I've met all the people named below, though not in the Natural History Museum of Pietermaritzburg with those giant beetles, ants, praying mantes and that truly disturbing spider on the roof. One of them (the people, not the goggas) told me about the ghostly footsteps in an old building late at night. The rest is not his story -- but a ghost story of mine.
They all know me at the museum.
“They” being the card-carrying members of the Night Shifters – the security staff; the cleaners; the odd student reading actual books in the musty back rooms to research a thesis.
People who work nights at the museum are my type of people. We are a tribe of reclusive weirdos who do not judge each other. Not like the people you meet outside. That is why I only go outside when I am low on coffee beans.
“Mad” is what the outside people called me. But only the scared ones did that. The kind ones called me “eccentric”. I am neither.
I’m just a dancer on the edge of the spectrum, pending which tick I’m ticking or which tock I’m rocking, as the case may be. On the good days, I just have a bad case of what used to be called Aspergers. On a bad day, I could be any of the catatonic autistic heroes in a David Brin scifi.
The wall that makes up one side of my hidden bedroom also has ticks. It’s only a make-believe wall, a well-rendered trompe-l’oeil of bookshelves that act as a backdrop for the Edwardian-era sitting room.
The rest of the room is not an optical illusion. Instead, it is stuffed with heavy, toe-stubbing furniture and a loud Grandfather clock.
As I lay here snug in my Arctic sleeping bag, I let the clock’s pendulum lull me as it slices the seconds off each minute in stately tick tocks.
With the corridor light shining through the painted books, I can watch the tiny vibration each tock makes in the taut canvass. The ticks do not make vibrations, their higher frequency moving too fast to turn the sound energy into kinetic energy.
This is how I fall asleep each night, the taut canvas gently drumming to the tocks and I to my ticks, the two of us tick-tocking peacefully along, neither quite what we seem to be.
Charles Mkhize did not know he would be using his access card for the last time when he arrived at the Natural History Museum on a wet Wednesday afternoon.
He nodded at the new day shift guy who was moving against the stream of students who rushed here every afternoon to squeeze as much as they could from the cafeteria’s free wi-fi and cheap coffee before closing time.
Mkhize still considered the man “the new guy”, despite the man having already spent eight months on the 12-hour day shift, answering the visitors’ inane questions and pointing parents with desperate toddlers to the nearest toilet.
Maybe after a year he would think of him just as “the other guy” and give him more than a nod.
Mkhize had put in four years on the day shift after he retired as a Metro Cop. He now looked forward to his quiet nights, leisurely making his patrols past the displays, limping if his gout was flaring up, strolling if not.
If his insomnia allowed, he’d snooze a while on the comfortable wingback, “Donated by the Orthmann Family”, in the display of an Edwardian sitting room up on the third floor. If not, he’d tune the radio in the small staff kitchen to choir music and read whatever was left laying around.
Mkhize blamed his defibrillator for his insomnia. The surgeon had explained once they linked the defibrillator to his heart with electromagnetic pulses, it would not miss a beat again. How is a big old heart like his supposed to relax in the knowledge that a little machine under his skin was just waiting to shock it, should it stutter?
“Scuse me! Mr Mkhize!”
The call came from one of the interns at the front reception, an Indian lass, this one of the Hindu faith, judging by the red string on her wrist. He never learned their names, their short internships turning them all into the same eager faceless voice.
He ambled his bulk over to the reception desk. Was that a twinge of gout in his right toe?
“Yes?”
“The new name tags have arrived Mr Mkhize. Here’s yours. You can be glad yours is an easy surname. Do you know they have a dyslexic working at the name tag place? You’d never believe what he did with professor Sithole!”
Charles tuned out the intern. Other husbands in his church had to go fishing to get away from the wife’s talk-talk. He got to work in the blissfully silent museum at night, where peace and quiet were the best perks of all.
“... ordered a second batch after they made the first with those pins. Professor Sithole told them we don’t want to stab holes into our clothes and it has to be the more expensive magnetic…”
“Yes, thank you,” he said as he reached over and took the small plastic bag from her before slowly climbing the stairs to the staff kitchen.
I remember the night I opted to move into the Natural History Museum like it was yesterday, although it is now 11 months and 27 days in my past. Before that, I used to go to the museum to do my genealogy research only after working all day at the coffee shop. I would stay in my quiet retreat between the shelves until midnight, when all visitors had to leave.
I had a routine. My type always do. Six minutes after my barista shift ended at five, I would be walking the three blocks to the museum with its giant metal insects on the wall which everyone liked and an enormous hairy spider on the roof which most people preferred not to see.
At a lucky thirteen past five, I would be signing the researchers book and taking deep breaths to load my blood with oxygen for a fast climb up to the third floor. At quarter past five, I would be walking past the staff kitchen door, down the long Edwardian display corridor to the blank door at the other end. Behind that door the shelves of the genealogy archive had been crammed into a windowless room.
I turned that room into my de facto office by adding desk and chair that I borrowed from the Edwardian display. I never worked in the admin wing with the other researchers, having no interest in sifting through dry old bones or trying to spot a new species from the thousands of pinned flies. You can get a lot of diseases from bones and flies. Anthrax for one.
Then I had second sub-routine. My type always do. Life is more efficient with routines. First, I'd set out my files, squaring up the papers precisely. My tidy desk shows my tidy mind. Then I would walk back to the tiny staff kitchen at the other end of the corridor to make myself my one and only cup of coffee for the day. Halfway to the kitchen, I would pause to select a cup from the display in the Edwardian dining room to drink my coffee in style.
I never drank coffee at work. It is barbaric, the way they rush things there. The other baristi don’t even count the beans! I often had to do my silent counting to not explode when I saw how customers would just slurp down one of my master brews without even sniffing it first.
In the kitchen, I would inspect each bean before grinding it for my one cup of the day. I count them too. Of course I count them. With a medium roast, even one extra bean can make the difference between sipping a smoothly balanced, dark fusion of caramel, chocolate and coffee flavours, or grimacing over an acidic oil sheen floating on a bitter, caffeine-infused sludge.
Very few of my customers got this. Mostly, my work at the coffee shop was casting pearls in front of swine. So, every night, before I went back to my windowless office to sit down on my creaky captain’s chair and fold open the lid of the beautifully made oak bureau, I did it right.
I used the old coffee grinder, which I borrowed from the Edwardian kitchen display, to slow grind a medium roast from Malawi. A slow grind prevents friction and pressure from reheating the beans. Then I measure the water to ensure the correct ratio to the beans. Some baristas say spring water this or reverse osmosis water that, but I am a disciple of the 19th century “water whisperer” Viktor Schauberger and use spirals to enliven the rain water I collect on the roof.
Old Schaubeger could get water to do almost whatever he wanted, confounding all the academics with his abilities to change even the viscosity of water. He told them his baffling secret too. Water is at least sentient, if not sapient, old Viktor said. Water has a memory, he said. You have to tell water what you want, he said.
But like with that other ancient alien intelligence on earth, fungi, our scientists are still too proud of our species’ recent successes, what with getting down from the trees and walking upright and everything, to acknowledge sapience in other entities. Such are the things one learns when listening to talks given at the Museum of Natural History.
That extra memorable night a year ago, when I decided to move into the museum, I had selected an 1850 Spode coffee mug to drink my coffee from. It had gold trim and was decorated in a delicate painting of a Japanese lake with two homes under their pagoda roofs and a boat, all done in pink. This mug was worth over about 800 rands on cup collectors’ websites. I could sell it a lot faster on eBay, but then I would only get half that.
From experience, I knew the mug would not be missed by the museum staff. Like the original Edwardians, the staff packed the display rooms to the rafters with stuff, some of which I have been selling off discreetly to pay for my coffee habit and cafeteria food. The Viking mutton there is really good by the way, but quite pricey.
Can we blame the Edwardians for being such hoarders, when they made things so fine? Or me for wanting the fine pieces to find good homes where they would be appreciated again?
Before I moved in, when I still struggled to pay rent on a bachelor flat, I had often thought that I would much rather fall asleep on the high cast iron bed in the air-conditioned Edwardian bedroom than on my grubby futon. Every night, I would cast longing glances at that bed as I walked past to traipse the broken sidewalks to my tiny flat afloat in a surround-sound of big screen televisions, colic babies and hooting traffic.
I was not the only one who loved the Edwardian display. Some nights I would find Mr Mkhize, the night guard, sitting in the wingback chair donated by the Orthmann family, right shoe and sock off so that he could hold a red, swollen toe in his big hand. He never rubbed or massaged that toe. He would just hold it gingerly, like a sharp glass shard. Or a hand grenade. That’s how I overheard him describe gout to one of the cleaners.
That night when I took my chance, I could hear him wheezing up the three flights of stairs on his way to the staff kitchen. That is the bonus of habitual stillness. Once you get to listening past your own noisy breaths and whining tinnitus, you really start to hear other people.
“Hey, um, Mr Mkhize.”
“Sawubona,” Mkhize nodded back at the dapper little man who could always be found making himself coffee in the staff canteen at 5:25 pm.
The man was the most regular of regulars at the museum. Mkhize liked that their talk never went past their routine greeting after months of meeting in the staff kitchen. Despite seeing him so many times, Mkhize thought he would be hard pressed to describe the visitor. He was as non-descript as a human could be. Mixed race. Average height. No memorable features, apart from a certain wariness. A high forehead, like most of the visitors who seem to spend more time doing research in the back rooms than the staff.
The smaller man stepped away from the sink so that Mkhizwe could open the small fridge to put his dinner on the bare shelves. It was left-over fish curry his wife had made for lunch.
As Mkhize sat down and picked up a loose section of The Witness, the little man finished making his coffee and left the staff room, the sharp taps of his highly polished shoes fading down the corridor.
The voices drifting in from downstairs also fell silent as the cafeteria closed for the night. Mkhize sighed contentedly as he scanned a long article explaining how archaeologists had for years hidden the golden rhino from Mapungubwe in a drawer during the apartheid government era. He grunted as he read how, in the ANC government era, the archeologists then refused to speculate how and why a golden model of a one-horned, Indian rhino had ended up in a grave in southern Africa. Instead, they sent it overseas. The rhino saga showed that archeology was mostly politics and politics was all to do with who lived where first. If the winners cannot rewrite history to fit the latest land claims, the facts will be ignored, was the conclusion of the author.
Still feeling out of breath and sweaty after climbing to the third floor, Mkhize pushed the newspaper aside and wiped his damp brow with the back of his hand, which he rubbed dry against a pant leg. Apart from the twinge of gout he was also feeling his heartburn bubbling up again, the acid broiling like a vulcano in his throat.
He would not be eating that left-over curry tonight. Feeling in his pants pocket for the foil sheet of Rennies tablets he kept there, his fingers found the little plastic bag containing his new name tag.
He shook out the little metal rectangle from the bag and had to admit, his surname looked good in gold letters on the shiny black metal. Pulling the magnet off the back required a bit of effort.
The cheap name tag he used to wear as a Metro cop did not have a magnet, but pins. As the intern said, those pins did leave tiny holes in his shirts. On top of this, the little plastic pin stoppers always got lost, leaving the name tag dangling askew, or the pins pricking into skin.
These magnets were a far better idea. Quite strong too, he found as he tested the magnet against the metal leg of the table. He had to push hard with his thumb to pry it off. Yes sir, these magnets would hold the name tag in place during a chase or a scuffle with a taxi driver.
Mkhize smiled ruefully as he looked down at his big belly. Who was he kidding? He hadn’t chased anyone in years. Not since the heart attack and getting a little defibrillator implanted.
Still, he thought the bold gold letters would look good above his shirt pocket as he placed the magnet behind his shirt, right above the slight lump made by the defibrillator.
The half smile was still on his face as the powerful magnet pushed the defibrillator into asynchronous mode. His big old heart, which the defibrillator had kept pumping at a steady pace after the climb up the stairs, stuttered.
This was the moment for which the little machine was designed to keep Mkhize’s heart pumping. But held firmly in the magnet’s strong electromagnetic grip, the defibrillator did nothing.
Charles’ grin turned into a grimace as his heart started racing. A tiny clot that had been stuck in his aorta broke loose and entered his heart. His body spasmed and he clawed with both hands at the sudden pain in his chest. Panting, he tried standing and was dimly aware of his leg sending a chair clattering to one side. Then his head knocked hard against the floor and he was aware no more. His panting stopped and like a hot air balloon left to cool, his big belly seeming to collapse in on itself.
Air rattled from his throat as his body stilled, leaving him on his back staring sightlessly at the wall above the kettle.
When I returned to the staff kitchen to rinse the Spode mug on that fateful night 11 months and 27 days past, Mr Mkhize was lying on his back on the floor, a chair by his feet also on its side.
I stood watching his body for a while and then, carefully stepping over his legs, I took my cup to the sink and rinsed it. Then I dried it and the teaspoon to keep them shiny and put both carefully on the dry rack. I would return them later to the display table with its dusty cakes made from Plaster of Paris.
I knew Mr Mkhize was dead because I could not hear Mr Mkhize breathing.
Mr Mkhize was a large man with bronchial issues and I could always hear his wheeze coming down the length of the corridor long before he arrived to tap his patrol gizmo against the sensor mounted inside the door of my de facto office.
As I stood watching his body, it struck me that while Mr Mkhize’s breathing was stentorious, I never heard his footsteps. For such an obese man, he moved like a big cat, perhaps a tiger. I could well believe the gossip that he got this sinecure at the museum after saving the life of some politician during one of the ongoing taxi wars.
Mr Mkhize never minded when I worked late to research a family tree. And if his gout was flaring up, he would lend me his access card when I finally had to leave at midnight. At the staff exit, I would wedge open the heavy door with my backpack and then take four steps to the right to prop his card on top of the broken metal detector in the corner. I would take a moment to line the card up exactly with the long dead temperature gun, still there from the mad Covid days.
All state institutions struggle to dispose of old equipment, but museums do not even try. Anything and anyone seem to be kept on as long as they lasted – and then stored in some corner.
My landlord had been the exact opposite. He had been trying to throw me out since I was late with the rent once. Baristi do not make coffee to roll in money. That month my side gig had exactly no replies to the “Know Your Family Tree!” fliers that I had left at old age homes.
I had even been thinking maybe I should try the other end of life – paediatric rooms. Would young parents want to know more of their lineage with a new baby in the house? It is still worth a try.
Mr Mkhize had a very proud lineage among the world’s youngest tribe, the amaZulu. But with three daughters, his branch would now be grafted onto others. Or his daughters may create a new hybrid family tree, if they kept up the fashion to co-join surnames like the oldest families in Europe.
At least his genes would go on. I wondered in which pocket of his capacious jeans he kept his access pass, so that I could let myself out.
I bend down to peer at Mr Mkhize’s face. Dead eyes stared past me at the kettle. Are the eyes dead because we don’t see our tiny reflections on the dry eyeballs?
“Sawubona” was how he always greeted me. It means “I see you” in isiZulu.
I liked that. No judging. No askance looks. Just, “I see you” and then moving on. Does seeing another make us more visible? Or at least visibly alive? Would a Zulu Descartes have said “I see you, therefore I am”?
Mr Mkhize looked peaceful, his lips parted in a smile. Perhaps it was a grimace. Frozen in time as they are, photos and death masks show no difference between a good laugh or cry.
I did not want Mr Mkhize looking at me with dead eyes while I searched for his access card, so I closed his eyelids. The dry eyeballs gave a tiny, squidgy resistance before denting a bit so that the lids could stretch over them. They never show this part in the movies.
Patting gingerly on all the front pockets accessible to me, I did not feel the familiar plastic square. It had to be in one of his back pants pockets.
Trying to pull on his cadaver to tilt him over, I marvelled at his dead weight. Mr Mkhize's body was at least double my size. Thinking I could hurt my back bending and straining to roll him over, I stood up and moved the table to make space. Then I laid on my back on the floor, braced my feet against the wall and pushed hard with my shoulders to tilt Mr Mkhize onto his side. Breathing hard from the effort to hold his capsizing bulk in position, I twisted one arm awkwardly to feel around in his back pants pockets. Against my shoulders, his back still felt warm.
My fingers found the plastic rectangle that I needed in the first pocket I searched. Then my questing fingerstips separated the rectangle into two cards. I pulled the cards out and let Mr Mkhize slump onto his back again.
Then I returned the table to its place, squaring it with the chair. The fallen chair bothered me a lot. Of course it did. But I figured whoever found Mr Mkhize in an official capacity would need to find the chair where he had kicked it to reassure them no foul play was involved. Just an old man dying on the job.
Then I just stood there for a long time, holding the two access cards over Mr Mkhize like a small prayer book. I always used the well-worn card in my right hand to get out. But with the second, brand new card in my left hand, I realised I could just... stay in.
I studied the unblemished card. It was not assigned to any name. Like the one Mkhize used, it was a master key card too, able to open all doors, even the fire doors and roof access to the tiny tower on top of the museum. But most importantly, it was the spare Mr Mkhize had taken out of the old Chubb safe last night, when he had forgotten his card at home. He must have been planning to put it back tonight.
My mind was on fire with the opportunities this pristine rectangle of spare plastic represented. No one would miss it. And once I had packed my few things I needed from my flat, sleeping bag, shoe polish, razor, toothbrush and such, no one would miss me. Nor I the blaring televisions or colic babies or food delivery guys hooting at the gate.
In a twist on Blake’s famous “Auguries of Innocence”, I was holding invisibility in my hand.
The chatter of the two cleaning ladies coming up the stairs broke my reverie. I hurriedly shoved Mr Mkhize’s worn access card into his shirt pocket, under one of the new metal name tags the chatty new intern at reception had been handing out to staff while I signed in.
Then I worried about fingerprints and took the card back out, wiping the worn card on my own shirt before sliding it back, holding it only by the edges. Then I went and stood in the door and let out a yell: "Mr Mkhize! What’s wrong! Mr Mkhize!?
“How can he have been dead for four months!? Don’t they have sensors, or cleaners, or, I dunno, art thieves who come through here every once in a while?”
Detective Shay Kalik stood up from where she was kneeling beside the weeks-old corpse and turned to the pathologist Gerald Smit, who just shrugged.
“Apparently the Edwardian display has been closed for repairs and the retouchers only got to work on the sitting room this week,” he told Kalik.
“Retouchers?” she asked.
“Their website says they specialise in cleaning and restoring antiques, even adding a patina of age,” Smit said.
“Ah, forgers, you mean,” said Kalik.
“Yes, but legit ones, with art degrees and certificates and even salary slips,” Smit said.
Kalik sighed. “Working stiff forgers. I ask you, what’s to become of our jobs if the criminals all get legal?”
She dragged a finger over the wooden arm of a high-backed stick and ball chair. “Isn’t even a good patina. Comes right off. So what do we know about him?” Kalik lifted her chin at the dried out cadaver the restorers had found in a sleeping bag in the narrow space between the wall and the canvas backdrop.
The backdrop was painted to show a bookshelf that Kalik thought looked very realistic whole you stood behind the rope that kept visitors at bay. Up close, not so much. She noticed the ornate grandfather clock standing against the canvass had run down.
“Yes, well, first the good news. The climate control here is set to just after hell froze over, so the air is even drier than my celebrated wit,” said Smit.
“You’ll notice I’m dressed for the 32 degrees Celsius and 70 percent humidity outside. So how is that good news?” asked Kalik, rubbing her goose-pimpled arms.
“Well, it means his skin won’t come right off like that drowning victim at the brewery last month. This body is, in fact, as dry as the preserved meats you can buy downstairs at the Ancient Fast Foods counter. You should go check it out, they have preserved meats from all ages. Go taste the difference between jerky and biltong, or better yet, try the mouldy mutton the Vikings ate,” Smit said.
Kalik gave a visible shudder. “Urgh, that may just turn me into a vegan. What’s the bad news?”
“Um, he is a John Doe,” said Smit.
Kalik sighed. “Why always on my shift? You’d think if teenagers can forge IDs to buy booze, these deadbeats can at least steal one so I have something to work with. Especially one with such nice shoes,” she said, prodding the pair of dusty brogues placed next to the sleeping bag with the toe of her muddy boot.
She looked up coily at the tall pathologist. “Say, does the cafeteria have any anthropophagic items on the menu?”
“Ooo, listen to who has been reading medical textbooks again. Not that I noticed. Why?”
“If they do, I can list this not as a cadaver, but as cafeteria supplies. Homegrown cannibal jerky. Get it while it’s cold! It will avoid a LOT of paperwork,” Kalik said.
“Ha ha. Some of the more hirstute cafeteria staff may bite, but I doubt the trustees will support your aversion to paper work,” Smit said. “Sign these please,” he added, holding out two forms and a pen to the detective.
Kalik sighed, took the forms and and scribbled her signature on both before pausing to study the second form.
“Gerald, you twit. It says here there was a notebook in a top pocket. That may have his name. Where is it?”
Smit slipped on his spectacles to peer at the form. “Ah, so it does. But it is not there now. Probably in the evidence bag. Ask whichever constable took the statement from the retouchers,” he said as he slid the signed pages into a folder hanging from a collapsible gurney.
“Say, slip into some gloves and help me lift him will you? You can take the feet. He is as light as a feather, mummified like this, but I don’t want to manhandle him. Last respects and all that.”
“All I am saying is it is not fair that Naomi is already riding the polisher. We have been here for two years and we’re still on dusting,” said Mirriam as she dabbed at a stuffed jackal with a large ostrich feather duster.
“Dusting the displays is a more important job than polishing floors, you don’t get training to ride that machine, but you do get training to do the dusting right,” said Lindiwe, carefully using a hand-held vacuum to suck dust off a stuffed lion’s testicles.
“Well I wouldn’t mind sitting on that machine once in a while instead of being on my feet all night, is all I’m saying,” sulked Mirriam, spitting on a dust cloth and standing on her toes to rub a shine onto a hippo’s large glass eye.
“Maybe you should consider polishing the supervisor’s – wait, do you hear that!? The footsteps! He’s coming!” whispered Lindiwe, her eyes wide.
Mirriam, her eyes even wider, could only nod wordlessly, clutching her duster to her bosom.
They listened to the sharp taps of shoes approaching, watching the wide open double doors to the taxidermic display of African wildlife as the footsteps moved past. As happened every time, they did not see anyone, but they smelled the freshly ground coffee.
Lindiwe turned to look as Mirriam gave a faint sigh and fainted, her ample bottom cushioning her slide down the wall.
Lindiwe was made of sterner stuff. Lifting the large wooden cross she carried on a fake gold chain from her neck, she brandished the symbol at the receding footsteps.
“Begone, in the name of Jeeezissss,” she hissed. “Yeah, that’s right, Mr Ghostman, you just keep walking.”
Still brandishing her cross at the door, she knelt next to Mirriam and shook her shoulder.
“Yo, wake up, c’mon, where’s my girl who hit her man with the frying pan, c’mon sister, show me some eyes.”
“Is he gone?” asked Mirriam, her eyes still tightly shut.
“He is gone for the next few weeks. You know he only goes out about once a month,” said Lindiwe. “Come, let’s get some sweet tea in you.”
Before I curl up in my sleeping bag in the narrow space between the canvas and the bare brick wall, I pull up the weights in the Grandfather and set the pendulum swinging again, smiling as the stately tick-tocks add life to the room.
Mine lull me now – the ticks – but they haven’t always done so. It used to be that the ticks scared me. Me, and the outside people. Not the pitying ones, they just ever had one feeling – that of feeling superior.
But the scared ones knew. They knew the ticks were waiting for them too, itching under their scalps or twitching in their jaw muscles. All those little ticks itching and twitching to break free when that last straw tears down the canvas wall on which we all paint the trompe-l'oeil that tarts up our brief moment of consciousness.
To stop the people staring at my ticks, I had learned to force stillness. To crave it. After a long while, to be it. Gurus who meditate have a lot to say about such stillness. Like, “Be still... and know God.”
Now, each night, as I fold myself into myself to lay still, I feel my dry, old man’s skin, taut like the canvas vibrating with the grandfather clock’s tocks, its pendulum scything my existence into thinner and thinner slices.
I am happy now, in the museum. I don’t think I will ever leave.
The End
