Michael Vines is twenty-four years old. He was born in Cape Town and now lives in Johannesburg. His stories have appeared in Botsotso and in an anthology called Unity in Flight. He works as a scriptwriter for television and is very, very tall.

The Neighbour

Michael Vines

The thing is, I hardly ever clean the car. I haven’t in months. I would have left it longer if it wasn’t for a comment my friend Paul made yesterday. I had to give him a lift home from work because his girlfriend was using his car. When I pulled up beside him outside his office, he peered through the passenger window and said, “Your car really needs a clean.”
       “I suppose it does,” I admitted.
       So this morning I fill a bucket with water and car shampoo and go down to the parking lot. I start on the roof with an old cloth I find in the glove box. It is a hot morning and after a few minutes I’m sweating heavily. A red car pulls into the driveway. It’s going too quickly, I think, for inside the townhouse complex. It stops right beside me, a few metres from where I am hunched over the windscreen of my car. A young guy gets out. I recognize him as the guy who lives downstairs from me. We’ve never spoken before. I’ve never even introduced myself — I’m not a very good neighbour.
       “Howzit,” he says to me.
       “Howzit.” I stop for a moment to look up at him. He is about my height but skinny, with a two-day beard and shoulder-length hair. Wearing baggy corduroy pants and a loose white shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, he’s smoking a cigarette and holding a can of beer. He drinks from it, looking me over.
       After a while he says, “You live at number twenty-eight, don’t you?”
       Exertion has caused my ears to buzz, but I detect a faint accent. He speaks quickly, flattening his vowels. I assume he is Bulgarian. Several Bulgarians have moved into the complex recently. My neighbour Rosie told me so the other day. She is under the impression that it will lead to a decline in moral values in the area.
       “That’s right. You’re downstairs at twenty-six, aren’t you?” I say.
       He nods. “Ja, I’ve seen you around.” He holds out his hand. “How are you? I’m Sven.”
He must be one of the Bulgarians. I smile at him but my mouth is dry, so I imagine it must look more like an involuntary spasm. “Hi there,” I say, wiping a drop of sweat from the end of my nose. We shake hands.
       “Do you want a beer?” he asks, looking back at his car. “I have a few left. They’re a bit warm, but you look like you need one.”
       I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. Thanks.” I like beer, but I don’t much feel like talking to Sven.
       “Cleaning your car?” he asks.
       I think of something sarcastic to say but I’m tired and hot so I just say, “Yes.”
       “You can do mine next,” he laughs.
       I smile politely. “I’ll have to charge you for it.”
       “How much?” he asks, enjoying himself. “I’ll give you ten bucks.”
       Deciding I don’t wish to continue this conversation I ask, “Do you miss Bulgaria?”
       “No, not really.” He looks at me oddly and lights another cigarette.
       “Oh,” I say. “Why is that? The cold?”
       “Well, no. I’ve never been there,” he says, squinting in the late morning light.
       I stand up. “What?”
       “I’m from Middelberg.”
       Then I recognize his accent. It is very obviously Afrikaans. Though it is more guttural than I would have expected, I should have noticed before.
       “But your name — ”
       “Ja, well my mother was born in Europe somewhere, Czechoslovakia, I think. Sven was her grandfather’s name, or her great-grandfather’s. I forget.”
       Embarrassed, I begin to wash the bonnet, but Sven shows no signs of leaving. He seems quite content to watch me and I begin to feel self-conscious. I crouch and clean the front of the car and the grille below the bonnet, being overly efficient to avoid having to raise my head. I even clean the metallic Toyota logo. I fold the cloth over and dab at the license plate. In a long sweeping motion, I wipe the length of the bumper. There are several dents there I haven’t noticed before. Then I feel something jutting out from underneath the bumper. I put the cloth into the bucket of dirty water and reach under the car. The object feels long and smooth. Perhaps it is a piece of rubber tubing. I pull it out and examine it. It is brown, almost malleable and bends under my fingers. Something crosses my mind and I drop it with a start.
       Sven clears his throat. I turn to look up at him. He drinks from his can and leans forward curiously, his hair falling into his eyes, his face directly beside mine. He smells of alcohol and deodorant. He pushes his hair back so he can look more closely at what I have discovered.
       It is a human finger.
       “Jeez,” he breaths, recoiling, beer spilling from his open mouth and over my shoulder and my neck. It’s warm and begins to creep unpleasantly down the back of my shirt. I rub at my neck with the dirty cloth.
       “Look at that,” I say. “It’s all shriveled, but I reckon it was a floppy’s. Weird. I must have knocked down a floppy on the highway or something. I wonder why I never noticed before?”
       We stare at the finger lying on the ground. There is a stark nub of bone at one end poking out from the desiccated flesh. Neither of us says anything for a few minutes.
       “Can I have one of those cigarettes?” I ask Sven.
       Wordlessly, he hands me one and lights it with a pink lighter.
       “What are you going to do?” he asks me softly, putting his lighter back into his pocket. He looks at his hands. He holds them out in front of his chest and rubs his palms together. The action makes a dry brushing sound.
       “I don’t know. I’m going to throw it away, I suppose. Toss it in the skip at the back of the complex. Then I’m going to finish cleaning my car and forget about it. There’s nothing I can do anyway.”
       I poke at the finger with the burning end of my cigarette. Sven winces.
       “Shouldn’t you go to the police or something?” he asks.
       I shake my head. “No. They’ll open a docket and it’ll be filed away and forgotten about. They’ll never find out who the oke was.” I laugh. “Think of it this way: there’s one less of them.” And I laugh again, flicking my cigarette butt so that it drops onto the bricks and comes to rest, smouldering, beside the finger.
       “Don’t worry about it,” I say, noticing the worried expression on Sven’s face. “It’s a Sunday. Relax.”
       “Okay,” he says, holding his hands up at me. “It’s not my problem, anyway.” And he begins to walk away, stepping backwards over the uneven driveway.

boontoe

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