Cruel Crazy Beautiful World Read Online Free PDF

of stabbing deep.
    He draws his tin canteen out of his rucksack and hurls it at Snaggletooth.
    It jangles against his skull. He yelps and his feet jitter and jig.
    The other dogs flick their eyes away from Jabulani for a moment to witness Snaggletooth stalking the canteen in the dust and sniffing at it. Then they focus on Jabulani again.
    Now all four dogs inch towards him. Now he sees their viscous pink gums. Now the low rattling of their bloodlust sours his blood.
    He wonders if his rucksack and passport would ever be found, if Thokozile would ever hear he’d died just south of the border.
    A dog with a jagged, tooth-torn ear drops low. Instinct scripts this dog with the sun behind him to make the first move. He leaps at Jabulani.
    Jabulani sidesteps and swipes wildly at the dog’s head.
    The dog spins away from him, yelping. Drops of blood from his lip fleck the dust. He paws at his bleeding lip. His yelping fades to a mystified whining. He shakes his head and blood fans out from him.
    As in a kung fu film the others waver and glance at one another. They are no longer keen to go solo.
    The bleeding dog falls in again, due east.
    They drop their heads. They lay their ears flat. They no longer growl. It is this silence of unflinching communal focus that tells him this is the kill.
    Flinging his rucksack might just off-foot one, and he might wound another with the knife, but two would still be free to gut him.
    He begs God: Keep an eye on my sweet-sweet Thokozile, on my soul-boy Panganai and my angel-girl Tendai .
    Then, out of the blue, they all tilt their heads in sync, as if to tune into rumours of blood on a high, inhuman frequency.
    He sees distant dust float skyward.
    The dogs figure they have no time to make the kill, yet find it hard to let their prey go.
    Now he hears the motor throbbing deep.
    And he sees sand spit up at their feet just before the shot cracks in his ears.
    The dogs spin on their heels and lope away, tails tucked. Each time a shot is fired their asses flinch as if a whip tip has stung them.
    A Land Rover painted in zebra markings jerks to a halt.
    – Lucky bastard, a voice calls through a haze of dust.
    As the dust fades he sees two white gunmen standing on the roof of the Land Rover, like tiger hunters riding high on a howdah.
    The black man behind the wheel gazes pityingly at Jabulani.

7
    H ERMANUS MARKET.
    The sky is a plane-chalked blue blackboard.
    The sun treks doggedly through the blue, painting the surface of things below a kind of yellow. That sunlight in Amsterdam’s too white and thin. This is viscous and chardonnayed.
    The fuzzy radio-static zither of the sea echoes the thrum in my blood whenever I conjure her, the seagull girl.
    The market echoes with the untuned, behind-the-scenes hubbub of shifting scaffolding, toppling boxes and jockeying vans. Smells waft by of jasmine joss, kelp, gas, dust, coffee, skinned oranges.
    Long planks balance on two sawhorses under the tarp roof of my end-of-the-row stand. I lay out the bead things one by one: penguins, seahorses, chameleons, geckos, turtles, fish, sharks, dolphins, whales ...
    Next stall along, to my left, a wiry woman fiddles with her printer’s trays of stones and fossils.
    I remember now that as a boy I dreamed of having an amber stone with a spider caught in it.
    Next stall along again, a guy from Senegal sells vividly painted figures carved out of wood. They hold a myriad of jobs from teacher to soldier. I wonder how he’d depict a poet (pencil and paper in hand? scratching his head?). How he’d make him stand out from a philosopher or a clerk.
    In this market no defined measure marks out the time. Trade will get under way once the first tourist moseys along to find a curio, or the first hotel keeper comes to finger fresh steenbrass or mango.
    I see the fishing-boat hobo hobble across the cobbled square to the Fisherman’s Cottage, his dog at his heels. The hobo’s spine is curved as a scorpion’s stinger under his ratty