The Serpentine Road

by Mendelson, Paul

  Inside the cabin, the brook roars, but otherwise it is peaceful. Du Toit has pictures of Arctic missions: Shackleton’s huts and tents, sepia pictures of ruddy, bearded sailors, an ice-breaker frozen into the ice. Within a few seconds, De Vries has learnt more about his boss than in twenty years of conversation. Du Toit fills an electric kettle from a jug, switches it on, opens a jar of instant coffee.

  ‘This your bolt-hole?’

  ‘Away from the grandchildren, where I can work, and think. One holiday with them all and I swore I wouldn’t come back till it was built. The boathouse.’

  Two dim electric sconces illuminate another wall of old family photographs and a threadbare Persian rug.

  Du Toit hands Vaughn coffee, offers him a slice of cake from the parcel. They sit in the two armchairs, listen to the rain beating on the roof, the brash rush of water outside, and say nothing.

  ‘Bad all round, I guess?’

  De Vries nods.

  ‘Pretty much. You did well to miss it.’

  ‘Sorry I did. That’s my role these days: support. I gather Thulani surprised with his vigour to uphold the constitution?’

  ‘He did.’

  They eat, sip their tea, do not meet each other’s gaze. Vaughn finds their silence acceptable: the length of their acquaintanceship, their professional journey together, lends them a mutual understanding. Silence need not be intimate; it may merely be sufficient.

  ‘You did well on the Holt case.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘There are plenty who would have taken what was offered to them by Angus Lyle’s death and walked away. You didn’t.’

  ‘I had help.’

  ‘I gather . . .’

  ‘What do you gather?’

  Du Toit sits back.

  ‘Classon told me that you seemed particularly well-informed; that you presented a bundle of intelligence and refused to reveal its source.’

  ‘I didn’t present it. It was taken from me.’

  ‘And where did it come from?’ Du Toit looks at him, folds his hands over one another in his lap. De Vries thinks he looks like a pompous teacher beginning a thorough telling off. ‘Your friend from England?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wherever it came from,Vaughn, whoever supplied it: beware the cost.’

  ‘There’s always a price, sir. I’m prepared to pay. It clarified some problems.’

  ‘You know Thulani won’t be able to defy Pretoria for long. He’ll send Nkosi back.’

  ‘It’s inevitable. If we want to see Ben Thwala again.’

  ‘That’s bad,Vaughn. You were naïve.’

  ‘I was desperate for information. Thwala knew what was happening. You know him. He volunteered.’

  ‘Spin it however you like. It still means your suspect walks.’

  ‘I know. The man kills twice and they’ll change his name so that he never existed and move him on . . . Unless I can persuade him to talk.’

  ‘You think that’s likely?’

  ‘No.’

  De Vries drains his mug, places in on the desk beside him gently.

  ‘It’s more than the Holt case, isn’t it?’

  Du Toit’s voice, quiet and controlled, still startles him.

  Vaughn nods.

  ‘It’s a story I should have told you before.’

  ‘Why does history always encroach in our lives?’ Du Toit says, swallowing cake. ‘In our country, I mean?’

  ‘It’s all we have. The founding fathers, the Boer War. It’s nothing. The last fifty years have shaped us now, probably will for generations.’

  ‘What is your history lesson?’

  De Vries is afraid and ashamed that here, in this tiny cabin, rain-sodden and cold, he must tell a story he had hoped would fade with the passing of time, only to find it consuming him, looming and completely clear.

  He takes fifteen minutes; he remembers details now that he had forgotten before, yet he truly does not know the controlling emotion which made him take himself and Mitchell Smith away from Khayelitsha. When he finishes, he feels only weakness and cowardice.

  Henrik du Toit stares at him, says slowly, firmly: ‘You didn’t give the order. You didn’t take the shot.’

  ‘I didn’t speak up. Not then, not later.’

  ‘And now, what? Why does this matter now?’

  ‘Seven weeks ago, in East London, Sheldon Rich was killed; a week later in Middelburg, Joe Swanepoel. Then Esau, Mike de Groot and Mitchell . . .’

  Du Toit views him open-mouthed, considers his words.

  ‘So, you know the connection. You know who will be next. Stake him out, find who’s doing this.’

  ‘I know who’s next,’ De Vries says solemnly. ‘Me.’

  He sees in Du Toit a sudden fear. Vaughn comprehends instantly that it is not for himself, but for his family.

  ‘They’re always killed in their own homes, Henrik.’

  ‘I see . . .’ Du Toit fingers his earlobes, fiddles with his lips. ‘Don’t go home?’

  De Vries laughs grimly.

  ‘I came here to tell you, so that if he gets me, if it happens, you can tell people what they need to know.’

  ‘If? You can’t just let it happen. For God’s sake,Vaughn . . .’ He trails off. De Vries sees his mind working, sees the realization that while one of those seven is still alive, perhaps a secret is best kept.

  ‘Could you go into protective custody? The whole incident then and now could be re-investigated . . .’

  ‘Kobus Nel was killed yesterday. You remember him, his reputation in the SAPS after Mandela was released? I visited him the day before his death to try to find out if he was behind it. The man lived at the top of Clifton, as high as you can go – higher – with well-trained guards, a bloody funicular railway to get up there, alarms. For all I know the killer was there already, watching both of us. Whoever this is won’t be caught, won’t stop. Whatever I do, he’ll wait, and then he’ll come for me. That’s why this has to end now.’

  ‘You have anyone helping you?’

  ‘It’s not about anyone else.’

  Du Toit looks moribund and helpless. Vaughn recognized long ago that his boss operates efficiently only within the strictures of the service.

  ‘I didn’t come here for help, Henrik. I came to tell you. So that you’d know.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘This person waits in the house, hides until his victim is asleep. I can wait too.’

  Du Toit nods.

  ‘Keep off the booze,Vaughn. Stay sharp.’

  De Vries smiles.

  ‘Can’t have one without the other.’

  He paces around the outside of his house, checking for signs of intrusion, sees nothing. He examines the garden by the perimeter boundary, seeking footprints, broken vegetation; he finds everything overgrown and untouched. Utterly drenched, he enters with trepidation what was his familiar, comforting family home, strips naked, pulls on a dressing gown from the back of his bedroom door – an old and unloved present – and spends the next forty-five minutes examining each window, cupboard and the corners of the attic, gun in hand, holding his breath at each stage. Finally, he wanders to the cupboard under the stairs which leads to a cellar cupboard, partly subterranean, where he keeps boxes of wine; he pulls out two bottles of red and studies them intensely as he walks back to his dining room table.

  Unlike the beers which sit inside him heavily, bloating his stomach and making his ears buzz, the red wine flows as if through his veins, instills his brain with a vague clarity he recognizes. The familiarity of the old sensations make him smile. He is not ashamed that his life consists now of work and wine and casual sex. He smiles more broadly. He is not happy, but he is almost fulfilled.

  He pours again and finds the bottle empty. He holds it over his glass, disorientated. Even the drop on the rim seems, to him now, substantial. He waits for it to fall. When he has finished the second bottle, he is sick. It is thin and dark, and bears only grains of Mrs du Toit’s
cake. He studies the contents of the otherwise empty sink, recognizes that he has not felt better in weeks.

  Sleeps evades him. He lies awake, back aching, neck sore, turning every few minutes, desperate to find any relief for the discomfort and pain which dog him. His arms are in the way of comfortable rest, his hips ache. When he does finally doze, it is only until the distant sound of the binmen wakes him shortly before 6 a.m. He gets up, re-checks everywhere, locks himself in what was the adult living room, and snoozes on the sofa, sitting upright, for another ninety minutes.

  In the daylight, he cannot decide whether to stay at home all day and guard his property or to go out and let his assailant take his place. There is an inevitability to what must happen which pushes him to leave, drive the three or four kilometres to the Foresters Arms, sit by one of the open fires and drink from mid-morning until daylight fades once more. He drinks alone, rejecting any interaction, and slowly, he is convinced, soberly. The drive back home is treacherous. Newlands Avenue is strewn with broken branches, deep puddles; heavy drops hit the roof of his car like gunshots. The leaves fall from trees reluctantly here, and their canopy makes the road seem like a tunnel. As he drives past the President’s Cape Town residence, the water pours down the sloping road in torrents; when he brakes gently at the bottom, he skids, tyres aquaplaning. By the time he reaches his street, he is exhausted. He fumbles for his gate remote, finds it in the central cubby-hole, operates the mechanism and drives slowly in. As he closes it again, he peers in his rear-view mirror, swallows hard when he sees a shadow pass between them. He jumps out of his car, stares through the rain at the gates, looks up at the streetlight and the swaying palm fronds in front of it: shadows pass this way every night.

  He eats hard-boiled eggs, sliced onto toast thickly buttered. Over them, he throws salt and grinds pepper, munches them joylessly. Through his dining room windows, he sees only a dark green distortion of his garden, fragmented by the trails of water falling relentlessly down the panes. He reflects on Du Toit’s words and spurns another drink, thinks: burglary incidences fall in the wet; maybe it is the same for vengeance?

  He pads around his house, sees nothing out of place, dismisses the growing urge to call his daughters. He prepares for bed, hurls the blankets off, throws himself in and pulls them back up, reaches under the pillow on what was his wife’s side of the bed, feels the reassuring coldness of his gun. Then, he lies rigid. His back itches and he cannot reach it to scratch it; his neck aches and no angle of head on pillow will relieve the pain. Amidst his unceasing frustration, gnawing fear and strange impatience, he falls asleep.

  He screams, feels the point of the knife in his flesh, tries to move his arms but cannot. The figure is astride him. Charged, he rises at the waist, gets one arm free and strikes his assailant. His other arm free, he reaches for his weapon under the pillow, finds nothing, scrambles out of bed. Outside his room, the rain is pouring so thunderously and in such blackness, he can neither hear nor see. He registers a different dimness in the direction of the door, stumbles to it, swings around the frame, sees movement on the landing, then the stairs, gives chase. As he reaches the bottom, he sees the front door opening, a silhouette vanishing into the dark. He throws himself forward, skids on the wood floor by his front door, dashes outside. Ahead of him, he sees the figure running. Adrenalin pumps through his legs, driving him on through the deluge. He looks up, water pouring down his face, into his assailant’s eyes, sees the figure climbing the gates. He charges forward, grabs at what he believes are legs, feels them jolt from between his slimy hands, like a dog withdrawing its paw from human grasp, and disappear over the gates. He starts to climb, his brain registering only that the skin he clenched was black, the legs incredibly thin, childlike, yet the strength within them was too great for him. He falls over the top of the gates, screams at the top of his voice, hears nothing over the deluge.

  Ahead of him, running downhill, he sees the figure. Everything in his vision is moving away from him: the rain diagonally, the water rushing down the falling road – fast and silver in the gutters, slow in the convex shallows of the centre – leaves and branches dragged from their boughs by the gusting wind. The streetlights are working but their light does not carry far amidst so much moisture. He sprints after the figure, encumbered and stiff, but feeling that his weight downhill will speed him forwards. He does not know whether he is gaining on it, suddenly sees it fall, twist sideways, scramble on the tarmac on all fours, rise to two and begin to limp – still fast but now jerky – away from him towards Liesbeek Parkway, the main road.

  De Vries feels his heart struggle inside him, his breath burning in his chest. As the figure approaches the traffic lights, he is almost up with it. He sees it turn towards him, registers only a black face against black tarmac against black sky. Suddenly, eyes flare white. They gaze for a second at De Vries, a stare which takes him back twenty-one years to Pama Road in Khayelitsha; he looks around at the road behind it, sees cars speeding too fast along it, one after the other. The figure jumps sideways, disappears from view.

  De Vries reaches the end of the road, turns to the side, knowing that he will see the low concrete railings to the little bridge over the Liesbeek River and, beyond this, the stepped rectangular formation of the river sides as it wends its way through the little park, planted to impress visitors to the 2010 World Cup, now a canal-side walk for locals. In the deep, dark shadows of overhanging trees, De Vries can see nothing but the river water in full flow, branches and plastic debris racing away into the darkness from beneath him. He stumbles down the side of the bridge railings to the edge of the river, looks in both directions, sees nothing. The water usually flows in the lowest section of the concrete gully but, now, it is above the step halfway up the sides and he knows that to jump in the river would be to risk his life. Amidst his panting, the water on his face, in his eyes and nose and mouth, he conjures one coherent thought: his assailant is patient, resourceful. He grasps that there is one hiding place remaining: beneath the road, under the bridge.

  He takes a deep breath, begins to lower himself gingerly down the concrete sides of the river, immersing himself in the cold, dark water. Ahead, beneath the road, he sees one higher step of concrete and realizes that a man could hide there. He edges along through the water until he is under the side-road, the entrance to his own street. Ahead of him, it is pitch dark. His pyjamas, so rarely worn, adhere to his body, wet as the river, cold as the air that rushes through the crawl space beneath the bridge. He grabs a branch from the edge of the river, where it has become entangled in the overhanging bushes, and cracks off a side shoot, drops to his knees. The spray from the water exiting the tunnel soaks him; ahead, he can see nothing, knows that the tunnel runs for no more than seven, maybe eight metres, until it re-emerges on the opposite side of the road, deep in the cover of overhanging willow trees.

  He edges forward, straining to form an image of what lies ahead of him, unable to hear anything but the hollow echo of rushing water. For a moment, a shard of light permeates the blackness as a car on the Liesbeek Parkway rushes past, the beam of headlight refracted dimly by the concrete lining. Ahead, on the same side as he is on, he glimpses something which could be a figure. He scrambles forward on his knees and one hand, the tree branch still held out ahead of him to warn of danger ahead. He sees nothing, hears nothing, but imagines a sudden movement, a strike, the cold agony of the blade penetrating him, gutting him.

  He pushes on until he is under the centre of the road, the ceiling barely a metre above the top ledge along which he crawls. Ahead, he sees dim, pale light as the tunnel opens back out into the river-side. Suddenly, the light is obliterated; a black form scrabbles away from him. He thinks he hears a cry, but he cannot know. He pulls himself forward, slowed by the branch ahead of him. He shoves it into the river, feels one end pulled back past him even before he has released the other. Head down, he thrusts himself forward, one lurch after another. As he reaches the grey, dismal light of the Cape Town night,
beside the Parkway main road, he sees ahead of him a figure limping, almost slithering up the side of the canal bank. He forces himself upright, grits his teeth and scrambles up the first tier. He looks up. Above him, the figure stands: he cannot see whether he is armed. He looks down to find a handhold, up again to see a wide, dark shape raised above the head of the figure, a shattering cry and the thick heavy log flying through space, out a little and down fast towards him. He throws himself against the side of the concrete bank, feels the air compress as the projectile crashes onto the step above him, bounces over him and lands in the foaming swell. He struggles for a breath, looks back up into the rain of silver nails which seem to assault him, sees the figure still standing above him. He blinks. The figure stumbles away.

  De Vries clambers up the side and pulls himself up onto the slippery, greasy grass verge, rights himself, sees the shadow ahead of him, silhouetted against the streetlight. He watches as it seems to turn to face him, then turns away again. He hears the sound of a car changing gear and accelerating down Liesbeek Parkway towards the traffic lights, sees the figure stumble toward the road. He stands, exhausted and disorientated, and watches the figure step out in front of the car.

  The car swerves away from the impact, brakes, skids, then accelerates away uphill, rear lights suddenly gone. De Vries runs up the bank towards the road, sees it now deserted, races to the fallen form, lit faintly red by the changed traffic light, yet seeming to him nothing but black against black against black. He bends down, sees something like a child’s body. He picks it up, cannot comprehend its lightness, feels breath in it, stumbles to the curb, half falls, half throws the body onto the grass, and fumbles to turn it over. The speckled white light of the streetlamp at the junction illuminates her face. She wears nothing but a black leotard, a thin black belt and matching bum-bag. He sees blood on her lips, eyes flickering, mouth gaping and twisted in agony. De Vries gathers her up in his arms, holds her to him, feels a final sigh leave her body, and then a deathly, absolute slump into his own sodden body.