John Matshikiza
With the Lid Off
Isn’t there a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm in which a young lad goes off into the world to seek his fortune, admonishing his old mother, who is not very bright, to make sure that she always locks the door securely when she goes out? And doesn’t the mother have the bright idea, one fine day, of going off to see how young Jack, or whatever his name is, is doing, and decides to take the door with her, so that she knows it is safe? Leaving the house wide open for the advent of thieves?
Living in Johannesburg sometimes makes you think you are living in a Grimm fairy tale, with a couple of impossible twists in it that even the Grimms couldn’t think up in their sour Swedish brains. Here is an update on last week’s story.
The old house, as you remember, a property that I can neither sell nor rent out, is being steadily looted by somebody/bodies in the neighbourhood because – well, because it’s there. Whoever it/they is/are plays an ongoing cat-and-mouse game with the security company I have employed as a last resort. As soon as the gunmen go away for a few hours, the thieves are in there again. There’s nothing moveable to steal, so the immovable things are going: first the bathroom basin, then the fireplace and the internal doors, now the external doors. The security company is tearing its hair out, and I am tearing them down a strip, because I somehow feel this should not be happening.
I know that whole schools and community halls disappear overnight in various parts of this country, and, in fact, in the same neighbourhood the local primary school has spent so much money replacing doors and windows that it has become ridiculous. But when it happens to you, it’s different. As I said last week, if you could put a face to the doer of the deed, have something in your mind’s eye that you could reason with, assassinate, or holler copper on, you would not feel this sense of powerlessness. If you could separate the faces in the neighbourhood into decent people who are struggling against the odds, and scum who are stacking the odds higher and higher against the rest of the world, you might be able to cope.
The individual faces in the neighbourhood disappear into a threatening blur. When you do find a friendly face to share your troubles with, you stand exposed in the street gossiping to each other about crime, both of you wondering who is watching you. And make no mistake, everything is being watched all the time, every flicker, every weakness, every opportunity. The only thing is, the thing that is watching is not what in some areas is called the Neighbourhood Watch. The thing that is watching the neighbourhood is the thing that the Neighbourhood Watch could learn a thing or two from. It is sharp, it is decisive, and it has no conscience. It is devastating.
So what, you ask, does this have to do with the Brothers Grimm? Well, after overcoming the waves of nausea that followed the news that there were no more doors in my house, something kicked in inside my brain. The inner crusader took over. I decided that there were answers, different ways of seeing, different ways of doing. I had a funny feeling that I knew where my doors had gone. They are not cheap plywood doors. They are the original Oregon pine things, and I had spent some time and money putting suitably old-fashioned and elegant brass doorknobs on them when I had settled into the house way back then. So I know my doors, and I still have a kind of love for the character that they gave to the old house.
I drove over to the suburb of Kensington, about 5km from the neighbourhood in question. Queen Street is famous for its antique shops, especially ones that specialise in Oregon pine. In the second shop I walked into, I wandered through to the workshop at the back, drawn by a strange sensation. There, among thousands of other doors, some stripped, some pristine, waiting to fill the vacant frames in some unknown person’s life, I saw three of my doors.
So this is your Grimm connection. Have you ever stood outside your own front door in a place that is kilometres away from where you thought you left it, locked and secure? If you’ve got a weak heart, a mind that is susceptible to obsessive fantasies, or are prone to excessive violence, it is not an experience I recommend.
I stood there, in that fancy place, staring at the doors that had been ripped out of my house just days before.
“Knock, knock!” I said.
“Who’s there?” said a voice.
“I’m calling the police,” I said, unable to think of a smart answer in short order.
“The police?” said the voice: “Ha, ha. Tell me another!”
“OK,” I said, “if I was to buy this door, what would it cost?”
“2 500 bucks,” said the voice. “For the nice front door, five grand without the glass.”
“I’ll be back,” I said, feeling my legs moving me backwards towards the street.
I don’t know what my next move is going to be, but this thing is not just going to end in pretty silence. Somebody is crying rage.