Simon´s Room

MaschataDiop

by MaschataDiop

Story

He had lived in a former hotel. Back then, in Cape Town. A towering concrete building in a row of small Victorian-style houses. In the middle of the city’s party mile. Simon shared the rent with 3 friends from his home country. The lift was broken, 7 floors on foot, 3rd door on the right, a small room, dark, the window covered with a flowered cloth. Opposite the building where the “Dubliner” offered black label and live music.

Light cigarette smoke in the air. And the smell of coffee. Two mattresses on the floor against each wall. His the one to the right of the window. Immediately recognisable. Accurately a grey and white sheet, a small cushion, a quilt, blue like the cushion cover, next to it his training shoes, flip-flops, a backpack. Above the mattress, to the side, a narrow wooden board, on it a razor blade, a toothbrush, a bar of soap. On a hook next to it, a towel. At the foot of the mattress a cardboard box, in it 2 pairs of pants, 2 T-shirts, 2 pairs of socks, a small French-English dictionary. Spread over the box the high-visibility waistcoat, yellow-orange.

Under the mattress an uneven spot, there lay 2 medical textbooks. In the backpack a bottle of hair shampoo, an aftershave, a tiny bottle of eau de toilette, a notebook, a pencil. The plastic-brown wallet, in it a few coins, 2 crumpled banknotes. A black, flip-open Nokia prepaid mobile phone. A condom. Peeling paint on the walls. A poster of a basketball player. Scribbles, daily marks. Involuntarily, she had to think of a prison.

On the other mattresses, woollen blankets, colourful, a little crumpled, not as smoothly pulled as on Simon’s bed. A fly-dirt encrusted light bulb on the ceiling, a matchbox on the window sill, a half-burnt candle on a tin can. No refrigerator.

She didn’t know when she had first noticed Simon. She had been staying with a host family. Her daily walk took her down Kloof Street from their flat in the middle-class Gardens district. Past the high school. Simon sat on the wall in front of it. Mostly looking at his mobile phone. When he heard a car slowing down, he raised his eyes, leapt nimbly onto the pavement, hurried towards the approaching vehicle, waved his long arms in the direction of the next parking space. His lean body, the baseball cap, the orange and yellow high-visibility waistcoat like all the parking guards in Cape Town wore, back in the year before the first World Cup in Africa.

He had followed the hope of decent work, like many from his homeland, the Congo. But there was no money to be made here, no dignified job to be had, he said. At that time. On her last night in town.

She had never entered Simon’s room. But she always saw it when she thought of him. As if she had taken a photo of it. With her inner camera.

© MaschataDiop 2021-05-16

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