We nod. We know he wrote a book.

“Dja. Hy’t a boek geskryf en alleranne pryse gewen mos . . . en dit was die laaste sien vannie blikkantien.”

No. I can’t write this in dialect. I feel like a minstrel dressed in blackface and suspenders. This is an act of piracy, and I can’t participate in it. This man doesn’t exist for my amusement or yours. His language is not “colourful” or “vibrant.” I will not use this as an opportunity to demonstrate my facility as a writer of vernacular. I will tell you what he says in my own words.

It seems John Coetzee was once a well-known and recognisable member of this community. Then his book became famous and he vanished into thin air (spoorloos in die niet in verdwyn).

At first the locals thought he had merely become a hermit. He retired from his post at the university and from public life entirely. But he was still seen popping in and out of the local shops. He would buy groceries from the Seven-Eleven and coffee beans from the organic coffee roastery (see Bo-Kaap: gentrification of).

Then all sightings of him dried up. But the lights came on in his house at night and were switched off during the day. His wheelie bin appeared on the sidewalk on garbage collection days and was whisked back in again as soon as it had been emptied.

Now even those signs of life have stopped. John Coetzee has well and truly disappeared (soos mis voor die môreson). Rumour has it, the car guard informs us, that he has gone to Australia.

Moira and I exchange glances. This is one of the wildest and most out-there rumours we have heard. Or that she has heard. Moira, after all, is the one who still works in the English Department—the one who still has a job in academia and is in a position to keep her ear to the ground.

Hearing this repeated here in the rising sea mist—with lights popping on up and down the road, and the throat-catching smell of coriander seeds heating in a dry pan—gives it credence somehow. This is more than the booming of the departmental jungle drums. This might be true.

“He’s not here?” I ask. “He is definitely not here?”

The car guard assures me he is not.

This emboldens me enough to walk up to the house with the peeling white paint, to insert my fist between the bars of the eighties-style Spanish grille, and to knock twice on the wooden door. There is no answer, so I knock again. Three loud raps this time.

There.

I will not be ignored. I have come to state my case. I am nobody’s lacuna.