‘Eh-heh! You see now, that’s the problem,’ shouted Ahmadu, at the screen. ‘Our women are behaving like white women. They don’t want to take care of their man.’
Kagiso ignored the comment. ‘Are the others here?’
Ahmadu nodded. ‘They came over an hour ago. You are the last,’ he said, with what sounded like reproach. He reached out to a shelf behind him, never taking his eyes away from the laptop, worked his practised fingers behind the last few DVDs and pressed a button. Kagiso waited by a back door until he heard the latch release, then pushed.
He walked down a dark corridor with several doors leading off it. He didn’t bother with the light switch. Experience had taught him that the bulb had long since blown. He pushed open another door, which brought him into a hallway, lit by a flickering neon strip. On one side of it there was a stairwell going up to what had once been the rather desirable apartments of Rondebosch Court. Its original purpose had been to act as a service entrance for domestic servants and tradesmen; now it provided a route for those who needed a discreet way in and out of the building – whether it was the suited men who used one of two apartments that Ahmadu rented out by the hour or the women who carried the consequences of these clandestine encounters in their bellies.
Kagiso bounded up the steps two at a time, no longer even seeing the sign that advertised ‘same-day abortions’ and ‘womb cleansing’. The greasy grey hand smears along the wall were proof that the progress of others up and down the stairs was much slower and hesitant. On the first landing, he passed two women. One was bent over, her eyes shut, her face glazed with sweat. She had one arm around the shoulders of the other woman. Kagiso looked down, as if to suggest he hadn’t seen them, to spare them the embarrassment of being noticed, and took the next flight of steps.
He walked along the second-floor corridor, its thick, undisturbed air infused with the heavy smell of cheap, fatty meat being fried. Behind each door he heard the muffled ritual of families coming together in that brief interregnum between the end of one day’s efforts and the preparation for the next. Eating, drinking, chatting, listening, watching, arguing, loving and lusting – it all had to be squeezed into a couple of hours. Voices competed with the indiscriminate cacophony of a TV soap opera, the intermittent canned laughter and applause a cue to shout even louder. Adults tried to get themselves heard over the incessant squabbling of children; women scolded men who, in turn, took it out on their kids.
Kagiso reached the end of the corridor, looked back towards the stairwell, knocked three times on the last door on the left, then used his key to open it and walked into the room.