Nineveh. Henrietta Rose-Innes

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СКАЧАТЬ matter how glossy the shopping precincts that lie above or below, the parking garage is always a brute dungeon of raw concrete. Not a wild space, but not civilized, either. The dark corners and crevices make her urban-pest sensors prick up. Here you get your rats, sometimes your pigeons. Not a terribly varied fauna, but a resilient one, dark-adapted.

      This parking garage is nothing special, the usual stained concrete and unfinished pillars. The old PPR-mobile looks dusty and out of place between the Beemers and Mercs. She lets her fingertips glide over the sleek flanks of the cars – metallic shells so like the carapaces of giant beetles – as she moves between them to the stairwell.

      A short flight of stairs, and then a swing door and an abrupt change of atmosphere. There’s a well-lit, carpeted lobby and a lobby-man in a cinnamon uniform; he takes her name and her picture with a webcam like a tiny Death Star. Then she has to press her thumb to a glass screen that glows with a bluish light. They say not a word to each other. He points silently to a space behind her right shoulder, in a banishing-from-Eden gesture, and she turns to see a large notice board of names and floor numbers.

      Brand Properties, it says on the board: fifteenth floor.

      “Thank you,” she murmurs.

      On floor two she’s joined in the lift by a good-looking young man with satiny skin and a sharp black suit; on floor four, a bony woman carrying a tray of samosas. Nobody speaks, and none of them meet each other’s eyes, although she attempts a brief flirtational skirmish in the polished metal of the lift wall with the young man. She tries to snag his eyes, but he’s too good: she can’t get an angle on him. He’s staring off into a corner, not looking at anyone – not even himself. It seems unnatural, but also a skill: who could look at nothing, surrounded by mirrors? He gets out on the eighth floor, samosa lady on the tenth. Katya ascends alone. She imagines herself a cosmonaut in her green flight suit, trapped in a space-capsule. If it goes any higher, it might hit zero gravity.

      When the doors sigh open on floor fifteen, she steps out into another white corridor, teal carpet with a diamond pattern underfoot. Disk-shaped light fixtures of smoked glass like flying saucers are set into the ceiling. She pads down the corridor, the only sound the sub-audible buzz of some electrical system – air-con, lighting. There are no windows, and it’s impossible to say how far she is from real air and sunlight. This honeycomb bears little relation to the monolithic office block she circled earlier, looking for the parking entrance.

      She counts the numbers on the doors. There are offices to the left and right, but no apparent occupants. Some show signs of recent activity, and a rapid exodus. Through doors ajar, she glimpses humorous postcards stuck to corkboards, a toppling pile of printouts on the floor, a chipped cup dumped in a sink in a tiny kitchenette. It’s like the Marie Celeste. Can business really be that bad?

      At the end of the corridor, where it turns a corner, there is at last a window, looking down onto the roofs of other city buildings. The foreshore: land stolen from the sea. The rooftops have been put to various uses. She sees gardens and stacked plastic chairs and heaps of scrap metal and even, on one, a gazebo and what seems to be a water feature. She can make out the fat torpedoes of koi fish circulating down there, the size of grains of rice but the shape unmistakeable. She has no idea all this had been going on above her commuter-level head. Most of the rooftops are grimy, though, not meant to be seen – like the top of the fridge in a short woman’s house.

      Down the other end of the corridor, just before it takes another corner, a cleaning lady leans on her silent hoover and stares down through a similar window. Katya wonders how the city’s streets are marked for this woman, with what humiliations, curiosities and pleasures. The two of them, sole survivors of whatever mysterious plague has wiped out everyone else on the fifteenth floor, gaze down upon the grubby topside of the town.

      The woman gives her a quick, flat glance and looks away, gunning the vacuum cleaner. It’s a reminder. She is not floating here; she is working. Katya is working too. She passes the woman in the corridor without troubling her with another glance.

      As she comes round the next corner, she sights life: not Mr. Brand, but another solidly potent figure, dark against the brightness of the corridor. It comes towards her with hand outstretched and a gleaming smile.

      The woman is glossy and round and fragrant as a sugar plum, with toffee-apple lipstick, a deep but elevated cleavage and apparently knee-less legs that taper smoothly from nyloned thigh to stilettoed heel. Her globular haircut shines like black silk and is, Katya assumes, a quality weave.

      She has no trouble recognizing the woman immediately: this is the owner of the satiny telephone voice. Seldom does a voice and its physical person correspond so closely. She has extravagantly bow-shaped lips, perfectly filled in, that part to reveal moist white teeth. There is nothing dry or cold or rough about this lady. She is all arcs and curves, sketched with a calligraphy pen and filled in with rich color. She proffers a hand and Katya feels the tips of enamelled nails touch her palm.

      “Miss Grubbs? I’m Zintle.”

      Katya is at once a kid with skinned knees and frogs in her pockets. Puppy-dog tails. She shouldn’t have worn the uniform; its powers are limited, in certain settings and with certain people. Zintle is tall, too. Being close to the ground has its advantages in Katya’s line of work (nippiness, ability to creep into small spaces), but now she feels cowed before this substantial woman. She misses Toby’s presence, pliant and wispy though it may be, by her side.

      “Miss Grubbs,” Zintle says, finding resonant depths in the name that Katya had not known existed. “We’re so glad you came. Mr. Brand has been so enthusiastic about your work.”

      Her eyes, in finely wrought settings of copper eye shadow, dart around Katya’s face, seeking data. She clasps Katya’s upper arm and walks her towards an office door, a gentle but insistent escort.

      “I understand that you’ve worked for Mr. Brand before?”

      “Yes.” She wants to say more – make something up, even. The woman seems so attentive.

      But Zintle hustles them on briskly. “Lovely,” she says, swiveling on one heel, batting open the door and easing them through. It’s choreography.

      Inside, it’s all light and sky. The far wall is glass. Beyond, Katya can see the steep side of Signal Hill, the mosques and the forehead of the mountain. The sky is flawless, but tinted that sad, gunmetal gray of double-glazing.

      “Have a seat,” says Zintle, deftly installing Katya at one end of a leather couch. She sits too, flinging one silky leg over the other. “Well then, you know the outline of the project?”

      “Well, no, actually. I don’t know much, is Mr. Brand not—”

      “He’s in Singapore. Apparently.” Zintle leans back and rakes a hand through her hair, which rebounds perfectly into shape.

      The leather of the couch is taut and slippery, and Katya feels her overalled buttocks sliding off the edge. Crossing one’s legs at the knee, she discovers, is not only ladylike but helps to lock one in position.

      “You do...do extermination, right?” Zintle narrows her eyes and gives a teasing smile.

      Katya appreciates this lady’s style. She has a skittish, theatrical way of speaking, as if they’re performing a slightly suggestive play. Katya is fluffing her lines, but that seems to be part of the fun. Zintle hasn’t winked at her yet but there’s a bit of a flick of butterfly eyelid in every syllable.

      Still, Katya’s responses remain clipped. СКАЧАТЬ