I was in Jo’burg wondering what the fuck to do with my life. I had a Private Pilots Licence, and wanted to get into aviation. I’d left a company in Swaziland that had been sponsoring me because they paid me very little and expected me to be a general dogsbody. One day I just got pissed off and left. I was sort of on my way back to Botsawana, but I knew that my parents wouldn’t be particularly pleased to see me. I went and stayed with Berty, a friend of mine from school, in Jo’burg. He stayed with his mum, and I wasn’t going to be able to stay with him too long. One afternoon I was lying on the floor in his lounge reading the jobs section of the Star. I wasn’t qualified to do anything. One job looked promising:

MAKE ONE HUNDRED RAND A DAY. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.

I wrote down the number and, after reading the entire jobs section, it was the only number I had apart from a bar job. I gave them a call, and the next day borrowed Berty’s suit for an interview. The job was selling encyclopaedias for an American company, Grellers, door to door. I sold a set of books on my first evening out, to a couple with a young girl who liked all the plastic overlays. The sample volume had the best pages from the entire twenty volumes crammed into one book. Two days later I sold another set.

One of the sales managers was an Israeli guy called Norman. He took me and two girls out to Secunda in the Eastern Transvaal, where Sasol have a huge plant for manufacturing petrol from coal using some process invented by the Nazis during the Second World War. We slept in tents in the local campsite, selling books in the evenings. Secunda had loads of new houses, with young families, and I made six sales in my first ten days. I got paid a hundred and twenty Rand for each confirmed sale. Selling encyclopaedias was easy if you had no conscience.

Norman had the gift of the gab. He had been living in South Africa for about a year. His English was not that good, but it didn’t handicap him one bit when it came to selling people books they did not really want. He was short, dark, stocky, dark-skinned, padded face, like a puff-adder. He always peered at people myopically over his small oval glasses. After two weeks selling in Secunda, Norman took me with him one day to show me how to improve my sales figures. We ended up in this fireman’s house. Norman’s trick was to persuade people they were getting something cheap. He told this guy and his wife that we were doing a promotional tour, looking for families that appreciated the importance of education. These families would get the full set of twenty books for the ridiculously low price of just twelve hundred Rand. Included in this special promotional offer were one hundred coupons that could be sent in to the company for courses on anything they wanted. In reality these coupons would net them no more than references on the subject they were interested in, coincidentally for sale by the same company. Within five minutes this poor guy and his wife were hooked. Norman told them he wasn’t sure if they were really the sort of people the company wanted to participate in their promotional offer. The next thing , this stupid Jaapie (Afrikaner) was offering Norman a bribe to sell him the books

I took to Norman’s technique like the proverbial duck to water. Within a few weeks my sales figures were second only to his. The trick was not to waste time on people who didn’t bite. I could get through the door of about one house in eight. Of the houses I got into, I was out of the door within five minutes about once in every five. In all the others I had an audience. I was selling an average of one set of books a night, more on weekends. When Norman was asked to open an office in Cape Town, he asked for me to be sent with him.

We moved into a furnished flat in Camps Bay, on a hill overlooking the sea. Tastefully furnished, glass coffee tables, plush sofas, separate kitchen. Our neighbours were mainly Yuppies. The office was a glass and chrome affair on the tenth floor of a downtown skyscraper. We put ads in the local papers and soon had a regular stream of recruits through the doors. We trained them conventionally at first, and then later, if they stayed, showed them the tricks of the trade. One in ten would stay more than a week. Soon we had a hardcore of dedicated salesmen. I hired a V,W. bus and drove out to the suburbs every evening with seven salespersons. Two of them were really good. Soon I stopped selling myself. I was making plenty on commission from their sales. Life was easy.

One of our salesmen was a guy called Ray. We got on really well, selling in the evenings and then partying all night. There was a club in town called 1886 where we used to take speed and dance until dawn, trying to pick up girls. We would sleep the day away before heading out again in the evening for our suburban paychecks. Cape Town is a great city.

One night Norman and myself decided to have a party. Norman went down to Seapoint and came back with three hookers. We had a gram of coke and three grams of speed. Ray came round, along with a few other people from work, and Max, our neighbour, came round with a bottle of scotch. As the party slowly degenerated into a full blown orgy most of the guests disappeared. I ended up in the bathroom with one of the hookers, a skinny girl called Beth, mixed race, curly black hair. Things were just getting interesting when the police arrived and told us to pack it in. Ray drove the girls home on his way back to Mouille Point.

The next night I was at work as usual. Five of my crew had made sales. Norman and myself went for a beer and then drove home. The key didn’t work so, thinking the lock was jammed, we went to see the landlord, a Polish immigrant.

"You have damaged the sofa", he told us.

"What do you mean?", I asked.

"There is a cigarette burn."

"O.K. , we’ll get it fixed."

"No possible. I have to cover it all new", he said in his treacly accent.

"No way!", Norman interjected," We can get the mending invisible done."

Norman was waving his hands around, punctuating his speech by wrinkling his nose and pushing his glasses back as they threatened to slide off his face. We argued for twenty minutes or so, but he would not let us back in the flat. All we had were the clothes we were wearing. We went round to Rays, slept on the floor. The next day, when I arrived in the office, there was a stranger sitting at my desk.

"Who are you?", I asked.

"I am Fred Cojinski", the stranger answered, in an American accent. "I’ve been sent over by Grellers to look at the operation here". He was sitting at my desk wearing a bright red and yellow checked jacket and a tie painted by Mondrian, bright irregular squares and rectangles in red, yellow, and blue . He had blonde hair parted at the side, big eyebrows, large square face. Piercing blue eyes stared at me.

I introduced myself.

"Ah, you are just the man I want to talk to", he replied, in a Southern accent. "I see your sales figures have dropped off dramatically recently".

"That’s because I am so busy training new recruits. All my crew are very productive."

"We expect our sales managers to set an example", he replied. This company is powered by enthusiasm, and not taking an active part is just not acceptable. You are not productive. Your services are no longer required".

I was gobsmacked. I lost my temper, and ended up insulting him. I went to the training room and trashed it, hurling the boards covered with stupid slogans like ‘A sale a day is the Grellers way’ across the room. The next thing I knew I was being escorted from the building by a security guard. I left the building with a strangely disjointed feeling, like I was in someone else’s experience, inhabiting someone else’s life. I picked up the V.W. bus from the car park across the road. I was hungry, and realised for the first time that I had no money. I was owed some commission from my team’s recent sales, and on three sales I had made myself a week or so earlier. I had two Rand and thirty two cents in my pocket. I went round to the car hire company to drop off the bus. The deposit didn’t cover the bill, so I told them I was going to the bank. The manager appeared, told me he was going to call the police. I told him I wanted to show him something on the bus, and as soon as we exited the office I ran off. He chased me for about a block, then gave up. I was glad he was overweight.

Ray wasn’t home. I sat on the football fields behind his house and had a joint. Some kids playing football kept staring at me. I felt strung out from the speed. I decided to walk to Steven’s house. Steven was a friend of Rays from Jo’burg, who’d moved down a few years ago. His mum was a religious nut, spoke in tongues and all that.

In a fit of pique, I kicked an empty bottle along the pavement. It span off with an echoing, swirling sigh, bounced off a rubbish bag, flew off the curb and shattered on the road, flying glass spraying in front of the wheels of a braking B.M.W. There was a loud pop. I started running, not looking back, imagining a panting yuppie, stamina built up by squash, reaching out and grabbing me. I ran all the way up Mouille Point, then I could run no further, and stopped, hands on knees, and looked back down the road. A guy in a suit about fifty yards away was gesticulating wildly at me, brandishing a mobile phone. He made a half-hearted effort to resume the chase. I ran a few steps, and then walked off. I had been chased twice in less than an hour, and felt completely knackered.

Ray was at Steven’s house. They were sitting at the pine coffee table in the immaculate cottage kitchen with Raeburn, drinking herbal tea and talking about the New Testament. Healthy big green plants in pots were arranged tastefully with due attention to light. Steven’s mum, Delia, made me uneasy with her intense blue saintly eyes. She was very pretty, pert nose and blonde bob. Ray was well into the conversation. I rolled a joint, passed it to Ray. He declined. Later he would tell me that this was the first time in his life he had ever refused a spliff. Steven had no such qualms, squinting guiltily at his mother as he sucked on the joint. Ray finally stopped talking and greeted me.

"Hey, Allen, howsit? I got fired today."

" Really? So did I. That American jerk?"

"Ja. Not enough sales."

"Same here. What are you going to do?"

"I scheme I’m going back to Jo’burg", he answered.

"Me to. Shall we hitch?"

We agreed to hitch to Jo’burg within the next few days. Ray was totally wrapped up in his discussion with Steven’s mother. They were talking about morality. I left them and headed round to Shane’s. Shane was a friend of Rays. With no money, it was going to be difficult to stay out of my head. Shane always had a supply of whites, Mandrax, smoked mixed with grass in a broken bottle neck. I didn’t much like them but a white pipe or two would obliterate a few days.

Shane live on the hill behind Seapoint in a rented ground floor room, furnished with a bed and an iron, which he used as a stove. He snorkled for pearlemain, which he sold to restaurants, and dealt in whites. He was playing Mr. Tambourine Man on an acoustic guitar when I arrived. The air was heavy with the smell of whites. He seemed pleased to see me.

"Allen, howsit man. Where you been?"

"Howsit Shane. I’ve been fired from my job , I’ve been locked out of my flat, and I’m skint."

"Want a pipe?"

"Ja, lekker",I replied, "I need one".

He put down the guitar, pulled a bag out from under the bed. Jimi Hendrix watched obliquely from his poster on the wall. Shane wrapped a Mandrax tablet in a piece of paper, crushed it to powder with an empty Coke bottle. He mixed it with some dagga, then picked up a broken bottleneck and rolled up some tin foil, plugging the neck with it. He put the mixture in the neck, tamped it down, and passed the neck to me. I wrapped a piece of toilet paper round the neck, wrapped my index finger and thumb around it and made a funnel shape with my hand. Shane struck two matches together, scraped the burnt sulphur off, held it to the pipe. The first hit was always the best, the smoke, with its slight chemical tang, still cool as it shot down my throat, filling my lungs. I breathed out a cloud of smoke, trying not to cough. Shane held the matches to the pipe again, the smoke rushing down my windpipe, my head became heavy. I passed the pipe to him and lay back on the floor, my head spinning, the eyes of Hendrix upon me. I could hear a rasping sound from Shane’s lungs as he sucked on the pipe.

I was at twenty thousand feet over Bremen. The bomb aimer’s voice came over the earphones, "Steady,steady..." Flak was bursting all around. In the distance a Lancaster trailing flames fell away in a gentle arc. In front of me and below the yellow marker flares on the ground lit the way to the target. Around us in the dark were eighty-odd other Lancasters, including our own squadron. A voice over the radio, squeaky, "Drop on the greens, drop on the greens." Down below fires raged through the city, explosions lit up the skyline in orange death. I wondered how many people would die tonight. I was sweating, and my fingers itched in the leather of my gloves. The smell of cordite, leather and oil found its way through my oxygen mask, and I needed a shit, as I did every time over the target. Thirty missions and never been hit. At first I had thought we were invincible, but their were too many faces missing to think that now. Now it was just luck. "Bombs away!" came over the earphones, the Lanc bucked as it suddenly became ten tons lighter, and I hauled the ‘plane round in a tight turn, stuck the nose down to gain speed, and set heading for the coast. None of us spoke for a while. Everyone was looking for night fighters, circling round the edges of the flak belt like vultures around a kill, waiting. I kept the nose down, and soon we were through ten thousand feet. Oxygen masks off, cigarettes on. I wiped away the sweat, rubbed my face where the mask had been chafing. It was getting light. We crossed the coast of Holland low level, the gunners shooting up a convoy of half-tracks and troop-carriers. As we shot out over the sea, leaving the enemy coast behind, a weight lifted, though we were not safe yet. Sometimes the nightfighters were waiting for us at home, where it was easy to bag a tired crew, thinking they were home safe I was so tired..…

"Wake up, Allen", I could hear through the mists of fatigue. In my dream it was Archie, the radio operator. But it was Shane, forty five years later.

"Fok, man, I’ve got to cut down", he said as he passed the pipe to me. I rubbed my face, still feeling where the oxygen mask had been.

I did not think then that he would be dead within a year. The Mandrax coursed through me I and realised I needed a shit, as I had in the dream. As I sat on the toilet, I thought about God, and about Ray. I had a feeling something strange was going on.

Shane and myself sat there talking crap for a while, then he nodded off and I staggered into the sunshine, my legs refusing to obey the confused demands made on them by my lobotomised brain. At least I didn’t have to worry about being hungry for a while. I headed back to Ray’s. He wasn’t there, but Norman was.

"Ray’s found God", Norman told me. "He came round a few minutes ago saying he was going to church."

"You can’t be serious". I had seen he was interested in Steven’s mother, but I had assumed his interest was sexual.

"Oh ,yes. But look what he left us." Norman slid an old biscuit tin across the carpet. I picked it up and pulled the lid off. The first things that caught my eye were about twelve pencils of Durban Poison. I took the bundle out and then lifted out a plastic bag containing various different coloured capsules and tablets.

"The bastard kept these pencils to himself. What are these?", I asked Norman, lifting out the bag of tablets.

"He can’t remember what most of them are. He said he took two of those blue capsules once and slept for two days."

That will take care of Tuesday and Wednesday, I thought to myself. There were three black capsules that looked like Dexedrine. That would remove the need for eating on Thursday. There were a couple of Whites with bits of fluff on them and some unidentifiable smaller white tablets, two little round yellow ones and what looked like a single suppository. Something strange must have happened to Ray for him to give up this lot. I ate one of the little yellow ones and then rolled a joint. I had forgotten how good Durban Poison was. In spite of the Mandrax I felt a pleasant rush.

Ray had an old projector set up in the living room. Norman dimmed the lights and we sat watching Woodstock and smoking joints. I felt very little from the little yellow tablet so I took two of the little white ones and took one of Rays beers from the refrigerator. I kept thinking about my dream. I could still smell the flak. I dozed off again.

I woke up with a strange " schwick....schwick" sound accompanied by Normans snoring. A bright rectangle of light on the wall made me realise that the projector was still running. I had a headache and my neck was in agony on one side. I could smell onions, which I knew from past experience was Norman’s particularly unpleasant body odour. I felt vaguely nauseous, almost hungry . I looked at my watch. Ten at night. I must have been asleep for about five hours. Realising I should eat, I stepped over Norman’s prostrate body and went into the kitchen. The fluorescent tube lent an unpleasant reality to the dismal state of the kitchen. A half eaten bowl of spaghetti hoops sat on the red plastic table, attended by several large flies. In the fridge was a piece of hardened cheddar, a mouldy half loaf of bread and some withered lettuce leaves. I took the piece of cheese, cut off the hard bits with a dirty bread knife, and almost puked when I ate it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a nearly full bottle of Scotch hidden behind the microwave. I took a large swig, and went back into the living room carrying the bottle. Norman was awake and, presumably thinking I had left, was having a wank.

"Leave it alone!", I yelled as I collapsed on the armchair.

Norman, startled, sat up abruptly and cursed me in Hebrew.

"Where the fuck is Ray?", I asked, not expecting an answer.

"He phoned while you were asleep. Said he was going to a bible meeting." As he said it, we heard a key in the lock. Ray walked in, dressed in a suit. In his left hand was a bible. He switched the light on, walked over to the projector which was still running, switched it off. An embarrassing silence descended on the room. No-one said anything. Ray’s eyes, normally dull, were bright blue. I realised I had never even noticed what colour they were before. Finally Norman broke the silence.

"Uh, Ray, you say any prayers for us?"

Ray picked up the full ashtray, looking in disgust at the scene which a few days earlier had been so familiar. He walked to the kitchen, returned and stood in the doorway with the bright neon light behind him, looking positively evangelical.

"You okes just don’t get it, do you?"

"What do you mean, Ray?", Norman asked, "Don’t get what?"

"There’s more to life than drink and drugs", Ray answered, Life is a gift. Why waste it on physical gratification?"

"’Cause it’s fun!", I replied, "We like it. So did you a few days ago."

Ray emitted a snort of disgust and disappeared into his room. There’s nothing worse than reformed smokers or born again Christians. I realised he must have been back to the flat while Norman and myself were asleep. He had not been wearing a suit when I had seen him in the morning.

Norman took me for supper to Papa Corlinnis, a cheap seafood restaurant near Seapoint. I had seventy two cents left. I ate my fish and chips and thought about mugging someone. Trouble is, I hate violence.

Hey, Norman, lend me fifty Rand", I asked him as he shovelled a load of calamari into his mouth. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty, threw it across the table. A gust of wind as someone entered the restaurant picked up the note and I had to chase it across the floor, ending up with my face between a woman’s legs at the next table. She didn’t have any panties on. She squealed and pushed her chair back, the rear legs of the chair catching on the floorboards. The chair tipped over and she ended up on her back on the floor, her pussy, covered in red hair, exposed. She struggled to her feet with the assistance of the man she was sharing dinner with, looking at me with distaste.

"What do you think you are doing?" , she demanded, scowling at me from beneath platinum locks. Her face was flushed with embarrassment. The guy she was with, a skinny oke in a suit, made as if to grab me, but catching my eye thought better of it. I went and sat down.

"That was worth twenty Rand", Norman said, laughing, " I wonder if that guy knows she isn’t a true blonde."

Within two minutes the couple had paid and fled the restaurant in embarrassment. We left shortly afterwards, going to the Wig and Pistle for a beer. Sharon, a girl I had seen a few times, was there with some friends. Norman picked up a girl called Tania, and the four of us drove back to Ray’s flat.

We were sitting drinking Ray’s Scotch and smoking some of the Poison when Ray appeared from his room in a pair of underpants.

"What’s going on?" he demanded, " I’m trying to sleep."

"Sorry, Ray", I answered, " We were just having a drink."

Ray walked across to the table , picked up the bottle, and walked into the kitchen. I followed him, and arrived just in time to see him pouring the whisky down the sink. I tried to grab it from him, but instead sent the bottle flying. It landed on the linoleum floor, spinning away towards the refrigerator with a stream of whisky spiralling from it. I leapt across, picked up the bottle. There was about a quarter inch left which I hurriedly downed, my eyes smarting.

"I can’t believe I was like that, once" , Ray said with a tinge of sadness, " I think Jesus found me just in time."

I said nothing. When I walked into the lounge the girls were leaving, Norman trying to persuade them to stay. I wasn’t horny anyway. I swallowed half a Mandrax and went back to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning Ray and Norman had both left. I hitched to town. A blue B.M.W., that I was sure had already passed me once, stopped. A guy in a charcoal pinstripe suit asked me where I was going.

"The city." I had no idea why.

"God told me to come back and pick you up", he said, smiling at me. My flesh crawled. It seemed I was destined to be beset by born again Christians.

"Have you found the Light?", he asked, still grinning at me with that annoying ‘I know something you don’t’ smile that the fish people seem to have. You see them everywhere, the stylised fish on the rear of the car identifying them.

"I’m fairly nocturnal, myself", I replied.

He smiled even more.

"Haha. Very funny...."

"Look", I interrupted, "One of my friends has just been born again, and I really don’t want any more religion."

This only shut him up for a second, although the smile now looked slightly more artificial, like someone watching a bad comedian and desperately trying to get the humour they’ve paid for. My mind wandered as we drove towards the shiny newness of downtown Cape Town. Table Mountain stood like a sentinel overlooking the city of dazzling glass and stark concrete. He was waffling on about the Bible. I nodded occasionally. The one thing that gets me about Christians is that they take the Bible as incontrovertible truth. I don’t see how a book written by a load of antisocial hermits nearly two thousand years ago can be taken too seriously. I mean, if someone wandered into town after spending ten years in the desert with a beard down to their knees claiming that God had spoken to them personally, they would hardly be taken seriously today, would they? Every argument you have with Christians, they end up saying, " Ah, but the Bible says...."

"I get my spirituality from the chemist", I interjected when he was spouting from the book of Matthew.

He looked at me, for the first time not smiling.

"Oh, you poor lost soul, he wailed, a look of pity in his eyes. Suddenly the car swerved as we took a corner. We had a puncture. We were almost in the city, but I offered to change the wheel for him so he didn’t get his suit dirty. He reckoned God had punctured a tyre to give us more time together. I changed the wheel, then declined his offer of a coffee and walked into the city. I bought half a loaf of bread , a tin of sardines and a pint of milk, and sat on the pavement at an intersection. I scooped out the centre of the loaf, opened the sardines, and shook them out of the tin into the bread. I ate about half of it, drank the milk, and gave the remainder of my breakfast to a degenerate looking old black guy dressed in bin bags. I walked off towards the city.

They didn’t want to let me into the building at Grellers, so I asked them to call Norman for me.

We went for a coffee. My last three sales had all been cancelled. I had paid the deposit on one of them. I was still due some commission from my team’s sales, but Norman said it would be a week or so until the cheque was processed. Ray and myself were leaving in two days. I had decided to go back to Botswana. Fuck knows what I was going to do there. I wanted to finish off my Commercial Pilots Licence and get a job, and it was about time I went and wrote the exams. I was carrying loads of study material around with me, and figured I was almost ready to write them. I hadn’t flown for six months and I was missing it a lot. I was sick of Cape Town. I had no money.

I went for a beer down by the docks in the hopes of seeing Piet, one of the people in the flats we had been staying at in Camps Bay. He supplied trawlers with their groceries, and I had had a few good meals aboard Portuguese trawlers with him. He wasn’t around, so I headed back to Rays and stuffed the suppository up my ass. I wondered what it was. I assumed it contained some form of mind altering drug for it to be in Rays drug collection. Just to make sure I took one of the black capsules and rolled a joint. Ray turned up about an hour later.

"Allen, you’ve got to come to church with me", he began, "It’s better than drugs and it’s free!"

"Listen, Ray, I’m not in the mood. When are we going to Jo’burg?"

"Saturday. That O.K?"

"Ray, I have no money, no clothes, and I just want to get out of here. Let’s go this afternoon. Please. Or I’m going anyway.

He was silent for a while . He went to the kitchen and made us coffee. When he returned I offered him the joint I was smoking. He declined.

"I’ve given up drugs", he informed me, for about the tenth time. "Really, Allen, this is the best thing that’s happened to me for years."

I said nothing. He told me he was off to church and then going to someone’s house for a prayer meeting. He tried to persuade me to accompany him. I had been to church a few times; a girl I had met in Jo’burg was a religious nut, and for a week or so I was under the mistaken impression that I would get her knickers off. I had even once felt a flicker of something spiritual at one of their meetings, but I couldn’t sustain it, and when I made a pass at her she was so shocked that I never went to see her again. This was the sum total of my religious experience. Sometimes I wished I could believe, but it just all seemed so illogical. But now here was Ray, a guy I had seen eat five tabs of acid and then want more, with his eyes all lit up with God and looking happier than I had ever seen him. I have always thought that there is some switch in your brain that can be tripped by the right stimuli, allowing you to forget your doubts and accept religion. I was also sure that mine was fused in the atheist position.

I stayed in the flat while he went to church. I had been reading War and Peace, and I struggled through a few pages and then gave up. I was bored, so I took the two remaining black capsules. I felt a bit strange, like I was waiting for something. The sun was going down, and soon I was sitting in the dark. A mosquito kept attacking me.

I heard a knock on the door. I ignored it, but whoever it was knocked harder, and I staggered to my feet and answered it. It was Beth ,the skinny hooker from the party.

" I saw you come in here earlier " , she said. "I was with my mother on the beach."

"Beth, It’s nice to see you , but I don’t have any money."

"I was just saying hello!", she said, seemingly insulted that I might think that a hooker could want money. "I’ll go if you like."

"No. Would you like some coffee?", I enquired, starting to feel horny. I went and made us both coffee. When I returned I sat next to her on the sofa. She was wearing a short white skirt and matching blouse. I touched her leg, and soon we were ripping each other’s clothes off. We were on the floor shagging when Ray arrived. Beth froze when she heard the door opening, her pussy muscles contracting, and I came inside her just as Ray walked into the room. Beth turned her face away; I smiled nervously at Ray. He walked into his room without saying a word. Beth dressed hurriedly, and I saw her out. I got dressed and knocked on Rays door. I felt dizzy. Ray came out and sat down.

"Uh, Allen , someone in the church bought me an air ticket to Jo’burg." I was expecting a lecture on lust and depravity.

"Well, tell them to get me one too. I’ve been waiting for you for three days now. You asked me to wait. I’m totally fucking broke and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week. When I wash my socks I can’t go out until they dry."

"I’m sorry, Allen, I didn’t know this was going to happen. I’ll give you some money and clothes."

I didn’t mind hitching on my own - it was usually easier, but I wished now that I had left three days earlier. Norman took us out that night, and the following morning he dropped me about thirty miles outside Cape Town. The trip to Botswana was a nightmare, but that’s another story. I never saw Norman again.

Almost a year later I was working for a crop-spraying company in Germiston. One day they sent me to Springs to pick up some avionics. I had to wait for two hours - they hadn’t finished bench-testing the parts. I went for a walk, and a few minutes later saw a familiar figure shuffling down the pavement towards me. It was Ray. He almost walked past me, until I called his name.

"Hey, Allen, howsit china! Fuck, I wondered what had happened to you. I was just thinking about you the other day! How the fuck are you!"

"I’m O.K. Fancy a beer?" I half expected him to say no.

"Sure. I know a bar down the road."

We ended up in a seedy bar near the station. I bought two quarts of Castle and we sat at a tatty formica table with plastic-covered tubular aluminium chairs. The only other people in there were two old drunks arguing about something. We talked about Cape Town for a while. He told me Norman had gone back to Israel. Finally, after two more beers, when I had to get going, I asked the question I had been dying to ask since I had noticed that the Light had left his eyes.

"What happened to the religion, Ray?"

"Fuck, Allen, it was great for a while. I was higher than a kite. I came back here and joined a church group. Trouble is, I started coming down. You know, as acid wears off, you’re still tripping, but the edge has gone. It was sort of like that. I came down. Fuck knows how other people stay up there."

He walked me back to the shop, I picked up the parts, and he accompanied to my car. He gave me his number, but we lost touch. As I drove back to Jo’burg in the rush hour traffic, ‘Hey Joe’ was playing on the radio. I kept thinking of Ray’s parting words. As I started the engine, he leaned in the window, looking tired, and said,

"Jusses , Allen, I think I just peaked too soon."

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