Why You Were Taken (9 page)

Wesley’s cheeks colour, and for a second Seth thinks he said it out loud, but then realises it’s because Wesley has caught sight of his sneakers. They’re limited edition, by a local graffiti artist, and have the word
Punani
emblazoned on the sides. He guesses that they’re worth more than Wesley makes in a month. Seth is tempted to put them up on the desk, but then thinks better of it. Best not to push him too far, too soon. Managers are assholes at the best of times and he can’t have anyone deliberately obstructing him. As a peace-making concession he takes out his eyebrow-ring and puts it in his pocket. Rubs off some of the Smudge on his eyes. He sees Wesley soften. It works every time.

‘Okay, then,’ says Seth, pointing at his giant flatscreen Glass, ‘I’d better get started.’

Wesley attempts a smile, and looks immediately like a rodent: his nose crinkles up and his lips reveal his large front teeth. Perfect, thinks Seth, Wesley the Weasel. At least now he won’t forget his name. There is a welcome pack on his desk containing his access/ID card, to be clipped onto his very own red lanyard, a CinnaCola shirt in his size, complete with animated fizzing logo, and a blue book of Fontus rules of conduct. The Fontus logo is, unimaginatively, a stylised illustration of a fountain, and the word ‘Fontus’ is set in a handsome font, uppercase. He turfs the lanyard into his drawer and slides the card into his pocket.

  ‘You have to wear it,’ says The Weasel. ‘The lanyard, and card. It’s for ID as much as it’s for access.’ He points to the camera in the corner of the room. ‘Security, you know.’

Seth retrieves the red lanyard and clips his card onto it. Reluctantly puts it around his neck. The Weasel chortles.

  ‘Besides, we can’t have those Greens sneaking around the red section, stealing our brand strategies!’

There are posters on the walls: pictures of the Fourteen Wonders of the world on dark blue backgrounds with slogans like: ‘It’s Not a Problem, it’s a Challenge’ and ‘Opportunities are Everywhere’.

He waits for The Weasel to go before he dumps the rest of the welcome pack into the bin. The shirt continues to fizz. He swivels his ergochair around, stares out of the window. He hears someone laugh in the corridor. The grounds are immaculate: the lawn grass smooth and green; perfectly tended bright annuals burst with complimentary colours under canopies of handsome indigenous trees. Cheerful employees pass each other with a smile or a wave. The campus is like a hotbed of high spirits, cleanliness, and efficiency. A bright island in the dark fuss that is the rest of the country. Seth pops a pill. Yes, he thinks, there is definitely something very odd going on around here.

MARY CONTRARY

9

Johannesburg, 2021

Kirsten catches the waiter’s attention and motions for another round. She is sitting on her own in Molly Q’s, a retro-restaurant, the only one in Johannesburg that still serves molecular cuisine.

It’s her favourite, and James had booked a table for them for his first night back home. Kirsten’s favourite gastroventure, she loves the purity of the flavours here; the shapes she sees and feels are so vivid and in focus.

She is drinking their signature cocktail, an unBloody Mary-Contrary. The purest vodka swirled with clear tomato water and essence of pepper. They serve it with a long, slender, frozen piece of celery-green glass. Kirsten takes a sip and feels the crystalline shapes appear before her. Not as strong as the first drink, but quite clear nevertheless.

 
Damn the law of diminishing returns.

They’ll get stronger, more palpable, later in the evening; alcohol always makes her synaesthesia more pronounced. Suddenly she feels lips on her forehead, sunshine hue, a warm hand on her back, and she blinks past the crystals to see James.

  ‘Kitty! I missed you.’

She springs up to hug him, inhales the tang of his neck. He smells like Zimbabwe: hand sanitiser and aeroplane cabin. Also: miswak chewing gum that has long lost its flavour. They hold onto each other for a while.

  ‘I missed you too.’ It was true.

They sit down, and Kirsten orders a craft beer for him, a hoppy ale; he doesn’t drink cocktails. He always laughs out loud when they watch old movies and James Bond drinks a martini.

  ‘How’s the clinic?’

He has a slight tan, despite his usually fanatical compulsion to apply SPF100, and crumpled cotton sleeves. He looks tired, but well.

  ‘Understaffed, underfunded, and bursting with sick people: sick children, sick babies. It was difficult to leave.’

Something small in Kirsten splinters. He grabs her hand.

  ‘Of course, I’d rather be with you than anywhere, but there are just so many – ’

  ‘I understand,’ she says, looking away. It’s easier to be with people you can help.

  ‘So many of the babies there are hungry and neglected. Not like here,’ he says.

  ‘Not like here,’ she agrees. How can you neglect a baby? How come those creeps are fertile, she thinks, when I’m not?

  ‘I mean I can see how the border-baby trade is thriving. When you see kids like that you get the feeling that their parents would gladly part with them for a couple of hundred thousand rand.’

  ‘Awful,’ says Kirsten, pulling a face. ‘They should write it into law that you need to qualify for a parenting license before you’re allowed to procreate.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ James says, but she kind of does.

They order the set menu, and an
amuse bouche
of wooded chardonnay gelée with pink balsamic caviar arrives, then Asian crudo with a brush of avocado silk, and wasabi sorbet. They keep quiet for the first few bites, allowing Kirsten to appreciate all the shapes, colours and textures of the flavours. The wasabi sorbet in particular sends cool ninja stars into her brain. It feels good.

  ‘How are you?’ James asks, ‘how have you been holding up?’

  ‘I had a very interesting weekend,’ she says, spooning the last of the wasabi into her mouth and feeling the jagged edges of the stars fade away. ‘I discovered the reason I’m so, well, fucked up.’

James takes a long, slow sip of his beer. They had been through this so many times before.

 
One of the problems with long-term mono-relationships,
she thinks
, is that listening to the same old issues gets eyeball-bleedingly boring. At least now she has a new angle.

He looks at her, measuring her mood, puts his glass down. She senses him sighing on the inside.

  ‘Kitty, you’re not fucked up.’

  ‘I am, a little.’

  ‘Okay, you are, a little. But so is everyone else. You’re just more aware of your fucked-up-ness than the average creep, because you’re …’

  ‘Special?’

  ‘Not what I was going to say, but let’s go with that.’

They smile at each other, and it reminds them both of when they started dating in varsity. When things were still shiny.

  ‘Do you mean your synaesthesia?’ He knows she doesn’t.

  ‘No, the synaesthesia is my light side. I’m talking about my dark side.’

  ‘The Black Hole,’ he says. God, how he hates The Black Hole.

As a child she had tried to explain it to her parents, thinking that they had it too, that is was a necessary human condition, but they would get frustrated and lose their patience, just as James does now. Perhaps The Black Hole on its own would have been fine, but together with her synaesthesia it seemed too much for them to handle. It caused a rift: a cool, empty space between them that could easily be ignored; not often navigated.

Once, when she was still in primary school, she had tried to explain the emptiness to her mother, who became very upset and stormed out, leaving her at home alone. When the minutes streamed into hours and the started sinking she went to the neighbour’s house: a young couple who, non-plussed, plopped her in front of the television. They fed her milky rooibos and stale Marie biscuits while they whispered into the phone. Afterwards, they sat in the living room with her, making awkward conversation, until the glare of her mother’s advancing headlights lit up their sitting room, announcing with bright hostility her return. It wasn’t the first or the last time her mother had left her on her own.

Eventually, a little desperately, her father had produced Mingi: a meowing yin-yang ball of fluff, hoping the kitten would stitch up The Black Hole, but it didn’t. She kept quiet about it after that, not wanting to cause them any more worry. Now they were gone. And now James was the worrier.

  ‘And?’ he prompts, ‘what’s the reason?’

She smooths out the polka-dotted tablecloth. She finally says the words out loud: slowly, clearly, listening to her own voice.

  ‘I think I was adopted.’

James frowns at her: ‘What?’

  ‘Keke visited while you were away. She found out some … well, to cut a long story short, my mother had a hysterectomy before I was born.’

She lets it sink in. James just looks at her.

  ‘And,’ she says, taking the birth certificate and magazine clipping out of her bag, ‘look at these. Look at this cheap-ass certificate, probably created in Corel Draw. Do you know that there is not one photo of me as a baby? Not one.’ 

She flips the imposter-baby picture over to reveal the magazine name and date on the other side. James looks stunned. She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t quite believe it yet, either. He grabs the photo from her hand and studies it.

  ‘I know!’ she says, ‘isn’t it crazy? I’m adopted!’ The woman at the next table looks over in interest. Kirsten lowers her voice.

  ‘So there is a reason I never felt properly connected to them. Why I always felt like an outsider.’

  ‘Everyone feels like an outsider. It’s inherent, the feeling we don’t belong. Ironically, the one thing we all have in common.’

  ‘Yes, okay, but … it’s crackers, right? Do you realise what this means? I could have a family out there!’

James is quiet, looks worried.

  ‘Well?’ she urges him, as if he has some kind of answer for her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s pretty shocking. If it’s true.’

  ‘I need to find them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What the hell do you think I mean? I’m going to find out who my real parents are. And meet them. Have them over for some fucking cake.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘That night … that night they were killed,’ says Kirsten. James puts his hand over hers. ‘My mother called me. Said she had to tell me something. That it couldn’t wait.’

  ‘Why didn’t you … tell me?’

  ‘She was upset, stumbling over her words. Not making sense. I thought she was … having one of her episodes.’

Carol had been showing signs of early-onset Alzheimers. She hadn’t been diagnosed, but the symptoms of dementia had begun presenting themselves the year before, and were increasing in frequency. Kirsten pictured the disease as a whey-coloured cotton wool cloud over her mother’s head (Cirrus Nest). As with most issues, her parents hadn’t liked to talk about it.

  ‘Surely you must get it? This is my chance to find my missing part. Besides, it’s not just for me, it’s for us. It will be helpful to know my biological mother’s medical history, it might help us figure out our … fertility issues.’

  ‘We don’t have fertility issues,’ he says.

  ‘Are you being serious? We’ve been trying for years.’

  ‘That’s normal, nowadays.’

This makes Kirsten furious. She feels like upending the table, smashing plates. Instead she just sits and fixes her glare on James. A frozen veil descends between them.

  ‘I feel the hope, too,’ says James. ‘And the disappointment. I want a baby as much as you do.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she says, although she knows it hurts him.

  ‘Look, the less you worry about it –’

Kirsten curls her hands into fists.

  ‘Less worry is not an option currently on the table. Please choose another fucking option.’

The chicken truffle with cocoa-chilli reduction and green peppercorn brittle arrives. It is beautifully presented but Kirsten is raging inside and can’t imagine she can swallow any of it.

  ‘Look,’ she says, pushing her chair back. ‘I’m meeting Kex for drinks tonight. I’m going to go.’

  ‘Kitty, please don’t be like this.’

She stands up. ‘I’ll see you later.’

*                  *                  *

Seth leaves the Fontus building at 20:30. He is enjoying the actual work of the new job, the flavour-mapping and production process modelling, it’s like grinding at Disney World after the serious chemical engineering he did at Pharmax. Plus they have everything you could possibly want on the campus: a gym, a spa, a drycleaner, a download-den, communal bikes, restaurants, a (mostly empty) childcare centre, a virtual bowling alley, a Lixair chamber, SleepPods, all complimentary for staff. They even have wine tasting and book club evenings. Golf days, gaming nights. Infertility support groups. Overnight accommodation. The huge property is not dissimilar to a full-board holiday resort. It’s as if they don’t want their employees to leave the premises. Seth is surprised that they don’t run a matchmaking service to keep all the creeps in the family. Or a brothel.

The employees themselves seem to be extremely clean-cut: professionally dressed, well-groomed, clear skinned. Not a lot of individual style -- no Smudge or ink in sight. Certainly no recreational drugs as far as he could tell.

The Weasel is turning out to be even more of a pesticle than expected, literally leaning over his shoulder as he works. He finds it difficult to be constructive when he’s being watched, especially by a bag of dicks. He needs to experiment and play around, and this includes swapping and swerving in between a host of different programs and apps, and you can’t do that when you have those watery eyes glued to your screen.