Problems with People Read online

  She went for the ladder. This gave him time to notice that the toilet bowl had one of those blue deodorizers in it—good—and that beside the incense burner was a packet of Pondicherry frankincense cones. With one hand he kept a little pressure on the tipped washing machine, lest it decide of its own accord to fall over—that would be a real disaster, potentially injurious to him or to the toilet bowl—with the other he picked up the Pondicherry packet and read its promotional and informational material—made at Sri Aurobindo Ashram … hand-mixed … friendly to the environment … packed in wood-free cotton and banana pulp hand-made paper … he could hear Lydia Williams returning with the stepladder—the padding of her down booties across the cork floor—so he put the incense packet back and just stood there as if—for her benefit—he was content to do nothing but hold up the machine. “Great,” he said, when she showed him the stepladder and began unfolding it. “A three-step kitchen model. That looks like a good one.” “Be careful, though. Don’t get hurt.” “I’m always careful. Safety first.” “I did what you’re doing. But I didn’t see the valve.” “You pulled the machine out?” “No, but I used the ladder.” “I probably should have told you to pull the machine out.” “I got a pretty good look. I even used a flashlight.” “The deep, abiding mystery of the water valve,” he said. This time, finally, she smiled: he’d worn her down.

  He took the ladder. “You’re sure you’re okay?” she said. “I’m okay.” “It’s just that you have to climb the ladder and keep the machine from tipping any further now that its front is off of the counter. That’s two things at once.” “I think I can do it, though.” “Maybe I should help.” “Tight quarters here.” “Yes, but, like this”—she came in, braced herself against the drop-in sink console, and pressed her right hand—bulbous finger pads, he noticed—strongly into the face of the slightly tilted washing machine—“I can hold it in place while you climb up and take a look.” “You don’t mind?” “No. It’s fine.” “Well, if you don’t mind then, thank you, that’s helpful.” Whereas actually he was thinking that suddenly the two of them were jammed into this little room together and that the culturally correct distance protocol had been abrogated to the point where he thought he could smell her hair inside its beanie skull cap; after all, having risen already to step two of her ladder, he was above her now; the closest part of her to his nose was her hair; on the other hand, she would be aware, potentially, of the smells emanating from the nether portions of his body—what would that be like for her? Most people have little awareness of their own smells, this was something he knew because of a cousin who due to his restaurant work often smelled like cumin but didn’t know it; clothing heavily impregnated or infused with sweat and spice was not an impression he wanted to make right now, so how fortunate that this room was in his favor due to its hygienic blue-deodorizer scent and verdure of concealing Pondicherry frankincense. Something else: generally he was too slothful and depressed to do laundry, but by a stroke of fortune—or due to exploitation of a snowbound, errandless, in-home window of late Wednesday morning domestic energy—his clothes were right now washed, happily so given the rarity of current circumstance: proximity to a woman of child-bearing age; for that matter, proximity to anybody. And yet, rising to the third and final ladder step, he lacked confidence in his odors. It seemed to him he had to be—surely he was—an olfactory offense to Lydia Williams, and probably an offense in his other particulars. How could this not be the case?

  Now he bent across the machine, draped himself over it and looked down its back side. There were dust and cobwebs, there were hot and cold water lines, there was a power cord, but—no shut-off valve. “You’re right,” he said. “Huh.” “Come down now,” she answered. “The machine might fall over.”

  Failure. Failure at the moment of expected triumph. Abysmal, and proof of his worthlessness.

  He came down, she took the ladder away, he walked the machine back into place, by the time he was done she was back and he said, “Do you mind if I wash my hands?” “No.” And she gave him privacy to do it—she fled to the great room. Afterward he folded her hand towel to perfection. Then he came out and, standing beside her mannequin, said, “What’s wrong with me? Suddenly I remember where it is.” He went back and drew open the left-hand sliding door providing access to the dual-water-tank compartment. “Duh,” he said. “Shut-off valve. Stupid. I can’t believe it. Dumb. Moved it when I remodeled—there it is. Duh.” “Great!” “God, I’m stupid.” “Mystery solved—all’s well that ends well.”

  He knew what that was—that was a dismissal. Adiós, amigo, Auf Wiedersehen, fool. Their business was done; she wanted him to go; he would not get a deeper, more thorough look at Kali, or for that matter, at any of the other goddesses on her wall. “All’s well that ends well”—meaning, the end. He would leave and she would straighten the hair inside her beanie, reinforce her makeup scheme—if there was one—remove the sweatpants, down booties, and shirtdress, and replace them with things outdoorsy, warm, and casual, find her reusable shopping bags, and go outside with a scarf around her neck and her phone on to join her peers at the winter farmers’ market with its displays of expensive cheeses and organic nuts—all this while he went to visit his parents in New Holly, where they lived not far from the light-rail line and in walking distance of a place that sold chapatis because his mother no longer cared to make her own, plus—he’d counted—their neighborhood had six pho shops. “All’s well that ends well,” except, first, she wanted to know about his last name, Ghemawat, which, she said, she’d seen on the rental agreement—and which she now mispronounced. Was that her fault? Why set her straight? Why do anything? The whole thing was impossible. “From India,” he explained—meaning the name, not him, but certainly his answer could be taken to mean him—even though he’d been born three-quarters of a mile from where they stood right now and had never lived anywhere else, just Seattle. “Indian,” he told the fair-skinned Lydia Williams, without knowing exactly what that meant about himself, or to what extent it was true, and feeling it was something he couldn’t explain anyway, nor did he want to explain it. Besides, it was time to let this tenant live her life, time to leave so she could get on with her Saturday. It would be wrong of him to stay another minute. Sure, he owned the place, but what difference did that make? The two of them had no more business together. “I’m going to get out of your way now,” he said. “Thank you,” answered Lydia Williams.

  Pilanesberg

  They turned onto the R510. Every town they passed through had plentiful “rubbish,” as his sister called it—barbed-wire compounds, and slovenly industry. His sister was a nerve-racking driver, not because she wasn’t careful but because she was too careful, forcing other travelers to use the oncoming lane to make high-speed passes. They were on a road with no shoulders and crazy truckers; the “veldt”—another of his sister’s terms—looked increasingly dramatic as they got farther from Johannesburg. Twice his sister stopped to use restrooms. Twice she took pills. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel.

  They reached Pilanesberg—the Manyane Gate. She’d made a reservation at the Golden Leopard for a thatched-roof chalet that looked, to him, from the outside, better suited to the Lake District, but with a private patio and a barbecue on a stanchion that his sister called a braai. Inside, their quarters were air-conditioned. He was still jet-lagged; she was “away from death,” as she put it, and wanted, for now, to take in the peace and do nothing, not go anywhere, not move, just rest. Besides, there would be better animal viewing as dusk approached—near dusk was when the animals came out. And so, settled in wicker chairs, they lingered in the cool chalet, talking about his photography and her cancer, and what he wanted to know, given that it was summer in South Africa and therefore hot outside: was the wig uncomfortable? It was okay with him if she took it off.

  She took it off. Her skull was pitted. She’d packed her “boot” with food in coolers and bags—fruit, crackers, nuts, carrots, pomegranate juice, bread, a roas
ted chicken—all for him, because she couldn’t eat anything. Around three, she looked at her watch and said that she was excited about animal viewing, though at Pilanesberg the chances of a Big Five experience—lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and buffalo—were not as good as at Kruger. The ever-promising thing about Pilanesberg, she told him, was that it was transitional, somewhere in between dry and wet and thus eclectic in flora and fauna; further, because it was close to Johannesburg, it had been aggressively managed, and stocked via a program of translocation called Operation Genesis. Should they go take a look now? Maybe it was time to go. Especially if he wanted to take pictures; the light was good.

  They went. The guard in uniform at Manyane Gate waved them through and, almost immediately, after rounding a bend, they saw zebras on a hillside. Not long after it was wildebeest, then rhinos at a mudhole, then a hardworking dung beetle in the road, small, pushing a big ball of dung. He took a photo of the dung beetle and thanked his sister for bringing him here. His sister, in the manner of a tour guide, told him that, for all of Pilanesberg’s glories, it had challenges and problems because it was surrounded by a fence and reclaimed from land that had been farmed and grazed. Here was one indicative difficulty: the male elephants of Pilanesberg had been culled from a herd at Kruger and were apparently psychotic, having survived a population-control killing operation that had stressed them beyond the breaking point. This was why they were busy, in their new home, raping white rhinos and goring them to death with their tusks. Another example: there was a lion in the park—a rogue, bad, a lone hunter, crazy—who serially killed lionesses averse to his advances and then, repeatedly, copulated with their dead bodies. Was it Pilanesberg that caused this, since, in effect, it was unnatural, a massive zoo?

  They came to a place where there were a lot of elephants, and because of that, a lot of Land Rovers and safari vehicles of the sort he was familiar with from television—open-air four-wheeling one-ton trucks with canvas tops and bolstered bumpers, driven by guides in ranger uniforms, and seated behind them, or standing up, passengers viewing the Pilanesberg elephants through binoculars and camera lenses. The herd milled on a plain of acacias, and as he and his sister idled in her car, elephants moved in front and behind, left and right, slowly, unconcerned, while all around the diesel engines of safari vehicles were shut off, the better to hear the noises elephants made—snorting, trammeling, trumpeting, thumping—as they cracked branches, ate grass, forced their way through brush, and dusted themselves. It was so arresting, so much what they’d come for, that they stayed for a long time, watching elephants and talking, while he took pictures. And then, since it was beginning to get dark, they drove toward the Manyane Gate.

  The gate was closed. They idled in front of it with the entirely reasonable expectation that it would open automatically in the next moment and let them through, but nothing happened for such a long time that eventually they got out and stood in the headlights, talking about what to do next. It’s widely known, he had been told, that, one, darkness falls quickly in Africa, and two, that African darkness seems exceptionally dark to foreign tourists. Already, at Manyane, it was dark in this way, except for the headlights, the stars, and a light on in the squat, modest guardhouse on the other side of the gate. “This is upsetting,” his sister said. “The gate won’t open.”

  The guard finally emerged from the guardhouse, walked toward them, put his hands on the gate, and explained to them that Manyane, like all the gates in the park, closed at 7 p.m., and that it was now—he looked at his watch—7:04 p.m.

  What were they to do? His sister pressed the guard about this. “Obviously you have a key,” she said, “so go get it and open the gate.”

  The guard pulled on the trouser fabric at his thigh, raised his leg, and set his boot on the gate’s bottom rail. He grimaced and shook his head—no. He was a young black man, polite, apologetic, in a clean and pressed uniform and with a pistol on his hip, speaking in a quiet tone: “No, but I don’t have a key,” he said. “I have no key.” He shrugged.

  “No key,” said his sister. “Okay, I get it.” She went to her car, which was idling still, retrieved her handbag, and brought it to the gate. In the headlights again, she opened her wallet, removed some bills, and held them where the guard could take them through the bars. Her hand was shaking. “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Nelson.”

  “Well, Nelson,” said his sister, “this is wrong of you, what you’re doing here, you know. You have to open the gate right now. You don’t have a choice—you have to open the gate. You can’t just trap people in the park indefinitely. Come on now, Nelson, open the gate.” She shook the money enticingly.

  Nelson shrugged again and kept his distance from the bills. “It’s true, truly, I have no key,” he said. “There is no way for me to open the gate. Seven o’clock,” he added.

  “At seven you close and lock the gate,” said his sister. “And you close it and lock it with what, Nelson?”

  “Key.”

  “So you have a key.”

  “No.”

  “Then how did you lock the gate?”

  “A woman comes walking,” Nelson said. “She lives there.” He pointed down the road. “She comes with the key to lock the gate, and then she goes away.”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “So she’s five minutes down the road, walking. That’s all. Five minutes. So go after her in your jeep and get the key.” Again, his sister shook the money and pushed the bills farther through the gate.

  “No,” said Nelson. “There’s nothing I can do.” Then he smiled and laughed in a way that might have meant that they were invited to smile and laugh, too.

  “Not funny, Nelson,” said his sister.

  She made suggestions, and he couldn’t tell if the way she was speaking to Nelson—as if he were a child, or someone who could be ordered around, badgered, and belittled—was something that had become natural to her after living in South Africa for thirty-three years, or an exception to her ongoing rules of behavior, goaded by exasperation, weariness, and cancer. “Do you have a phone, Nelson?” she asked. “Yes,” he said. So why didn’t he call the woman with the key? What about calling the park administration, or some kind of dispatcher, who could then call a ranger, who could then show up with the key? Wasn’t that obvious? Surely they couldn’t be the first park visitors who’d come late to the gate but still needed to get out, who couldn’t spend the night camped in their car waiting for morning. This same problem must have happened before. There must be, at Pilanesberg—a major park, heavily visited—provisions for late exits. “Okay,” said Nelson. “I can phone.”

  He went back into the guardhouse. Under the stars, by the gate, his sister sighed bitterly. “Typical,” she said. “Everything’s mismanaged, a mess, in South Africa. Nobody knows what they’re doing.”

  There was a damp, night smell now, alongside the smell of the veldt he’d gotten familiar with that afternoon. He suggested his sister shut off her headlights and kill her car engine; she said no, that probably wasn’t a good idea, because of the lions. He didn’t believe lions, or any other predator, would attack them by the gate, but since shutting off the car engine wasn’t his decision he didn’t argue with her about it. Instead, they passed the time talking about Nelson until he returned and said, “Okay, it’s better now.”