Cecil Helman

Just beside the barbed wire fence. At the end of that long dusty, reddish path. Like a vein of terracotta. Past the acre of prickly pears, netted against monkey thieves. Past rows of orange and pear trees, plum and peach. Past the little herb garden, the two small ponds with their thirty white, waddling geese. Up past the broken-down tractor, the water pump, the half-empty reservoir. Six abandoned graves. Of African farm workers, someone says. Among the high waving grass, six broad lines of stones. No gravestones, just a rock, unmarked, placed at one end. Nearby, in the warm Magaliesberg winds, a long line of bluegum trees sway and sigh. Like mourners.
...

She speaks to me in hieroglyphics. In a row of tiny pictures. Each one brightly coloured. And finely detailed. Each picture never quite straight, always facing sideways. She speaks quickly, one image following another. A long row of them, and then more after that. Her hair is dark as Anubis, her blue eyes of Horus outlined in black. A golden cobra lies coiled around her head. Whenever she speaks, I find myself mesmerized by this endless row of images. Crafted in arcane language, one after the other. A row of brightly-painted hieroglyphics. I wish I knew what she was trying to say
...

The way we talk on the telephone. Yes, the liquid flow of her melodious voice. So special. Warm and harmonious, and usually quite low. Her voice like hot treacle through the telephone, dark now yet sweet. Late at nighttime, or early the next morning. She talks and talks. Afterwards, it's always the same. The skin of my ear raw and blistered. That half of my face peeling to the touch, and flaking away. The telephone set, all cracked and corroded. And always that same sweet incense of burning plastic. So special. And the droplets of melted phone, black and tiny like musical notes strewn across the carpet. We need to talk, she says. And talks. And again. Like heated tar through the telephone now, hot and viscous. The smell of melting wires, again. Yesterday, our talk singed my hair. Again. But today, for the first time, it set the curtains alight. The cat ran screaming from the room, her fur scalded by the conversation. In their bowl, the goldfish boiled. Several house-plants wilted in the heat, others died. Someone called the fire brigade. Someone else jumped out of the window. Tomorrow morning, I guess we will talk again. In the meantime, the telephone company has complained. Their fuses have blown, they say, and their fibre-optics are all aflame. Our city is now cut off from the others, our country no longer in touch with the outside world. High above us, their telecommunication satellites fall flaming from the sky. Droplets of melted tungsten and burning steel dropped through the ether: slowly, melodiously, like the words of a leisurely conversation. Her voice is dropping too. Now it comes from the deeper down. Much deeper. Deep below the earth's surface, but rising fast. Hot, molten, incandescent lava pours out of the telephone as we talk. Down the slopes of Mount Etna, and into my sitting room. It's completely on fire now, and so is the house itself. Smoke signals rise into the flaming sky. Higher and higher, among the falling satellites. All around me I can catch that familiar smell of burning flesh. Yet again. But we need to talk, she says. They're so very special, these talks we have. I put down the melted phone, onto the charred remains of the little table. Everywhere cylinders, and charcoal, and piles of ash. And tomorrow? Tomorrow, I am sure, we will talk again. And again —
...

That UFO that came down that day. The one that picked on us, just us. Circular and silver, that almost whitening-grey and glistening one. Why us? The one that set fire to the cowshed, and did those mathematical things to the chickens, God rest their little souls. But why to us? Why then? Do you remember it, that so-called UFO? The one that divided Uncle Basil, and subtracted Aunty May? That silvery thing, silver-blue as a circular whale that swum, just like that, through the air. At great speed, just like this, look, just like that. But why us? Remember that UFO, remember that high electrostatic whine, and the aurora borealis that fell across the farm. The shadows in the fields. The old crops whitening. The shriek of radio, and all that fearful television. The pylons that ran in panic across the yard, trailing their wires behind them. The tractors that fought each other to death inside the incubators. All those llamas then, and the wild rabbits, and the melted generator. All dead and gone, all of them, now. Even the fax machines, dead in their corral, among the crispy remains of Xerox and thyme. Do you remember that alleged UFO that landed among us that day? The one that took me so far away, and never brought all of me back again?
...