Nocturne

This is a harrowing tale from last night.

I was out at the goodbye gathering of my friend George. It was held in Melville, the hip neighborhood next to my own. Since I am no longer working, strictly speaking, I decided to stay out late (until about 3). Then a drunken rationalization took over: nobody is out this late, and home is only 15 minutes away. I should be fine walking. I may be drunk, but not to the point that I am unaware of my surroundings.

BAD IDEA.

About halfway to my house, near the one major intersection on the route, an off-white, old-model small Japanese sedan pulled up next to me. The engine made a distinctive whirring sound, the kind of noise manual Japanese cars tend to make. There was a lone driver, who seemed to be saying a greeting. I stopped, but stayed as far away from the car as possible. Suddenly, the digital camera I was carrying in one pocket to take a few last pictures of George felt very heavy.

Driver: "How is it?"

Me: "Fine, thanks."

"You need a lift somewhere? I can give you a lift. Just give me 10 rand."

"No, thank you."

"You sure? It's no problem."

"No, I'll be all right, thank you."

Then I walked away. But as I walked away, I watched behind me out of the corner of my eye. The car drove several feet and turned left into Campus Square, our local shopping center.

Now why would anyone need to go in there this time of night? I thought to myself. I could only come up with two possibilities: that he was taking some kind of shortcut...or that he had gone out of his way to talk to me to begin with, and was looping around for another pass.

Quickly, I crossed the street into the extreme darkness of the next section of road on my trip home. I've been reading a lot of thrillers and suspense novels over the past few months, and one thought went through my head: in conditions where you are all by yourself, darkness is an ally. I wanted to be obscured in case the guy decided to return along his route.

A few minutes later, I heard that distinctive whirring sound again. Now, understand that very, very few people are out at this time of night in Johannesburg. So the sound of another(?) Japanese car instantly caught my attention. Behind me, I could see headlights turning onto the street I was on.

The street I was on provided a couple of advantages: one, it gets very dark at night because there aren't enough streetlamps. Two, there are several massive trees with large trunks that cast very long shadows. I pressed myself up against one of these trees, on the side away from the approaching car. Then I watched.

The approaching car looked remarkably like the one that had stopped near me earlier. It drove past without any sign of slowing. I waited until the car seemed safely in front of me, and resumed my walk. Maybe it was only my paranoia, but it seemd to me that the driver was going a teeny bit too slowly for someone anxious to get somewhere late at night. Then again, it was approaching the red light where my current street intersected my home street, so maybe it was slowing down to stop.

Then the car slowed down dramatically, and I saw the glow of white reverse lights. He's turning around!

Quickly, I pressed myself up against another massive tree trunk facing away from the road. The shadow the tree cast was so large that anyone would have been hard-pressed to see me, even with headlights. I knew this because the street made me nervous at night for that very reason.

The car drove past, and continued all the way to the intersection where I had first met the 'samaritan'. Then it turned left onto the main road.

I walked extremely quickly, listening for any sound of the approaching car. Crossing the traffic light intersection, I immediately chose the darker side of the road. My street is actually well-lit, but is also completely deserted at that hour. This was an occasion where I didn't want to be seen.  Thank God for Robert Ludlum and Jason Bourne.

Needless to say, I made it home safely. But I also knew that I'd made an extremely bad decision. 30 rand isn't much to spend on a taxi -- especially when a simple walk home can be so harrowing. I won't ever do that again...and it reinforced one of the many things I miss about my own country.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit