Nineveh. Henrietta Rose-Innes

      For my mother, who introduced me to the Assyrian and the tsetse fly.

      And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he shall uncover the cedar work.

      This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!

       Zephaniah 2:14–15

      My possessions, like a flock of rooks rising up, have risen in flight. He who came from the south has carried my possessions off to the south – I shall cry “O my possessions!” He who came from the highlands has carried my possessions off to the highlands – I shall cry “O my possessions!” The swamp has swallowed my treasures...Men ignorant of silver have filled their hands with my silver. Men ignorant of gems have fastened my gems around their necks. My small birds and fowl have flown away – I shall say “Alas, my city”...Woe is me, my city which no longer exists – I am not its queen. I am not its owner. I am the good woman whose house has been made into ruins, whose city has been destroyed, in place of whose city a strange city has been built.

       Lament for Ur (The goddess Ningal weeps for her city) c. 2000 BC

      I feel like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, when I read about the capturing of rare beetles.

       Charles Darwin 1854

      CONTENTS

1. SWARM

2. RELEASE

3. CRACKS

      4. AT THE GATES

      5. BULLY BEEF

      6. SWAMP

      7. GOLF

      8. SCRITCH, SCRATCH

      9. UNDERWORLD

      10. VIP

      11. ALMA

      12. SACRIFICE

      13. RATS IN A RATTRAP

      14. ARMED RESPONSE

      15. MAZE

      16. LEAVING NINEVEH

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

       1

       SWARM

      Caterpillars? Easy, thinks Katya. Even these, thick-clustered, obscuring a tree from bole to crown and shivering their orange hairs. Caterpillars she can deal with.

      Still, it’s a strange sight, this writhing tree: a tree in mortification. Particularly here, where the perfect lawn slopes down to the grand white house below, between clipped flowerbeds flecked with pink and blue. Off to the side, just in the corner of her vision, a gardener is trimming the edge of the lawn, his eyes on Katya and the boy and not on his scissoring blades. Rising behind the scene is the Constantiaberg. It’s an autumn day, cool but bright. The mountains look their age, wrinkled and worn and shouted down by the boisterous sky. It’s a lovely afternoon for a garden party.

      But at the center of this picture is an abomination. This single tree sleeved with a rind of invertebrate matter, with plump, spiked bodies the color of burnt sugar. It’s possible to imagine that the whole tree has been eaten away, replaced by a crude facsimile made of caterpillar flesh.

      “Toby. Gloves,” Katya says, snapping her fingers and holding them out stiffly.

      Her nephew rolls his eyes – particularly effective, with those large pale orbs, green with the whites visible clean around the irises – but leans down from his superior height to press a crumpled ball of latex into her palm.

      The gloves are important. Katya is not at all squeamish about cold-blooded, squishy things, but some caterpillars have irritant spines. Thick gardening gloves are too unwieldy for this fine work, and Katya also prefers the feel of the latex: it deadens, but in tamping down the background stimuli, it also seems to isolate specific sensations. The gravelly landscape of bark, the warmth of skin without its friction. The gloves are part of the uniform, along with the steel-toed boots and lurid overalls. Her signature color: poison-toad green, boomslang green. While they are working, the uniform separates her and Toby from the pastel colors of lawn and flowers. They are all business.

      Katya shakes out the gloves and works them onto her hands. “We need to get some talc. Didn’t I ask you to get some talc?”

      Eye-roll. “Ja ja,” he says, fiddling with his silver-blond hair, which is scraped back into a scraggy bun with a rubber band. He’s been growing it ever since he left school a few months ago. He’s always ripping off the elastic, or jamming it closer to his scalp by yanking at the strands, a sight that makes Katya’s own hair prickle at the roots. Aunt and nephew both have their bangs pulled away from their faces in a practical way – although if you look closer the impression is diluted: the hairclips are sparkly, meant for little girls. Toby has supplied them and Katya wonders about their source. They are the kind of thing a teenage girl might wear, to be cute. One of several recent signs that her nephew might be in intimate contact with young ladies. What is he now, seventeen?