All That is Left. Kirsten Miller

looks back at the man’s pale face and realises it isn’t a joke. There’s a sheen of fury in the eyes, an expression that confuses him for its anger.

      ‘It’s five o’clock,’ Sizwe says. ‘It’s time to go. I need to get to a meeting.’

      ‘I said, get into my office. Now.’

      In the manager’s office Sizwe sits in front of the desk, in the easy-backed swivel chair. The younger man twirls the silver ring on the middle finger of his right hand, bites his lip and gazes out the window. Sizwe shifts in the chair, clears his throat, but the other keeps his attention outside. ‘I don’t have a lot of time,’ Sizwe says. ‘Can we get on with this?’

      Slowly the man’s pale eyes shift towards him. It’s a cold realisation that Sizwe knows. There is no way he will win this battle and also keep his job. He is confused but what is predictable is the unpredictability of the man in front of him. He has seen this behaviour before. He has been both the target and the receptacle, many times. He has tried to keep a low profile but in truth there is nothing that he can do right because he is stronger, bigger, brighter and more articulate than the man who is his superior in the shop. For the sake of his job and the bread he puts on his mother’s table he holds his tongue, but he understands that a time will come when his words will no longer be held.

      Eventually the manager says too quietly, ‘I’m tired of your insolence, Manfred.’ Sizwe winces, regretting the name that he’d put on his job application form so many months ago. It was a joke, then. A joke on the old regime when grown black men made up English names to be acceptable to their white counterparts who could pronounce no words in any African language. He doesn’t want to be Manfred now. The joke has backfired, because now the manager calls him nothing else. ‘I want to tell you that you’re on your second warning. If you try it on again, if you step out of line, out of place or off the floor, if you’re late from tea or if you take a phone call when you should be attending to customers, I’ll fire you. I don’t like your face. I don’t like your attitude. And I don’t like the way it rubs off on the other staff.’

      Sizwe places his head into his hands. He is a lion, a hunter that seeks out the courageous encounter in lonely places. He is one who lives and moves and breathes alone and with strength in order to bring a voice to his people, so that he can catch what is hidden in the world and expose the truth of it. He follows the path of the heart and lives by instinct and experience in a world that operates below the poet’s call. A world materialistic and too focused on the outer life, a world that inside has become a powder cake, hollow and in need of something more. The man before him is hollow and wanting, but also angry. Sizwe lifts his head and gives his eyes to the man. He speaks the words that spring from his blood and his being. ‘My brother, I hear your ache and I hear your anger. You’re afraid of me because I look stronger but let me tell you; let ME tell YOU that anger is stronger for the power within. You will see that who you think I am isn’t me at all. Who you think you are is your call but my identity …’

      ‘Shut up, Manfred. This isn’t a fucking poetry performance,’ the white man snarls.

      Sizwe rises from the chair.

      The manager’s face deepens in colour. His eyes flash across the wood and the anger reaches out and spreads until it fills the room and takes Sizwe’s breath away.

      ‘My name is Sizwe,’ he says. ‘Not Manfred.’

      The manager leans forward over the wood, over the scattered papers. He pushes a forefinger into Sizwe’s forehead. ‘I don’t care what your fucking name is,’ he says quietly. ‘This is your second warning. Now get out.’

      Looking at life sucking dry the blood that fuels my thermal soul.

      He rings the bell. He rings it again and then he waits. He can’t see Maya’s car in the driveway. She’d called him, she’d asked him to be here. He is late but she isn’t one to let him down.

      He rings the bell a third time. In the front window a curtain moves to the side, then drops. The front door opens and a figure emerges, a woman he recognises at once and at once doesn’t know at all. He wants to run to her and say a name, but the word on his lips doesn’t fit this female version of the image in his memory. She is and at the same time she is not someone he knows. It confuses him, before he gains clarity and walks forward to greet her with his arms ready to encircle her as part of his world.

      And Rachel goes to him because he looks her straight in the eyes and holds out his arms and he smiles. She goes to him because in his face there is a softness and a strength and he offers something to hold on to as a country sky of pitch offers a lapful of stars. She sees in his face the way his defined lips work with his nose and the arch of his brow. A scarf hangs about his neck and his head is smooth, like a dark rock in the wilderness. She knows him and yet she doesn’t. But she wants to.

      He is warm and he smells of soap and lotion on his soft skin. He pulls her to himself. ‘I have lost my brother,’ she says into his neck, into his scarf and his heart.

      ‘No,’ he answers her when he draws back and looks at her again. At the same time he is looking through her, to Thomas. ‘We’ve all lost a brother. We’ve all lost him.’

      ‘You must be Sizwe,’ she says. ‘It’s good to meet you at last. I feel like I know you already.’

      ‘Some people call me that. My boss calls me Manfred. But what’s in a name, huh?’

      The wind shifts in the trees. The sky remains clear and blue, expecting the evening to come. They turn from the gate and walk into the house, and he keeps his arm around her shoulders all the while. She is aware of the weight of his arm, of his skin, because she wants to sink her face into the fabric of his shirt and cry or sleep or become someone else. Instead she slips out from under his broad grasp as the house covers them. She offers him a cup of coffee while he waits for Maya.

      He follows her into the kitchen and she is aware of him watching her. She moves to fill the kettle and takes the milk from the fridge. Her limbs feel surreal and awkward, moving as they do with his eyes on her. He watches her fill the cup with boiling water and add the milk. ‘Aren’t you having any?’ he asks.