The night had a hum, like the earth beneath the shack had an engine idling in it. Sizwe lay motionless on his bed. The slightly chilly breeze whistling over the shack seeped in through the gaps in his tin roof, dragging in the dust and smoke from outside. A dog barked in the distance, then another, and even further, one responded. But the air regained its stillness after some time, carrying the sounds of loud televisions and radios, and the solemn voices of mothers and fathers praying for the protection of their families before they slept.
Sizwe reached for the old voice recorder on the table next to his bed.
He pressed the record button and let it run, and in the darkness of his room, the tiny red light on it blinked like a heartbeat. He placed it back on the table and, for a while, lay silently watching its pulsating light from his bed, transfixed by its monotonous pattern. He listened to the world move outside the open window: rattling of the roof as the wind blew over it, a bottle breaking, someone coughing in the distance, their sickly voice calling to no one in particular.
Sizwe had no idea what he was trying to capture in his recordings anymore. He had started making them to understand the sounds keeping him up at night, but that was no longer the case. In the beginning, he wanted proof of the sounds, to prove to himself that he was not imagining the restlessness of the place he lived in. But later, after his friend, Tebogo, passed, his reason for making the recordings changed, developing a more significant purpose. Instead of searching only for unrecognisable sounds in the recordings, Sizwe now searched for his friend, a breath, a laugh, or that irritating way he cleared his throat before speaking.
Every morning before the sun rose, Sizwe replayed the recordings while sitting alone behind his shack, the recorder tightly pressed to his ear. The township would still be asleep. He kept to his task like a man possessed. During those grey hours before the township fully woke up, the place felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for someone to speak first. But that didn’t matter to Sizwe. The only thing that mattered to him was listening to the sounds coming from the device pressed to his ear.
The sounds of the township would later join in as the place took its first breath after a long night. It always began with the chorus of taxis competing to pick up the first commuters of the day. Next, the chatter of parents leaving their houses for work. Then, the laughter of children making their way to school would complete the uproar. Sizwe would keep his focus on the sounds coming from his recorder, and when the pandemonium became too loud for him to ignore, he would lock himself in, with the windows and curtains closed, and spend the rest of the day sleeping.
When he eventually woke, Sizwe would go back to listening to the recordings he had made, hoping the rest would have cleared his mind enough to help him pick up sounds he’d missed earlier.
But most of the time, that was never the case.
Like many people living in his area, Sizwe was unemployed. But unlike them, he spent most of his time locked in his room, choosing to let the world carry on without him instead of taking part in its numbing drone. But things were not always like that. Back when Tebogo was still alive, Sizwe used to spend most of his time with him. They would walk around their township, recording the growing number of sounds polluting the dusty air of their growing settlement. They would then listen to the sounds together, sitting in the same spot where he now sat alone every morning, and then choose from their bounty which ones Tebogo should use for the songs for his mixtapes.
But then Tebogo died suddenly from a stab wound he suffered while walking back to his house from Sizwe’s late one winter evening, and the sounds Sizwe used to listen to with his friend became something different.
The change, while gradual, felt quick. It began when Sizwe received the news of his friend’s passing from Tebogo’s mother. By the time they buried him in the cemetery behind their settlement, every sound Sizwe heard around their settlement sounded foreign to him. It was as if his ability to hear the beauty of the place had been buried with his friend, doomed to stay hidden from him forever, and he did not know how to get it back. So, he decided to listen to other sounds.
***
Tebogo’s mother gave her son’s recorder to Sizwe after his funeral, but instead of walking around the settlements to record, Sizwe now did so from the darkness of his room.
When he started making the recordings, Sizwe never knew what to do with them after he was done listening. Like most useless things, he got rid of them. But during one warm, early morning, while Sizwe was listening to the previous night’s recordings under the growing light of the sun, he heard a faint hum that sounded like someone whispering his name. He pulled the recorder away from his ear and looked around like he was expecting to see someone who would verify what he’d just heard. His heart raced and body shook so much he was afraid he would drop the recorder. He took in some deep breaths to calm himself down. When he pressed the recorder back to his ear, the hum was no longer there. He listened to it a few more times, but the sound never returned.
From that day on, Sizwe began saving the recordings he’d made, cataloguing them in a notebook filled with timestamps and notes.
To anyone else, the notes would not make much sense. But to him, each marked a point in a recording where something spoke to him. Most of the sounds were not long, a cough heard at 1:30; laughter heard at 2:14; the voice of an unknown male heard at 3:07, but they all carried possibilities he wanted to explore. So, for weeks, Sizwe spent most of his mornings sitting on the old chair behind his shack, cataloguing the sounds, certain he was meant to hear them. He began spending longer periods outside, no longer locking himself in his room when the sun came out. After weeks of doing the same thing every morning, he became so obsessed with the task that, to most people who saw him sitting there with the recorder, he looked like someone who had lost his connection with reality, which was true because, as time went on, every sound began to remind him of his friends.
Raindrops on his roof sounded like Tebogo’s rough laughter, the sound of the wind reminded him of the arguments they used to have while talking about music, and the static between each sound reminded him of the silences they often shared while walking around the settlement. He noted these in the notebook he now carried everywhere he went, hoping to keep the memory of his friend alive.
One morning, a neighbour, feigning concern for Sizwe, stood behind her shack while Sizwe, sitting outside, was busy cataloguing sounds he’d recorded the previous night.
“Makhi,” she said, leaning on the wall of her shack, causing the metal sheets to crackle. “How are you this morning?”
Sizwe paused his recorder and moved it away from his ear. He turned to face the woman, and the tired look in his eyes would have worried her had she been close enough to see them.
“Sis Nora,” he said. “I’m okay, ma. How are you?”
“I’m good, ngwanake.” She watched as Sizwe returned the little black device to his ear and look down at the little black book resting on his lap. “What are you busy with there?”
When Sizwe began making his recording, he never expected to answer questions about what he was doing. He thought about how best to explain it to the woman now looking at him with expectant eyes, but nothing came to mind. How in God’s name was he supposed to explain to her that he was documenting sounds he had recorded the previous night? Besides, his mind was a blur from having not slept the entire night, and to be honest, he did not feel like explaining anything to her anyway.
“Nothing important, ma.”
“It can’t be ‘nothing’ if you’re doing it every morning,” the woman said. “I mean, I see you sitting there with that thing and that book of yours every morning, so I’m sure what you’re doing must be important.”
“Well, it’s not, ma,” Sizwe said, irritation growing in his voice.
He stood from the chair and began walking to his room. As he was about to open the door, the woman spoke again.
“Son.” Her voice sounded dejected, like she felt sorry for what she was about to say. “I never got to say sorry for the loss of your friend. I know you two were very close and losing him must have been very difficult for you.”
Sizwe winced, almost as if the woman’s words had struck him. In some ways, they had. But, instead of causing him physical pain, they opened wounds he had been trying hard to stitch with the recordings he had been making for weeks now. He thought about turning to face the woman to respond, but his eyes were beginning to well up, and he did not want to give her another reason to continue talking. “Thank you,” he said with as steady a voice as the emotions growing in his throat would allow, and continued into his room.
Sizwe sat on his bed for a while, allowing the emotions the woman’s words had stirred in him to settle, then he listened to older recordings. To his surprise, nothing in the recordings was as it had been when he first listened to them. Sounds had shifted, and, even more surprisingly, new voices and sounds had appeared. Sizwe went through every recording, and each had taken on a new form. He blamed this development on his fatigue, but something else crossed his mind. What if the recorder was haunted? What if his grief was rearranged?
He spent the rest of that day mulling over this development and the questions it raised and fell asleep earlier than usual that night. But the questions followed him into his dreams, haunting him until the alarm on his phone woke him in the morning.
***
He took a walk around the settlement, listening to the silence that always rested over the place at that time of the day. A small sadness caught briefly in his throat as he walked past some of the places and things he used to see with Tebogo, but he managed to contain himself and make his way back to his street, midday, without having a tear fall down his cheeks. Turning the corner leading to his shack, Sizwe saw a young boy standing by. It took him a while to recognise who it was, but as he got closer, he realised it was Mpho, the young boy who lived next door to Tebogo, and it looked like he had been standing there for a long time.
“Buti-Sizwe,” the kid said, the words almost tripping over each other as they rushed out of his smiling lips. “Ma-Tebogo asked me to tell you she wants you to come to her place for dinner today.”
Sizwe didn’t know much about the boy, just what Tebogo had told him. The few times he had spoken to him, the kid’s eyes had had a glaze to them that made him feel uncomfortable, but Tebogo had told him that was just how the kid was. According to him, the kid spent most of his time lost in a world only he had access to, speaking to people only he could see, and laughing at jokes only he could hear. But on rare occasions, like at that very moment, he was just another kid from their settlement with the same sad eyes every other kid had, but his were lodged in sockets dug deep into a thin, long face.
“Okay, kid,” Sizwe said. “Tell her I’ll come.”
The kid smiled and ran off toward Tebogo’s house without saying a word.
The woman from next door was standing by her shack again, her eyes focused on Sizwe. He rushed into his shack before she could say anything to him. It was a hot Sunday afternoon, and the silence of the early morning was seeping into the rest of the day, making it feel to Sizwe like time was not moving. But before long, it was late afternoon, and he needed to get ready for Tebogo’s house. He had not been there since his friend’s funeral. He had been apprehensive, but when he finally arrived, an odd sense of calmness came over him. He knocked on the door and waited for Tebogo’s mother to answer. When she opened, she smiled at him and looked at his hands. Without thinking, he had brought with him the notebook and the recorder. He placed his arms behind his back to hide them.
“Son,” she said. “Come in.”
She turned around and walked into the house, expecting Sizwe to follow.
The sun was beginning to set; the air outside was already getting cooler. But the atmosphere in the small, dimly lit shack Tebogo used to call home felt warm and heavy. Sizwe could feel this heaviness from the door. He took some time at the threshold, preparing his mind for the change it was about to experience.
Stepping over the threshold felt to Sizwe like he was walking into a familiar world he was no longer a part of. He recognised the small round table in the middle of the kitchen and the mismatched plastic chairs surrounding it, the rusty double-burner stove, the beat-up microwave, the large plastic bucket holding water, the old leather couches in the crammed living room, and the small television on the makeshift stand. The woman who had opened the door for him looked unrecognisable. Her face looked different to him, like he was remembering it from an old dream, and he felt guilty for feeling that way.
Tebogo’s mother went to the pots steaming on the stove and spoke to Sizwe without turning to face him. “I see you’re still using that old recorder.”
The aroma of the food filled the air like an imposing memory. “Yes, ma. I am,” he said, placing both the book and the recorder on the table before him.
He looked at them for a while, thinking how the memories of his friend he had recorded, as crazy as they sometimes were, felt more real to him than the ones he had while sitting on the couch he once enjoyed sitting on. The thought sent a volt of sadness through his body, and he had to remind himself to calm down before the feeling took over. Tebogo’s mother walked back into the room after a while. Her face looked even more foreign to him through the haze of his teary eyes. Tebogo’s mother sat next to him on the couch and put on a smile. She gently placed her hand on his lap and did not say anything for a while.
“So,” she finally said. “Do you still walk around recording people with that thing?”
“Kind of,” Sizwe said. “Actually, I was hoping you could listen to some of the recordings I’ve made and tell me what you think.”
He picked up the recorder and handed it to her. She looked at it for some time, as if afraid what touching it might do.
“What are you expecting me to hear?”
Sizwe didn’t know. He was just hoping she would hear her son’s echo. He smiled at her and pointed at the play button on the recorder.
“Just listen and tell me what you hear.”
She pressed play and raised the recorder to her ear. Finally, someone else was going to listen and reassure him that what he had been hearing was real. He watched her brows fold as she concentrated on the sounds coming from the little recorder. He felt certain that, at any moment now, she was going to scream out when she heard Tebogo’s voice.
He waited and waited, but nothing happened.
She looked at him with confusion in her eyes, then she pressed the pause button and handed it back to him.
“So?” he asked, unable to contain himself. “What did you hear?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Nothing?” A look of confusion crossed his face, and he did his best to hide it from her. “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?”
“Yes.” Her expression went from confusion to concern. “Was I supposed to hear something?”
“No,” Sizwe said. He paused, looking at the recorder now in his hand. “I just thought —” Sizwe’s body began to shake. The recorder suddenly felt too heavy for him to hold, so he placed it on top of the book and sat back on the couch.
“You know what,” Tebogo’s mother said, standing from the couch. “Let me dish up for us, and we can talk about this while we are eating.” E
