Tales of the Metric System. Imraan Coovadia

as bare as the stage, which held only three chairs and a hat rack, and the blackboard with corrections on it, and with as few elements as the tools in his hand. Polk was noted for the spareness of his script and stage. He would only admit a word, or an action, into a play when it satisfied some internal ruler. He made sure everything counted.

      Janet’s husband was the principal of the school. Nevertheless she had fallen in love with Roland. She kept an eye on him as she marked the class essays, her red pen held at an odd angle in her strong hand. Through the window, on the sports ground, the students were doing hurdles. She would get up and watch them when she could no longer concentrate while Roland painted the ceiling from a step-ladder.

      They talked when he came down to clean the rollers. In the play it was an unequal relationship. Roland’s character was handsome; he was far more certain in his skin than Janet. He had five children who never appeared on stage. She taught him to play the piano, which stood on the right-hand corner of the stage and sounded much louder than you expected when they played together.

      At one point her husband came in. He was played by the husband of the nurse who came to the hostel to administer certain injections. The principal didn’t acknowledge his wife’s presence as he gave Roland a set of detailed instructions about the geyser. The principal had a soldier’s posture and harsh voice. Victor didn’t understand how the character could have been based on Polk’s friend Professor Hunter. They had nothing in common apart from a patch on the elbow of the tweed jacket that Polk had borrowed from his friend for the duration of the play.

      The second act brought trouble and reminded Victor that his permit book was somewhere in the very same building. One of the students stole from Janet’s purse. She counted it, and decided that the guard had taken her property. Victor stirred in his seat and wondered if he should try to sneak out of the performance. It was too early. As he had suspected there was no sign of the custodian on the staircase, listening intently to the antics on stage. Mr Shabangu preferred to steer clear of what he could not control.

      Janet called Roland to her classroom and tried to persuade him to confess. She told him that she didn’t want to report him to her husband on account of his five children. She made him empty out his pockets in front of her and then give her the key to his locker. Victor wished he could do the same thing with Mr Shabangu. His world was full of accusations. Roland refused to admit to Janet that he was guilty. He thought it was because she had fallen in love with him that she was willing to go to such lengths. He had never stolen a thing. He wished that he had never listened to her stories in the first place. It was worse for him because she had told him about her husband and family, the school board, and the operation that had left her unable to bear a child. She slapped him. He pushed her away.

      Around him Victor sensed the audience becoming more excited by the different predicaments, as if some secret, usually lost in the spaces between people, had become visible. He was distracted by the nearby girl and then by the question of what to do about Mr Shabangu.

      When he came back to the play not much had changed except the progress of their feelings. Anger crackled between the main characters with all their unsatisfied and disappointed love. Victor saw that he was also angry at Polk, at Roland, who had delayed him, and at Davidson the printer, who employed him to set the government gazette and then pretended not to remember his name the next time he went to ask for a job.

      At the beginning of the final act the guard picked his hammer out of the toolbox and never put it down again. He kept it behind his back, hidden from his companion but visible to the audience, the head going up and down as the tension between the actors varied. What was said between Janet and Roland didn’t matter. The hammer mattered. When she accused Roland to her husband it listened and drew its own conclusions.

      It was only in the final minutes of the play that the hammer revealed itself between the two principals. The guard was supposed to be collecting his possessions when she went into his room on the back of the property. Janet couldn’t take her eyes off the hammer when she saw it in his hands. The tension was unbearable in the canteen, hardly relieved when Roland hit her twice on the back of the head, just as if he were testing the soundness of the hammer against bone.

      His victim didn’t have a chance to protect herself. She collapsed as the curtain was rolled down and lay stretched out on the stage, her feet trembling more slowly, for a few minutes before getting up again. The audience began to clap although you couldn’t say what they were clapping for. Perhaps it was for her resurrection. Janet, Roland, and the principal stood in the front of the canteen and bowed.

      Victor also clapped but he didn’t believe in Polk’s story. It was too neat. It was told from the wrong side. In his experience, it was the one who was safe, who had money in his pocket, who told stories, who also had the hammer in his hand and would stand over your body shedding tears to prove his humanity. Mr Shabangu, for example, had the hammer. Janet, or her husband, would have had the hammer.

      He was sure his good luck had returned at the end of the day. Everybody’s secrets had come out on stage. It was as if he had been drinking a secret liquor all day, watering a seed in his breast which had blossomed into happiness. He saw Polk, who stopped Victor to talk. He was as exhilarated as Victor. His shirt was open to the navel.

      —You think it worked, after all?

      —I didn’t expect the men to understand. But it looks like they did.

      —When it comes to a play I don’t think understanding means much. Chekhov acts on your heart, on your breathing. Like Shakespeare. Next year I am going to put on Macbeth in Zulu. I hope you will come and assist me.

      —I will be happy to come.

      The girl Victor noticed before had vanished. He didn’t mind. Polk, with his rusted white beard and wine on his lips, looked like a hero. Nobody else in the building mattered.

      —Everything will be different now, Victor. We proved something here.

      Victor wasn’t sure what Polk meant. The audience was breaking up and the volunteers were folding chairs and putting them against the wall. He had to hurry.

      —So your Mr Shabangu didn’t come after all. I expected him to fix his evil eye on us for taking over his canteen. He couldn’t forgive the intrusion. Steer clear of that man, Victor.

      —I will try. But I have to go and see him now. I believe that he has taken my reference book.

      Polk didn’t appear to hear. He had turned away and was already talking to Janet. Victor couldn’t expect any help from him. The building was almost empty and the men were already in their beds. When Victor went upstairs, avoiding the last members of the audience and Roland, who had come out with his face scrubbed, he found he was alone in the hallway.

      To Victor’s despair, the light was already on in the caretaker’s room. He knelt and looked through the keyhole to establish the situation.

      Mr Shabangu was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was a European sitting at the desk on which the caretaker checked his calculations and did his accounts. The pad of carbon paper had been replaced with a complicated machine, a motor bearing two spindles through which was passing a section of thick brown tape.

      The caretaker was sure to have arranged it ahead of time. Victor couldn’t imagine the machine being set up in a single evening. He was surprised that Mr Shabangu hadn’t warned him to stay away from the top floor after the performance. It was as if he wanted to get caught in the act, wanted to show off his European friend.

      Crouching in front of the door, Victor noted the man’s reddish-brown, big-buttoned leather jacket on the back of the chair and the short trimmed hair on his rectangular head. He had earphones over his ears and was adjusting the dials on the machine.

      At some point the caretaker would reappear. He never slept in any other place, never travelled for the holidays, never spent a night in the hospital. So there would be no other chance of looking in his room. Victor’s opportunities were diminishing by the hour. Last night Mr Shabangu had eaten him. This evening a new man with a recorder had appeared to guard what had been taken.

      Victor was sure that the man