The Restless Supermarket by Ivan Vladislavic

Author:Ivan Vladislavic
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: proofreader, contemporary fiction, Novel, Humour, South Africa, Café Europa, apartheid, proof-reader, Sunday Times Fiction Prize, Andre Brink, proof-reading, Drama, Johannesburg, editor, Literary Fiction, Proof-reader’s Derby, Hillbrow, Pocket Oxford Dictionary, Aubrey Tearle
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2013-12-17T08:00:00+00:00

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The Zoological Gardens were even more trying than I’d anticipated.

We went at night. The authorities had instituted special night tours to allow for the viewing of nocturnal animals. Learn more about hyenas, bats, civets and owls, the pamphlet said. Bring your own torch. Prying into the lairs of innocent creatures? It did not strike me as edifying, and I thought of staying away. But then I imagined Merle surrounded by animals like Wessels and Bogey.

Predictably, the Mazda was a jalopy. On the rear bumper was a sticker that read: Don’t look at my tits. I had come across this bit of smut before, emblazoned across the front of a harlot’s T-shirt. Distasteful as it was, one saw the logic: it gave lechers like Wessels an excuse to gaze at the breasts in question. But its import in relation to a motor car was obscure.

Bogey was scarcely competent behind the wheel. To make matters worse, he’d brought one of the Bogeymen along, a slab of gristle called Zbignieuw. Merle had to sit in front, next to the driver, who perched himself on a copy of the Reader’s Digest Book of the Car. That left Wessels, Zbignieuw and me to cram into the back, which was already cluttered with empty bottles and dirty laundry. I refused to ride bodkin. I’d be squashed to a pulp. In the end, Zbignieuw piled in first and Wessels and I had to squeeze into the unoccupied margins. Just my luck to be on the driver’s side, where I could smell the back of Bogey’s head, wafted to me on the breeze like the aroma of a Sunday roast. As I’d feared, he was wearing the leather jacket. It was bound to incense the beasts.

The start of the tour was tiresome but innocuous. We ranged ourselves upon trailers, along with the other paying guests – two dozen of us all told, mainly mommies, daddies and little ones – and a tractor dragged us about from cage to cage. Those who had heeded the advice to bring their torches were able to rouse the nocturnals from their slumbers (evidently they were prone to unnatural behaviour) by shining the beams in their faces, while our guide, a nasal young woman dressed for a safari, provided us with useful information about their habits and habitats. I busied myself proofreading the little notices appended to each cage and maintaining an appearance of enjoying myself. I wouldn’t have them calling me a stick in the mud.

When we had finished eyeballing the owls, an encounter that should have signalled the end of our tour, our guide announced that there was a treat in store for us. Whispering excitedly, we were conveyed to a cage concealed in a grove of trees in a distant corner of the gardens, and encouraged to winkle out the creature contained therein. Something vicious, to judge by the thickness of the bars, and the moat and railings that kept us at a distance.

Fingers of light probed between the bars. What was that? A table and chairs! A premonitory shiver passed through our party.

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