I’ve done it before and I can do it again. I’m not afraid of hard work.
But this wasn’t London. It was Africa. Nothing had prepared Gabe for the backbreaking work, hauling bricks and mixing cement in the hundred-degree heat, bitten to death by mosquitoes and sand flies. Often he found he was the only white man on a crew, which was lonely and dispiriting. The blacks all spoke Swahili to one another, laughing and joking as they lifted huge slabs of stone with no more effort than a mother lifting a baby. Gabe had always considered himself strong and physically fit. But at thirty, with a white man’s muscle tone, he was no match for the nineteen-year-old local boys. Every night he crawled back to his filthy single-room apartment on Kennedy Road and collapsed on the bed, his body screaming with pain. For the first six months, before his skin hardened, Gabe’s hands would blister and bleed so badly he looked like he had stigmata. Worst of all was the loneliness. It followed him everywhere, like a stalker, even into his dreams at night. Sometimes he could go an entire week without talking to anyone other than the foreman who paid him his wages. Gabe had to make a conscious effort not to slide into depression and despair.
I got through heroin. I got through prison. I can get through this.
And slowly, as the months rolled into years, he did get through it. Giving up drinking was the first step, not so much a choice as a physical necessity. Gabe’s body was already stretched to the limits of endurance. There was no way he could work with a hangover. With the booze out of his system, he started sleeping better. His mood and energy levels began, imperceptibly, to lift. Once he raised his head and smiled at the black men working beside him, he found that they were not so standoffish after all. The thought struck him that perhaps it was he who had kept himself isolated, not them.
He made friends with a man named Dia Ghali. Dia was a joker, sunny-natured, with a deep, booming laugh that erupted frequently and incongruously from his skinny body. Dia was a foot shorter than Gabe, and as black as Gabe was white. Standing side by side, they looked like a comedy act. But Dia was every bit as serious as Gabe about making something of his life.
“I grew up in Pinetown. You know what happened last week, in the street where I lived? A baby girl, four months old, was killed by a rat. Killed. By a rat.”
Gabe looked suitably horrified.
“The city refuses to collect the trash so the bloody rats are everywhere. They say the shack dwellers are ‘illegals’ and not entitled to services. As if we choose to live that way. Well, it’s not happening to my child. No way. I’m getting out.”
By pooling his money with Dia, Gabe was at last able to afford to move out of his single room. Together the two men rented a minuscule two-bedroom apartment downtown. It was a shoe box, but it felt like the Ritz.
“You know what we should do?” Gabe emerged from his first hot shower in a year and a half to find Dia watching cricket on their secondhand TV. “We should go into business for ourselves, in Pinetown. That’s the problem in South Africa. There are shantytowns and mansions, but nothing in between. Low-cost, cooperative housing my friend. It’s the future.”
Dia nodded absently. “Fine. But you know what we should do first?”
“What?”
“Get laid.”
Gabe hadn’t had a woman since Ruby. Alcohol had deadened his libido. Since he gave up drinking, he’d begun, slowly, to notice women again. But he was too poor, and too exhausted, to spare much thought for dating. Cruising the bars of the Victoria and Albert Waterfront with Dia, watching the girls in their miniskirts and heels dolled up for a night out, Gabe felt like a tortoise emerging from hibernation. His first few attempts to chat up women were met with blunt rejection.
Gabe couldn’t understand it. He’d always found flirting so easy.
“It’s because you’re with me,” Dia told him. “Women don’t trust a white guy who hangs out with a native.”
“A native ?” Gabe laughed. “Come on, Dia. Apartheid’s been over for years.”
Dia raised an eyebrow. “Really? Where have you been the past two years, brother? In a cave?”
He was right. Glancing around, Gabe saw that none of the groups hanging around the Waterfront were of mixed race. Whites and blacks might frequent the same stores and bars, but they each stuck with their own. Gabe thought of his ancestor Jamie McGregor and his lifelong friendship with Banda, a native revolutionary. A hundred and fifty years had passed since those days. But how much has really changed?
Happily, Dia was not in the mood for philosophizing. “Check out that honey standing by the fountain.” He pointed out a tall, slender black girl in tight jeans and a sequined vest. When she looked up and saw him staring, she smiled.
Dia grinned at Gabe. “You’re on your own, my friend. Don’t wait up.”
The black girl’s name was Lefu. Less than a year later, Dia married her.
“Quit complaining,” Dia told Gabe as he taped up the last of his boxes. He and Lefu were moving into their own place a few blocks away. “Now your crazy white women can make as much noise as they like through the walls.”
Gabe would miss Dia. But it was true, he could use the privacy. It hadn’t taken him long to rediscover his magic touch when it came to women. Cape Town, he quickly learned, was a mecca for Eastern European models. Girls flocked to join the hot new agencies-Faces, Infinity, Max, Outlaws-taking advantage of South Africa’s year-round sunshine and perfect photographic conditions. Gabe McGregor made it his personal mission-more like his Christian duty-to ensure that the poor things didn’t get too homesick.