The Water Man's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

the squawk of the chickens as they are moved aside for the bounty.

THREE

    T HE HIGHWAYS ARE WIDE AND TRAFFIC PEPPERS THE lanes, leaving too much empty space. The sun is rising, maybe more brilliant and orange than back home, but Peter can’t tell. He takes in the shadows fleeing past. Beyond the transparent reflection of his angled nose and now hapless mop of hair, he can see rows of boxes pile onto one another just behind the line where the scraggly grass separating highway from ditch ends. Between the boxes, little lights flicker like ghosts, following them as they drive. The plush limousine tops a hill and Peter gets a quick look beyond the sentinel layer of structures. Shacks, paint chipped and sides falling, colours fading into the dusky morning, extend back from the highway in a massive wave. He sees a meadow of metal roofs and walls, slanting in unpredictable patterns. Smoke rises from spaces between the homes and mingles into a shallow cloud.
    Africa.
    “We will be at the hotel in less than an hour,” the driver says in a low voice with a thick accent. He wears an ornate uniform that looks as though it was plucked from the back of a British colonial soldier. Peter feels too tired to respond.He rubs his arms to get the wet chill of an African fall morning from his skin.
    Eighteen hours ago, he was in the pleasant warmth of Toronto in the early summer. The magnolia tree outside his house was still hanging on to its last flowers, and their smell mixed with that of the breakfast his daughter was preparing before rushing off to class. He was in a neatly pressed suit, telling jokes as Claire bustled about the kitchen. His long legs didn’t ache from the cramp and pressure of tiny airplane seats.
    Eighteen hours ago, he wasn’t a little hungover from the champagne and Tylenol PM taken at the beginning of the flight. He wasn’t about to lug a large suitcase into yet another foreign hotel, tipping every black boy who ushered him through the maze of desks and identical doors. He wasn’t about to speedily unpack clothes stained with the smell of airport before skimming the papers for the day’s meetings.
    There was a time when a trip to Johannesburg would have been a thrill – a chance to prove his stuff to the company management, but, more importantly, a chance to effect some real change. That was what they’d called it then:
real change
. Then, it was as if the permanent structures the taxi whizzed by, the large city that sprang up around them, and the row of fancy hotels they stopped before, were simple children’s toys. Peter could have picked up the pieces, changed the hats on the players, and created a little utopia all of his own. It certainly wasn’t the complex mess he sees now.
This is a country
, Peter thinks to himself as he exitsthe car and hands ten rand to the doorman,
impervious to change
.
    He has to be in the conference room in twenty minutes. There is no time for a hot shower before the day begins. The hotel is freezing, fans going in every room despite the cool morning air outside. He pulls a soft blue sweater over his dress shirt and a navy sports coat around his shoulders. The day will heat up, but at this moment it seems as though Peter never will. He breathes in deep and heads back out to the elevators.
    The township councillor is bringing a delegation of community representatives who are willing to work with his company’s subsidiary, Amanzi, in controlling local resistance to the water systems. Peter doesn’t feel at all ready for a confrontation full of half-English sentences and misunderstandings. He knows from too many meetings in conference rooms like the one he is about to enter that local leadership is weak and often corrupt. The people hate this councillor as much as the company does. He cups his hands over his eyes and closes them. Little light trains play in front of his eyelids. For a moment he is back at home in the kitchen with his daughter while she tries to finish her