by Deon Meyer
They had cattle, a milk cow for the house, a few hens. Vegetables grew at the back door, a patch of lucerne on the riverbank. Every morning he drove Pakamile to school, and every afternoon he fetched him. And between the schoolwork they farmed. And swam and walked and hunted small game and shot with catapults and lay and watched the stars at night. The child enjoyed it so intensely. And so did he. Two years of peace. Two years without loss.
Pakamile wasn’t his own blood. He was the son of the woman he loved, the woman they’d lost, and so the child became his blood. And later his legal son. But Pakamile had died, and he had become a fugitive because of the people he’d hunted down and punished, and he’d had to sell the farm from Europe, using an attorney in King William’s Town. He’d had to pay the man a lot of money for his silence and to handle the estate because, it seemed, Thobela Mpayipheli was dead.
The attorney had sent the money to him. Like the Cata River, little by little. Small businesses and trusts, the amounts low enough to send out of the country, to five separate French bank accounts. Which he later consolidated under the name of Daniel Darret.
‘It was difficult. That attorney of yours was no fool,’ Lonnie said. ‘But he wasn’t clever enough.’
‘How did you know I was alive?’
‘You are Umzingeli.’
‘How, Lonnie?’
‘Your body was never found. There were rumours, Tiny, always the rumours. And when we had to plan to get rid of the president, your name was at the top of the wish list. At the very least, they said, we should make sure that you weren’t somewhere . . . I said, “Leave it to me.” I’d been an attorney. I knew the tracks people leave. That was always my strong point. And you and I know it was actually my only strong point . . .’
Chapter 39
He drove to Chartrons. He had to leave the panel van at work, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He swept the entire workshop. His weary body protested, but he did it slowly, deliberately and systematically. Then he made sure the table top was clean. He’d learned from Monsieur Lefèvre never to varnish wood if there was any trace of dust, sawdust or shavings nearby.
He thinned the varnish with tung oil until he was satisfied with the mixture, found the right brush. He painted slowly and carefully, first against the grain, always the first layer against the grain. He concentrated on the job, the rhythmic back-and-forth motion of the brush, the scents of varnish, turpentine and wood.
Thoughts penetrated: Lonnie must be in Amsterdam.
He didn’t like to admit it but part of his discontent, unease and dissatisfaction was because he would miss Lonnie now. Lonnie, South Africa and everything that was precious to him. All over again. He had a connection to Lonnie. Yesterday in the restaurant, despite the long arguments and manipulation, he had bonded with an old comrade. A man he knew well. Family. From his world. And now he missed that world. He ached for it.
And he didn’t want to.
He slept for ten hours. In the morning he woke feeling relieved, cheerful, as if he had survived something, an accident or great hardship. He fed the cat, picked up the rucksack holding the money and the letter, and put it away in a kitchen cupboard, behind the rubbish bin.
He went to work. There was a great deal to do because it was the Friday before the Lefèvres returned from Arcachon. From Monday on it would be back to him and le génie and the familiar routine that made him feel so comfortable. After Monday everything would be back to normal: this summer of violence and upheaval would be behind him.
He dusted the entire front shop, all the furniture. He vacuumed the carpets, polished the silver- and copperware, cleaned the glass of the display cabinets.
Now and then he went to check his cell phone. No message from Lonnie yet.
He thought about the weekend. Tomorrow morning he would go and have tapas at the Capucins market, at Madame Dupuy’s La Maison du Pata Negra. He didn’t do that often, saving it for special occasions. Monsieur Dupuy’s foie-gras dish was beyond description, the most delicious mouthful of food in the world.
On Sunday he would take a ride on the motorbike. The Dutch and Germans who camped in the Périgord in summer should have gone home by then. Quiet roads, beautiful scenery. He would clear his head, get his mind off all the disturbing things Lonnie had stirred up.
At four he was finished. He walked to Carrefour on cours Victor-Hugo to buy milk and cat food. He went home. Took another shower, sat down in the kitchen wearing only shorts, opened a tin of tuna, and ate while reading the news on his tablet.
The article on Lonnie’s death was lower down on the News24 cover page. Former intelligence boss dead at airport. He saw Lonnie’s name, but didn’t want to read on, didn’t want to believe it. Mr May had flown in from Amsterdam; a suspected heart attack. Attempts by onlookers and paramedics to revive him at the exit of Cape Town International had been in vain.
He read it again and again. It felt unreal, surreal, like a dream.
And then he had to get out. He dressed, walked out of the door.
What could he have done? Nothing. It wasn’t his fault.
Heart attack? No. They had lain in wait for Lonnie at the airport. They must have known what flight he was on. They had eyes and ears in the world’s computer systems, informants everywhere. MK43 was just not careful enough. Maybe there was a mole.
He felt a consuming rage for the people who had murdered Lonnie, administered a pharmaceutical or chemical weapon, or poison – the Russians had their sly, dishonourable methods, too cowardly to stand in front of you, look you in the eye and fight like a man.
In the late-afternoon light he walked down to the Sainte-Croix church. The interior was dusky, silent. He sat down on a chair and grieved for Lonnie, the emotion like a pain in his chest. He remembered Lonnie walking away at Bergerac airport, shoulders squared. Brave little Lonnie. He felt the guilt, the heaviness. There was nothing he could have done, he thought. This guilt was unreasonable. We make our choices, and we have to live with the consequences. Lonnie had known what he was dealing with; he’d understood the risks. He had saved Lonnie, helped him, but he couldn’t have kept him here. Or gone with him. They should have protected Lonnie. They should.
He sat there for over an hour, his arms folded and head bowed, filled with pain, anger and self-reproach. Then he stood up, took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them solemnly into the church donations box.
He lit a big candle for Lonnie.
He rang Madame Élodie Lecompte’s doorbell. It was an instinctive decision. Later he would realise it stemmed from a need to experience and touch something pure, beautiful, undefiled and human.
She opened the door for him, barefoot as usual. She looked at him with those soft eyes.
‘I haven’t come to see my painting,’ he said. ‘I want to look at the others again.’
She felt his distress. He saw it in the way she lifted a hand to comfort him, and dropped it again, doubtfully. ‘Bien sûr,’ she said, very gently, and led him to the large room. He stopped there, gazing at the people on the walls. Good souls. Good, ordinary people. In each one she had captured their humanity. As if she was trying to express something: we are broken; we are breakable, but we are good.
He realised she had left the room.
He stood there alone for a long time, staring, searching for a connection, absolution.
Then he went out to thank her, to head back out into the city and the darkness.
‘I’ll make tea for you,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Oui. Merci.’
They sat in her salon, sipping tea, without speaking. Until he said: ‘A friend of mine is dead.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He knew she understood. It was more than just the death of a friend.
A little later she rose, crossed to him, just stood there, held his hand. He cried. His big shoulders heaved just a few times. Then he was still.
Past midnight he took the rucksack out of the kitchen cupboard. He unclipped the catche
s, found the letter, put it on the small sofa in his living room. Wackett jumped onto his lap as if she could sense his mood.
He tore open the letter. It was in blue ink, with spidery, shaky handwriting.
He unfolded it. A photo slid out. The cat watched curiously as it dropped onto the sofa. He picked it up and examined it. The head-and-shoulders photo of a young woman. She laughed at the camera, her skin smooth and shiny, exuding zest for life.
He turned it over. The name Gugu was written on the back. He didn’t know her. He picked up the letter, began to read.
My old friend
I thought for a very long time before I wrote this letter. Because I know how difficult this will be for you. But it is my duty, and you will know I have always done my duty.
Daniel turned to the last of the three pages to see who had written it. Above the postscript it was signed by Mandla Masondo.
It shocked him to read it, hear it, this voice from the past. Because he knew that Mandla would be able to persuade him. Of all the people they could have chosen, Mandla would be able to talk him round.
The memories flowed back. Thirty-five years ago. Mandla, the one who smuggled food and medicine to him, into Saraktash, that godforsaken training camp in the south of Russia. When Daniel was still Thobela Mpayipheli, in detention for fighting with an Uzbekistani. A bloody fight with a Red Army sergeant. The man had had shoulders like a bull and a neck like a tree trunk and treated Thobela and his black comrades like scum. Until Thobela couldn’t take any more, and fought the man in the non-comissioned officers’ bar. They’d locked him up as punishment for his victory and the awful damage he had done to the man in his rage.
Mandla had sneaked in every night to bring him food, soup and bread, ointment for his wounds and pills for the pain. Skinny Mandla, the humble one with so much patience, earthy wisdom, the quiet smile and a little cough, always a little cough in the Russian cold. He was ten years older than the other Umkhonto recruits: they called him ‘uBaba’, tongue-in-cheek at first, but later they meant it. Father. For that was what he was to many of them.
Mandla Masondo. A simple man, the herdsman of Babanango, the harbour worker and trade-union activist from Richards Bay. Never reaching great heights, he was a follower, like Lonnie May, rather than a leader. After 1994 he was an officer at an army base in Bloemfontein, a colonel. Never wanted more than isithunzi.
Mandla who brought him the salve and the soup, and the cheap Russian army bread that tasted like baked sawdust. Then he would sit outside the cell and talk to Thobela, who was only twenty years old, full of fire and rage, hate and impulsiveness. He would say to Mandla: ‘If they catch you here, they’ll lock you up too, uBaba. And that will make your cough very bad, because it’s cold and wet in this jail. It would make you very sick.’
Mandla just smiled quietly and carried on talking in his soft, gentle way.
‘Why are you here, uBaba, in this terrible place?’ Thobela wanted to know. ‘Why aren’t you with your cows in the KwaZulu hills?’
‘I’m looking for isithunzi. For my children.’
Thobela knew Mandla meant ‘dignity’, because isithunzi could also mean ‘status’ in Zulu, or ‘prestige’. ‘That’s all, uBaba?’
‘That all that anyone needs, Thobela. Isithunzi. The rest comes by itself.’
Daniel Darret came back to the present, rearranged the thin sheets of the letter, so that he could start at the beginning again.
Chapter 40
My old friend
I thought for a very long time before I wrote this letter. Because I know how difficult this will be for you. But it is my duty, and you will know I have always done my duty.
I want to tell you a story. It is a story I know you will understand, because I know about your loss. I was so very sorry to hear of it. The story is about my daughter. Her name is Gugu. She is very beautiful. She is now thirty-two years old. She was born in London, when I was in exile. She is my only child.
She was eight years old when I brought her back to South Africa for the great liberation in 1994. I was so happy, Thobela, and so proud, because I could tell her that I was part of the Struggle. In 1997 I took her with me to my office when our beloved Nelson Mandela paid a visit to 1 SA Infantry Battalion. Madiba held Gugu’s hand and he told her that I, her father, was a great hero of this country. I will never forget that day and how Gugu looked at me with great pride. That was the day I got my isithunzi back, Thobela. Do you remember when we talked through the night about isithunzi?
I told Gugu so many stories about all we endured and about the people who fought with us. I told her about you and Rudewaan Moosa and our fearless leader Moses Morape and the great rugby match we played against the Russian Army. And we won! Do you remember?
That was a wonderful day. I wanted to tell that one to my grandchildren, but now I may never get the chance.
I also told Gugu about the man who is now our president. I told her how brave our president was in the Struggle, how many people he helped to get out of the country, to join Umkhonto. Did I ever tell you he recruited me? Our president. He came to Babanango. He spoke to my father. He spoke to me. He escorted me to Swaziland and to Mozambique. I respected him very much. I was also very proud when he became president. I did not know everything that happened because I was working very hard in Bloemfontein.
Gugu studied to become a teacher. She went to the University of the Free State and got her degree. I only wish her umkhulu was still alive to see that, his granddaughter getting a degree. He had no schooling, my father, he could not read or write. And his granddaughter earned a degree, with distinction! That is the moment when you realise how much we have achieved through our sacrifices.
Thobela, I find it hard to tell you this story, so I write other things that are not important. Let me say what I have to say.
Two years ago, Gugu was teaching in Brandfort when our president came for the Winnie Mandela celebrations. The choir that sang for the president were Gugu’s pupils. The president came to thank her and the children after the ceremony, and then she told him that she was my daughter. She told him about all the stories she heard when she was a child. She told him he was one of her great heroes. He said he remembered me.
The president then invited her to visit him, Thobela. He got his people to take her name and number, to organise a visit to him in Mahlamba Ndlopfu, that big white house on the hill in Pretoria where he now lives in his official residence.
She was very excited when they called. They said she must come for the weekend, as the guest of our president. She told all the school children she was going to have dinner with the president and his wives, because she was the daughter of a Struggle hero. But that is not what happened.
That Friday, she drove to Pretoria. They gave her a room in his house, told her the president was very busy, but he would come later to eat with her. There were no wives. Only bodyguards and servants. He came alone, after eight o’clock. He was very charming. Do you remember how charming he could be?
They gave her wine and food, and then all the servants and the bodyguards left. And then he changed. He was not charming any more. He made advances and she did not know what to do. She tried to be respectful, to let him understand that she did not want to do such a thing. But then he forced her, Thobela. He raped my daughter.
Why did she not run away? Why did she not fight back? Why did she not scream or shout or hide in a bathroom? Those are the questions I have asked myself these past two years, so many times. When she told me about it, she said she was paralysed. She wishes, every day, she could go back to that night and change everything. But she cannot. She is different now. She is sad all the time. She is ashamed of herself. I am sending you a photograph of how Gugu was. Look at her, Thobela. That beautiful smile you see, that is gone now. She has lost her job. She has lost her self-respect. She lives with me. She does not want to go outside.
I am not asking you to take revenge for my daughter. I am not asking you to kill this man
because he took away Gugu’s life. I am asking you, is this isithunzi? If this man is our president, do we have isithunzi? As South Africans, as soldiers, as fathers, as daughters? Is this what we gave the best years of our lives for?
I am asking you to join the Struggle again. Please.
Your comrade, your friend, your uBaba,
Mandla Masondo
There was a postscript below Mandla’s name, instructions that Daniel didn’t wish to read now. He put the letter down beside him and picked up the photo again. He stared at it for a long time, then put it down, too. He stroked the cat’s neck.
Later he got up, went to lie on his bed with his hands behind his head. He stared at the patterns on the old ceiling. Fatigue overcame him, emotional exhaustion. He fell asleep, although it was fitful. When the sun rose, he was already awake. He went to wash, then fed the cat, ate breakfast.
Before he went out, he saw the letter and the photo on the sofa. He hesitated a moment, feeling a faint unease. He picked them up, folded them, put them inside the envelope and pushed it back into the rucksack. Now, after Lonnie, after everything, he didn’t want just to leave it there. He walked out, slinging the rucksack over his shoulder. Which reminded him – the pistols. He was suddenly angry with himself. How could he have forgotten about the pistols in the toolbox? He was pathetic, a mere shadow of what he’d once been.
He walked to the garage at the rue Permentade. He pulled on his riding gear, put on the helmet, climbed onto the motorbike. He set off. First to Chartrons. He unlocked the workshop, walked to the Peugeot panel van, took out the pistols, wrapped them in cheesecloth and packed them into the rucksack too. He would throw them away somewhere.
He took to the road. First southwards. Along the Garonne, Langon and Marmande. At Aiguillon he turned north-east without thinking. He focused on controlling the bike on the road, clutch, gears, accelerator, brakes, through the twists and turns, following the signboards without a destination in mind.
