The Raft: A Novel by Fred Strydom Page A

embellished. A stick of primed wood never saw a lick of paint and nor was a meal ever garnished. The commune was a place of bareness. A practical bone yard. And now, without a soul in sight, the place was even gloomier than usual. It seemed for a moment that all activity had not been postponed but permanently abandoned, as if everyone, all at once, had come to the realisation they’d been living on a stage of cardboard props, none of which really worked at all.
    I continued walking towards the botanical garden.
    I didn’t think I’d see Moneta, but there was no other place to look. I thought again about her story—each inspired detail. I thought about her running between those trees, and long-legged Burt chasing her the way some horrible thing chases you in a nightmare. Tearing through those bushes until the bushes began to tear through him. Now, perhaps old Moneta had chosen to run again, run from this commune the way her memory told her she had, that day in the woods.
    But was there anywhere left to run?
    A warm wind passed through the trees, ruffling the leaves and startling brightly coloured birds. They took to the sky like shreds of a rainbow. Below, an arcade of palm trees shuffled in the stiff breeze. My path ran alongside the beach and then snaked between the trees. Soon, the glistening glass dome came into view. I passed through the wild grasses and could see Moneta’s plants through the shimmering glass walls.
    Junyap was hobbling awkwardly out of the front door, carrying a blue bucket, tipping his body to the side to counter the weight of it. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and flapped the top of his shirt to pull cooler air in. He caught sight of me. I waited for a reaction, but he did little but stare. I redirected my gaze to the dome.
    Everything seemed to be as it had been when I’d left it: the perfect green ferns, the vegetables, the bushels of herbs, the radiant petals of the flowers. And there were the bags of fertiliser, the pots I’d moved and the large wooden crate I had dragged.
    The crate. The six-foot-long crate was now packed with soil and blanketed in tufts of large-leafed plants.
    ( The trees, it seems, will take the body of a dead thing as quickly as they want it, or want to get rid of it )
    I swung to Junyap to confirm my conclusion. He placed the bucket on the ground beside him. Holding my gaze, he raised his right hand and put a finger to his pursed lips …
    Sssshhh.
    A chill ran through me, but I nodded. I understood, immediately and completely. There was nothing left to be said: I already knew more than had been intended. Any questions would only betray Moneta’s final wish.
    Unhurriedly, and without looking over my shoulder, I strolled away—away from Junyap, away from the greenhouse—and back through the long green undergrowth towards the path.
    The weather was changing again. As I made my way back to the commune, the wind whistled listlessly overhead. But it was also carrying something. Something that made me sick to the bottom of my stomach. The wind, an unscrupulous messenger spirit flitting over the ocean and beach, carried the stench of oil smoke and burning flesh.

Extracts
    (Excerpt from the The Age of Self Primary )
    The day every person on earth lost his and her memory was not a day at all. It couldn’t be slotted in a schedule or added to a calendar. In people’s minds, there was no actual event—no earthquake, tsunami, or act of terror—and thus whatever had happened could be followed by no period of shock or mourning. There could be no catharsis. Everyone was simply reset to zero.
    This moment of collective amnesia could not be understood within any context because it was the context itself that had been taken away. There was nothing anyone could do to repair themselves because they didn’t know what was broken. Before the resetting, they had created for themselves lives of routine and were motivated to participate in the world because they knew where they