"Where are you now my fingerprints?" Photo: Eddie Adams
Built in the 1930s, ours is a three-floor, three-building complex set in a horseshoe—two blocks perpendicular to Main Road and the other, set slightly higher on the slopes of Table Mountain, overlooking the Cape Flats in the far distance.
We face the road across a large, immaculate garden.
With spacious, plant-filled balconies, wooden window frames, and an air of timeless solidity, the white and beige complex, served by six wide, wood-panelled stairwells—over any of which one might find a well-fed cat standing guard, is cut off from the hurly-burly of city life (the traffic, gas station, restaurants, taxis, hookers, takeouts, Laundromat, DIY store and passersby) by large trees and a high, densely foliaged security fence.
It's a relatively luxurious complex. We have one of four three-bedroomed apartments on the first floor. Large, high-ceilinged rooms bathe in the warm glow of wooden floors and thick walls, and a sun offering light both sides of the day shields us from the outside world.
Even the bathroom is panelled and boasts a Victorian bath and a shower.
After six months, the apartment feels homely. The walls, hung with Java prints, Sotho carpets, family and vendor art and, in the hallway, laminated 'struggle' posters from the pre '94 era (I call it the Chris Hani Memorial Hall) remind us of where we live.
We seldom use the sitting room, an easy assembly of throw-covered couches, prints, straw mats, African memorabilia and art prints focused on the god of old, the 'home theatre system'. The room's good for watching movies or putting up overnight visitors, but little else.
With a door leading to the balcony and white French doors opening onto the inner hallway, I've expanded available space using mirrors. When the curtains are open, the hall mirror reflects the green-laden branches of the garden's large, bowering, seventy-year old centrepiece, a gnarled but rudely healthy tree.
The kitchen, with its separate entrance leading down a narrow stairwell—also presided over by obese, Sphinx-eyed cats—to the gated, circular drive, is our living space of choice. It's an extraordinarily large, well-fitted mix of muted peach and subdued blue and serves as a dining room, study, meeting place and cooking space.
But it's not where you'll usually find us.
Because I don't allow smoking inside the house we, unlike other residents of the 36-unit complex, tend to gather in garden chairs on the walled balcony flowing out and over the garden. A mix of regular cigarettes and verdant plant life finds me on the balcony at any time between 05:00 and 02:00, monitoring the shifting shades of the passing day.
Dominated by bird-filled trees overlooking terraced lawns and flowerbeds boasting a profusion of indigenous and other flora (hydrangeas and white roses), the garden is strictly demarcated by monkey stone-paved pathways, a sundial set in 1937 beneath the shade-giving tree and, further up, a fountain.
Tended by a full-time West African gardener, a gardening service and several Kenilworth dowagers, it offers more than a sense of seclusion.
It's an ecosystem in its own right, a natural world cycling the seasons, impervious to human intrusion. As I smoke, drink tea or coffee, or tend pot plants on our balcony, I find it difficult to believe that, in the early '30s, before the sundial was placed and traffic on Main Road grew too heavy, it served as a cul-de-sac offering parking to residents.
It's closed in now.
Today, most of the trees fronting the property, with the exception of a copse shading the block opposite and an ancient oak still boasting splashes of canary yellow, have lost their riotous New England rusts and reds. The winter-withered branches of most expose us, for now, to Main Road and the commerce attending the faux village architecture of the buildings opposite.
But this exposure is seasonal and will not last. Besides, just down Kenilworth Road, running down and away from us and the pre-existing cul de sac, a 100-foot fir marking the doctors' surgery stamps nature's authority on the area and the distant lights and smog of the Cape Flats.
It's quiet at 05:00. The star-filled sky covers the lighted street and our black-windowed complex in sleep. Beyond the raised voices of the pump jockeys at the gas station and the muted glow of the slow-changing traffic lights up the road, peace holds sway. It's a good time to wake up, smoke and drink tea.
The birds tend to rise to the rhythm of the sun. Come sunrise, a warm luminescence lights the Eastern sky and the far-off mountains, and squadrons of birds follow set routines and flight paths, taking to the air in predictable patterns and manoeuvres, circling to catch the new day on their sun-tipped wings or following the contours of the roofs in darting flight.
Others rise and fall effortlessly from various levels of the trees which, as the dawn fades before the sun, are surrounded by swarms of butterflies. In summer, when the warm walls and lush garden are washed to a green somnolence, this is another world, another time, and another place.
I like it.
"The beauty of an Equinox moon is beaten only by its shading the coast in silver nitrate. We blew up a lot of fireworks, shot rockets out to sea, and burnt sparklers in the dunes that night. Scattered clouds gave the sky a canopy effect and inverted the whole scene. Looking at and through the multi-coloured layers of cloud, we felt as though we were glimpsing the world from galaxies and billions of light years away. Some mentioned acid. But there was none. It was just a remarkable sight."
Last Sunday morning, around 09:30, my wife and I were sitting on the balcony listening to Neil Young as we drank mugs of freshly made Mocca Java. The rain had abated, the clouds had cleared and the sky was a deep dark blue. It was about 20 degrees Celsius; another balmy Cape winter's day.
Sunday morning is a particularly quiet time, most Capetonians choosing to sleep in, go to church, or do the household thing. Apart from a few solitary cars and one or two passersby, the street and sidewalks were deserted. Even the birds, having done their thing, were quiet. Sitting on the balcony that morning, drinking coffee and listening to good music, I realised I had everything I had ever wanted.
I was at peace with the world.
Beneath us, the security gate clicked and swung shut on oiled hinges. I could see one of my neighbours walking slowly along the path towards the sundial and the turn-off to his block—why is it nobody walks on the grass in places like this? He'd been up to the 7-11 and cradled a bag of groceries in his one arm.
In the other, he carried a bag of croissants.
"We have no croissants," I remarked to my wife.
"No, we don't," she answered, sipping her coffee.
"Don't worry. I'll sort it out," I said, putting my mug aside and standing.
"Where ya going?" she asked me with a sigh.
"No place special. I'll be back in a tick," I replied making my way through the sitting room towards the front door and the steps leading down to the garden.
Walking into the sunlight and the quiet warmth of the garden, I saw my neighbour about to enter the building opposite.
"Oy! Wait up," I called. He turned. I motioned for him to stop and jogged over to him.
"Hi," I greeted him.
"Morning," he replied. "How're ya' doin'?"
"Great," I responded. "It's just that we've no croissants and I see you have several."
"So?" He tightened his grip on the bag of freshly baked bread, the smell of which had begun to tease my nostrils.
"So give them to me."
He looked at me disbelievingly. "Give them to you?"
"Don't play dumb. You heard what I said. Give them to me now."
He looked pissed off. "Look, I don't know if this is your idea of a joke, but it's Sunday morning. You can go fuck yourself."
It was my turn to be pissed off. "Christ! Who do you think you're speaking to? I've asked you politely to hand over your croissants and this is the way you respond? Fuck you, buddy. Give me the damned things or else."
"Or else what?"
I didn't speak. I drew my revolver and shot him in the head. He fell to the ground, dead. His groceries scattered across the path and a couple of oranges, bright against the green lawn, rolled into the gutter. I picked up the bag of croissants and made my way back up to our apartment.
My wife had changed the music. Lord Randall had supplanted Neil Young and I saw that the sky had turned red.
"I've got the croissants," I called out to her. "I'll just warm them up in the microwave."
"Thanks," she replied. "I'll have a smidgeon of butter on mine."
"Okey dokey. Could you turn that music up a bit?"
"Sure," she answered and, as she did so, I noticed through the kitchen windows that a scarlet mist had begun to fall.
I refilled our mugs and carried our breakfast out onto the balcony. Someone had cleared away the body and scattered groceries.
"Ah, that smells good," she commented.
"Sure does," I replied, handing her a mug while surveying the garden beneath. The butterflies, a swirling horde of orange and red, were circling the old tree in the centre of the garden. Its branches covered the sundial, the sky grew increasingly dark, and I lost all sense of time.
A couple of crows swooped in to perch on the roof opposite and, high above, gulls caught between the two coasts of our peninsula cawed their dissatisfaction.
As the music reached a crescendo, I smiled. "This is a wonderful place, y'know? We couldn't really ask for more."
"I guess not. You having a croissant?" she asked, smiling back at me.
"No thanks," I responded, reaching for my gun.
