him, to the council of supervisors, five Europeans drawn from the church hierarchy and the police. Their lordly messages, however, were received and then ignored by Mr Shabangu.
Victor looked for his friend. He should be around. The custodian didn’t seem to sleep. At any hour he might be prowling the hallway, inspecting the burglar bars for spots of rust, taking the council members on a tour, leading a policeman to an interview with one of the men about a theft or an assault, standing and thumbing the passages in a Gideons Bible, which shone in an oiled black leather cover.
Mr Shabangu, after all, was the person to ask if you had lost something or were looking for someone. There were no obvious limits to his knowledge. Sometimes he even seemed to know the future, who might find a position with the machinist shops, a fitter and turner and a large tool and die maker on Rissik Square, which of the residents might wind up in the district hospital, and which one might be arrested in connection with the burglary of a certain premises. Mr Shabangu stood for a system, fixed in place, in which you knew how to measure who and what was important.
Down the corridor, the door to Shabangu’s room was closed. Victor considered knocking. The caretaker hated any disappearances in the building, whether it concerned a man or a woman or an item of property, because it reflected poorly on him. He had seen the worst that a man could do, many times over, and liked to remind you of the lessons he had learned while drinking straight from a carton of very sour Juba in which the alcohol was as piercing as a European woman’s perfume.
Many identified Victor as something of a son to Mr Shabangu. They were wrong. Sometimes there was no connection with the older man. The caretaker had to struggle, on certain occasions, to recall Victor’s name. His large face would go blank while he was trying to fix on the letters, as if someone had relaxed the string holding his eyes and mouth in harness. He was unable to set his jaws. It was frightening. You feared that the man had been overcome by a fit and that he might choke. After a minute or two, Mr Shabangu recovered his self-possession, completed his sentence, retreated his tongue, and again seemed to recognise the other person. Afterwards he didn’t refer back to these incidents.
The people Mr Shabangu truly remembered, for whom his face tightened on the string, were the ones to whom he had loaned money. On Fridays he set up at the desk in the entrance, behind the frosted-glass door, and doled out new two-rand notes in exchange for their signatures. Over Christmas he made longer-term loans, which the residents took to the rural areas to pay for a new roof, or a coffin, or a daughter’s or sister’s dowry, or the celebrations to mark a boy’s circumcision. He took down their pass numbers as part of his security. Looking over the top of plastic glasses, he copied the details into the end pages of the Gideons Bible. When you repaid your loan, a line went through your name with the help of a Parker pen and a ruler.
The outstanding accounts belonged to men who vanished. Some chose not to return to the urban area because of the pressure. Others died after a short illness and were buried in a potter’s field. Several had left the country to join Umkhonto, in which case the disappearance was not mentioned. Their names were nevertheless kept in the book and transcribed into a new Gideons when more space was required. They might come back into the country someday. Mr Shabangu repeated the numbers under his breath, updating the principal to allow for each month of interest, when he went through his records column by column. He was the only man who could do such calculations in his head. He was as good as an Indian.
Victor knocked on the door and listened. There was no movement. He waited and put his ear to the door. Sometimes in the passage he heard the caretaker talk to himself on his long trestle bed after he had stored his mops and buckets. His stern lips recalled the names of the debtors and the amounts outstanding in a voice so low you had to stand beside the door to make out the words and numbers. You almost believed you had caught Mr Shabangu casting a spell.
Victor went back down the hall and into his room, remembering the feeling of bad magic about the custodian. It was common knowledge, when somebody fell behind on his loan, that misfortune was sure to follow. Shabangu sent Victor to remind the person when a payment was due. Victor brought back promises, excuses, and other stories, and the knowledge that the payment would be made. Nobody defied Shabangu for fear of what he could do at a distance.
When he wanted to celebrate a sizeable repayment, the custodian came into the store room with a dish of sugared and startlingly orange baked beans, or a bowl of saltless bone-white pap from which rose the merest scent of water. On a long holiday, when certain longstanding accounts had been closed, he might bring an unlabelled tin of golden syrup. He ate slowly and delightedly without, however, offering Victor so much as a spoonful. Nobody knew Shabangu’s people. Victor was clearly his favourite at the hostel and perhaps in his life. Yet he didn’t get a spoon.
Towards others in the hostel the caretaker was obscure and even unfriendly. If Mr Shabangu wasn’t much liked, he was respected on account of his longevity. He was understood to be the oldest man in the building, snow having settled thick on his eyebrows and in the stiff hair around his black mouth. He walked up and down the staircase while hitching one of his legs. He sat down on a chair with a noticeable degree of discomfort and could only find peace in certain positions. Nevertheless, Mr Shabangu was not yet out of his forties.
Victor went to look again in the store room. He couldn’t rely on his friend to save him.
Mr Shabangu didn’t knock. He simply arrived by right, putting his broad hands around the door and hauling himself inside the store room, where everything had been turned upside down and moved away from the wall.
—And how are you this morning, Victor? Is everything going to your satisfaction?
—I have no complaints, Mr Shabangu.
The pass book was nowhere. Victor could cry out loud. The past was gone. There wasn’t anything you could do to return lost objects to their positions. Nor could a person trace his steps so exactly that he would discover at which point he and his possession had parted.
—Everything is out of its place in here, I see. I can also see that you have moved my supplies from their usual locations. I prefer this room to be ship-shape, as you know.
—I understand. I will put it all back in the right place.
The caretaker put his hands out to make a sign.
—Everything must fit together like a tea set.
—I promise to put it back as it was. I misplaced something.
—Nothing too important, I hope. I know you have extra work thanks to the recent invaders. That gentleman Polk is to blame, I believe. He has put an extra strain on you.
—He gave me a chance to work on the play.
—Nevertheless, it takes a toll. I understand completely. When you are distracted it is only natural to lose track of your property.
Mr Shabangu smiled broadly. It seemed to be the product of some dislocation at the jaw. Mr Shabangu had moods which were monotonous for months at a time, strung the one on the other like beads in a necklace. He got through Christmas and Boxing Day without the slightest trace of good cheer, singing hymns in the front row of the choir with a face as clouded as a Scotsman’s, and afterwards drinking the red fruit juice from the punchbowl with no more joy than if it were medicine.
In the same instant Victor understood that it was his landlord who had taken the reference book. He had come to the store room to gloat, declaring there was nothing that could be done.
Victor saw he was as lost as his permit. Shabangu had been at the top of his list, the first of his patrons. Victor tried to be friends with everyone who could help him. Now, for no
