The Fall

By Jen Thorpe

When Thuli reveals her secret – that she can see into the near future – to journalist Helen, the latter is skeptical. But as Thuli believes she’s seen that #FeesMustFall protest leader, Hector, will be assassinated, Helen looks into the matter. What she finds is odd behaviour by the police on campus. Police sent by President Noné, who wants no trouble from pesky students while she launches her zoo of magical creatures. If what Thuli say is true, they have only seven days to change the future …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kwela
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780795709586

Jen Thorpe

Jen Thorpe is a feminist writer and researcher based in Cape Town, South Africa. Jen published her first novel, 'The Peculiars', with Penguin South Africa in 2016. It was long listed for the Etisalat Prize for Literature (2016) and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize (2017). Jen has published poetry, flash fiction, and short stories on a number of online publishing platforms including 'Itch', 'Brittle Paper, 'Aerodrome', 'Saraba Magazine', 'BooksLive', and 'Poetry Potion'. She has completed writing residencies in Uganda, the USA and France. Find out more via http://jen-thorpe.com

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MONDAY

CHAPTER 1

Hector

This time around I’m making it out alive. Things are different. There’s something in the energy of the movement, a conviction I’ve never felt before. I’ve changed too. I’m ready this time.

‘Nice tackies, Hector. You sure they’re white enough?’

My neighbour, Melusi, smirks at me over the joke of a fence between our two back-yard homes.

‘Can’t get there and look like I don’t mean business, can I? I need those fat government cats to take me seriously.’

‘Take yourself seriously – nobody trusts a man whose shoes or clothes are too clean.’

He’s laughing as he heads back into his ramshackle self-constructed house, but I keep washing my backup pair of white sneakers with corn starch. Protesting in clean clothes does something to silence Mom’s voice in my ear criticising me for protesting in the first place. Aunty Estere didn’t pay for those expensive clothes so you can destroy them in a protest, Bakhulule – polishing your tackies to look good on camera instead of working hard so you can buy your own shoes … tsek. Even in my imagination, she can never tell me she’s disappointed.

Mom wouldn’t even know how to live in this world now. She wouldn’t get it. These days you have to start a fire to get taken seriously. Though I guess that was the same in her time.

Melusi comes back from his house and offers me a lukewarm beer; I take it out of politeness and habit. With my first sip, I drift off into memory.

‘You know, Melusi, the first time I ever got involved in something like this, things seemed so much clearer. There were the good guys and there were the bad guys. There was a uniform that said which side you were on, or at least the colour of your skin told you. People were willing to die for what they believed in, but now—’

Melusi interrupts me, snort-laughing. ‘Hector, man, sometimes I don’t know whether you’re talking from your butt or your mouth because most times it’s just shit that comes out. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You’re a baby.’

Of course, he wouldn’t understand how I know. How could I expect him to? I try again.

‘I mean that it feels like people used to know why they were fighting for things, and now they just do it because it looks cool, or their friends are doing it, or they want the selfie. You know?’

‘Says the dude polishing a pair of canvas tackies so they’re whiter than the DA.’

We laugh, but it doesn’t reach my stomach. We sip our beers some more, me on a plastic garden chair, him leaning on one leg and kicking the dry ground where grass used to grow before the drought.

If Mom could see me now, she’d kick the shit out of me for renting this back-yard shanti when Estere’s giving me money that could cover a flat in the ’burbs. She wouldn’t understand that I’m trying to save up. I’ve got a good feeling that this time around I can make it out the other side, and it would be nice to have a bit of cash stashed away. For … something.

‘Hey, man, don’t kick that dust near my clean shoes. I’ve got to wear those tomorrow.’

‘Yes, Your Highness.’ Melusi bows. ‘I wouldn’t want to spoil your expensive Converses or dirty your palace.’

This place is no palace but I’ve seen worse. At least it has an inside toilet, not like our old place in Meriting. Stupid name for a township where the only merit was that most days the men were underground mining instead of above ground drinking.

‘Hey, Melusi, did I ever tell you about—’

‘Probably, you never seem to stop talking, my man. It’s from being around women too much. You don’t know the comfort of a quiet drink, or the silence between men.’

He’s joking, smile on his broad face, but he’s right. In our house, the drinks were loud and so were the men, and it was a bad combination for me but mostly for my mom. The men she chose were too noisy, took up too much space, so that when they fucked off out of our two-room shack it felt giant with the space they left. Sometimes we needed the space for recovery, sometimes just for grief. But whatever, I made it through, right? I was lucky.

Those times when it was just us two, she’d be on me like a rash nagging me about my homework and to tidy my room and to go out and get things from neighbours. She wanted me to be a better man, to get a good education. I’m doing it, but I wonder whether all that money she scrimped and saved was worth it.

‘Maybe you’re right, Melusi, maybe I do talk too much. Maybe this protest isn’t worth it.’

‘Do you expect me to believe that you believe that? You’re loving this, my bra. Loving it.’

Mom spent all that money on a Model C school so I could learn with the rich mine kids and have people say that I spoke well. She was so busy taking care of me that she didn’t take good enough care of herself.

I start polishing my tackies again, avoiding thinking any more about home and focusing on the job at hand.

‘Don’t worry, my bra, your shoes are right. If you get shot, I’ll come identify you by your Colgate-white tackies.’

‘This isn’t the old days, Melusi. Nobody gets shot at a university protest.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

I didn’t mean to sound condescending, and I’m glad he’s the type of person not to hold it against me. Politics isn’t Melusi’s thing anyway, and he’s got no plans to come to varsity, even if it were free. He didn’t finish school, and he’s got a stable job. He doesn’t see the point – or so he says.

As it is now, it would bankrupt him. You get into varsity for five minutes before you realise you’re out of your depth and out of pocket. Three years of Estere’s fancy high school and all of her money still didn’t equip me for that, or for the hidden costs. You think it’s fees and done, but then it’s photocopies, and printing, and student cards, and societies, and exam fees, and food, and residence keys and, before you know it, what sounded like a fortune feels like pocket change. I could ask Estere for more, but she’s done enough for me as it is. Plus, it’s not right, on principle.

Melusi’s still kicking the dust, staring at me buffing my shoes.

‘This morning the train station was packed with kids heading to protest.’

‘Today’s going to be a big day. The minister’s supposed to come and address us at campus. Should be lit.’

‘I just hope the students stay on campus and leave the station alone. Last week when he didn’t come they threw rubbish everywhere, and—’

‘They’re just trying to get attention.’

‘Well, maybe they should also take notice of who has to clean up after they get their attention and go home. Mtoti had to stay late at work to clean up their mess and then walk home in the dark.’

His normally warm voice has turned angry, and as we both imagine his girlfriend walk home along the field in the dark, I feel guilty. Melusi’s been working security at the train station for more than a decade, night shift. Mtoti works day shift as a cleaner.

‘Fuck, man, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Do better. And stop swearing, man, it doesn’t suit you.’

I’ve started swearing too much, he’s right. My language is just something else for Mom and Estere to disapprove of. I didn’t teach you English so you could learn how to misuse it, Bakhulule. Sometimes I wonder what the point of learning English is – all it does is leave the power with the powerful.

‘Maybe he’ll come today and it’ll all be celebration instead of destruction for a change.’

He’s forgiven me already. It’s what I love about him.

‘Hope so, Melusi, hope so.’

‘Don’t start going crazy over there.’

‘Crazy? You’re the one who’s still listening to Mafikizolo in 2016.’

This time the laugh gets right down into my stomach. I’m glad to see Melusi’s warmth return to his eyes.

‘No more talking shit, Hector. You love studying as much as you love your own reflection, so just sort it out so you can study.’

He’s right again. Ever since I watched re-runs of L.A. Law on Bop TV with Mom, and then The Practice at Aunty Estere’s, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. If I was going to keep getting into trouble, I wanted to know how to get myself out of it. A fair chance at justice seems like reason enough to keep this protest going, even if I know better than most that in the end it’s unlikely to matter anyway.

‘It’s all impermanent,’ I mumble without meaning to say it out loud.

‘What are you saying?’

‘Just thinking, man, daydreaming.’

‘Nice to be a student and sit here drinking beer all day and dreaming while others are slaving away at real jobs.’

‘Hey, man, we’re working too.’

‘I know, I know. So stop polishing your shoes while those students you’re supposedly leading are already at campus calling out the government.’

‘This government, hey, man! Lucky I’m studying law because that way I’ll never be without a job. They talk out of their arses for sure. If lips could fall off from lip service …’

‘Don’t get started again, man. I’ve heard it all before.’

‘But it’s like every time it’s the same type of person that sets the rest of us up to fall and die. Same type commanding the troops at Delville, same type commanding the bulldozers in the fifties, same type ordering students to get shot in the seventies, same type taking bribes from the French for arms, same type—’

‘Stop. Now you seriously don’t know what shit you’re talking. That stuff you learn in history is just half of the story. This government isn’t like the others. If you don’t think our lives are better—’

‘That’s not what I’m saying, man. I’m talking about the fact that politicians since time immemorial have been making the masses the same promises – a better life for all or whatever – and in all that business they forget to implement those promises, and it’s always the working class—’

Melusi interrupts me by throwing his bottle into the bin between our houses, hard. Hard enough for me to know I’ve crossed the line. It’s the age difference between us. We just can’t get past it.

‘Hector, I need to sleep and you’re going to be late for your big show if you keep sitting here ranting. Go now.’

‘I just want them to keep their promises.’

‘We all do, my bra, we all do.’

He closes his door before I can apologise again. I know he’ll have forgotten about it or forgiven me by tomorrow. Just because I’m younger, he thinks I’m naive, but I’m not; I’m committed. This time, things will be different. Not like last year or any of the others before it.

Twenty years since they wrote the Constitution and these leaders are still spinning the same line. Melusi got sold dreams in 1994, the year I was born, and I’m here for the refund. This time last year we thought we’d made progress – they said they’d review things, get back to us with an offer. Then they passed the buck to the universities, with no bucks to accompany it. Seems like they’ve got plenty of money for cops, though.

‘Hector!’

Melusi’s shouting at me through his door. I knew he’d forgive me.

‘Yo?’

‘Answer your damn phone!’

I’ve been so deep in thought, I haven’t heard my phone ringing. I must be going deaf from all the stun grenades they’ve thrown at us the last while. They don’t call them flashbangs for nothing. Three missed calls already and all Estere. Mom might not be watching the news, but Estere will be.

‘Hi, Aunty.’

She doesn’t falter at my fake casual voice.

‘Bakhulule Hector Dlamini, you better stop this behaviour at once. I don’t want to have to hear from everyone that my nephew is on television burning artwork.’

‘I’m only doing what’s needed.’

‘No, what’s needed is that you get your law degree and start acting like an adult. You’re not a boy any more, Hector.’

‘I need to do this so that more people get a chance at getting a degree. So more people can be like me and get this access …’

‘Well, you’re going to need that law degree because by the looks of things you and all your friends are going to end up in jail for arson.’

‘We have to burn things – it’s the only way to get taken seriously.’

‘Oh, you think this is serious? That anyone will give you a job when you are the face of this fake revolution?’

How does Estere know exactly how to get under my skin? It’s like she knew from the moment I was born.

‘A job is the last thing on my mind right now.’

‘It shouldn’t be – you’ll need a job to do the real work of fighting for the rights of people who don’t have access, who need help.’

‘Is that what you did? Sit back and watch? Because, from what Mom told me, you were just as happy to burn things in your day …’

I shouldn’t have said that. I can hear her sucking the air through her teeth and the sharp click of her tongue. I flinch, expecting the smack to the ears. When she speaks again, it is slow and commanding.

‘Bakhulule, that is not how you speak to your elders. Your mother did not raise you this way. Back then, things were different. Those were different times.’

She’s so wrong. These times are just the same.

‘Estere, sometimes it’s hard to see the truth in something unless you’re right in the middle of it. Trust me. What the journalists show you is only a small slice of what we’re going through. They’re just looking for the best photo of the angriest black guy they can find. It’s not all like that. Most of us are simply out there exercising our right to protest – a right that activists like you fought for us to have.’

I’m making her angrier but I can’t stop. She should be angry. I’m angry for all of us. I stand up, getting dust on my shoes as I stomp into my house, her disappointment making me even more determined to get back to campus and prove that this matters. I don’t know when all those old activists lost this feeling, this drive to make things better, but it hasn’t helped any of us that they’re chilling with their BEE ratings on the sunloungers of once-every-four-years political participation.

‘I hope you can hear my voice in that thick skull of yours. Stay off the news and don’t do anything stupid this week. Don’t get arrested. Because one thing you should be able to trust me on is that it’s not as glamorous as you think.’

So she’s thrown her struggle credentials in to silence me. Smooth move. Not much I can say to that. Her voice softens as I sigh.

‘Bakhulule, don’t let your decisions come back to haunt you.’

‘I don’t have a choice.’

‘You always have a choice.’

She doesn’t understand and her sigh is as large as a Nyala police van driving over my courage. But this time I won’t give up. People are relying on me. Sindiwe is relying on me.

‘Be careful.’

That’s her way of saying she loves me; she hangs up before I get the chance to say it back.

She needs to stop watching the news. The media, man. I don’t know whether to love or hate them. When those scary cops have their guns out, I couldn’t be happier to see a journalist – at least then you know the bullets are rubber. But other times they’re just waiting on the sidelines to take photos of the scariest-looking motherfucker, the stereotypical ‘angry black male’ whom they know they’ll make their money from, just like everyone else. The journalists allow everyone to think we’re crazy, but they’re the crazy ones. Numb to everything or living vicariously through us.

I put my backup pair of sneakers on the window ledge to dry and dust off the pair I’m wearing. I choose a white shirt, and my darkest blue jeans. Melusi’s right – I should be on campus by now. Only thing holding me back is these feelings I’m catching about the students I have to take care of. Sindiwe especially. I need to get my head straight.

There’s no turning back now. Asijiki.

CHAPTER 2

Thuli

‘In a week Hector will be dead. I saw it in a glitch.’

‘A glitch?’

I look around the alleyway we’re standing in to make sure nobody else can hear us. Although the Jammie Plaza is busy, it’s quieter over here away from the crowds. This journalist and I should be safe from prying ears. Her mousy hair is tied up with an actual elastic band in an old-school ponytail. Her black jeans are faded, and definitely haven’t been washed recently, because I can see the smear of something yellow on her right thigh. There’s a pair of cigarettes in a soft packet sticking out of her pocket. Her shoes are nineties hiker-style, high at the sides to protect the ankles, and as for her faded blue T-shirt … well. This is someone who my mother might say ‘is not taking care of herself’.

She’s here and she’s listening to me, though. I can’t waste this opportunity.

‘I just call it a glitch. I don’t know what its real name is, but it’s like a quick look at the future.’

‘And you do this how?’

‘The trick is to hold your breath until what once was breath turns into something else. ’Til the point where you feel if something fresh doesn’t enter your body you will explode. Your lungs should ache, burn even. Scream for you to breathe. Eventually, at the point when you feel like you’re about to die, your vision should start to feel hypersensitive, like you can see the movements before they’re happening. It’s because you can.

‘Now, if you’re there, and if you concentrate, and you hold that breath a bit more, then as you exhale, the particles of you that were once here go elsewhere.’

I see her subtly trying to hold her breath, wondering if she’ll get there. For a moment I kind of hope she will, that someone else will know what this is like.

‘You see?’

She shakes her head, eyebrow raised, mouth sceptical.

Just because she can’t get there doesn’t mean what I know isn’t real. It just means she’s not different like me. I should have known that from looking at her.

‘Well, it’s probably because you haven’t … because something bad enough hasn’t happened to you. Anyway—’

She interrupts, her face turning quickly from bemused to angry: ‘Look, I’ve had plenty of things happen to me, trust me, and the last time someone told me they could time travel, they were off their face on LSD, so I think that’s about all I need from you right now.’

She starts packing her things away.

‘Wait. I mean, I’ve only been able to glitch since … Well, I mean … The point is, I’m not on drugs. I’m not shitting you. This thing that I can do, I can move out of my body and into somewhere else. Another time. Sometimes I just escape from here.’

I don’t tell her that it feels like my body blames itself for getting me into trouble and tries to escape. I’ve tried to unlearn that type of mental bullshit, but it’s hard to shake the voices that say that women are to blame for everything. Especially when those voices are repeated all around me so damn often.

The world would have you believe that women invite things on them – the bad things at least. The good things count as ‘luck’ or ‘exceptions’. Fuck it. She’s losing interest while I’m replaying lessons from childhood church in my mind.

‘What I’m about to tell you is important. Just listen for a little longer.’

‘Look, this all sounds a bit …’

She shakes her head and shoulders side to side, making a circle around her ear with her finger.

‘Crazy? I know it sounds crazy, but if you’d just fucking listen …’

‘If that’s your attitude, I’m sure there are thousands of other students here who would like their version of #FeesMustFall told, so …’ She continues packing her things, but I can’t let her go. I have to get this off my chest before someone dies.

‘Don’t go. I didn’t mean it. I know you do your job right. I’ve seen you doing it. Asking the questions that need to be asked. I know I can trust you because I’ve been watching you for a while – in real time and in my glitches. Going back and forth, checking where you’d been and what you’d been up to.

‘I’ve seen you before today, walking around on campus, watching the scuffles, crouching down with that hot piece of DSLR you have, snapping away like our pain is going to make you famous. Don’t get defensive. At least someone’s here trying to tell our side of the story. They wouldn’t believe it if we fucking told it. The realer the real is, the harder it is to make people trust it these days. They’re more comfortable with the glossed-up version. Am I right?’

She just shrugs, but she’s still here, so I guess that means I can keep talking. I know something that will convince her I’m telling the truth.

‘Do you remember that feeling last Friday like you were about to land on that rock the police had just thrown back at the students?’ Her eyes widen as if I’ve told her that I know all her secrets. I continue before her brain has space to doubt me. ‘I moved it. Before you landed. The glitching allows me to do that type of thing, but only if it’s in the future. You see, I saw all of that last Monday. I thought there wouldn’t be any benefit to letting our only committed storyteller break her arm, and so I took a bit of covert action.’

I’m not surprised that she looks both confused and dubious. I would too if someone started telling me something like this. I wouldn’t have believed any of it if it weren’t happening to me. I’m not crazy.

She narrows her eyes at me before she speaks and I notice dark circles line them. Girl is not getting enough sleep.

‘So what you’re asking me to believe is that you’ve been to the future and you moved a rock that I was about to fall on?’

‘Yup.’

‘Right. And so, if that were true, and you could move through time, how far might you be able to go, do you think?’

‘I know. It’s seven days at most – I can’t get any further than that. That’s why what I have to tell you is so urgent, why you’ve got to move quickly.’

‘And how long have you been doing this glitching?’

‘That’s not important.’

‘It is to me. So how long?’

‘About six months.’

I don’t want her to ask what started it. I said about six months, but my body knows down to the second what started all of this. That’s not for her, though. That’s not for now.

‘What’s important is what I saw today. It’s going to change everything. Are you ready?’

She nods, looks at the stone buildings around us laced with ivy. I bet she’s thinking that this place looks too nice for bad things to happen. I thought the same thing. I was wrong, and so is she. Ivy can’t protect you from anything, especially not from other people.

I take a deep breath and tell her what I saw.

‘I glitched forwards this morning in a moment of boredom. Since I’ve been glitching, I’ve noticed that there is always a buzz and crackle when I first arrive somewhere else. Like my mind is trying to pick up the radio signal and tune in to the frequency. It lasts a few minutes. It’s tinny and screechy, but I can hear the voices on the other side and I know that I just need to stand a minute and recalibrate.

‘I was shaking my head, trying to clear my ears of the crackle, and watching the crowd. We were standing near the parking lot, right by where the statue used to be. Now there’s just that cement block that used to be the base. Do you know it?’

She looks down campus in the right direction, so I go on.

‘As usual, Hector was in the thick of things, marching towards Sindiwe and me. She was holding the microphone, must have been waiting for him to get to the block. He looked like he was ready to burst.

As he jumped up on the stone, he raised his right hand in a fist into the air. He looked like he was born to do it. Like this moment was his destiny.

‘You know who I mean, right? You’ve seen him. The skinny one with the good looks and the arrogant smile?’

My voice tremors, but I push on. I can’t believe I used to find friendship in that smile. But that’s not for now either.

‘Twenty-one years old and the man thinks he is a god – to the ladies and to the movement. Like we need another man telling us what to do. Still, once you get taken seriously in movements like these, you better hope your dick is as big as you’re pretending it is. The hopes and expectations of thousands of students depend on you getting what they want for them, protecting them and their interests.’ I try to avoid thinking about how Hector didn’t protect me. ‘If you don’t, you’re gone just as fast as you got here.

‘I could see as he turned towards us that his shirt read: Too rich for NSFAS, too poor for fees, too black for a bank loan. Too honest for democracy is what it should have read.’

She takes out a notebook and pen, starts writing, and looks at me, gesturing with her hand for me to go on, like a horizontal royal wave. I look around again to make sure nobody’s listening, but there are just a bunch of students resting on the lawn, jamming to their Bluetooth speakers. We’re still safe.

‘So anyway, Hector was standing there, looking out at all of us, his eyes wide and alert, his forehead gleaming with sweat. As he opened his mouth to shout, he flinched sharply, and his face was a kaleidoscope of expressions in a split second. He turned away from the crowd to look back at Sindiwe and me, and then his eyes went so calm and peaceful. He collapsed. He didn’t even