Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic

Anti-Waste sells that cloth by the kilo. Every student place I know is full of it.’ Linda had an entire wardrobe of dresses and pinafores cut from disfigured prints, factory rejects caused by a jammed roller or a spilt dye. When she sat on the sofa, you couldn’t tell where she ended and the scatter cushions began.
    â€˜Let’s see if anyone’s home.’
    â€˜What will you say?’ I asked.
    â€˜I’ll think of something.’
    The front door was framed by leaded panels, the regular pattern of blue and yellow spoilt by lozenges of clear glass where broken panes had been mended. Auerbach rang the bell. No one came. While we waited, Brookes strolled to the end of the stoep.
    â€˜What the hell!’
    We all went around the corner.
    At the side of the house, where a bougainvillea growing on to the roof made a sort of arbour, a dozen skulls were fixed to the wall. Animal skulls, pale as driftwood, bleached to sea-shades against the powder-blue plaster. The centrepiece was obviously the skull of a horse. There were others whose shapes suggested the flesh in which they had once been embedded: a dog, a rabbit, and more I could only guess at – rat, lamb, lizard, mole. The way they were arranged, with the horse in the middle and the lesser creatures above and below, each in its proper station, the beaked birds under the rafters, the head of the dog at a height that invited you to scratch its ear although its jaw was dropped to snap at your ankle, made them seem less like trophies than ghosts, passing through the wall that instant, hungry for meat and grass, for air and company, breaking back into the realm of the living. One of the skulls had small, pointed horns, darkly whorled, as shiny as enamel. Suspended in the eye socket of the horse was a pocket watch with its hands hanging down, defeated.
    â€˜Is it an altar?’ Brookes asked.
    Auerbach snorted no.
    To my fingertips, the bones felt slily manufactured. There were hard plates, smooth as china, and porous edges like baked goods, bread or biscuit.
    â€˜It’s almost art,’ Auerbach said, with his hands cupped to a windowpane and his voice fogging the glass.
    I also looked into the room. The familiar mess of a student life: mattress, desk, bookshelves of bricks and boards, beanbag, coat hangers on a broomstick angled across a corner on the picture rails, clothes mainly on the floor. Here on the window sill, an overflowing ashtray and a candle, and something else, a bird perched on a branch, a mounted specimen like a display in a natural history museum. The creature in its natural habitat.
    Brookes took a photograph of the skulls.
    â€˜Time stood still,’ Auerbach said, leaning close to the face of the watch.
    A path led down the other side of the house, blocked at the end by a wooden door. Just as Auerbach and I rounded the corner, the door swung open and a woman looked out. Whether she had heard the bell ringing in the house and the sound of our voices or just happened to be on her way to the front, I cannot be sure, but she recoiled at the sight of us and jerked the door shut.
    Waving me back, like a game ranger concerned for the safety of his charge, Auerbach hastened towards the woman, greeting her in Afrikaans. She opened the door, a slight woman with an elfin face, and spoke to him through the gap. He pointed to the sky and then to Brookes, who had appeared at my side. She smiled uncertainly with downcast eyes and answered so softly her words did not carry to me. They spoke at length, with their heads inclined towards one another as if they were sharing a secret.
    Then he waved us closer. ‘This is Veronica. She lives here at the back with her husband, who’s gone to work.’ And he told her our names. Brookes stuck out his hand, but she didn’t seem to recognize the gesture.
    We all went into the backyard. It was cramped, cluttered, and garish in the sunshine. Facing us was the long side of a garage and