Borderline

by Marita van der Vyver

  The police must have called his mother, who must have made a plan, because shortly afterwards he was sent to a state facility in Pretoria, where he stayed for increasingly longer spells. Where he died years later. Of heart failure, presumably. Probably caused by two decades of compulsory medication, combined with far too much alcohol and nicotine.

  About everything that happened in the final chapter of Theo’s life, Theresa could only speculate. In the last few years, she would occasionally hear from someone who had spotted him somewhere in the north of the country. At the Johannesburg station. With a white beggar on Church Square in Pretoria. With a black car guard outside a shopping mall on the East Rand. Rumours that reminded her of Lou Reed’s song about the last great American whale: some people said they saw him at the Great Lakes, others said they saw him somewhere off the coast of Florida, his mother said she spotted him in Chinatown. But you can’t always trust your mother, can you?

  Theresa hears Ruben move around in the apartment. It is time to get up and say goodbye. To Ruben, to Cuba, to Theo. Especially to Theo. She closes the little book in her lap.

  She doesn’t even know exactly when her former husband died. Her former mother-in-law made no attempt to contact her to share the news. Theresa only heard about it by chance a week or two later, during a phone conversation with a Gauteng colleague who knew her former mother-in-law’s attorney. There had been no memorial service, she heard. Who would have attended it? Perhaps one or two of his nurses or carers, Theresa hoped, because it was an unbearable thought that a sixty-year-old man’s life could be extinguished like a candle flame without anyone except his mother grieving over him. He was cremated, the attorney said, and the box with ashes was to be inlaid in his father’s grave in Pretoria. Next to the grave where his mother too would rest someday. Safely back between his parents.

  He would’ve hated that if he’d known.

  She wishes she could have told him how she cried about him when the news finally reached her. Fuckit, Van Velden, do you know how many tears I’ve cried since I heard you were dead? she would have liked to say to him. As if a tap was opened somewhere inside me that I couldn’t turn off again. You’d probably think it was funny. Me, who always wanted to be such a tough cookie. And now I just can’t stop weeping. About you and about me and about the Cuban soldier and about everything that could have been different. Oh, good grief, here I go again.

  She removes her glasses, rubs her eyes, starts laughing helplessly while she cries. Because she can see him again the way he looked decades ago, in the newspaper office, when they were still only friends, when everything still could have turned out differently.

  Yes, Marais, it’s quite shit being dead, he says with a wry smile as he lights a cigarette. There are no cigarettes or liquor or sex or anything good on this side. But if I hadn’t died, I never would have known how much you’d miss me, right?

  She even imagines that she hears him laughing with her.

  27. MI QUERIDA HIJA

  Ten days later she places two of the mermaid ashtrays she bought in Cuba on the table in a Cape Town restaurant.

  Sandra’s neat eyebrows shoot up as she glances from the ashtrays to Theresa and back at the ashtrays, uncertain about how to react to this unwelcome gift.

  Nini bursts out laughing: ‘Ah, another gimcrack to add to my growing collection. Can I have the one with orange hair?’

  ‘I chose her specially for you.’

  ‘Because she reminded you of me? How sweet.’ Nini flicks her dyed red fringe with a show of vanity, like a model in a shampoo commercial.

  ‘And the one with the black hair and pale little face is for my Snow White sister.’

  ‘She looks more like Morticia Addams than Snow White,’ Nini says.

  Sandra now joins in their laughter, relieved that she doesn’t have to take the gift seriously. She has always battled to grasp irony or sarcasm; she is simply too innocent.

  ‘I also bought a blonde mermaid which I’m keeping for myself. I will need an ashtray when I smoke the cigars I brought back with me.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve started smoking again,’ Sandra frowns, concerned.

  ‘No, I just puffed on cigars a few times.’

  ‘But weren’t you afraid you were going to want a cigarette again?’

  ‘I will probably want a cigarette for the rest of my life,’ Theresa says and raises her mojito to her two table companions. ‘But if I learned one lesson in Cuba, it is to not be so terribly afraid of everything all the time.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Nini takes a sip of her daiquiri.

  Theresa looks away from their curious eyes, at the posters of Che on the walls. It had been her idea that they should meet at this Cuban eatery in Cape Town. Not quite as good as being in Havana, she had said, but not a bad consolation prize. Nini had agreed right away, eager to draw the juicy details of Theresa’s Cuban romance out of her. ‘I am going to feed you mojitos until you spill everything,’ she’d promised on the phone. And took no notice at all when Theresa protested that there was nothing to spill.

  Sandra had required more persuasion. She’d been just as eager as Nini to hear more about the mysterious taxi driver and trumpet player Theresa had mentioned a few times. Probably a few times too many, Theresa now suspects. But Sandra rarely went out at night because she couldn’t leave their father at home alone.

  Theresa had called Hanna – Sandra’s adult daughter who still lived in a granny flat in her garden – to ask if she would look after her grandfather for the evening. Of course, Hanna had said. No problem.

  Theresa had felt an unexpected pang of longing for Oreste.

  It would be cool if her mother went out for a bit, Hanna had added. ‘I have a feeling she uses Oupa as an excuse to stay at home all the time. You know how she likes to be a victim.’ Hanna had said it without rancour, merely amused, in an affectionate way.

  When had her niece become so wise? The forward little girl whose birthday party Theresa had had to attend year after year, later on a wayward teenager with an enormous drug problem, now apparently a sensible young woman who wanted her mother to have a life again.

  The result of this telephonic plotting was that Sandra would stay over with Theresa tonight so she wouldn’t have to drive back to Somerset West alone on the N2 late at night. Another excuse that Sandra regularly offered as an obstacle in the way of Theresa’s suggestions. And granted, it was a valid excuse, because the N2 could get dangerous at night, with rocks being thrown off bridges and all kinds of obstacles blocking the road.

  But now Sandra is looking as excited as a schoolgirl who has escaped from a strict boarding school, her cheeks glowing with pleasure as she glances around the noisy restaurant, her eyes shiny above the bamboo straw through which she is sipping her pina colada.

  It’s still early on a Friday night, but the restaurant is already packed, and cheerful Cuban music can be heard above the din of voices. The young waiter who is serving them has smouldering black eyes and a seductive white smile. Nini nods approvingly as he walks away, her eyes on his backside in exceptionally tight black jeans.

  ‘Aren’t we a bit too old for this place?’ Sandra wants to know.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Theresa says, ‘but I haven’t felt this young in ages.’

  ‘Ever since she flirted with that taxi driver, she’s been out of control,’ Nini warns Sandra and looks at Theresa expectantly.

  Theresa tries to smile as enigmatically as Ruben and takes another sip of her mojito. The broad outline of her Cuban journey she has already shared with them. They’d been just as surprised as her to hear that the fallen soldier’s daughter had tied the knot with a South African and that Theresa would now have to continue the search in South Africa. Although it’s clear they are much more interested in her relationship with Ruben than in her search for Mercedes, she forces the conversation back to the search.

  ‘Post that little picture you have of her on Facebook and Instagram,’ Nini suggest
s, ‘and ask everyone you know on social media to share it. These days that’s the best way to find anyone.’

  Theresa reminds her that she still knows only two people on social media – and that they are both sitting at the same table as her this evening.

  ‘Ask your friends in Pretoria to help you,’ Sandra suggests.

  ‘What friends in Pretoria?’

  ‘I don’t know, you always have lots of friends everywhere.’

  ‘Except on social media,’ Nini says disapprovingly.

  ‘I’m beginning to realise that I don’t really have all that many friends.’ She expects them to demur, to laugh and say that she has loads more friends than they do. But they look at her sympathetically, as if they have long suspected that all her talk about friends was a barrier behind which she hid her loneliness. This is such a shock to her that she drinks the rest of her mojito in a single gulp. ‘And I don’t know anyone in Pretoria well enough to ask them to help with something like this.’

  ‘What about Theo’s mother’s attorney?’ Nini asks.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Didn’t you say that one of your Gauteng colleagues knew him and that was how you heard that Theo had died? If he manages the mother’s affairs, he’s likely to handle Theo’s estate as well, then he’ll—’

  ‘I don’t think there’s “an estate” to handle.’

  ‘You know what I mean, someone who takes care of the post-death admin. Why don’t you contact him? Tell him you need his professional services. You’ve got this letter that Theo left behind – perhaps he can find out if Mercedes is still living in Pretoria?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Theresa nods, considering.

  ‘Just remember, attorneys are expensive,’ Sandra cautions.

  ‘As I discovered well enough when I got divorced,’ Theresa says with a wry smile.

  ‘And you may have to pay for a detective as well.’ Sandra is sounding more and more anxious. ‘Can you afford that? Are you sure it’s worth it?’

  ‘No,’ Theresa sighs. ‘I can’t afford it, especially not after blowing all my savings on a trip to Cuba. And I’m no longer sure of anything. But I can’t throw in the towel now?’

  The sexy waiter brings the empanadas they ordered, and flashes his loveliest smile at them.

  Nini returns his smile and orders another round of cocktails for everyone, again admiring his butt as he walks away. Then she leans across the table and beams her eyes like spotlights onto Theresa. ‘Okay, enough about attorneys and detectives and boring professions like that. Let’s rather talk about taxi drivers.’

  She pauses so meaningfully that Theresa laughs.

  ‘Or trumpet players,’ Sandra says.

  They remind her of female guests at a wedding waiting for the bride to toss her bouquet over her shoulder. Fizzing with excitement, ready to jump and knock each other out of the way to catch the sought-after bouquet. But what could she toss them tonight that would satisfy them? It’s no use saying that nothing happened between her and Ruben. Just like on the last night beside the Malecón, it had been no use saying it to Oreste and Lazaro and Miles. They will believe what they want to believe.

  And she herself no longer knows what she believes.

  On her last morning in Havana, she and Ruben ate a proper breakfast together. Or, at any rate, the closest thing to her idea of a proper breakfast since she had arrived in Cuba. He made them fresh fruit salad and served it with toast and his mother’s homemade tomato jam, along with mango juice and of course the customary poisonously strong coffee. The fact that she was drinking the coffee much more easily than a week earlier didn’t make her feel any more cheerful.

  On the contrary.

  They eat in silence, the crunch of the toast between their teeth the only sound in the room. She can’t think of anything to say to him. She so badly wants to believe that they will see each other again, but that feathered thing called hope refuses to fly on this particular morning. She is vaguely aware of a flapping inside her ribcage, like a large bird trapped behind the bars of a too small cage, but she doesn’t dare open the cage.

  Hope is one thing, she tells herself, self-deception something entirely different. Ruben isn’t able to visit her country; she probably can’t afford to travel to his country again. Or to any other country, unless the South African rand rallies dramatically.

  ‘Hmm, the fruit salad is—’

  ‘Did you have a good night—’

  They both start talking at the same time; now they are both silent, waiting for the other to continue.

  ‘It’s delicious,’ Theresa says with hot cheeks and takes another greedy bite of the salad to show that she means it.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ Ruben asks.

  ‘Not really.’ The admission slips out before she can think about what she’s saying. ‘You?’

  ‘Also not. But I have never been a good sleeper, so …’ He frowns while he pours them more coffee. ‘Sorry, I didn’t warn you, Amado’s mattress is not exactly the latest model.’

  ‘No, it has nothing to do with the mattress. My ex-husband always said I could fall asleep in the fork of a tree. He’d also been a bad sleeper.’ She avoids his eyes and drinks her coffee, babbling on nervously: ‘It must be awful lying awake night after night next to someone who sleeps so effortlessly.’

  ‘I do not know. I used to enjoy watching Carlota sleep.’ He smiles distractedly over his coffee cup. ‘She was also capable of the sleep of the innocent.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m all that innocent.’ Before he can react, she quickly adds, ‘So your wife’s name was Carlota?’

  He nods.

  How is it possible that she is asking this only now?

  ‘My ex’s name was Theo.’ Suddenly it seems vitally important that they should know at least this about each other before they go their separate ways in a few hours. The names of the people they’d been married to. As if it could make up for all the other things they would never know. ‘Theo van Velden.’

  They look silently at each other.

  ‘So why didn’t you sleep well?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know.’ Surely she couldn’t admit that she lay awake for hours hoping he would come knock on her bedroom door. ‘I always become a little anxious before I fly. And it gets worse as one gets older, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I never fly anywhere.’

  Of course not. Theresa grabs another piece of toast and smothers it with his mother’s tomato jam, just because she needs to do something with her hands and eyes. Of her treasonous tongue, she has apparently lost all control.

  ‘I lay awake thinking about my husband,’ she says carefully. ‘About Theo. In the end I read his diary again. A little book he kept with him during the war.’

  ‘I have a few old letters from Carlota.’ He keeps his eyes fixed on her hands that keep adding more jam. ‘I also sometimes read parts from it. Not as often as I used to.’ His eyes follow her right hand as she raises the toast to her mouth. Now all his attention is focused on her chewing mouth, which makes her entire face catch fire. ‘But there were nights when I swear those old letters were the only thing that stopped me from starting to drink again. Something I could hold on to until it became light again. Words on paper from someone who died long ago.’

  She swallows the bread and pulls her handbag towards her. Takes out a plastic folder and removes a creased envelope with a bloodstain in the top corner from the plastic. Removes a few sheets of thin yellowed paper from the envelope. She didn’t plan this, it happens by itself, every movement careful but not hesitant, like a slow-motion scene from a movie.

  ‘Would you read it to me please?’ She holds the soldier’s letter out towards him across the toast. ‘Read it out loud, I mean?’

  ‘In Spanish?’

  ‘A friend translated it for me. I have read the translation so many times that I just about know it off by heart. But I want to hear what it sounds like in Spanish. With a Cuban accent. Do you understand?’<
br />
  He nods, bemused, and takes the letter from her.

  ‘Besides, after all your effort to help me deliver it, you at least deserve to know what it says.’

  He takes a pair of small round spectacles from the top pocket of his white cotton shirt, polishes the lenses with a corner of the shirt, balances them on his nose.

  ‘I didn’t know you wore glasses.’ Something else she didn’t know.

  ‘You have never asked me to read anything to you,’ he says with an apologetic shrug.

  ‘Haven’t I?’ She thinks back over the past week. ‘In the graveyard?’

  ‘I could stand far enough away from the gravestones to read the names. And on my phone I can cheat to protect my vanity. You know, the letters on the screen can be set to old-person size.’

  ‘There’s no need to cheat.’ She smiles at him. ‘I like the glasses. Makes you look like Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf wearing the grandmother’s round glasses.’

  ‘And that is supposed to be a compliment?’ He snorts indignantly before he turns his attention to the letter.

  ‘Mi querida hija,’ he reads aloud.

  My darling daughter. His double-bass voice has never sounded so beautiful. She stares at his mouth, the fleshy lips above the grey-flecked beard, the tip of his tongue flashing between his teeth, the entire sensual picture. Her eyes slide down over his body, the dark chest hair peeking out from the collar of his button-down shirt, the hair on his bare forearms. No wonder he reminds her of a wolf. She looks at his broad hands handling the letter so carefully. And she tells herself that those hands will never caress her body.

  Then she closes her eyes to concentrate on his voice.

  She opens her eyes again – she has closed them for a second to avoid the two expectant faces on either side of her – and says: ‘It feels as though this trip to Cuba raked something open inside me. Like a garden that was covered with a thick layer of dead leaves and now the leaves have been raked away. As if I can see the fertile soil underneath the leaves for the first time in a long while.’

  ‘So you feel like a raked garden,’ Sandra says eagerly.