Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic Page A

the front of an outbuilding that was no more than a shack. Like the fences on either side, the corrugated-iron walls of the buildings were the colour of old scabs, as if they’d been sluiced with blood a long time ago. A washing line strung between two poles held some baby clothes and nappies, two bed sheets and a pink pleated skirt. There were thick pads of moss between the flagstones underfoot and lichens on the concrete doorstep. From a bucket under a tap came the yellow smell of soiled nappies and sucking sweets.
    Veronica stood aside. What had he told her? Perhaps she thought we were officials of some kind: Brookes could have passed for a municipal inspector, especially now that he had taken out his notebook. What would she make of me, though, with my long hair and ragged jeans? I must spoil the picture. Then again, it hardly mattered whether she grasped what we were up to. Who we were was clear. We were white men. We would do as we pleased.
    She was wearing a light summer dress and silver sandals with a wine-glass heel. You could see the bones of her face beneath the skin, the shape of her skull under her doek. In the jagged cage of the yard, with the air full of iron filings and rust, she looked out of place. Did she really hang up the washing in high heels?
    I was embarrassed. On my own behalf, for being there; on hers, for being unable to prevent me. I remembered my father speaking to Paulina in the yard, how she always came out of her room and pulled the door closed behind her, drawing the only line she could.
    For a moment, we hummed like a delicately balanced mechanism with an experimental purpose, keeping the sun in the sky overhead, let’s say, or measuring the whiteness of the linen hanging down like sheets of paper: Auerbach with his hands on his hips, gazing into the doorway of the shack, Brookes concealed behind the washing as if he were a prompt in the wings, scribbling in his notebook, Veronica swaying gently, testing the blade of the air against her skin. And me, looking on, standing by. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stop staring. Below her left breast were three wooden clothes pegs with their teeth in the fabric of her dress and they moved with her like a shoal of fish.
    A baby began to cry in the shack. Auerbach motioned her to go to it. Then he spoke to her from the doorway again, so softly I could not hear. When the baby had been hushed, he half-closed the door and went to fetch his camera.
    As soon as he was gone, Brookes stooped under the washing line, thrashing through the sheets like a pantomime ghost, and peered around the door. ‘May I come in?’ His voice was a spill of white enamel on red brick. He ducked his head and went inside.
    I hung back, flustered by my own discomfort, repelled by Brookes and the haze of deodorized sweat and proper English that had begun to emanate from him.
    The room felt even smaller inside than the view from outside suggested. Daylight, poking holes through the walls everywhere, drawing dotted lines along their seams, made the place seem temporary, like something you could tear up and scatter to the wind. Most of the space was taken up by an iron bed on which the woman sat, nursing two infants; what remained was occupied by two tea chests lined with blankets, which evidently served as cradles, and a third chest standing on end and holding a Primus stove, a candlestick, plates and mugs, a medicine bottle.
    I know this because I have seen Auerbach’s photograph. Probably you have seen it too and my description is redundant, or worse, inadequate.
    Alone in the yard, I suddenly felt anxious. If the owner of the house were to come home now … a student might understand – perhaps it would be someone I knew. But even so, trespassing is trespassing. What would my father think if he could see me? He was such a stickler about the law and doing the right thing. A parking ticket threw him into a moral panic. He might still regret this little