‘Don’t break your head about it,’ Hendrik says. ‘Either the woman can help you or she can’t. It’s a chance you take. What have you got to lose in any case?’
‘Nothing,’ says Karl. ‘I’ve got fucking nothing to lose.’
*
Maria Volschenk wakes up from a dream of bitter conflict with her sister, Sofie. She doesn’t know what time it is; it seems to be getting light already. She feels a headache coming on. In the distance she hears the rumbling of the traffic on the main road, louder than usual. The dream dissipates rapidly, but the conflict was bitterly, bitterly intense. To love only one person, she says to Sofie, is to love no-one at all. Sofie says nothing, she looks down, in front of her, smiles faintly. She’ll adopt a different strategy, Maria decided in the dream. When Sofie returns (from where?), she’ll be all conciliatory. Sofie returns, with the woman. (The woman?) How was the beach? Maria asks her sister. You have to breast the waves one at a time, says Sofie.
Maria opens the curtains. Behind the clear outline of the trees the early-morning light is bright; it glows. She feels an inner resistance to starting the day.
Below her she hears Joy Park, her tenant, unlocking her security gate. She has a first ciggie in the garden before taking her child to school. A few hadedas fly skirling over the roof.
No, thinks Maria. No to the day, to the shrieking birds, to the city’s roar, to the smell of Joy Park’s cigarette smoke. Is something welling up in her – a feeling as of a vehement resistance?
In the nine months since Sofie’s death, Maria has seldom dreamed of her sister. Now all of a sudden. From what level of Maria’s psyche does this sudden acknowledgement of Sofie’s death arise? And why in the shape of intense conflict? Is that how long it’s taken her to overcome her shock and horror at her sister’s death? Damn you, Sofie, she thinks this morning, you dealt us all a low blow.
She must phone the man, she thinks, she’s put it off for long enough.
And much later in the day Maria recalls that there were also insects in the dream – a spider, she thinks, and perhaps a locust.
*
Joy Park lives in a garden flat on the ground floor of Maria Volschenk’s house. Joy wears the smallest pair of jeans Maria has ever seen on an adult woman’s body, from the back she looks like a twelve-year-old. She’s more or less Maria’s age, early fifties, thin, red hair, freckled complexion, thin legs, big breasts, been round the block a couple of times, but spunky (full of spirit). A woman of reduced means. Everybody of straitened circumstances earns Maria’s compassion, though Joy not that much, because she can look after herself (she’s streetwise), and she doesn’t always pay her rent on time.
Joy Park wears heels with her jeans. She chain-smokes and enjoys a tipple. Joy Park is outspoken, she seldom guards her tongue, and when she’s had a few beers she gets heated, even out of control. Friggin this and friggin that, she says at such times. Joy is a bookkeeper for a small computer business and in the afternoons she does treatments to supplement her income. Her clients are exclusively male. Maria has never seen a woman coming down the garden steps to avail herself of Joy’s services. Joy would also seem not to have any woman friends. She refers from time to time to someone she meets for a beer or two.
At the end of the month she hands over her rent in a yellow envelope. Over weekends she vacuums. Energetically she sweeps the path in front of her garden flat. In one corner of the open-plan living area, behind a bamboo screen separating it from the kitchen area, is the bed on which she does her treatments. In the other leg of the L-shaped room are two sofas, facing each other. A television set and a fish tank, containing a single fish. A Buddha effigy (in truth a Chinese domestic deity) on a mounted plank on the wall, and several small framed reproductions. The sound of bubbling water in the fish tank. On one of the sofas lies a black-and-white lapdog, barely lifting its head when someone enters the room – must be used to the comings and goings of clients.
She sees a psychic regularly, she tells Maria. Joy sometimes chats while Maria is watering the garden downstairs. Last time the psychic told her she’s lonely, says Joy Park. She’s allowed her family to disperse. She should try to bring them together again. The woman saw two faces behind her. The one was the face of her late mother, with a pleading expression. The other face was that of a shit-stirrer. A large, broad face. She knows it belonged to her son-in-law. He’s scheming to alienate her eldest daughter from her. She came home and cut out her grandmother’s photo from a snapshot. She cut out her mother’s face. She arranged the two cut-outs in a small semi-circle on the little semi-circular table underneath the mirror. The one in the entrance hall. Next to it she placed a pink rock crystal she’d bought at the Essenwood market. She lit a candle. She summoned the spirits of her mother and grandmother. They had to stand by her in her hour of loneliness. She’s been independent for years, used to fighting her own battles. At age thirteen she ran away from home, because her mother didn’t give a damn what she did. She can fend for herself. She can look after her own interests. But there are times when things just get her down, she says. Her son-in-law on his own is enough to burn her friggin ass.
She always screens her clients before she sees them, she says. She doesn’t waste her time with chancers. All above board. Character and good breeding are the ticket for Joy Park. There are lots of chancers – men with ignoble intentions, but she’s not interested. She provides a half, a three-quarter and a full body massage. She uses quality oils that she buys wholesale from an Indian in the city. Afterwards the client showers if he wants to rinse off the oil. Her prices are competitive, she says. She’s not a pushover, she has to make a living. She plays music, if the client prefers, to enhance the ambience as much as possible. She has her regulars, and, as she’s said, she always screens all prospective clients thoroughly, she has no time for anything that’s not strictly kosher. For that they have to go and knock at some other door. She has her standards, she has the young child to support. With a girl you can’t be too careful. If she’d gone the other route she could have afforded her own place long ago and driven a Merc.
What does she do if the client wants to go the other route? Maria Volschenk asks her. She tells them in no uncertain terms where they can go, she says. And what do they ask for if they want to go the other route? Maria asks. They ask if the session has a happy ending. Maria laughs.
*
Karl doesn’t readily go into the homes of strangers if he doesn’t know more or less what he’s going to come across there. He’s always wary of strange smells and surfaces. Strange, unidentifiable substances – especially in bathrooms and kitchens. If at all possible, he avoids strange toilets. He’s easily put off. He doesn’t do oil. He doesn’t do pets – nothing that defecates in public places. Also not mice or rats or guinea pigs or parrots or whatever freaky creatures people keep in cages. He doesn’t do small dog breeds either. He doesn’t like the expression in their eyes. At most a fish in a tank, but it shouldn’t be overdone with moss and seaweed and snails slithering slowly up the walls of the tank.
Whatever his phobias, the psychic is fortunately to be found in a suburban house in a suburban sitting room, and at first glance everything seems acceptable. No inauspicious numbers; nothing that he balks at immediately or has an aversion to. Her hair is dyed raven black and she walks with her feet at ten to two. The presence of three small dogs on the sofa (on which she sits) does admittedly give him the heebie-jeebies. One of them has a shaved patch with a wound of which the stitches are still visible. Wounds are high on the list of things Karl doesn’t do. He tries not to look at it. The room is furnished in autumnal shades, with many ornaments. A sudden urge to wash his hands overpowers him. Before she starts, the woman covers the little dogs with a blanket to get them to settle. (Which for the duration of the session they don’t do.)
He wants to know what’s up with his brother, he says. It looks as if his brother is experiencing some kind of a crisis. But she silences him. Holds up her hand dramatically. No, she has no need to know why he’s here.
Then