Gas & Electric
By: Jesh Baker
Tags: Cinquecento, Relationships, Fiction, Johannesburg, Electric Car

Photo by Jakub Puchalski

She stood looking at herself in the mirror for a few moments, her shoulders drooping — she felt broken from the day. She moved in closer towards the floor-standing mirror and turned the lamp towards her face. She let out a slow deep sigh — seemingly coming from the very depths of her soul but more likely from having too much hummus at lunch she realised. She could see traces of the crows feet forming around her eyes; the faintest lines around her mouth and were her lips actually losing their colour?

“ What the …” Kate stops and lets out another sigh, standing there mute and looking at the mirror but seemingly looking at nothing. She smiled; it was years ago that her jida first talked about aging and she was going to have a laugh the next time they saw each other.

Kate remembered when she was preparing to leave home for the first time — going to do an internship in Johannesburg, way down in the South of the continent. So far down south that mostly in her jida’s village, people barely acknowledged it as even part of the same landmass. Of course, they had heard of South Africa — she knew all about Apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s fame had reached even their little corner of the vast Sahara. But it was not a place to go to voluntarily.

She heard a long ago story of Grandpa going to Paris to work and she once went on a trip to Cairo when jida’s brother passed on. Mostly they just took the train to the capital city to deal with admin once or twice a year. They did not consider travel to what the local newspapers had referred to as the ‘crime capital of the world’ — it was a notably violent place — carjacking was common and when it went wrong, the victims and sometimes the hijackers ended up dead. There was no coming back from that kind of trip and Kate knew that well enough — and she felt her jida silently holding these fears inside her sturdy frame. She felt it each time they touched hands while doing the washing. In the way jida lay unusually still in bed for a while before falling off to sleep. Usually she would tell her stories, ask about her thoughts, talk about some obscure issue with the village water sharing system or just sing old songs. Kate knew no other family — it was always just her and jida.

“Fuck you thirty” she blurted out suddenly — she lifted her shoulders, stretched herself out like a cat waking up from a nap and then just stood rooted. In a moment the phone starts ringing. She half turns and then stops. She lets it ring through — it was just too far away — and she is in no state to make the effort of going across the bedroom, out the door and over to the kitchen counter.

A momentary silence descends as the phone stops trilling and bouncing on the counter and the playlist finds that rare moment between tracks. Kate inhales, finds what she was looking for inside her being and gently pads over to the kitchen counter.

“Hey”

“Bisou cherie” comes Nadeem’s greeting.

For the next two minutes or so, Kate bawls while alternatively holding the phone in her hand and leaving it on the counter. Tear streaked and as red-nosed as a Comic Relief advert, her locks pasted to her wet cheeks and sniffling that would make a Great Dane proud. Nadeem gets to see most of it depending on the phone’s location. Eventually the bawling slows down, Kate slides onto the bar stool at the kitchen counter, props up the phone against the rice cooker and gives him a smile.

Nadeem smiles and waits silently — looking at her. In a moment, Kate has undone the cuff button on her blue linen blouse and in a seamless movement, her left arm is filling the screen. A deep foghorn boom fills his ears as she blows her nose into the shirt sleeve.

It’s all he can do to not burst out laughing and after a momentary pause, she joins him — their faces alight.

“I’ve seen some news about it too, so it’s reached as far as an artsy corner of this cultured village Nadeem.”

He notes that she refers to the city differently today — it’s not a tourist trap and he takes that as a good sign — Kate is know for vacillating between love and hate for the City of Light.

“No one anywhere is safe from it” she goes on “so I don’t think it has as much to do with where you live as to do with how you live; what your sources of news are, maybe even how you engage with the daily acts of material existence — for that is what our modern cities are; bases for material exchanges and class factions above all else.”

“Which very neatly Mademoiselle Smith” he jumps in “makes my point that our actual physical location does have a material — excuse the pun — impact on our exposure to and participation in things like rabid capitalism’s Black Friday sales.”

She laughs; “hhhmm”

“It’s contrived” he continues “allegedly to drive economic growth, but this growth currently only comes from consuming more newly made goods; using a large proportion of finite natural resources. Something’s got to give. And while people bandy around news like the UK (and likely Europe too) is going to ban sales of internal combustion engined cars by 2030 — we’re missing a whole chunk of thinking when those kind of headlines are thrown around like victories. So the big change is a move to electric cars. Bravo but no-bravo because the car companies are not changing their business models — they are just changing products. It’s nowhere near enough to keep them going in the way they have established themselves. A change from internal combustion to electric car manufacturing and sales is not enough to save the car industry. Not by a long shot; there needs to be a wholesale rethink of their business model.”

“Oh, that’s serious news dude, does it mean I won’t get to keep my Cinquecento after 2030?” she asked, suddenly worried. Nadeem knew how much Kate loved her ancient little city car.

“I doubt you need to worry. Your Fiat is already classified as a vintage and enjoys special concessions and there’s likely a matrix of loopholes and allowances to be worked out with lobby groups, the Automobile Associations and classic car clubs. So, I don’t think you’ve got to hand Edith over just yet.”

There was a palpable relief in Kate’s eyes; “We are totally heading to new ways of living and being Nadeem — and we’re so unready for it. And here we are in 2020, with someone calling me up to buy another thing I probably don’t need — reminds me of the title of that early Kerouac & Burroughs collaboration; And The Hippos Were Boiled Alive In Their Tanks.”

“Excellent choice” he manages, before a hearty laugh bursts forth from him and they spend a few silent moments staring at their respective screens. Kate sighs — and this time she’s sure what the cause of the deep sigh is — it’s the way peacefulness seems to bloom in her heart when this human is in frame.

“Ciao Hippo”

“Ciao — bisous”