guide's jeep that the monsterous leopard-thing had rendered
unsteerable when it lept through the windshield of the moving steel,
bending the steering wheel into an unturnable mess when the teeth of
its bottom jaw had come up through the guide's bottom jaw and the
teeth of its top jawn had pulled great gashes from the guide's
forehead through his eyes and nose to meet the bottom teeth, leading
to the crash that further made its driving ability a lost cause. At
the time I had thought the seats were uncomfortable, but now I
compared them to my Timberlands boots and thought I would trade the
two to stop this forced death march. I drank my bottled water
quickly, hoping to lessen the weight of my pack.
It was a calculated risk to consume my
Voss and possibly fall to the mercies of the disease ridden well
water that coursed beneath my feet. Piggs Peak, the next settlement,
promised a full city. This filled me with little hope given what I
had come to realize of the African definition of the word "city".
However, a casino is a casino is a casino and Piggs Peak Hotel and
Casino was featured in the packet of information sent to my magazine
by the Swaziland department of tourism (who I imagined to be one guy
name Zimbimbim or something desparately trying to get tourists to
come under threat of execution). The casino had a pool and gambling,
so there must be some civilization and where there is civility, there
is internet access, bottled water, and white people speaking English.
It was the only thing that was going to
keep me putting one foot after the other on the thin, one lane road
that twisted like a crooked vein through tin roofed huts, punctuated
with the occasional tin roofed shack (Is that considered the rich
family in town?). A suite awaited my tired and abused feet, maybe
even a hot tub. It was too hot to actually get in, but if it was
next to the pool, I could lounge in the pool and drink with my feet
soaking in the hot tub. After two miles, I got curious and walked
into one of these villages. There were seven homes. Not ugly. No
shop. No cars. I knocked on one of the doors and a woman answered.
It was one of those situations where I was unsure of how a normal
person would react. Her melted face was by all accounts horrific. I
had seen victims of acid attacks in other parts of the world and the
results never stop being gross. That's the idea. Woman messes with
you, you throw acid in her face and she can't get married because no
one wants her. Acceptable behavior in a lot of countries like
Swaziland where women have the same legal rights as an
eight-year-old.
Still I had to weigh my options. Do I
recoil in horror as this woman must be used to? That would be the
normal response. Even I know that would be a negative experience for
the woman. Besides, it would take less effort to indulge my apathy
at her condition.
"Hello. Do you know where I can
rent a car?"
"Swati swati?" or it was
"Swazi swazi?" because her upper lip had fused to her
bottom on the left side and she slurred and spit.
"Does anyone here speak English?"
I shouted over her shoulder into the crowded little house full of
Swazis. Six children were upon me like spiders bursting out of a egg
ball chanting "English! English!" over and over.
"Do you know where I rent a car?"
Some of them pointed back to Bulembu
and shouted that name, which would mean I wasted my time. Some of
them pointed towards Piggs Peak and shouted that name, which didn't
help me.
"Do any of you have a bicycle?"
None of them did.
"Who wants to carry my backpack to
Piggs Peak?"
They all cheered and I started to walk
off with the children. The acid scarred woman yelled "Swati
swati" back into the house and another woman came out. Looking
back at them was a strange sight. Before and After pictures of an
acid attack, obviously a sister and the mother of at least some of
these children.
"They're showing me the way to
Piggs Peak," I said.
"Swati swazi swazi!" she said
to me and then to her children, "Swati swati!"
The children started to go back inside,
but a note for 100 emalangeni changed her mind. In a world where a
person lives off E12 a day, E100 can change minds. And thanks to the
exchange rate, it only cost me as much as a McCombo Deal. I only
needed one of the Swazilings to carry my bag, but they all came
along. Swaziland can be a dangerous place for a kid. It's a place
where there are PSA billboards every few miles warning "Are you
thinking of raping a child today? Think twice of the consequences."
Obviously, the consequences are little deterent in the poor country
where over half the children lose their virginity as rapers or rapees
of the violent variety.
So I imagined I was as Gandalf, walking
with his hobbits through the greenery of the Middle Earth of the
Lower Poverty Class. And while Samwise Gamgee, the name I gave to
one of the tykes who was really named Chihuahua or something, kept
pestering me to teach him English, I evaluated the differences
between our childhoods to their happiness.
"Now I'm not saying that I grew up
in a better home than you, in a better neighborhood, full of better
appliances, filled with better food, maintained by better
housekeeping staff than your pea-brained mom and your melted sister.
But I'm also not saying that I didn't.
I'm not saying that I watched satellite
and enjoyed indie rock while you watched snaked dance around your
feed and enjoyed, well, rocks. I'm not saying I had a fat phase and
you had a
my-parents-had-another-kid-because-I-was-probably-going-to-die phase.
I'm not saying that while your first sexual experience will be a
rough teenager bending you over and making your anus bleed, I
corn-holed the most coquettish call girls. But I'm also not saying
that I didn't.
I'm not saying that my dad used the
money he saved by not donating to charities that would feed your
family and have saved the lives of how ever many of your family and
neighbors to get me a car that I turned around and wrecked while high
two weeks later. I'm also not saying I didn't."
They understood every other word it
seemed and I knelt down and pinched Mofongo II's cheek (I felt it was
a fitting tribute to name one after my disappeared photographer) and
I told her, "Oh, who am I kidding? I AM saying all of these
things. But c'mon, sweetie! You can see it in my eyes. I'm better
than you. My smug look clearly shows that no individual has EVER
questioned my abilities or merit or the possibilities for my future.
It was all chance, I understand. I've had certain opportunities that
you, in your well water, improverished, for the price of a cup of a
coffee you can save the life of this child life will never
understand. So when I walked into your house like I owned it, saw
the gooey, frozen, and unresponsive face of your family members, I
knew it was my God-given right as an American to buy your entire
sub-human family for less than a car wash without an ounce of
negotiation needed. And I did."
I stood up and continued my trek down
the dirty road in my Timberlands.
"Every bit of dust you kick around
your bare feet while carrying my $500 backpack is a reminder that
while I will wrap up experiencing this 'adventure' that you call your
'life', I will fly back, first class, to my $3000 studio in an old
industrial district just because it's hip and trendy while
maintaining a car, ordering food, and bar hopping every day. You, on
the other hand, will say poor. Haha... loser."
I assumed the uneducated wretches had
never read the classics and continued to borrow from Bret Easton
Ellis.
"Oh yeah, remember how your dad
was killed by civil unrest or the oppressive regime of your
totalitarian dictator? Well, your mom sold you all so quick, I'm
betting she's hurting for stiff American money and I'm looking to use
my unearned wealth. When I'm riding back in my rental, hopefully a
closed top so I can ignore your poverty more, I might stop by. How
much do you think your mom charges for an around the world? Just
kidding, of course. Your mom probably has AIDS and will die in a
year."
The smiles on their faces throughout
this horribly offensive expression of the English language had fueled
me on to make it more offensive, waiting for the moment when they
would gather I was insulting them, but the moment never happened. I
had said the whole lot of words in a sing-song voice and they might
have thought I was espousing on the designated hitter rule's impact
on the game. When stuck on the road, it's important to entertain
yourself with little games to pass the time. The sound of a car
behind us interrupted more of my inane self-agrandizing.
"And I'm a ninja. Make that king
of the ninjas. With a couple wives. Not all at once. Some were ninja
wives."
The car's engine was deep and low and
impressive, making me stop in my tracks to admire it, not just to try
to hitch a ride behind it and the air conditioning unit. I turned
and looked at the cloud of dust with the flat and low metal shark
that helmed the dirt storm and rumbled quickly towards me. The
hobbits had already moved to the side. They knew the shark, painted
purple, and respected its power, understanding that at least. It
drove as if no man or child would possibly slow its travel and the
shark would consume all pedistrians or lesser vehicles without
slowing to taste them. I moved to the side of the road and jutted
out my thumb, but the Swazilings grabbed my arm and pulled it down,
repeating and yelling "No" at different volumes. Loud
enough to impart the urgency, hush enough that the shark wouldn't
hear them.
The shark slowed and my hobbits
abandoned Gandalf the White, dropping my pack, as they scattered.
The shark stopped in front of me and the dust cloud overtook it and
me, sending me into a coughing fit as the tinted window lowered with
a whir. I couldn't see through the dust into the darkness of the
tinted car, but I coughed out something resembling, "How about a
lift to Piggs Peak Casino?" and the window whirred back up. I
thought I was out of luck and was about to rap on the window with my
knuckles and give the driver some good old fashioned "How dare
you? Do you know who I am?" when I heard the cha-chunk of the
door lock. I grabbed my bag and opened the door, but a voice from
the darkness stopped me. It was a soft voice, but it sounded crisp
and cut and hard edged. It sounded like a small man puffing out his
chest at a club when confronted by a tough guy.
"Put da bag in da trunk, not in da
lab."
I didn't know what "da lab"
was, but I figured "da trunk" when it popped open. I
walked to the back of the four door and hefted up my sack, taking a
moment to appreciate the contents of the trunk. A box of guns,
suspicious worn plastic containers with mystery liquids still
settling from the stop, two gallon size ziplocs of marijuana, a quart
of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether,
chemistry textbooks, three machetes and suits in dry cleaner bags,
folded over with care. This was a man to treat with respect and I
laided my pack down as carefully as I could, trying not to disturb
the contents of this hell on wheels.
I returned to the front passenger side
door and sat down in the seat, ass first, with my feet out the side
and clapped them together, knocking off dirt and hoping my host would
appreciate the gesture to keep his car clean and to keep the
Swaziland on the outside of the shark. Then I turned and shut the
door.
"Thanks for picking me up. My
name's Levi Rucker. I'm a magazine writer from America."
I turned and shook the hand of my host.
"Lindiwe Dyuba."
This was a man whose name you learned
and remembered.
