Dub Steps (19 page)

I wasn’t sure we would ever be able to get a big enough aeroplane off the ground to fly to another continent. A few joyrides across sub-Saharan Africa, maybe, but full-on flying? The agreed-upon goal felt like it would be beyond us. Aeroplanes, even the smaller jets that business moguls and sports stars used, seemed to me to be inherently complicated. Runways and tyre pressure and lift-offs and wind speeds and landings and all those things were being funnelled in Teboho’s direction, and he was displaying more and more signs of coming unhinged. Our late-night joint conversations had become more speculative and wistful, his language and ideas drifting off to extraterrestrials and harnessing star power for proper energy, and then suddenly back to inner space and nano flights and the biological dimensions of internal infinity and such things.

I humoured him. I even went with him, as far as I was able to in my own more restricted, linear mind. But I also suspected that as the hack percentage in his piss was dwindling, Tebza had been topping up with things secured on his Durban scrounging session. I knew the symptoms well from the ad bunnies, who oscillated similarly between bright-eyed interest in and sudden hypersensitivity to the basic stimuli of life.

From a distance the Waterkloof Airforce Base looked like a poorly executed attempt at a school. The architectural signage at the sagging entrance gates announced structural redevelopment. Stabbed into the red earth next to the technical information was a logo mounted on a single steel leg: a sun rising over a generic horizon, beneath the header ‘Watching Over South Africa’s Future’. The sign had fallen dramatically to the left, the edge of the W hovering inches above the ground.

The base consisted of a collection of vaguely interlinked face-brick and temporary prefab buildings. A cluster of elderly, dirty-brown military planes were parked around the runways, waiting patiently behind a single, more prosperous white jumbo jet, which was aimed directly down the runway, ready to take off. Surrounding them all was an army of construction machines: yellow front-end loaders, trucks and others born to drag and move.

Lillian and the rest hovered in and around the simulator hut. (As Lillian had suggested, the building, based on appearance, shouldn’t have housed much more than detergents and brooms. According to an A4 laminated notice which had fallen from the door, it was the temporary flight-training facility.) Meanwhile I walked around the complex a few times, poking my head into offices, running my fingers over the many prefab walls, marvelling at the structural transience of a place that had been there since long before I was born. And of course it was all khaki and brown, the colours of the desks and files and folders and photos matching eerily with the cargo planes at the back, all of it mirrored by the deep orange of the Highveld soil, which swarmed around and over my peripheral vision.

It took a little over a week for us to set up the power for the simulator hut. I provided as much muscle as I could and tried not to think about anything specific. I carried and dropped off, and plugged and unplugged things in and out of various holes, obeying Fats and Gerald and Lillian in turn, sharing sighs and grunts with Beatrice and the twins, feeling Babalwa’s pregnant eyes on me as she sat and watched like a representative from the UN.

Once the power was set up and the simulator was fully
operational, I fell back. I dedicated my early mornings to a long run, which generally ended with me sitting at the top of London Road and looking down over the shacks of Alex. After the run I made sure I managed the farm as best I could while the rest were occupied. I milked the cows, slaughtered whatever small creatures needed to die, and skinned and plucked and butchered as was necessary. I maintained the vegetable garden, turning the soil gently, picking dead leaves off here and there, talking to the plants, encouraging them in the way I myself needed encouragement. After the farm maintenance I allowed myself to drift into the mid-afternoon.

Sometimes I would dream while lounging on the pool furniture, arms behind my head, eyelids heavy and falling. Other days I would read, stocking up on South African history. Joburg history. The miners and the slaves. That sort of thing. Sometimes I would just stare out at the northern horizon and wonder how they were getting on with flight.

The twins operated in a parallel orbit to mine, staying chiefly housebound and focusing on food and maintenance. Andile and Javas would take turns in the kitchen, and often one of them would join me for a period in the garden or – when necessary – in wielding the knife on a chicken. Javas spent nights in his studio and woke just before lunch. The three of us maintained a pleasant mutual quietude.

Then the rest would arrive back from the base: Tebza looking frazzled and disturbed; Lillian and Fats arguing some point (take-off trajectory, flaps or fuel); Gerald trailing behind, arms full of the day’s supplies and equipment; Babalwa at the back, belly cupped in her hands.

I made sure I visited the base every few days. It felt important to be seen as part of the venture – as part of the team and all that. In truth I was relieved the farm had to be maintained and that there were viable tasks for me back home. The simulator hut was hot and cramped. With two people in the available seats and three more hovering around the edges of the plastic bucket that housed the dash and screen, it was a stuffy, hot and bothersome gig. The less I participated, the fewer reasons there were for me to be near the action, and so when I did visit I generally ended up
kicking it with Babalwa just outside the hut, the two of us perched awkwardly on plastic pool furniture.

Cheers would rattle the hut after hours of silence. With each roar we grew closer to the idea of actually taking off. Even I, the sceptic, felt myself occasionally roused at the thought of the ability to break free of our domain. I pictured other small packs of people in different parts of the world attempting similar things. I imagined us crossing paths in mid-air, waving at each other.

Even when we were fighting – and there was always an argument of some sort on the go, to say nothing of the lingering Durban resentments – we were driven by an intention, by a goal. This was in marked contrast to earlier months, which had felt like a steady march towards complete stagnation or death. As a group we were now imbued with meaning and a larger purpose. There was, in a word, progress.

I don’t think Tebza felt very much of that. Towards the end of training, when regular touchdowns and landings were being achieved, he began to openly question his position as pilot. He had never wanted to be the pilot. He felt that Lillian and Fats had bestowed the position on him because of his computer addiction and his drive to establish the WAN – hardly, he said, the same thing as wanting to fly. He also said to me privately, on several occasions, that he was feeling extremely pressured. He would have preferred to be the training guy on the ground rather than the guinea pig in the air. I couldn’t fault his argument, but Fats and Lillian shut him down with the brute force of a fait accompli. Fats would pat him on the head or fake punch his shoulder and say, ‘Too late my son. You’re our pilot now. You’re our man in the air. The guy with the skills. Sometimes destiny is undeniable, eh?’ Or some other such fatuous rubbish.

Some nights I would push my head into his room to see Tebza slumped and drugged in front of his machine, listening to old broken dubstep beats, eyes drilling into the fractals on some retro reconstruction of a ’90s-era Windows Media Player. I would call his name, but my voice was unable to spark even a grunt of acknowledgement, let alone a reply.

So, at Javas’s Drill Hall studio I found peace of the sort I just couldn’t get my hands on anywhere else. As often as was logistically possible, I began to reverse my routine. Laundry first, then cow milking and general farm maintenance, followed by a run to Drill Hall and a long session in the midday sun, letting the warmth of the metal sculptures broil me as I leaned against the legs of the biggest one – who I had come to call George. I talked to George, running him through events in the house and preparations for the flight. He was a good confidant, always listening, always neutral. As the weeks of preparation drifted into months, I relied on him more and more to keep my mental balance in check.

‘You never know, Roy,’ Javas said as he stepped out from wherever he had been listening. ‘Miracles do happen. They could just as easily figure it all out as fuck it all up.’

I shot to my feet, shocked, and gulped a few times. Thankfully I hadn’t been gossiping.

‘Ag, moenie worry, mchana. I talk to them too. All the time.’ He drifted between iron legs, patting a thigh, kneeling occasionally to inspect the weld on a foot. ‘They’re like that, nè? The more you get to know them, the more they want to get to know you – your story.’

‘Strange shit’ was the best response I could come up with.

‘Ja. Strange shit.’ Javas took a seat at the feet of Julius, a fatter, squatter, meaner-looking creature. ‘This one’s my favourite,’ he said. ‘He’s a bit fucked up. Quite ugly. He lacks the abilities of the others.’

It was odd to hear him refer to the creatures so personally, as individual humans, in just the same way as I had been interacting with them. I sat back down at George’s feet. ‘George is my man,’ I said. ‘Something about him, I don’t know. He’s just … my guy.’

Javas smiled and leaned back against Julius’s fat, ungainly foot. ‘So, Roy, what the fuck is going on with you, son? Everyone is talking about how you’re drifting. Not involved. Et cetera, et cetera.’

My heart thumped. ‘You’re not exactly in the middle of things
either, are you?’ I said.

‘Well, you’re right there. But I think, and forgive me, I don’t mean to insult’ – he smiled warmly to reinforce the non-insult – ‘that I’m a bit smoother than you. I don’t make people jumpy like you do.’

‘I make them jumpy?’ I wasn’t completely shocked by this, but still, it was strange to hear it out loud. ‘Must be this bladdy tooth.’

We roamed for a while around the flight and its potential for success or otherwise, and then further out to art and the Drill Hall and life and advertising and all the things we had, respectively, left behind. Javas talked straight at me, his words bouncing lightly off the roof. I was struck again by how articulate he was, by his ability to warm me up with words. Mostly, I was struck by his interest in advertising, a subject of little worth or interest to anyone else. He questioned me repeatedly about what I had worked on before getting involved with Mlungu’s, what my job actually was, who controlled me, who controlled the process, how much I got paid, and so on. I self-expressed, as we used to joke at the agency while mimicking a lactating breast.

Eventually I reversed the Q&A. ‘So you were famous?’

‘Depends on your definition,’ Javas said. ‘I mean, no one outside of these people’ – he indicated the statues and, I assumed, their associated industry humans – ‘would know who I was. Just artists. Buyers, you know. That stuff. So no, not famous. Not in the real way.’

‘But on the up, yes?’ I pressed on.

‘On the up. Ja. I like that. I was on the up.’

‘How much were you selling these for again?’

‘’Bout three bar, sometimes four, five, six even.’

I whistled.

‘Not a lot, Roy,’ he countered. ‘Each one takes more than six months to build. Hard cost is about eight hundred thousand rand. And a million today’s not what it was.’

‘So you weren’t rich.’

‘Eish, no. Just bought my first car. Tiny BMW.’

‘But happy?’

‘Crazy happy. Crazy happy, boss. It was a miracle, for someone like me to fall into this stuff and find money in it. The shock of my life.’

‘But you’re good, hey. I mean, it’s so obvious. You’re a really talented artist.’

Javas laughed. A good, long, cynical laugh. It came right from his belly. ‘I’m not an artist’s ass, Roy. I’m a guy who learned how to weld and met some people in sunglasses.’

So that was it. The ability to weld and the good fortune that arrives with people in sunglasses. The critics called it his ‘genuine humanity’.

I agreed with the critics. Javas was humble and thoughtful, and both characteristics found form in his art, in his creatures, his monsters, who weren’t trying to prove anything, or win any competitions, or better anyone else working the block. They were complete and confident on their own, and that was thanks to their creator.

Javas forced me into a reciprocal effort. Tired of ‘I was an advertising drunk’ and the crass simplicity of my time as Mlungu’s manager, I scratched around for something a little more genuine. Eventually I settled on cheese.

Our agency was hired on the Dairy Board account, and I was given cheese. I stole a very old idea from the Americans, tweaked it a little and got the credit. It was simple enough. We put the Dairy Board and a pizza house together. The board subsidised the development and promotion of an uber-cheese pizza – with twelve times more cheese than a regular. It was a giant success, in every sense, and changed the standard across the country. Cheese volumes went through the roof, kids and grannies scrambled for the giant pizzas, and the fattening-foods debate only sparked more exposure and more sales. The Dairy Board was ecstatic, and I was personally responsible for adding at least two extra inches to the national waistline.

‘Cheese,’ Javas tutted. ‘Cheese.’ He was only half laughing. ‘I had no idea things like that happened. Cheese.’

We left it at that. His monsters. My cheese.

The excitement grew. Like one of those really old movies about going into space. The ones with Clint Eastwood or Ed Harris or Burt Reynolds, where the wives flutter around making sandwiches and staring up at the moon, kids under wing.

With every successful simulator trip they (we) allowed themselves (ourselves) to crank it up a notch. Plans were laid for which plane to use, a not insignificant question. They (we) settled on something small (but not too small, pleaded Tebza), but when they got into the cockpit it bore almost no resemblance to the simulator.

The simulator turned out to be for a fighter jet – but it took over six weeks to discover this. It seems bizarre in the telling, but this is how things actually happen. You jump in the simulator, learn how to fly, presume the best and ask the important questions later. Only once Tebza was successfully taking off and landing regularly did anyone think to question what kind of plane he was learning to fly.

And so we stalled. None of us were foolish enough to think Tebza could fly a fighter jet – even a small one. We would have to find another simulator, and another method.

The failure sent Lillian into a crushing decline. I frequently found her in strange corners, peering into the middle distance, picking and biting at her fingernails. Once I made the mistake of enquiring after her mental health and in reply she delivered, in shocking and extended detail, an exposition on the fundamental differences between the USA and South Africa. It was a searing monologue, born of a great deal of frustration. The only thing the two places had in common was their obsession with God. Otherwise, it was extreme contrasts and damaging mirror images. She rattled them off (ethics, innovation, music diversity, national planning, tendencies towards a feudal state, physical security, consequences
for actions, entrepreneurial culture, etc., etc.), but while she began the tirade powered by a tart, ironic sense of humour, this ebbed as the list grew and eventually she was, knowingly, and semi-ashamedly but still unable to stop herself, dragging me through a pool of her own bile.

She tailed off eventually. ‘I’m sorry, Roy, I am,’ she said. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘But Lillian,’ I replied, squeezing her shoulder tentatively, ‘do you really think there’s a home to go to?’

‘Well, I’ve got to, don’t I? This can’t be it. We can’t be it.’

I went running.

I milked cows.

I slaughtered chickens.

Fats eventually emerged from his rejuvenated office to pronounce that, based on his reading and research, a commercial Boeing was our only option. A simulator was unable to replicate the physical forces involved in piloting a small plane, which ultimately required hands-on-the-stick experience. Fighter jets and other types of army planes were too powerful and risky. Commercial passenger planes like Boeings, on the other hand, were almost completely automated. Once you knew what you were doing, it was simply a question of telling the on-board computer to follow the flight plan.

‘How do you create a flight plan?’ Gerald asked.

Fats brought the answer back from the OR Tambo International pilot-training centre, which included a full simulator, instructions on how to file flight plans, and everything else anyone wanting to learn to fly a Boeing could possibly need.

Yet again, none of us could figure out how we missed it. Lillian accused me of a lack of thoroughness and/or vision. I took the blow, although we had all been to the airport several times, and
none of us had come close to the training centre.

We moved out to Kempton Park to repeat the process.