A boundary wall with peeling paint and a rusty metal gate guarding the stoep and wood front door. The keys fit into their slots and turn easy enough and I enter. Inside, a flip of a switch reveals a dim lit wide corridor and two pairs of anxious eyes. I sense that I have interrupted something. Were they sleeping or were they playing I wonder. They sit still and quiet as I close the door behind me. Their eyes have not yet learned to beg from me. Instead they regard me with indifferent intrigue.
But that smell! That unbearable smell. Uncomfortable and stuffy. The odour in the house chokes you at the nose. I pace the house to inspect and their eyes follow me and my loud boot steps on the wood floor. How could an empty house smell this awful. I open a window to let in a different air. Through it comes the noise of hurried foot steps and idle chatter, as people hurry from the train station. The smell in the house is undoubtedly from these animals. Their fur is every where. It is on the floor, on the bear wood furniture and can be seen in clumps in the corners along the skirting boards. Surely it floats in the air too, miniscule strands of it wafting into your nasal cavities. An animal miasma. The kitchen smells no better. And what do you know? a pile of dirty dishes. That won’t help the smell either. Nor will the cockroaches running for cover, exposed by the kitchen light. Not just the medium size cockroaches but also the little platoons dashing for cover under kitchen appliances.
Perhaps this arrangement is not so clever after all. Why did I agree to this? It seemed so sensible at the time, when I needed to escape my sister’s house, and her children’s toys and music. I didn’t mind cooking some of the meals, sharing the minute bathroom (which it turns out, dwarfs the one here) or being a substitute role model for the kids. I could even bear the skateboards and bicycles conveniently left in doorways and the unabated sock theft. However, a quiet spot to read and the exact locality of my books and newspapers was a privilege I was criminally short of and no longer prepared to sacrifice.
On reflection, I think something else was slowly eating away at me. While I never doubted that my elder sister would love her children dearly over me, it was too uncomfortable to experience. Our conversations were ever interrupted by an incessant cry “mummy, mummy” as we competed for her attention. I was always her baby brother, but I am not sure I ever upgraded to her children’s uncle. I tried once, with little success, to settle a stand off between my niece and nephew over dish washing obligations. In the ensuing battle of denials and false accusations, my sister intervened in irritation, just when the tempers and insults were at their zenith, and commanded “my brother, you are making noise.” I took to working late at the office. There is nothing liking problems at home to keep you in the office.
So again a refuge, for that is what this house near the sea is. After all, my sister’s place was only meant to be a landing pad after my departure from London. London was a refuge from Geneva and Geneva a refuge from here. Given my tendencies of flight and freight, and my humble income from maths tuition at the university, it was a ray of light on a wet winter’s morning when the professor offered his place for six months. “I am on sabbatical next semester and Jane and I really need somebody to look after our place. We’re going to the states on holiday. You would be perfect” he chimed in his American accent through his messy beard and hair. Of course I always knew he was some sort of hippy. Not a happy-clappy one with a guitar, but still a person who views pervasive commodity culture with suspicion and actively pursues an alternative lifestyle. The wife’s uncut hair, his long beard and their droopy clothes must have something to do with that.
A house to keep, pets to feed and an electricity meter that cuts out should it run out of digits. But there are other responsibilities I must attend to such as theater, movies, parties and a girlfriend, all of which are a long way off and clustered around the heart of the city and that bigger mountain. I am cut off at night, as are all those dependent on public transport. That leaves me isolated, in a way, in a thinly spread suburbia hugging the bay and mountains. I cannot do this alone.
