The Antique Shop - Part 7

If she recognises me, she doesn’t show it. I look away and pretend to write something in my notes. What the hell is going on here? I feel like I’ve been duped in some elaborate game. I try to look at her indirectly. I focus on the men she’s with so that she’s in my peripheral vision but won’t make eye contact with me. One of the men, introduced as Mr Miya, starts speaking. He has a slight hare lip and a confident voice. He has the look of someone who knows and gets what he wants. He pauses every few sentences for the translator to speak. I immediately feel sorry for him. It can’t be more than 20 degrees but he’s sweating so much droplets are running down his face and dropping from his nose. I’ve never seen someone so nervous. His English is pretty broken but he conveys the gist of Mr Miya’s speech. Every now and again he pauses for a few seconds as his tongue fumbles with the unfamiliar English words, and when Mr Miya feels he is taking too long, he reprimands him sharply in Japanese. The hostility in his voice doesn’t need a translator. I wince as I imagine the translator’s knees being broken later in an underground parking lot somewhere.
The speech comes to an end and everyone claps dutifully. The translator moves behind everyone and dabs at his face with a handkerchief. His fringe is slicked against his forehead. Mr Miya and the Minister shake hands and smile to the flashing of cameras. I hate photo ops; the overlong handshakes, the gormless smiles, the little quips followed by manufactured chuckles. The canned laughter of the political arena. We all clap after the photos are taken.
- Who is that woman who came in with the Japanese delegates?
The journalist next to me shrugs his shoulders.
- Damned if I know.
A short guy with immaculate hair and blindingly white teeth announces that there’s breakfast outside and that the budget vote speech will commence shortly afterwards in the Old Assembly Chamber. My stomach grumbles, but I remember the boerewors breath the security guard breathed all over me and my hunger wilts. I settle for a cup of coffee and watch the stampede for the breakfast buffet. If there’s one thing that’s a great leveller, it’s free food. Lowly aides and deputy ministers pack around the buffet like warthogs at a scant waterhole. Tailored suit pants groan and stretch as their wearers bend over to choose food. I spot the guys who don’t like to admit their weight, squeezing size 46 legs into size 42 pants. The poor stitches which have to hold those seams together…
I try to spot the old lady without giving it away that I’m looking for her. I flick my eyes across the room casually. As I finish my coffee I see her leave the room and walk down a small corridor. I pretend to answer my phone and make a show of not being able to hear the person who called me and walk towards the same corridor. Once in there I see her turn left down another. I take a deep breath and decide to follow her. It’s not particularly clever following important and possibly shady people around the halls of parliament, but I can always use the excuse that I’m looking for the loo or something. I need a photo of this woman. If no one can tell me who she is, I’ll need to do some sleuthing of my own. I notice that she has stopped and is on a call of her own. I stick my phone out in front of me at arm’s length like a middle-aged person trying to focus on the small screen and pretend to send an sms. I take a few pictures of her as I get close. They’re pretty blurry, but not bad considering the yellow light of the corridor and the fact that I can’t stand still. Her eyes follow me as I walk past but I don’t look at her. Her voice is clipped and sharp, and she is clearly not happy with whoever she’s speaking too.
- ...unacceptable! I delivered it myself precisely so this wouldn’t happen.
A pause. I slow down to hear more.
- I don’t care that the street was busy! Your job was to make sure there was no interference. You clearly didn’t do it. Explosions that go off in the wrong place make for messy business. You’re damn lucky your family...
I turn another corner and lose her words in the echo. This woman is clearly not someone to stuff with. I realise that I can’t really go back the way I came without looking suspicious, but the corridors and rooms I keep passing all look the same and it’s not long before I’m lost. I play the bumbling visitor and ask a harried clerk how to get to the Old Assembly Chamber.
I arrive at the Chamber’s gallery at the same time as the other journalists, who nod their heads in my direction in recognition. Parliament has been underway for a while it seems, because most people in the gallery and on the floor look to be in varying stages slumber except for the odd earnest or outraged MP. For a while I let myself enjoy the beauty of the sage assembly, the highly polished wooden walls, the exquisite roof, the rich green chairs, and reflect on the history that’s been written here, until the heckling from the MPs below brings me back. Parliament in person appears to be just as dreadful as on TV. A person from the opposition stands up to speak and is heckled and maligned the whole way through, much to the disgust of the speaker. She finishes and someone from the ruling party then speaks, which is the cue for the opposition speaker and her cronies to do the very same thing. If any of the dissent from either side was vaguely interesting or based on anything other than simple churlishness it would be okay, but it just seems like people heckle for the very sake of it.
I look at the chairperson and silently will him to say something, because it just seems that everyone is being obtuse out of some warped sense of political duty and party pride, rather than listening with a rational ear to what the other side has to say. After twenty minutes of this I’m just about ready to scream, when the somnolent chairperson awakes from whatever he was dreaming about.
- Honourable MPs, there must please be order.
There isn’t much authority to his tone, and after a light chuckle he returns to whatever his mind was dwelling on before he lifted the veil on it to speak. The MPs go right back to cackling and insulting each other. I manage to sit through another hour of this before deciding not to wait for the speech as I have a copy of it anyway. Plus I feel like I’m wasting my time when there are more pressing questions about who that old lady is and precisely what I’ve gotten myself into.
Leaving Parliament is mercifully easy and it feels good to be on the street again amongst real people who don’t feel the compulsion to smile for the sake of it when someone of a higher rank says something resembling a joke.
I need time to think and muse over the last 24 hours. As I inch my way through the city traffic and the buildings start to thin, I idly notice a black wisp of smoke up ahead. The traffic is even worse today than usual. It takes me 45 minutes to travel the six kilometres to the intersection where I turn off for my flat. I don’t give much thought to the smoke up ahead, or the sirens which are close by. It’s only as I turn onto my road that I begin to wonder what all the fuss is about. I don’t have to wonder for long.
Before me is my building. Where my third story flat used to be is a blackened shell with flames dancing merrily from the fuel my only possessions must be providing. The ground below is littered with chunks of concrete and burning debris which fire-fighters are dousing with foam. I get out of my car and vomit on the street.

© William Edgcumbe