The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
My cigarette fell from my hand and rolled across the floor of the bus.
I did not bend to pick it up.
At that moment the strange photograph had taken such a hold of my mind that the cigarette no longer mattered.
I picked up the photograph and looked again.
There I was, behind the wheel of this very bus, wearing the same jacket, with the same unruly hair and the weary look a person usually acquires after seven lives.
The woman in red stood beside me.
But something about the photograph was wrong.
It was not my face.
Not her clothes.
Not even the date written on the back.
The problem was that in one corner, behind the bus window, stood someone who had said goodbye to us only moments earlier, black file in hand.
The death officer.
This time he wore his long coat and hat, but his face was half erased in the photograph, as if the rain had wiped part of him away before the drops could reach the ground.
— Who took this picture? I asked the woman.
She did not answer.
I held it up in front of her face.
— My dear lady, when someone sees a photograph of his own future, he has a right to know the photographer’s name at least.
She turned her gaze away and stared at the street.
— It hasn’t been taken yet.
— What hasn’t?
— The photograph.
— Then what’s this in my hand? An electricity bill?
— Something that might become a photograph.
I looked at it again.
— You mean it might not?
— Not if you choose another road.
— A few minutes ago I chose the road marked “Yourself”. How many more roads am I supposed to choose between?
— Choosing a road is easy, Khalo. The difficult part begins when you discover that you must pay its price yourself.
I did not like that.
People who talk about the “price of a choice” are usually trying to sell you something or preparing to deliver bad news.
I picked my cigarette up from the bus floor, flicked off its imaginary dust and put it back in my mouth.
— What does the date on the back mean?
— It’s the day one of you gets off this bus.
I looked at the seat beside me.
— One of us?
She said nothing.
I turned and looked at the donkey. It looked back at me.
For the first time since it had appeared, it did not bray.
Its silence worried me more.
— I hope you don’t mean my fellow traveller here. We were only just beginning to find a common language.
The woman said quietly:
— Can you see the donkey in the photograph?
I held it closer to the dashboard light.
The space behind me was empty.
No donkey. Not even the shadow of its long ears.
I turned round. It was still there, alive, calm and more real than many people I had met while awake.
— Perhaps it was on holiday when they took the picture.
She looked at me.
— You can’t put everything off with a joke.
— I’m not putting anything off. I just refuse to let fear arrive before its time.
Suddenly there was a scratching sound low down at the bus door.
We both fell silent.
The sound came again, like the claws of a small animal scraping wet metal.
I got up from behind the wheel and went to the door. I opened it.
A small black-and-brown dog stood on the step, wearing a spotted coat like a leopard’s skin. Rain dripped from its ears and muzzle, yet it looked at me as though it had known me for years and was merely offended that I had arrived late.
— Which part of the story did you come from?
The dog gave me a serious look and barked:
— My name is Coco, though the local children call me “Co”. I don’t mind. You can call me Co as well.
Then, without permission, it climbed aboard.
It passed the woman in red, came straight up to me and dropped something at my feet.
Another piece of the same photograph.
I bent down and picked it up.
When I put the two pieces together, the picture became more complete.
Now the dog could be seen on the bus step.
The donkey stood behind me.
The woman in red sat a little way from me.
The death officer stood outside by the driver’s door, a file under his arm.
And I, with a cigar in my mouth and both hands on the wheel, was looking at the road.
Only one place in the picture was still empty.
The place of the person who was supposed to take it.
I looked at the woman.
— Where’s the photographer?
For the first time, she looked afraid.
— You weren’t supposed to get that piece, she said very quietly.
— Why?
Before she could answer, the dog turned towards the window and barked.
Across the street, in the rain, someone stood holding a camera.
He raised it and pointed it at us.
The woman in red shouted:
— Khalo, turn off the lights!
But it was too late.
The flash lit up the street.
And in that instant I saw that the person behind the camera was me.
I blinked.
He was still there.
Across the street, beneath a lamp ringed with rain, he stood with the camera lowered.
The same face.
The same hair.
But younger, and without glasses.
He even had a cigar like mine at the corner of his mouth.
He looked younger than me, but not so young that I could fail to recognise him. Young enough for me to know that a face from my youth stood opposite me, not in the past but here and now.
I lowered the window and shouted:
— Hey, comrade! Are you me, or am I you?
He did not answer.
Coco put its front paws on the dashboard and barked angrily.
— Easy, Co! It’s a family argument.
Coco looked at me and gave a short bark, as though to say:
“You can tell what sort of family this is when its members don’t even recognise one another.”
The woman in red said:
— You mustn’t speak to him.
— Why not?
— Every question you ask him costs you a memory.
— What nonsense! I’ve spent seventy years working to gather these memories. Now someone with a camera has come to take them away?
— He doesn’t take your memories.
— What does he do with them, then?
— He writes them down.
I looked at the man behind the camera.
— He’s one of us, then. You should have said he was a writer. I wouldn’t have been so worried.
— If anything, you should worry more, she said softly.
The man took a step forward. The streetlamp lit his face.
I had no doubt now. It was me.
But the Khalo standing across the street had something in his eyes that I lacked: the composure of someone who knew how the story ended and felt no hurry to tell it.
— Mate! If you know something, come here and talk like a human being. Why are you standing in the rain taking pictures of people’s lives?
He raised the camera again.
The woman put a hand on my arm.
— Don’t let him take the second picture.
— What will the second one do?
— In the first, you saw your past. In the second, you’ll see what you’re going to lose.
— And in the third?
She hesitated.
— In the third, there’ll be nobody left to see it.
This time even Coco fell silent.
Behind me, the donkey gave a long breath and nudged my shoulder with its muzzle.
The man put his finger on the camera button.
I pressed the bus horn. It blared through the street.
For a moment he stepped back.
— See? I still know how to defend myself.
Then I started the engine.
— What are you doing? the woman asked.
— Going after him.
— In the bus?
— I haven’t got anything else. Even in dreams, London taxis cost a fortune.
I turned the wheel and the bus began to move slowly towards the other side of the street.
The man did not run. He stood there and watched me.
The closer I came, the longer the street between us grew, as if the tarmac were stretching and the distance refused to end.
I drove faster. He remained just as far away.
— Has this street got a contract with the Department of Death too?
The woman did not answer.
I looked at her seat. It was empty.
I put my foot on the brake.
— Where’s she gone?
Coco looked at the empty seat and gave a small whine.
The donkey put its head out of the window.
The death officer still stood by the door, but now he had opened his black file and was writing in it.
— What are you writing?
— Passenger absence.
— She vanished! I didn’t make her get off.
— In the file of a life, people’s departures are recorded. Their reasons aren’t always.
Suddenly the man with the camera appeared right in front of the bus.
I braked. This time he did not move.
I got off. Coco jumped down after me. The donkey tried to follow, but got stuck between the seats and protested loudly.
I went up to the man.
— Tell me, which Naser Kamali are you?
— The one who wrote everything down but never found the time to live it.
His voice was mine too, only more tired.
— Have you come from the future?
— No.
— The past?
— No.
— Then where have you come from?
He pointed the camera at me.
— From behind this lens.
— Don’t give me a philosophical answer. It’s the middle of the night and I’m not in the mood.
He lowered the camera.
— There are two people inside everyone, Khalo. One lives, the other watches from a safe distance. For years you were the watcher. You saw pain, love and people leaving, and turned them all into stories.
— That’s what a writer does.
— Yes. But sometimes a writer gets so caught up in telling life that he forgets he is inside it himself.
I did not like what he said, perhaps because it came too close to the truth.
— Who is the woman in red?
The man smiled bitterly.
— You still haven’t worked it out?
— If I had, I wouldn’t be asking you.
— She isn’t a woman you’ve met before.
— Then why do I feel that I know her?
He opened the camera and took out a fresh photograph. He handed it to me.
In it, the bus stood at the side of the road.
The donkey was behind the window.
Coco sat on the step.
The death officer waited by the door.
But the driver’s seat was empty.
— Where am I?
The man pointed to the back of the photograph. I turned it over.
This time there was no date, only one sentence:
“The driver must choose between writing life and living it.”
I laughed.
— Another choice? Is this dream a polling station?
— This isn’t your last choice.
— How many more are there?
— As many as the days you have left.
I was about to ask another question when Coco began to bark.
I turned.
The woman in red stood in the middle of the street. This time her dress was wet, and she held something in her arms.
A child whose face I could not see.
— Khalo! Don’t give him the photograph back! she shouted.
I looked at the man.
He was no longer there.
Only his camera lay on the ground.
I bent and picked it up.
The last picture was still on its screen.
The woman in red, holding the child.
But when I enlarged the image, my hand trembled.
The child was the same little boy I had seen years ago in the mirror, before I became “Khalo”.
It was me.
There will definitely be more!
Naser Kamali
London, in my little room with a window looking towards freedom
Undated
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