The JRB presents new short fiction by Mehita Iqani.
Double Flash
Professor Fisher stands at the tea station, stirring his melancholy cup of instant coffee in front of the noticeboard. Only five months ago he had affixed the group photograph at which he is gazing: eleven scientists and technicians making up the 36th South African Expedition to Marion Island.
The men had been in good humour, despite the blast of late summer heat in Pretoria during their pre-departure briefings, and pulled on the thick woollen jumpers that Mrs Fisher and her ring of knitting mothers, sisters and girlfriends had enthusiastically produced as an ‘indoor team uniform’. They convened at Fisher’s met lab at Tukkies and arranged themselves dutifully: five at the back on chairs, the Prof in the middle, and six in the front, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The photographer insisted that the grounded chaps arrange their arms evenly, resting elbows on knees and clasping hands in front. For symmetry, he said. The result was, in fact, rather pleasing. Mrs Fisher, bless her, had been right about the matching knitwear. It signalled team, implied cosy camaraderie, and somehow made the men come off rakish and mature. Fisher approved.
On arrival at the island in May, after the 35th had packed up and climbed aboard the Agulhas to head home, the 36th chirpily posted up the portrait during their self-thrown welcome party.
‘We’re family for the year, boys,’ Fisher told them in his little speech, ‘Let’s act like it. The deal is we all watch each other’s backs, trust each other to do our jobs, and pitch in to help when needed. In return, we get to become a part of the history of this place!’
There had been no hint of sedition or disagreement then, and everybody cheered in high spirits.
Now, five months later, something has gone wrong between one of the radio technicians, Meyer, and the ornithologist, Schmidt. They’ve been grumbling at each other, crashing teaspoons in this self-same sink, sighing dramatically at each other’s backs, stomping carpeting, slamming books closed. Fisher tells them in quiet asides they still have more than six months left on this deployment, and it is in everyone’s interests to get along. But like children, no, teenagers, they just won’t listen. It is bad enough that the rest of the men must tolerate their huffing and puffing, and under-breath mutterings while they’re all trying to have breakfast or enjoy a peaceful evening of cards and cigarettes in the lounge after a long day of sampling, deploying, cataloguing, logging. But for them to come to fisticuffs this evening, with Schmidt bunching up Meyer’s shirt under his throat, and Meyer spitting curses back into Schmidt’s face, means that things have gone too far. Fisher cannot deduce what on earth they have against one another. He cannot recall any specific triggering incident. He takes his coffee to the armchair in his quarters and wonders if there is something he missed about each fellow in the screening interviews.
Meyer, with his blond-and-blue cheer and neat moustache, went to great lengths to deliver pleasing answers to the panel. He grew up in a small farming town in the Orange Free State, dreamed of going to sea so he could see for himself the greatness of God’s creation, loved radio engineering with a juvenile’s enthusiasm for gadgets. Wanted to serve the greater good, et cetera. As well as his excellent interview technique, he had a clean medical record and unreserved endorsements from his predikant and Technikon lecturers, who underlined a sober, loyal and friendly character, alongside considerable intelligence. Fisher signed him on straight after the interview.
Dark-bearded Schmidt, with the cheeky smile, was top of his Biology class and a devoted birder. He enthused about the lifer he had just spotted the weekend before his interview, and the volunteer work that he had done with the Southern African Ornithological Society. The only son of a West Rand hardware store owner, he helped local high schoolers set up their own birding club, fundraising for bird books and binoculars. An exemplary young man in all respects, citing his grandfather as his role model. His GP wrote that he was in excellent health, with no hint of psychological trouble, and of above average fitness (his other interest was long-distance running). Schmidt’s heart desired to see the snowy albatross, and he wanted to contribute in some small way to ‘the legacy of the ornithological project’. Although Fisher had found that choice of phrase somewhat pompous for a twenty-four-year-old, he agreed that Schmidt was by far the best applicant.
Ordinarily, Fisher didn’t give a hoot if two of his students had some kind of argument. But things are different here. Only eleven men, a lot of work to be done, and the inevitably terrible weather making everything more onerous. He really would prefer it if everyone just got along. Just the other day, the two seemed the best of friends, going out of their way to assist each other with tasks when their own were done. Whence the conflict?
Was Schmidt under-exercised, therefore pent-up and grumpy? But just yesterday someone had needed to hike up to the crater that served as reservoir to Base, to check the water levels, and Schmidt had leapt up before anyone had a chance to clear throats or examine boots. It was not an easy climb, with bog and mire on the lower slopes, and loose scree higher up. Schmidt returned in record time with a good healthy flush in his cheeks. Surely that was enough exercise, even for a colt like him.
So then perhaps the problem lies with Meyer. He is content to clamber around base fixing things long after his actual work is done and has the excellent habit of taking good long daily walks. Fisher doubts that exercise is the problem here, Meyer is not that kind of high-energy type. Although Fisher set up a Sunday rota for the religious to do some bible study and prayer, it could be that Meyer is battling without the consistency and succour of an actual church and pastor. Maybe he is unfulfilled, with the paucity of spiritual inspiration available among these blasted seals and penguins and, to state the case bluntly, the disappointingly secular colleagues that arrived with him on the ship.
But no, they are both good eggs. Fisher trusts his initial judgement. The obvious and only reason for their bad humour must be that all the men are nearing that time when they suddenly realise that they are not even halfway through the posting. There are seven long months of work, cold and isolation stretching ahead. It is usually around this time that any ordinary fellow would really start to crave the attention, pleasantries and presence of the fairer sex. Just as he himself was terribly missing Mrs Fisher, her saucy way of twinkling out at him from the kitchen when she was mixing their G and Ts, the shape of her calves down to her narrow ankles, the swell of ample bosom in her blouse, he was suddenly certain that these two young lads were acting up because they were each missing a specific, pretty maiden back home.
Fisher did not believe in locker room talk. He advised the men at the outset that the best way to handle any longings for feminine company was to keep one’s thoughts private, not only for purposes of decorum and decency to their women back home, who scarcely deserved to be talked about in explicit terms with utter strangers, but also to not further disrupt the general work ethic on Base. It did no one any good to be hearing about eyelash-fluttering beauties back home, when here there were only hairy, stubbly, grunting oafs padding about in holey socks, publicly farting, scratching testicles with impunity. ‘The less we talk about women, the less we think about them,’ he counselled, once and only once, as once should be enough, in the very first week of their stay, ‘and the less we think about them, the quicker time will pass. This is the year for hard work, science, embracing God’s glorious creation, and personal growth. Make sure you take yourself home a man worthy of her devotion!’
But still, even excellent advice won’t keep longing from taking hold. Sensual deprivation can quickly grow into grumbling, sour disposition, outright anger, violence even. If this is the cause of the bitching between Meyer and Schmidt, thinks Fisher, there is really nothing at all that I can do about it. He’ll remind them not to pine for women after breakfast. They will have to find another way to get it out of their systems.
His coffee has gone cold, which is probably for the best anyway, as it is nearing 11 p.m., and he has to be up at five to make pancakes. This is his fatherly gesture towards a Saturday routine, and he won’t let the men down on this small slice of domestic comfort. It is not easy being at once father figure, scientific supervisor, spiritual counsellor and, until this recent spat, keeper of the peace for ten other men, with none of them for a moment considering what his needs might be, whether his cup was running empty.
Sighing heavily, Fisher prepares for sleep, soothing himself while imagining Mrs Fisher in the bathroom, applying nightly creams and potions to cheekbones, eyelids, forehead, sweet cheeks, neck, decolletage, her long thin fingers with pale pink painted nails moving in gentle circles, the ring finger diamond he chose for her glinting in reflection. ‘Good night my love,’ he whispers, and as he goes under, he is quite sure that he hears her echo it back to him.
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Meyer contemplates his calendar, on which he has been neatly crossing off days as they pass. This posting appealed not only for the adventure, but also to get a whole year off from the pastor’s wife trying to set him up with church girls. The way they batted their eyelashes at him over tea always produced mild panic. He did not expect to feel what he did when he saw Schmidt pulling off his sweaty T-shirt after gym. Or to have that picture in his head almost constantly since then.
It is only the 21st of September. Still almost seven months to go. He asks the Lord to give him the patience to accept the things he cannot change.
He picks up his bible and turns to 1 Corinthians 10:13. Whatever a man is tempted with, that temptation comes along with a means of escape, and it is never greater than the ability of the temptee to endure. Scripture brings clarity. Martin is temptation, yes, but he is also an opportunity for Meyer to work on himself, to grow, get stronger and clearer and kinder. He is all at once utterly disgusted with himself, that in the hallway he had thrown such degrading insults at Martin, his friend, his closest actual friend on this island. How had he let things go so far, how had he lost his moral compass? Perhaps this devilish wind was blowing the peace out of him. To speak not out of love for his neighbour—his literal neighbour, one of his only ten other neighbours on a remote bit of rock halfway to Antarctica—but from hate, and a hate that he himself did not actually even feel but had over the course of his own life been indoctrinated by others to parrot. This most certainly was not what Jesus wants for him. He must make amends.
He looks into the little mirror that he uses to tidy his moustache and initiates an earnest conversation with himself. Who are you really, Joseph Niels Meyer? Who are you? Are you a disciple of Christ or a cruel barbarian, taken to slinging insults at people that you love? As he looks into his own eyes, an inkling of truth dawns. The erotic idea can and must be resisted. Although he cannot love him in the way Schmidt wants, he nevertheless loves him. As a brother. A brother in Christ, if he could bring himself to repent, but even if not, that would not change the love that the Lord, and indeed Meyer, holds for him. If this was explained to Martin, in lieu of the well-rehearsed and in Meyer’s opinion now quite exhausted conversation about closets, societal progress and that soon everyone will be free to love whomever they wish to love, he will understand. He tilts the mirror to look at his throat and sees that the red marks from Martin’s fingers are still visible.
Meyer’s shame at how he conducted himself in the hallway is fuel for a new zeal. It can all be explained and resolved. He harbours no more anger about Martin’s violence. He sees that his refusal to discuss and debate provoked his friend. His mistake was thinking that to handle the temptation he should push Martin away. The correct approach was to embrace him, bring him closer to redemption and the full power and beauty of Christian love.
He puts his boots back on and makes for Martin’s door. He will ask for forgiveness, turn the other cheek. They could pray together. They shall fix everything, in the cold privacy of an early morning walk.
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How could one man be so beautiful, Schmidt wonders, and so goddamned infuriating?
Almost everyone on this expedition used ongoing university enrolments to defer military service, yet they must carry on with this ridiculous business of everyone calling each other by their last name, as though this is some kind of bootcamp. Are they scientists or cadets, for chrissakes. He prefers to call Meyer ‘Joseph’, his actual adorable given name, or better still, Joey, because of the painful innocence in his big eyes and the way his curls sometimes flop forward over them. It takes all Schmidt’s self-control to not lean forward across the table every morning at breakfast and tenderly brush them back up his forehead.
Joey insisted they had to call it off, not that ‘it’ had been anything except for eyes meeting in the laundry, a brush of the hand in the library, an arm around a shoulder on a long walk to see how the sealers were getting on. And then at the gym, if that’s what you could call an icy, mouldy room featuring three skipping ropes, a bunch of mismatched weights and a couple of stinking old mats, it wasn’t even a kiss, their lips barely touched, but their faces came close and they breathed each other in and Schmidt ignited. Imagine finding another like him out here! Never mind a man that ticked every box about what he liked: blond, lithe, kind, and sinfully unaware of his own crackling sexuality.
Joey’s conscience, apparently, was in torment and he had to keep praying for a clue on how to handle the massive conflict between faith and desires of his flesh. As though this was the first time in existence that two men had the hots for each other. Schmidt told Joey that it was absolutely not a conflict, God loves us, always did, and it is 1979 for goodness sake, society is moving in a different direction! Joey said what about getting arrested, what about the Immorality Act? Schmidt gestured laughingly around them, asking where are the police on this bitter wind-whipped outcrop of rock on an isolated island in the middle of ocean deep and wide? And even back home, Schmidt reminded him, the cops can’t arrest us all, can they?
Schmidt is deeply irritated by Joey’s unwillingness to reason, to accept that even though the good old RSA was backward in many ways indeed, change was coming. Five years ago he could only hide, but the weekend before getting on the ship he was at the Butterfly enjoying cocktails. In five more years, we’ll be just like New York City! But Joey had shuddered and whispered, what about Jesus, what about the police, all while maintaining belly-melting eye contact. Maybe it all would have landed better if they were discussing their frisson at the Butterfly or some other new bar that has surely popped up in Hillbrow since they left, the two of them whispering among other men in muscle-tees and bellbottoms. But all they had were ice pellets, albatross nests and chicks that needed counting, the rickety drafts of Base sinking daily deeper into the bog, a library of mottled books, tins of beans, instant coffee and proliferating mouse droppings. Of course they would have to be careful, even more so than back home. We live our lives privately, we survive. We made it here, didn’t we? We can stay under the radar like we always do.
Joey kept needing to ‘think’ about it, then started avoiding Schmidt in theatrical ways, like scurrying back out to his radio mast even though the workday had clearly ended.
It all erupted that very evening, when Schmidt stopped Joey in the hall and begged to please just talk about it again, and Joey said get out of his way, and Schmidt said he owed him at least a conversation, and Joey tried to push him off, and then he grabbed Joey’s shirt and pulled him close, whispering what they had was not something you could just push away, and then Joey lost it and started cursing him, saying that vile and hurtful word, and as they were suspended between the aggression of Schmidt’s fist bunched up under Joey’s chin and the shock of being almost outed, Fisher came into the corridor and saw the whole thing.
‘Break it up, boys.’ He went over to physically separate them. ‘Enough now. Whatever you two are arguing about, you need to sort it out like civilised men. You’re scientists, not blerry day labourers. Act the part!’
They were sent to their rooms, instructed not to come out until morning. The matter would be next discussed after pancakes.
Schmidt is still seething at having acted, and therefore having been treated, like an adolescent by the Prof, and at Joey for being such a pussy about everything. It could have been a beautiful thing, their little burning secret lighting up this dark and stormy place, they could have snuggled up to talk about birds, and weather, and radio signalling, and the colours of volcanic rock, and breathed in the perfect air, and when they got back home maybe it would have carried on, or maybe it would be over, but Schmidt was very sure that even if it ended they could have stayed friends. His anger subsides into sadness. What could have been; what will not be. He sinks to the bed to wallow.
Suddenly a gentle knock.
Schmidt opens the door. There is Joey. He tries to pull him inside, but he says, ‘No, let’s walk later. Meet me outside the lab at 4 a.m.’ And he is gone.
+ + +
Fisher wakes with a start, his dream mixing images of women’s legs and painted toes with his wife’s voice admonishing him for being late for dinner. It has been so long since he felt the soft touch of her palm on his balding pate. He wonders if he will have changed much by the time he gets home, or she. Will she still find him attractive? He wonders if she is missing him as much as he is her.
He reaches for his watch and, hearing the genny’s soft purring, switches on the side lamp. It’s a little after four, so it makes no sense whatsoever to try to go back to sleep. He needs to make the batter and let it rest; the boys expect their pancakes before weekend skivvy duties commence. He decides to just get up. He does his fifty push-ups and fifty jumping jacks, then warmed and livened, splashes some water on his face, towels it off, combs what is left of his hair, dresses. Woollen long johns and a long sleeve vest, thick socks, windproof trousers, a shirt, the team knitted jumper, his thick canvas windproof jacket. Mohair gloves (knitted by the Mrs), a snug warm beanie. A walk will clear his head, help him figure out how to get those two sniping grumblers in line before starting on breakfast.
Base is silent and peaceful, apart from a few righteous snores floating down the hallway. Fisher steps out on a remarkably still atmosphere, dark as midnight. Yesterday’s fierce wind has dropped. Some fog and clouds hang over the peaks, as is quite common, but out to sea it is clear, though the black night seems to absorb any possibility of reflection. He looks for the waning crescent moon, but it must be hidden. Knowing it to be quite unsafe for the knees to walk off path in the dark, on account of the bogs hidden under cushion plants, the general mire and swampiness of the terrain, not to mention the major risk of disrupting nesting birdlife, Fisher sticks to the well demarcated boardwalks between the few buildings that make up their tiny hamlet. He’ll keep an eye out for any parts of the decking that need shoring up. He strides happily, breathing full, fresh lungfuls of what is, certainly, the cleanest air in the Republic. Thinking again of Meyer and Schmidt, he admits, this posting can be hard. But it is also an acute privilege. Perhaps this is what he must lead with, when he tries to mend the peace between the two erstwhile friends. If they let all this wonder be eclipsed by petty bickering and interpersonal frustration, before they know it their year will be over, and they will have to pack their kit and climb on the ship, and their hearts will break from the tragedy of having wasted it all on nonsense, when they could have been working cheerfully as a team, getting things done, and entering into the annals of scientific history in their own small way.
Fisher takes the left boardwalk to the lab. He catches sight of movement ahead, just next to the building itself, up against its seaward wall. It could be a seal that has lumbered up from the beach—but at this time of night? He lightens his step, moves gingerly for fear of frightening whatever is there. It seems too large for a penguin. The giant albatross stick to their nests at night, as they should. If not mammal or avian then what could it be?
As he gets closer, he hears distinctly human whispering. A person? But who, and why is he talking to himself? He gets closer: two distinct tones are interwoven, but the shadow itself seems to be one, so closely pressed together are the bodies producing the voices. What could they possibly be discussing, why could it not be done in the light of day? The whispering stops and the shadow moves in on itself. A lightning silence charges its soft intimacy. Fisher cannot see what is happening; moves closer to decipher it. The shadow changes shape, and one side of it morphs lower, drops down, the other stays against the wall, and a movement emerges first gentle, then insistent and in place of the whispers comes a soft groan. With a terrible realisation Fisher starts to understand what he is seeing. He is transfixed, scared of revealing himself, his own shadow unwieldy on the boardwalk. The slightest movement might give him away. He should not stay; he sees that he has stumbled across an obscene intimacy. He ought not be witness. He cannot look away.
Flash one: a millisecond. A white-hot illumination. Schmidt on his knees, Meyer’s hand on the back of his skull, together making smooth movements.
A micro-whisper of darkness.
Flash two: several milliseconds, a longer build, the same burning white turns to butter, chamomile, gold, umber, red, hot crimson, blood. Schmidt gulps, Meyer arches from the wall, his eyes open in terrible ecstasy, registering Fisher on the boardwalk.
Ink descends.
A ripple spreads through the ionosphere.
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- Mehita Iqani is a researcher and writer. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Wits. She was writer-in-residence on the SA Agulhas II during its 2025 Marion takeover voyage, with the South African National Antarctic Artists and Writers Programme.
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Author’s Note: This story was written aboard the SA Agulhas II on their 2025 Marion takeover voyage, while I was writer in residence for the South African National Antarctic Programme Artist and Writers Project (AWP). I have borrowed the date, time and location of the Vela incident,* but everything else is pure fiction. My thanks to Charne Lavery for comments on the first draft, and for creating the AWP (with Jean Brundrit) in the first place.
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* The Vela incident
The South African naval base at Simonstown was declared off limits from 17–23 September 1979.
Early in the hours of 22 September, the US nuclear surveillance satellite Vela 6911 registered its 42nd sighting of a nuclear detonation at 47°S, 40°E in the Southern Ocean, near Prince Edward Island. The Vela had been commissioned specifically to look for nuclear activity on Earth. Vela had never been wrong before, in all its 41 previous sightings of nuclear activity. The satellite saw a bomb: one short flash, a complete blackout, then a second, longer flash. It could not have been anything else.
Experts deduced that it was likely a 2–3 kiloton neutron bomb, detonated in the air over the ocean.
The mission of testing at sea could have been completed with two or three ships or aircraft, and a crew of several dozen technicians. It would have taken a few hours to set up, milliseconds to detonate, and then a few more hours to gather the necessary data and depart. The Prince Edward Islands were a splendid place for a clandestine test, due to their shallow waters and high mountains for observations, not to mention their isolation and distance from other landmasses. South African naval vessels were on record as conducting ‘routine’ military exercises in the Southern Ocean on the date.
Radioactive debris from the detonation was caught in the next passing storm, which carried heavy rain to Australia. A scientist occupied with a longitudinal study testing sheep thyroid for radioactivity found Australian sheep positive during early October 1979. Never had they been before, never were they again.
Owing to the location of the double-flash event in South Africa’s territorial waters, South Africa was the prime suspect of having contravened the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which forbade any testing in oceans or atmospheres.
South Africa’s foreign minister made a point of not outright denying responsibility, but also actively deflecting attention to other possible causes of the double flash. ‘We didn’t do it, but it suited us for it to seem that we might have,’ Magnus Malan, head of the SADF at the time, said of the ambiguity, decades later.
In the week after the event, the Israeli defence minister, an atomic hawk, was in South Africa for meetings with the head of the South African Atomic Energy Agency. A former commander of the Simonstown naval base said, off the record, that he had overheard from a reliable source that the detonation was a joint test in the interests of both countries, with the codename Operation Phoenix.
South Africa was building its nuclear capacity in the late nineteen-seventies, but Armscor only developed a functioning nuclear device in 1987. In early 1979, South Africa had started work on a small nuclear device intended for underground testing in the Kalahari, but it was not ready by September. Historians of South Africa’s nuclear efforts maintain that the country’s military did not have the capacity to detonate a bomb at sea in September 1979. Israel, however, did, even though it had been denying its nuclear achievements as a matter of national foreign policy. Why the two pariah nations allegedly partnered on this event, and what they each stood to gain from it, remains a point of speculation.
(De Geer and Wright, 2018; Frazier, 2006; Husain, 1982; Masiza, 1993; Monterey Institute of International Studies, 2007; Polakow-Suransky, 2010; Van Wyk, 2010)
Sources
De Geer, Lars-Erik and Wright, Christopher M, The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: Radionuclide and Hydroacoustic Evidence for a Nuclear Explosion, Science & Global Security, 26, 1 (2018), 20–54.
Frazier, Javan, Atomic Apartheid: United States-South African Nuclear Relations from Truman to Reagan, 1945-1989, PhD dissertation (2006), Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, US.
Husain, Azim, The West, South Africa and Israel: A Strategic Triangle, Third World Quarterly, 4, 1 (1982), 44–73.
Masiza, Zondi, A Chronology of South Africa’s Nuclear Program, The Nonproliferation Review, 1, 1 (1993), 34–53.
Monterey Institute of International Studies, South Africa Nuclear Chronology, 2007, https://www.nti.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/south_africa_nuclear.pdf.
Palakow-Suransky, Sasha, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, 2010, Jacana Media, Auckland Park, South Africa.
Van Wyk, Anna Mart, Apartheid’s Atomic Bomb: Cold War Perspectives, South African Historical Journal, 62, 1 (2010), 100–120.
