by Deon Meyer
They would start to leave the children of this land alone, the dogs, he would make sure of that. Somewhere Khoza and Ramphele were hiding, fugitives for the moment, invisible. But some time or other they would reappear, make contact or do something, and he would pick up their trail and hunt them down, corner them and let the assegai do the talking. Sometime or other. If you wanted to get the prey, you had to be patient.
In the meantime there was work to do.
* * *
I was clueless about money. There was just never enough. My father put a hundred rand a month in my account. A hundred rand. No matter how hard I tried, it would only last two weeks. Maybe three if I didnt buy magazines or if I smoked less or if I pretended I was busy when they went to movies or to eat out or chill . . . but it was never enough and I didnt want to ask for more because he would want to know what I was doing with it and I would have to listen to his nagging. I heard they were looking for students at a catering business in Westdene. They did weddings and functions and paid ninety rand for a Saturday night if you would waitress or serve, and they gave you an advance for the clothes. You had to wear black pantyhose and a black pencil skirt with a white blouse. I went to ask and they gave me a job, two sweet middle-aged gays who would have a huge falling out every fortnight and then make up just in time for the next function.
The work was okay, once you got used to being on your feet for so long, and I looked stunning in the pencil skirt, even if I say so myself. But most of all I liked the money. The freedom. The, the . . . I dont know, to walk down Mimosa Mall and look at the Diesel jeans and decide I wanted them and buy them. Just that feeling, always knowing your purse was not emptythat was cool.
At first I just did Saturdays, and then Fridays too and the occasional Wednesday. Just for the money. Just for the . . . power, you could say.
Then in October we did the Schoemans Park golf-day party. I went outside for a smoke after the main course, and Viljoen was standing on the eighteenth green with a bottle in his hand and such a knowing look on his face. He asked me if I wanted a slug.
* * *
They must have injected him with something, because it was morning when he woke, slowly and with difficulty, and he just lay with his face to the hospital wall. It was a while before he realized there was a needle and a thin tube attached to his arm. He was not shaking.
A nurse came in and asked him questions and his voice was hoarse when he answered. He might have been speaking too loudly, because she sounded far away. She took his wrist and in her other hand held a watch that was pinned to her chest. He thought it was odd to wear it there. She put a thermometer into his dry mouth and spoke in a soft voice. She was a black woman with scars on her cheeks, fossil remnants of acne. Her eyes rested softly on him and she wrote something on a snow-white card and then she was gone.
Two colored women brought him breakfast, shifting the trolley over the bed. They were excitable, chittering birds. They put a steaming tray on the trolley and said: You must eat, Sarge, you need the nourishment. Then they disappeared. When the doctor arrived it was still there, cold and uneaten, and Griessel lay like a fetus, hands between his legs and his head feeling thick. Unwilling to think, because all his head had to offer was trouble.
The doctor was an elderly man, short and stooped, bald and bespectacled. The hair that remained around his head grew long and gray down his back. He read the chart first and then came to sit beside the bed.
I pumped you full of thiamin and Valium. It will help with the withdrawal. But you have to eat too, he said quietly.
Griessel just lay there.
You are a brave man to give up alcohol. Matt Joubert must have talked to him.
Did they tell you my wife left me?
They did not. Was it because of the drink?
Griessel shifted partially upright. I hit her when I was drunk.
How long have you been dependent?
Fourteen fucking years.
Then it is good that you stopped. The liver has its limits.
I dont know if I can.
I also felt like that and I have been dry for twenty-four years.
Griessel sat up. You were an alky?
The doctors eyes blinked behind the thick lenses. Thats why they sent for me this morning. You could say I am a specialist. For eleven years I drank like a fish. Drank away my practice, my family, my Mercedes-Benz. Three times I swore I would stop, but I couldnt keep my balance on the wagon. Eventually I had nothing left except pancreatitis.
Did she take you back?
She did, said the doctor and smiled. We had two more children, just to celebrate. The trouble is, they look like their father.
How did you do it?
Sex played an important role.
No, I mean . . .
The doctor took Griessels hand and he laughed with closed eyes. I know what you mean.
Oh. For the first time Griessel smiled.
One day at a time. And the AA. And the fact that I had hit rock bottom. There was no more medication to help, except disulfiram, the stuff that makes you throw up if you drink. But I knew from the literature it is rubbishif you really want to drink, you just stop taking the pills.
Are there drugs now that can make you stop drinking?
No drug can make you stop drinking. Only you can.
Griessel nodded in disappointment.
But they can make withdrawal easier.
Take away the DTs.
You have not yet experienced delirium tremens, my friend. That only comes three to five days after withdrawal begins. Yesterday you experienced reasonably normal convulsions and, I imagine, the hallucinations of a heavy drinker who stops. Did you smell strange scents?
Yes.
Hear strange things?
Yes. With emphasis.
Acute withdrawal, but not yet the DTs, and for that you should be thankful. DTs is hell and we havent found a way to stop it. If it gets really bad, you could get
grand mal
seizures, cardiac infarction or stroke, and any one of the three could kill you.
Jesus.
Do you really want to stop, Griessel?
I do.
Then today is your lucky day.
13.
She was a colored woman with three children, and a husband in jail. She was the receptionist at the Quay Delta workshop in Paarden Island and it was never her intention to send the whole thing off at a tangent.
The
Argus
came at 12:30 every day, four papers for the waiting room so that clients could read while they waited for their cars to be finished. It was her habit to quickly scan the main news headlines of the day. Today she did this with more purpose because she had expectations.
She found it on the front page just below the fold in the newspaper. The headline already told her that all was not right.
POLICE LINKED TO KILLING OF ALLEGED CHILD RAPIST
Quickly she read through the article and clicked her tongue.
The South African Police Services (SAPS) might have been responsible for the vigilante-style murder of alleged child rapist Enver Davids last night. A spokesperson for the Cape Human Rights Forum, Mr. David Rosenthal, said his organization had received sensitive information from a very reliable source inside the police services in this regard. The source indicated that the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit (SVC) was involved in the killing.
HIV-positive Davids, who was freed on charges of murder and child rape three days after the SVC had misplaced DNA evidence pertinent to the case, was found stabbed to death on a Kraaifontein street early this morning.
Senior Superintendent Matt Joubert, head of the SVC, vigorously denied the allegation, calling the claim that two of his detectives tracked down Davids and killed him malicious, spurious and devoid of all truth. He admits that the uni
t was upset and frustrated after a judge sharply criticized their management of the case and then dismissed it . . .
The woman shook her head.
She would have to do something. This morning when she went into her dark kitchen to get the bottle of Vicks for her childs chest she could see the movement from her window. She had been a witness to the awful dance on the pavement. She had recognized Davidss face in the streetlight. Of one thing she was absolutely sure. The man with the short assegai was not a policeman. She knew the police; she could spot a policeman a mile away. She had had plenty of them on her doorstep. Like this morning when they had come to ask if she had seen anything and she had denied any knowledge.
She looked up the telephone number of the
Argus
on their front page and dialed it. She asked for the journalist who had written the article.
It wasnt the police who killed Enver Davids, she said without introduction.
To whom am I speaking?
It doesnt matter.
And how do you know this, madam?
She had been expecting the question. But she could not say or they would get her. They would track her down if she gave too much information.
You might say I have first-hand knowledge.
Are you saying you were involved in this killing, madam?
All I want to say is that it wasnt the police. Definitely not.
Are you a member of Pagad?
No, Im not. It wasnt a group. It was one person.
Are you that person?
I am going to put the phone down now.
Wait, please. How can I believe you, madam? How do I know you are not a crank?
She thought for a moment. Then she said: It was a spear that killed him. An assegai. You can go and check that.
She put the phone down.
That is how the Artemis story began.
* * *
Joubert and his English wife came to visit him that evening. All he could see was the way they kept touching each other, the big senior superintendent and his red-headed wife with the gentle eyes. Married four years and still touching like a honeymoon couple.
Joubert told him about the allegation that the unit was responsible for Davids death. Margaret Joubert brought him magazines. They talked about everything but his problem. When they left Joubert gripped his shoulder with a big hand and said, Hang in there, Benny. After they had gone he wondered how long it had been since he and Anna had touched each other. Like that.
He could not recall.
Fuck, when last had they had sex? When last did he even want to? Sometimes, in the semi-drunken state of his day, something would prompt him to think about it, but by the time he got home the alcohol would long since have melted the lead in his pencil.
And what of Anna? Did she feel the need? She didnt drink. She had been keen in the days before he began drinking seriously. Always game when he was, sometimes twice a week, folding her delicate fingers around his erection and playing their ritual game that had begun spontaneously and they had never dropped. Where did you get this thing, Benny?
Sale at Checkers, so I took four.
Or: I traded with a Jew for nine inches of boere sausages. Dont be afraid, hes bald. He would think of something new every time and even when he was less ingenious and more banal she would laugh. Every time. Their sex was always joyous, cheerful, until her orgasm made her serious. Afterwards they would hold each other and she would say, I love you, Benny.
Pissed away, systematically, like everything.
He yearned. Where were the days, Lord, could he ever get them back? He wondered what she did when the desire was on her? What had she done the past two or three years? Did she see to herself? Or was there . . . ?
Panic. What if there was someone? Jissis, he would fucking shoot him. Nobody touched his Anna.
He looked at his hands, clenched fists, white knuckles. Slowly, slowly, the doctor had said he would make emotional leaps, anxiety . . . He must slow down.
He unclenched his fists and drew the magazines closer.
Car.
Margaret Joubert had brought him mens magazines but cars were not his scene. Nor was
Popular Mechanics.
There was a sketch of a futuristic airplane on the cover. The cover story read,
New York to London in 30 Minutes?
Who cares, he said.
His scene was drinking, but they dont publish magazines for that.
He switched off the light. It would be a long night.
* * *
The woman at the Internet café in Long Street had a row of earrings all down the edge of her ear and a shiny object through her nostril. Thobela thought she would have been prettier without it.
I dont know how to use these things, he said.
Its twenty rand an hour, she said, as if that would disqualify him straight away.
I need someone to teach me, he said patiently, refreshed after his afternoon nap.
What do you want to do?
I heard you can read newspapers. And see what they wrote last year too.
Archives. They call them Internet archives.
Aaah . . . he said. Would you show me?
We dont really do training.
I will pay.
He could see the synapses fire behind her pale green eyes: the potential to make good money out of a dumb black, but also the possibility that it could be slow, frustrating work.
Two hundred rand an hour, but you will have to wait until my shift is over.
Fifty, he said. I will wait.
He had taken her unawares, but she recovered well. A hundred, take it or leave it.
A hundred and you buy the coffee.
She put out a hand and smiled. Deal. My name is Simone.
He saw there was another shiny object on her tongue.
* * *
Viljoen. He was not tall, barely half a head taller than she was. He was not very handsome, and wore a copper bracelet on his wrist and a thin gold chain around his neck that she never much liked. It was not that he was poorhe just had no interest in money. The Free State sun had bleached his eight-year-old 464 pickup until you would be hard pressed to name the original color. Day after day it stood in the parking lot of the Schoemans Park Golf Club while he coached golf, or sold golf balls in the pro shop or played a round or two with the more important members.
He was a professional golfer. In theory. He had only lasted three months on the Sunshine Tour before his money ran out because he could not putt under pressure. He got the shakes, the yips, he called them. He would set up the putt and walk away and line up and set himself up again but always putted too short. Nerves had destroyed him.
He became the resident pro at Schoemans Park. I found him that night on the eighteenth green with a bottle in his hand. It was weird. It was like we recognized each other. We were the same kind. Sort of on the sidelines. When you are in a hostel, you feel it quicklythat you dont quite belong. Nobody says anything, everyone is nice to each other and you socialize and laugh and worry together about exams, but you are not really in.
But Viljoen saw it. He knew it, because he was like that too.
We began to talk. It was just so . . . natural, from the beginning. When I had to go in, he asked me what I was doing afterwards, and I said I had to catch a lift back to the hostel, so I couldnt do anything and he said he would take me.
So when everyone had gone, he asked me if I would caddy for him, because he wanted to play a bit of golf. I think he was a little drunk. I said you cant play golf in the dark, and he said thats what everyone thinks, but he would show me.
The Bloemfontein summer night . . . She could smell the mown grass, hear the night sounds, and see the half moon. She could remember the way the light from the clubhouse verandah reflected off Viljo
ens tanned skin. She could see his broad shoulders and his odd smile and the expression in his eyes and that aura about him, that terrible solitariness he carried around with him. The noise of the golf club striking the ball and the way it flew into the darkness and him saying: Come, caddy, dont let the roar of the crowd distract you. His voice was gentle, self-mocking. Before every shot they would drink from the bottle of semi-sweet white wine still cold from the fridge. I dont get the yips at night, he said, and he made his putts, long and short. In the dark he made the ball roll on perfect lines, over the humps in the greens, till it fell clattering into the hole. On the fairway of the sixth hole he kissed her, but by then she already knew she liked him too much and it was okay, absolutely okay.
