Tales of the Metric System. Imraan Coovadia

positions. Nor could a person trace his steps so exactly that he would discover at which point he and his possession had parted.

      —Everything is out of its place in here, I see. I can also see that you have moved my supplies from their usual locations. I prefer this room to be ship-shape, as you know.

      —I understand. I will put it all back in the right place.

      The caretaker put his hands out to make a sign.

      —Everything must fit together like a tea set.

      —I promise to put it back as it was. I misplaced something.

      —Nothing too important, I hope. I know you have extra work thanks to the recent invaders. That gentleman Polk is to blame, I believe. He has put an extra strain on you.

      —He gave me a chance to work on the play.

      —Nevertheless, it takes a toll. I understand completely. When you are distracted it is only natural to lose track of your property.

      Mr Shabangu smiled broadly. It seemed to be the product of some dislocation at the jaw. Mr Shabangu had moods which were monotonous for months at a time, strung the one on the other like beads in a necklace. He got through Christmas and Boxing Day without the slightest trace of good cheer, singing hymns in the front row of the choir with a face as clouded as a Scotsman’s, and afterwards drinking the red fruit juice from the punchbowl with no more joy than if it were medicine.

      In the same instant Victor understood that it was his landlord who had taken the reference book. He had come to the store room to gloat, declaring there was nothing that could be done.

      Victor saw he was as lost as his permit. Shabangu had been at the top of his list, the first of his patrons. Victor tried to be friends with everyone who could help him. Now, for no reason he could understand, the custodian had taken the permit. There was no sense in it. He was bare in front of Mr Shabangu. He staggered. He wanted to sit down on the floor. He had never had such a flux of hot and cold sensations.

      The intruder came further into the room, looking around at the items displaced by the search and the thin mattress, which stood on its side against the wall. There was one window in the store room, barred, although you would have needed a long ladder to reach it from the road. Through it, the cornmeal-coloured sunlight suddenly poured. It gave Mr Shabangu’s face an unexpected golden aspect, a King Midas who had brought his hands to his head.

      Victor understood, for the first time, that it wasn’t a trustworthy countenance. Mr Shabangu was lean elsewhere, in his hands and chest, yet his neck and chin resembled a lizard’s collar. He was pleased by the knowledge of other men’s frailties and superstitions, information he relayed to Victor, by the discovery he made every day that nobody in the building was better than him. There was no African to beat him.

      How had Victor borne it for three years? How had he survived the weight of the caretaker leaning on him, for three full years, and stealing the breath out of his chest? How bad was his luck that, in a single month three years ago, he had lost his father and gained a succubus to drain his life energies? He couldn’t measure his misfortune. This Shabangu would sit on him until he died.

      The caretaker settled on the bottom of the mattress.

      —For you, Victor, life can be delightful forever, provided you have the rent for me. Yes, it is true that I came to remind you of that unlucky day of the month. Not that I wish to be the messenger of bad news only. This evening, I am buying meat from Clover butchery. I have ordered mutton chops. You can join me if that suits you.

      —I have the rent money right now. Only I cannot eat with you, Mr Shabangu. Mr Polk wants me from the afternoon. Tonight the play opens downstairs. They didn’t inform you? It is supposed to go until quite late.

      —Indeed that is what they have warned us to expect.

      —So I don’t think I will be free.

      —Well, that is a pity then. Good chops.

      Victor was surprised to find the notes where he had left them in his trousers. He counted out the four rands and twenty cents to the caretaker. They were accepted in the good grace that had struck Mr Shabangu like a ray of moonshine. Victor remembered that the caretaker was the only person in the building who knew the secret of the reference book. Before he left town his father had taken the caretaker into confidence, consulting with him as to the proper price to pay. Shabangu had protected Victor for three years. In this fatal week when Polk’s play was about to open, the caretaker had been unable to prevent himself taking advantage of his knowledge. He wanted to profit on both sides.

      They went downstairs together where Mr Shabangu had to start opening the doors and running after the kitchen staff. Victor tried to understand the caretaker’s complete change of mood. Shabangu was the riddle. Why would he do it? Why would it make him happy? The police were useless. If he was correct about what had happened, and the caretaker’s smile shone into his soul as the proof, then it was up to Victor to search the money-lender’s heart, not to say Shabangu’s room, and rescue his permit.

      In the meantime he couldn’t afford to alert the other man. He couldn’t let the pass book leave the building. Then he would be finished.

      They stood for a minute in the canteen, where the preparations for the play were almost complete.

      —You won’t come to see the performance, Mr Shabangu? The tickets are for free, of course, because you have assisted the production. You can also stand on the stairs over there and watch through the window. Mr Polk doesn’t mind.

      —Then he is a very unusual European. I have never heard of such a man. Not to worry about the tickets! But I have seen enough to agree with you that, with Mr Peter Polk, what we have is a different kettle of fish. In any case, Victor, my religion does not believe in plays.

      The older man’s lips were twitching, as if he were unwilling to erase his victorious feeling and become unhappy again at the changes in his kingdom. He looked around the large room.

      —I don’t know why there has been such a fuss about Mr Polk’s play. For weeks they have turned our lives upside down. For a piece of make-believe!

      In this regard Mr Shabangu was quite correct. Despite the way Polk had presented his plan to the supervisors, the preparations for the play had come to interfere with the routine operations of the hostel. The canteen, where there were usually churning pots on the stove holding shining Maizena porridge alongside piles of hairy corn cobs bedraggled from boiling water, had been converted into a theatre. The benches had been shifted from their usual place. Black drapes had been nailed over the makeshift stage. In the evenings, when the men remained on the steps to talk or to practise their dancing, there had been the sounds of rehearsals behind the locked doors and the beguiling voice of a woman. Late into the evening there had been the outbursts of Polk the director, as likely to come to the boil and spill over as one of the pots on the stove.

      They were also skirting the law. There were certain ordinances that prevented black and white actors performing professionally, for money, on the same stage. Polk thought he had found a loophole, by changing the method of payment, and had chosen four Caledonian residents to work alongside his two principal actors, Roland Adams and Janet Gilfillan. Victor had become as interested in the actor and actress as in Polk himself. They seemed to fly from thought to thought, feeling to feeling, like acrobats. Polk’s company seemed to work outside the law, beyond what could easily be measured or defined, and yet, as you overheard in their conversation, they had their own strong sense of what counted. They chose the individual over the system and their own ways of doing things above everything else and everybody else’s expectations. The two of them stayed on the same floor of the whites-only hotel despite Roland’s complexion.

      There was a chance Polk and his actors would understand Victor’s predicament. Polk could try to help. If Victor complained about Shabangu to any of the hostel residents, however, they would laugh at him. After all, he had told a Christian his secret and exposed himself.

      —I can come to your room afterwards then, Mr Shabangu. I will see if you are still awake. Maybe we can still celebrate