"A schoolgirl turns in from a side street a block away and comes towards me. a little girls, of nice or ten, in a Jeppe Prep uniform and short socks, with a satchel on her back. a perfectly ordinary little girl on her way home from school. or she would be, perfectly ordinary, i mean, if she were not wearing a diving mask and snorkel. comings towards me, on a spring afternoon in Roberts Avenue, snorkelling though the slanting sunlight.
Assuming that her performance must be for the benefit for spectators like me, for the woman sweeping the stoep of the old-age home, or the barber under his canvas awning, i expect her to be giggling or suppressing a giggle. but her face behind the glass is serious. the snorkel tube is transparent, the mask rimmed with pink rubber, her eyes look out with the astounded, strained expression of a diver who has just sunk below the surface for the first time and discovered a second world. she gazes at me as if i am a fish, a creature covered in spines, trailing poisonous filaments, jaggered with exotic colour, and passes me, moving slowly through the air, with bubbles of anxiety around her.
I walk on for a few paces, then glance over my shoulder, she will be looking back to giggle at my bemused reaction, I'm sure. or her skinny shoulders will be shaking, at least. but she is neither looking back nor laughing. she is simply going on, her head drifting slowly from one side to the other, her open palms floating back on the air. there are steps cut into the verge, where the tram used to stop, and she goes slowly down them to the kerb, holding onto the metal railing, puts a foot in the roadway, fords fearlessly out into the traffic on Roberts Avenue.
My feet have turned to led, my head is round and deaf. she has submerged the world, and me in it. the light streams like water over everything, the grass on the verges shifts in currents of astonishment, as i press on into the deep end of the city."
"Portrait with Keys: Joburg and what-what" Ivan Vladislavic