-CIDE

AE Smith

The woman with the sanguine triangle of pubic hair is all that stands between Vivian and his bottle of pills. She may not be enough to stave off despair. He wills her to look across the gory street, to turn her head, to look at him. She will never do it, his amputee infatuation - she will not look him in the eye, he is simply not enough of a man to warrant her breaking the laws of physics.

Exaggeration and drama disturb him, his exterior thoughts are an unrippled lake, he can drink volumes without losing his calm: his is a decorous melancholy.

At Vivian's feet lies a dog, a golden retriever, whose joy of existence is a foil to his cynical master. The dog's happiness is an unpretentious excess, it does not make Vivian feel uneasy, only bound; he is responsible for the creature: it is his duty to preserve this life with a bowl of food each evening at six.

He must resist the quiet lure of the pills. He must content himself with looking at the woman's body from a quantum distance and considering her reasons for humouring the German abhorrence ogling her from the inside of that red room. Vivian lights another cigarette - he would sooner die like Freud, mouth addled with cancer, than give up this addiction. He determines to discover the motives of the woman with no right arm.

Harvey Grosz is a vein-faced man, skin slippery and insipid as a sausage casing, with a capillaried nose and wearing a starched shirt and a turquoise silk cravat, pinned with the platinum swastika he inherited from his father.

Words must be unadulterated, they deserve that courtesy, thinks Vivian, flinching at an echoed noun that rattles in his thoughts: bilberry. It is a cur word, like twankey, another untouchable. Not long ago he spent a weekend with a woman whose habit of referring to all tea as twankey brought him close to punching her in the face, but that would have been unseemly.

Vivian knows that nobody likes Harvey Grosz, but everybody likes money, even enemies. Earlier in the day, one such enemy sat like a lapdog poodle waiting for a treat, panting with pink-tongued anticipation, right there across the scarlet road with Olympia (that's the woman's name) watching.

"In front of lame-dicked Harvey," says Olympia "who was naked from the waist down, holding an El Rey del Mundo Choix Supreme in one hand and a mug of Reichelbrau Eisbock in the other, on his wheel-chair throne."

How perfect it was, Olympia tells Vivian, that Harvey Grosz is a paraplegic, and that he was flagrantly baring his droop: there could not be a better cloak of strength, nor a surer way of giving an enemy a false sense of advantage.

"It's a damn good deal, Grosz, all we need now is for the Department of Environmental Affairs to reallow the zoning, then we're A for away," said the enemy. "I mean, this is a win-win situation, it's going to be the biggest thing since Sol's Lost City, but it's even bigger, much bigger." The enemy, besides being an enemy, was also what Olympia calls a Neatsuit. He was sweating over his glass of cognac, suit and tie on despite the midsummer night, despite the overheated Loop Street penthouse.

"The Neatsuit had a UCT Graduate School of Business voice," says Olympia, who until recently had two arms. "I know that voice. Harvey's given me plenty of them. They're the ones who try to show off their skill as lovers. Think they impress me by holding back and holding back."

She might laugh if she were prone to laughter, but instead she sucks on Vivian's cigarette and leaves it rimmed with red. He likes the fact that she does not laugh - it shows an admirable measure of self-control. "Poor stupid buggers," she says to Vivian, "if only they knew the best way to please a woman, or at least me, is to come quickly. Actually, their red-faced desperation is what really pleasures me."

Vivian puffs on his cigarette. The woman, he thinks, has beautiful breasts but her setup, her language, is most unbecoming.

At the cognac drinking stage she had not yet "had" that Neatsuit, so she told Vivian, but was certain that she would "have him", because that, she claims, is the way the deals are sealed with men on desperate ground. "Not with a handshake, but with cum, and Harvey watching from behind a mirrored pain as I let the enemy live out his prostitute fantasy, in a room with red drapes and red lights."

Olympia tells Vivian that the Neatsuit was the newly appointed CEO of a large South African investment bank. A man who suffers from depression and has a blond wife called Sarah, an antiques dealer. "They have two daughters who go to Herschel School for uptight girls with rich daddies."

Harvey was looking at Olympia and in reply she frowned.

"Olympia, cover you cunt with you hand, you silly bitch," Harvey had said and then he looked at the Neatsuit and said, "You're talking about a bribe?"

"It wouldn't have to be very large. I have, shall we say, a friend in Parliament," said the Neatsuit, chewing the end of his Choix Supreme.

"You are a fortunate man to have such friends. I'm honoured that you have come to me," said Harvey.

"I loved the irony dribbling in Harvey's tone," Olympia tells Vivian. "As expected, the Neatsuit was so up his own arse, he took what Harvey said to be a real compliment."

She refuses to tell Vivian how she lost her arm - all she will say is that it is a result of the thing she has done that she most regrets. He tells her about a friend, his best friend, but he stops. He too cannot speak of the thing he did, or rather did not do, the thing he regrets the most.

According to Olympia, the predictability of Neatsuits makes war comforting. Vivian does not understand her use of the word war.

"Poor Neatsuit," she says, "if he had paid attention to Sun Tzu, which I'm sure he's read, he would have remembered that "humble words are signs that the enemy is about to advance."

"Well, you know, a few favours here and there and anyone can become a friend," said the Neatsuit, puffing out a series of leather and sweet cocoa-smelling smoke rings. "Grosz, I would really like to get you on board with this project. It's truly an outstanding opportunity; we're talking a guaranteed minimum of 400 per cent r o i."

Olympia describes to Vivian a man by the name of Sexyloops Shabangu, a close on seven-foot Malawian, onetime fly-fishing champion and ace hitman. Sexyloops entered the marble-floored battleground carrying an easel and a box of paints. He placed the easel and the paint-box close to Harvey Grosz and the Neatsuit.

"Close enough for the Neatsuit to notice the two divers knives that Sexyloops wears like a cowboy would wear his guns," says Olympia.

While Sexyloops and his knives were setting up the easel, Harvey was saying to the Neatsuit, "It sounds like an opportunity I won't be able to turn down, tell me more."

There is no smile, only contempt in the way Olympia's lips curl. "The panting Neatsuit was pretending like it's every midnight he has meetings with naked cripples in loft apartments with human tableaus of famous paintings all around him. He recited a series of return on investment statistics as if he was in a standard blue-carpet boardroom."

The situation's lack of dignity makes Vivian feel unusual. His work usually involves men in pubs with no thoughts and no colour and certainly no carmine lipstick. Considering the deviation, a drink might not be amiss, but no, he does not drink while working.

"Poor bugger, he didn't suspect that these battles only ever take place at midnight," says Olympia. "Those versed in the Art of War know that a soldier's spirit is keenest in the morning; by noonday it has begun to flag; and in the evening the soldier's mind is bent on returning to camp. So caught up in his spew of corporate verbiage, the Neatsuit, appeared to ignore the fact that it is Edouard Manet week, which is why I am Olympia."

She elaborates by telling Vivian how, in the corner of the room, there was a homeless white boy dressed up in a nineteenth-century military suit, standing frozen, holding a fife to his lips. He was The Fifer, usually found hanging in Paris's Musee d'Orsay. Against the back wall, behind the Neatsuit, lay Olympia: the famous French nude with a magnolia in her hair, a black velvet bow around her neck. "I was reclining on a white-sheeted bed with my hand tastefully covering my cunt."

"Decorum," says Vivian, lighting another cigarette. "I must insist on some decorum."

"Looking on, dressed like a Southern Mammy and holding a bouquet of flowers, was a girl from the Ivory Coast, a refugee that Sexyloops picked up at the harbour as a playmate for me and, of course, as a model for Harvey."

"Let's talk about money then, shall we?" said Harvey, and the Neatsuit sat up a little straighter, possibly thinking the battle was almost over and home camp was near.

"He inherited his money from his father," Olympia says to Vivian. "Father was a high-ranking Nazi general. Made an obscene fortune out of the gold teeth, swallowed jewels, watches and clothing with banknotes stitched into the lining - all items that his henchman harvested from the Jewish prisoners in Austria and Poland."

Olympia tells Vivian that guilt has devoured Harvey's soul and conscience and capacity to feel the normal range of emotions. Devour is a word too lacking in sobriety for Vivian to relate it to himself, but guilt, he concedes, is disquieting in its pervasiveness.

"Although the half-man doesn't have much of a soul, there are two things I know for certain he does care about," says Olympia. "One is painting versions of the great masterpieces, which he does rather well, and the other is me."

She says that she likes the girl from the Ivory Coast, who calls herself Rye and speaks only French.

"Fine with me," says Olympia, "I got a distinction for French at university. In fact, I got distinctions for all my subjects. I was an economics and mathematics double major and I took French and German as extras."

"Look it's not really that much, the bribe is a pittance, actually," the Neatsuit had said. "We're talking maybe a mil, and I'm thinking how about, say, 200 million for a five percent stake in the development."

Olympia says she was amused by the way the Neatsuit was so casual with millions he did not have, which rolled from his tongue like it was just another boring Monday morning at the oak-panelled office.

"But this was no boring Monday," she says. "The Neatsuit was on desperate ground. He arrived there because he staked not only the bank's future but his own fortune on a golfing island that he plans to build outside of Knysna. Everything was going so well, the bank had cheerily forked out a few billion rand to construct a tarred road and a bridge to the island. It was A for away, as the Neatsuit would say, until the neat plan was blown out of the water when a herpetologist discovered that a rare breed of frog, endemic to that particular island, would become extinct if the project went ahead."

The missing arm, cut halfway between the shoulder and the elbow, has transfixed Vivian. When he first saw her, he did not notice the imperfection - he saw only her breasts and her hips under a tight waist. How could he have missed such an obvious lack of form?

"We have a routine, Harvey and I," says Olympia. "He looks over the enemy's shoulder. I lick my lips and slide my fingers into my cunt."

"Decorum," says Vivian.

"Beautiful," said Harvey.

The Neatsuit turned to see and Olympia smiled at his shock.

"So typical," she says to Vivian. "He reminds me of my first finance manager. It was after I had graduated from university. I was at a job interview at a Swiss Bank's South African head office. It was the eighth, and final, interview; I was virtually assured of the job. The finance manager and I were meeting in his pitiful office. He told me what sort of salary I could expect and that one day I, too, may be able to work myself up to the position of finance manager. I asked him what he earned. That Neatsuit laughed and told me, like he was humouring a child, probably thinking perhaps that I would be impressed. I was not. I had another idea of what I was worth and to test my theory, I unbuttoned my blouse and unfastened my bra. With my breasts which are, as I had by then learned through much experience, entirely irresistible to men, proffered from across the desk, I said to that Neatsuit, "Keep the job, but tell me, how much would you pay me for the blowjob of your life, right here, right now?'"

It comes as little surprise to Vivian to hear that the man paid Olympia extremely well and that afterwards she developed an adoring clientele at the Swiss Bank. One of those clients was Harvey Grosz.

"You can imagine how this Neatsuit's gut must have dropped into his Calvin Klein briefs when a battalion of environmentalists blocked his budget-rupturing bridge to the golfing island. The leader of the frog-loving crazies made news headlines when he chained himself to a bulldozer and then the Department of Environmental Affairs stepped in, retracted the zoning permission given to the Neatsuit and his bank, and put a hold on the whole development. Now the Neatsuit, and his bank, are bleeding serious interest on monies used to build the goddamn tarred road and the bridge. Retreat is impossible."

"Four hundred million should tide you over nicely," Harvey said.

"Absolutely, yes," said the Neatsuit.

"But I want a fifty-five percent stake."

The Neatsuit swallowed some Davidoff Extra for courage.

"Momentarily, he deluded himself into thinking he was in hemmed-in ground as opposed to the worse terrain of desperate ground and so he resorted to strategy," says Olympia.

"Look, with all due respect, that's impossible, there are other stakeholders, and the bank has invested almost two billion already," said the Neatsuit. "Although I came to you first, I have to be completely honest and say I have got other options."

The Neatsuit was on the road to ruin.

In the end, the deal was done.

"After thirty-nine tedious minutes of ego-restoring protraction, the Neatsuit came," says Olympia.

When the defeated Neatsuit enemy, with lips stained with Revlon Vermilion, had left to return to his Tuscany mansion in Constantia, Harvey rolled into the red-light room. That is how Vivian saw her. That is how Vivian sees her.

Olympia stands naked at the window, holding a purple orchid and looking down on the city. She has red lipstick on her lips and red lipstick round her nipples. "You did well for me baby," she says as Harvey Grosz rests his head against her belly.

Relationships happen slowly for Vivian, he never makes a move. He would like to ask her what she is thinking on the other side of suicide row but he cannot. If the grammar of physics is to be bent, he must close his eyes.

She turns to him and says, "'O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.' Poor Neatsuit, he would never know that Harvey and I are married, that the Nazi fortune is now all mine and that the herpetologist, the leader of the environmentalists and the accommodating MPs are all mine too."

At the last full stop, Vivian opens his eyes and looks at the postcard propped up against his bottle of pills. He has made the yellow-eyed woman a megalomaniac. The twankey drinking female he'd spent the weekend with, the abstemious, teetotal, vegan vegetarian, she confessed she was a megalomaniac. She has grown in his thoughts and imprinted her vice onto Vivian's Olympia who is also George Grosz, the expressionist painter's whore in Suicide. Tomorrow Vivian will give Olympia a good working-over, clean her up, cut out any undignified qualifiers, edit her. Today she has saved him from the bottle. His dog will have dinner on time.

AE Smith Alexandra ditched a perfectly decent job, sold-off a damn fine apartment and gave in to her undignified addiction to words by signing up for UCT’s MA in Creative Writing course at the beginning of this year. Since then she’s been living off credit and dried figs and putting in eight-hour days on her novella "The Fool’s Way". After five she sheds her literary pretensions and assumes the role of Cape Social Editor for Style magazine – a position she relishes for the irony of the fact that life can lead a sworn introvert (not to mention teetotal, 80% raw vegan vegetarian) such as herself into the role of socialite (and punter of French Champagne and fois gras). Before financial inclemency grounded and reduced her to an existence of constantly feigning gastric flu in order avoid eating the stuffed and sautéed insides of tortured birds, she was an intrepid traveler. Her next novella, if the atrabilious universe allows it, will be on her experiences in Iran.

LitNet: 15 Desember 2004

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