Now I See You

by Holmes, Priscilla; Holmes, Priscilla;

  I sank down beside the biggest pool, pulling off my heavy knapsack. ‘Let’s have a rest,’ I said. ‘It’s a good place.’

  I pulled off my walking boots and waded into the water, watching the dirt wash off my feet in cinnamon swirls. It felt good. Zak followed. He threw himself down on one of the little beaches, looking around appreciatively.

  ‘This is great.’

  ‘I came here as a kid with my friends; I’d tell them stories and write their names in the sand. They liked that.’ I smiled as I remembered. My friends’ laughter, the joy of kids playing around together. No complications...

  ‘What did they think about you going to school?’

  ‘They thought I was the unlucky one. They got to play here every day.’

  ‘Did you feel like the unlucky one?’

  ‘No. I always felt fortunate. This was my favourite place when I was a kid.’

  ‘I can see you here, jumping from rock to rock, bossing all your village friends around, smart little kid.’ His dark eyes rested on me.

  Time to end this conversation. Once again, Zak had managed to get too close, too familiar. What was with all his questions anyway? Wasn’t someone as vain as Zak Khumalo supposed to be too self-involved to be interested in someone else’s life? Besides, I had enough to think about. Meeting my grandfather wasn’t something I was looking forward to.

  I got out of the water and pulled on my boots again. ‘Come on, Zak, now you’ve rested, let’s get going. Or do you want me to carry your knapsack for you?’

  Zak threw back his head and laughed. He looked wholesome, sitting in the sun, so relaxed that I almost liked him. What a pity appearances are so deceptive.

  We continued in silence. As we walked, we heard the sound of surging water. To the right, a river leapt at us between high banks. It rushed over shining boulders, crashing around our legs as we jumped across slippery stepping-stones. I led the way, balancing precariously, jumping from rock to rock.

  ‘How did you get over this, when it was in flood, to go to school?’ Zak asked.

  ‘Put my school uniform on my head and waded.’

  ‘That must have looked good.’

  I ignored him.

  ***

  Nobody arrived in the ancient valley by accident. Lying at the foot of the massive Drakensberg Mountains, it was a daunting climb down. Twisted sandstone ridges cradled the valley, hid it from the world.

  At first sight, the village seemed buried in silver grass as tall as a man. Down through a dry gully we found a dusty track. The village lay ahead. With every step I took, I travelled back into the past.

  The first thing that hit me was the smell. The potent mix of wood fires, pungent cooking smells, animals and people who lived close to the earth. A smell I had forgotten in the city. I had to stop and catch my breath.

  We attracted immediate attention. Like a chink in a dam, the first trickle of villagers approached us. Then the entire population poured out of nowhere. Dozens of them dressed in deep red blankets, their faces, hands, hair and clothes a rusty, dusty ochre. Most stopped, staring in open-mouthed amazement at Zak and me. Children ran in front of us kicking up the dust, calling out. Chickens ran squawking among goats, old ladies washing clothes in the river waved, shouting out greetings.

  Looking at this village scene, so familiar, yet so alien to me now, I thought how Zak and I upset the balance, so perfectly first-world in our designer jeans and tops.

  Cows mooed, women walked past, water buckets on their heads, to collect water from the river; some smiled and burst out laughing, others lowered their eyes, reluctant to stare. One bare-breasted girl stared provocatively at Zak as she walked past. I glanced at him. He didn’t move a muscle.

  Old men, smoking clay pipes outside their beehive-shaped mud huts, stood to see this modern couple walk past, a quickening mood descending on the valley. With our noisy entourage swirling around us, we walked up the dusty track to the chief’s homestead. My grandfather stood at the door, a blanket around his skinny shoulders.

  ‘Now I see you. So, you have returned to the valley at last, Thabisa Tswane?’

  Tall, imposing, he had hardly changed since I had last seen him.

  I looked straight ahead. My hands behind my back. I stared at him, although this showed him no respect. This man who had betrayed me, abandoned me, allowed me to be punished. He had tempted me with the promise of a better life through education, only to snatch it away from me. How could I still feel anything for him, this stubborn, intolerant old man? And yet... there was something of him in me. Blood ties are the worst ties of all. They’re also the strongest. I wanted to reach out my hand to him. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  I glanced around; his wives and some village elders had gathered beside my grandfather and I noticed familiar faces and embarrassed smiles as they watched me. Not from Ngosi, his chief wife, she curled her lip when she looked at me. I stared back at them all. I wanted them to know that I remembered what they had done to me. And I wanted them to know I was a police officer doing my job. Not the chief’s granddaughter running back when he summoned me.

  ‘So you’ve come to find these city criminals in the valley?’ my grandfather asked, as I finally knelt in traditional greeting. Zak knelt too I noticed. Zulu customs were similar to ours.

  I felt a rush of conflicting emotions as I wondered how far back I had to go to straighten things out with my grandfather. It would take years.

  During the traditional greetings, which took longer and seemed more tedious than ever before, I gazed over my grandfather’s shoulder, watching the mottled white and brown cattle standing in the shining water of the river. Cattle meant everything in the valley. Cattle meant power; money, food, medicine. You could rise up and hit out as you wished if you had cattle. My grandfather had wanted to sell me for 50 cattle a few years ago. What was I worth now?

  Chief Solenkosi Tswane indicated that we should enter his homestead. It was just as dark, smoky and depressing as I remembered.

  ‘So you’ve come home at last.’ My grandfather’s eyes searched my face. ‘Are you ready to marry and have children? You’re getting old now, Thabisa, this might be hard to achieve.’

  Zak subdued a smile.

  ‘No, Grandfather. As you know, I have come to speak to you about the bank robbery you witnessed a few days ago.’

  ‘Ah, the mystery criminals?’ He turned away scornfully. ‘So my granddaughter only comes to ask me questions about small matters after so many years away.’

  He had asked me to come here. My boss told me to come here. I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t been forced to, by him. What was he playing at?

  ‘A man was killed in this robbery. This is a serious crime. Please tell me what you saw.’

  ‘There are many things a police officer needs to know, Thabisa. These are mostly the practical rules we teach in the valley every day. We have our own laws here. But even an important police woman like you needs to know that sometimes things are not what they seem to be.’

  ‘Yes, but what did you see?’ I insisted.

  ‘I see you still have a lot to learn.’

  ‘Listen, you have asked for me, and only me, to come to interview you about this murder.’ I stopped and drew a deep breath. He was not going to goad me into losing my temper and looking like a petulant child. ‘So please cooperate and answer my question. What did you see? What happened?’

  There was a long silence, while Solenkosi Tswane stared hard into my eyes. I stared back, refusing to drop my eyes like all valley women did whenever a man was around.

  ‘Well, smart police officer Thabisa, who has forgotten her people, I will tell you. First I saw two tall men go into the bank. They were dressed in masks, dark coats and gloves. These are the men everyone saw. The black men they tell us who have been robbing many banks.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘When they came out they were different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  My grandfather sucked on his cl
ay pipe. He moved away and turned his back on me. There was silence for some minutes, before he turned back to face me. ‘In this valley, the law is different,’ he said. ‘I am the law here. I am the Chief. No man questions me. What I am about to tell you is the truth, I will not be questioned by my own child.’

  I knew that it would be pointless to argue. I waited.

  ‘When they came out, one of them had a white hand,’ her grandfather announced.

  ‘A white hand?’ I asked.

  ‘They went in black, but they came out white.’

  I glanced at Zak. He was staring at my grandfather intently. Over the years, Chief Solenkosi Tswane had acquired a fearsome reputation for his dramatic speeches and his mask-like expression. He hadn’t changed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re the clever police officer. You tell me what this means.’

  Zak stepped forward and gave the formal, tribal greeting to a chief, in perfect isiXhosa: ‘I am Zulu. I acknowledge you, Chief Tswane. May I speak?’ he asked with downcast eyes, the correct way to address an elder. My grandfather nodded.

  Zak was playing the good boy here. I wasn’t going to go that route. But I had to admit he might get the better results.

  ‘Do you believe these men were white?’ Zak asked.

  ‘I have told you already about the white hand. What other explanation could there be?’ Chief Tswane asked.

  ‘Did you hear the gun shot?’ Zak asked.

  ‘Yes, I saw the gun, but there is more.’

  ‘Who was carrying the gun?’ I asked.

  ‘The tallest one with the white hand. But there is more to tell. To the Zulu boy I will tell the secret. This is not a woman’s matter.’

  ‘What secret?’ I persisted.

  ‘Only to the Zulu,’ my grandfather said.

  I moved back, fuming. It hadn’t taken long for my grandfather to belittle me and put me in my place. I tried to hang on to my self-respect. It would have been so easy under these circumstances to slide back into village ways. This was going nowhere. After all the trouble of getting here, Solenkosi Tswane wasn’t going to tell us anything useful.

  Zak stepped close to the chief while he whispered to him. He and Zak looked at each other for a moment, before my grandfather turned and moved away into a back room.

  ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘What is this about?’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘He says our criminal with the white hand likes red nail polish. He thinks it’s a woman, a white woman.’

  I shook my head. ‘What did you say?’

  Zak grinned. ‘Your grandfather is very impressive, Thabisa,’ he said. ‘Very impressive.’

  I turned on my heel and walked away.

  No comment.

  8

  Two months earlier

  20 April 2006

  ‘I’m cutting your hair. It’s a dead giveaway,’ said Sue.

  ‘Okay,’ said Julia. ‘Do it.’

  Sue took a pair of scissors and hacked into Julia’s hair. Julia smiled, remembering the loving care and attention Carlton Hair had lavished on it over the years. ‘Cut it really short, like a boy,’ she said.

  Long strands of red hair fell to the kitchen floor.

  ‘We’ll dye it,’ Sue said. ‘Dark hair isn’t such a giveaway.’

  Julia looked at herself in the mirror, her thoughts scattered like spilt marbles on a travertine floor, the sort of floor she had in her Johannesburg house, in another time, another place, another planet. Just a few weeks ago she had been living in a gracious house, with servants and gardeners to fulfil her every need and whim. How had she got here, living in this beach shack with a captor who might kill her at any moment? It was surreal. But then again Magnus was just as dangerous as this woman, in his own way. The only way to survive this was to adapt. And she would adapt whatever it took. Because one day she was going to have her revenge on Magnus. That was what drove her now, kept her going. The thought of Magnus suffering. Held in a dangerous place. Helpless to fight back. The thought of him dying. Slowly. Painfully.

  ‘When will you show me how to handle a gun?’ she asked.

  ‘Later.’

  ***

  Julia had made some progress. Sue was still in charge and Julia was her humble servant, her captive, but the threats to kill her seemed to have stopped.

  After the first day, she’d said: ‘Call me Sue, and don’t ask any questions.’

  Sue had nightmares, bad ones. She received regular phone calls that always upset her. She was obsessively tidy, forever checking her watch, exercising twice a day. She was driven, by something or somebody who wouldn’t let up. Apart from that, Julia knew nothing about her. She wanted to understand her strange captor. She longed to ask a dozen questions. It was obvious that Sue was in genuine distress, unable to throw off whatever was tormenting her, but who Sue was and why she was doing this remained a mystery.

  All Julia could do was watch quietly, wait and learn.

  Sue was beautiful, feline. Tall, thin and graceful with long legs, muscular thighs and a luxuriant mane of blonde hair. Her cold blue eyes were as intense as searchlights, and Julia was caught in their beam.

  Julia pretended to admire her, said she wanted to be like her, asked Sue to show her how. At first Sue refused, but after a while, the idea seemed to appeal to her. The more Julia grovelled, the more Sue accepted her.

  Julia was submissive, never challenged Sue, or questioned her, never looked at her directly, but inside her mind new ideas were forming. She was coming to life again. Ideas were working their way to the surface, all concerning the new life she was living. It was odd, considering the precarious situation she was in, but she felt a sense of renewal.

  The road to the cottage led through a steep bumpy incline of coastal forest, the house completely invisible through a thick and tangled wall of milk woods. Their branches formed such a low arch over the driveway that the car was only just able to pass beneath.

  The cottage was nothing more than a shack. But there was something basic about the shabby furniture and cracked surfaces that Julia found oddly comforting. She compared it with her Johannesburg home and its silk curtains, Persian carpets and upholstered furniture. The cottage stripped everything back to barest essentials. This new no-frills life tugged at her; it seemed appropriate for someone who had lost everything and didn’t even know whether she would survive another day.

  She had her own bedroom in the cottage, but what a poor bedroom it was. A stained mattress, an iron bed frame, an old blanket that smelt of salt and dust, a washbasin in one corner. But at least Sue didn’t come near it. She just locked Julia’s door every night.

  Julia didn’t try to escape, or beg help from the few coloured fishermen who passed by in the early winter mornings. All she wanted was to live. Escaping meant Sue would try to kill her. And if she did manage to escape, what would be waiting for her? Police stations, endless questions, explanations and – finally – Magnus. She didn’t want that. She never wanted him in her life again. Unless it was at his funeral.

  After two weeks, Sue had allowed Julia to take short walks along the beach. It was an undisturbed bow of soft, white sand with rocky outcrops at either end. All along the beach were trails that led her through waist-high ferns, past thickly clustered yellowwood trees draped in mossy vines. When the sun came out she sometimes swam. The water was so cold it numbed her entire body. There were tricky currents and often Julia felt like giving in to them, letting them carry her away. But she never did.

  Her life had become slow and simple, lived only in the present. It wouldn’t last, she knew that, but for now she was happy to be alive, breathe the tangy sea air, walk in the sand with bare feet, listen to the tides. Compared to living with Magnus, being on tenterhooks all the time, only coming to life when she conducted her forays into the shopping malls, it wasn’t a bad alternative.

  Two days after the hair cut, Sue pushed open J
ulia’s bedroom door and strode into the room holding a gun.

  So this is it, Julia thought. She’s going to kill me. She stood up from the old wicker chair where she had been sitting, and faced Sue.

  She wasn’t going to cower, if this was it, she would bloody well stand up straight and look her in the eye. Julia couldn’t move. It was as if time had fallen away. They faced each other for a long moment. Then Sue dropped the gun onto the stained mattress.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, I am going to show you how to use this. Time for you to pull your own weight around here.’

  Julia’s hands were shaking and her heart was hammering, but she played along. She became familiar with loading and unloading guns, 9mm Glocks and Z88s.

  Naturally neat, precise and cerebral, she quickly learnt to read maps, plan strategic attacks and getaway routes. She learnt how to suck helium in a special way from the small portable flasks Sue provided. The slow sucking technique turned her voice into a Donald Duck squeak for more than fifteen minutes. She recoiled for a moment, shocked with the memory of her kidnap, when she first heard Sue's voice, distorted and tinny. The cartoon characters of her childhood with their friendly grins, flapping ears and fluffy yellow coats turned into grotesque monsters. Now Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck were caricatures you’d never want to meet on a dark night. Nursery room nightmares. And she was part of it.

  9

  21 June 2006

  My grandfather played host that evening. His newest wife, Nomvula, a plump, buttery girl, younger than me, served us a rich soup, a moat of broth around a castle of mealie-pap. As globules of golden fat slid down my throat, I counted the calories in horror. There was mutton steam in my hair, the smell of charcoal in my clothes. My French painted nails had worn off during the mountain climb and were encrusted with dirt.

  I glanced at the wives. Several of them were new, and young, but not one was pregnant. Solenkosi Tswane might be tribal chief of the valley, but he was over eighty. I was still his only blood relative and likely to remain so.

  The suffocation of the valley had set in. My grandfather gestured to me to stand or sit, his wives signalled where I should be, moving around me as if I was a child again. I was used to looking after myself, making my own decisions, and now, in the space of a few hours, it felt as if I had never left. There was something about the way my grandfather and his older wives issued orders, no matter how simple, that made me prickle with annoyance.