by Deon Meyer
Yvette.
That was all he knew. That night he had lain in bed with a strange melancholy. Her smell was on his fingers and on his body. But the next morning it was gone. Just like her.
* * *
While she was in the bathroom, he walked quickly out to his car and fetched the music and the CD player.
When she came out her hair was clean and wet. She made up a bed on the couch for him. She put out a big blue towel for him and said he was welcome to use the bathroom. He said he would like to shower. He was aware of the awkwardness between them. Or was it just him?
Tonight he was going to share a house with a whore. He couldnt look at her and forced a polite smile.
Well, Ill say goodnight, then.
Sleep well, he said.
You too. She went down the passage and shut her door. He went to the bathroom. It was still steamy from her shower and filled with her fragrances, soap and shampoo and lotion. It smelt different from Annas bathroom. Fuller. Richer.
He undressed and neatly folded his clothes and put them on the toilet lid, on top of his service pistol. He looked down at his body. Naked in a whores bathroom. He looked at the chest hairs already turning gray and the middle age slackening of his belly. His penis was in that no-mans land between indifference and desire, a half-smoked cigar. Not exactly your Greek god. Not exactly seductive in Christine van Rooyens eyes. He smiled wryly at himself in the steamy mirror.
He showered using her semi-transparent soap that was the color of red wine, and shampoo from a white bottle. He rinsed off and toweled. Put only his trousers on and carried the rest of his clothes and his firearm to the sitting room. He stacked them in a neat pile beside the couch and sat. He examined his bed. It was a big, wide couch. Long enough. He took out the Anton Goosen jewel case and had another look at it. He took out the second disc of the double set and put it in the player. Earphones on. He switched off the standard lamp beside the couch, swung his feet up and placed the player on his stomach. Pressed Play.
* * *
Only once the nine members of the Task Force had grown tired of laughing and jesting and gone on their way did the detective in Midrand get a chance to take the fingerprints of the two suspects. Then he had them locked up in the cells again.
He sat down at his desk and began to go through the evidence systematically. In one of the transparent plastic evidence bags he saw the identity documents that the Task Force men had found in the BMW. He took them out and looked at the names.
Lets see, he thought, and picked up the phone. The number he keyed was that of the SAPS Criminal Records Center in Pretoria.
* * *
As the applause after the last cut faded, he lay with closed eyes and a light heart. He wondered what he had lost in the past few years. He was the drinking equivalent of Rip van Winkle with this huge hole in his life, a black hole of unconsciousness. Everything had grown up. His children, the music of his culture . . . his fucking country. Everything except him. In his mind he was being exposed to the alternatives, how different things might have been. He didnt want to see that now. He took the earphones off.
City sounds penetrated faintly from outside. His eyes were adjusted to the dark now. Streetlights illuminated the room sufficiently through the gauzy curtains. The outlines of the furniture, the dark shape of the painting against the wall. Small red and green lights shone from the fridge and the TV.
He wanted to tell Fritz. Reaching over the little table he found his cell phone and scrolled through the menu to text messages. He struggled a bit with the tiny pads of the keyboard. CD IS BASS HEAVEN. THANKS. DAD.
He sent the SMS and put the CD player and phone on his pile of clothes. He must sleep. He didnt want to think, enough thinking for one day. He shifted around on the couch, struggling to be comfortable. It was best with his back against the backrest. Too hot for the blanket. Sleep.
He thought once of Christine lying in the bedroom, but he put her out of his mind and tried to think of Anna. That brought no peace so he thought about the music and he did what he used to do when he was seventeen: he visualized himself on stage. At the State Theater. With Anton & friends. He was playing bass guitar. Playing without effort, going with the flow of the music, letting his fingers run where they would and he heard the bedroom door open and soft footfalls on the carpet. She must be going to the bathroom. But here she was beside him. She lay down on the couch. Her back was against him. She shifted up close to him so they lay like two spoons. He hardly dared breathe. He must pretend to be asleep. Keep his breathing even and calm. He could smell her, her shoulder right by his nose.
She wanted comfort. She just needed a person. She didnt want to be alone, she missed her child, she was raw and hurting. He knew all that.
He made a sound that he hoped would sound like a person asleep and put a hand on her hip. A comforting gesture. Half on thin material and half on bare flesh.
He felt the heat of her body. Now he was getting a fucking erection, it blossomed irreverently and there was no way to stop it. He had to think of something. He made another vague noise and shifted his hips back. Lord, she mustnt know. He should have put his underpants on, that would have kept it reined in. Perhaps she wasnt fully awake. He tried to listen to her breathing, but all his senses returned to him were her heat and her scent.
She shifted back against him. Right against him. Up here. Down there.
He wanted to apologize. He wanted to mumble Im sorry or something, but he was too scared. She was half asleep and that would make it all worse. He lay very still. Thought about the music. Played bass guitar along with
gee die harlekyn nog wyn, skoebiedoewaa, skoebiedoewaa, rooiwyn vir sy lag en traan en pyn, skoebiedoewaa, skoebiedoewaa . . .
Give the harlequin more wine, scoobydoowaa, scoobydoowaa, red wine for his laughter and tears and pain . . .
She moved her arm, her hand, put it over his. She held it on her hip a moment and then drew it up under her nightie, oh fuck, up to her breast, her palm on the back of his hand and he felt her, felt the softness and she sighed deeply and pressed his hand tightly and roughly against her. Moved again, her hips away from his pelvis and her hand came down there, behind her back and undid the clip of his trousers, how he had no idea. Unzipped his trousers. Slipped in her hand and grasped him. Lust was one high perfect note in his head, a lead guitar that took flight to the rhythm of his hearts bass and then she pushed him into her from behind.
Long after his orgasm they lay still like that, belly to back, still inside her, though spent and flaccid now. The first words she spoke, barely aloud, were: You are broken too.
He thought for a long time before answering. He wondered how she knew. How she could see it. Or feel it. Why had she come to him? Her need? Or her gift to him? A comfort?
So he told her. About Anna. About his children. The drinking. Without plan or structure, he let it flow as it came into his head, his arm tight around her now, and his hand softly on the fullness of her breast. Her face against his, the fine hairs against his stubble.
He told her how he had been, in the days before the booze. He had been an optimist, an extrovert. A joker. He was the one who could make everyone laugh, at the funniest moments. In the parade room, when tensions ran high and tempers were stretched, he could spot the silly side of the matter and cut through all the crap with a phrase and leave them helpless with laughter. He was the one everyone phoned first when they wanted to throw some meat on the griddle for a
braai.
Two or three times a month he would join Murder and Robbery for an impromptu barbecue, a
braai.
Three oclock on a Friday afternoon, just to relieve the never-ending pressure, at Blouberg or Silvermine or even at the office itself in Bellville South. Beer and meat and bread, laughter, chat and drink, he would be first on the list, because he was Sergeant Benny Griessel, instinctive investigator and unofficial, cynical chief clown who could ridicule the
job and the bureaucracy and affirmative action but with compassion. So that they could all face up to it again.
Now, this side of the booze, they still had their
braais.
But no one called him. No one wanted him there, the sot who staggered and couldnt string two coherent words together. The oaf who bumped into others, swore and fought and had to be taken home to a wife who opened the door reluctantly. Because she didnt want that drunkard or the humiliation.
He told Christine he had been sober for eleven days now and he didnt know the man this side of the booze.
Everything had changed around him. His children, his wife, his colleagues. Jissis, he was an old has-been amongst all the
Sturm und Drang
of the young policemen in the Service.
But the main thing was, he believed he
had
changed. He wasnt sure how. Or how much. A strange fellow in his forties with a gaping hole in his life.
He told her all this and somewhere in the telling she asked: Why do you want your wife back? He wondered about that before he answered. He said the thing was, he had been happy then. They had. She was the woman he had begun his life with. They had nothing, just each other. Set up house together, suffered together. Laughed together. Shared the same wonder at the magic of Carla and Fritzs births. Celebrated together when he was promoted. They had history, the sort of history that mattered. They were friends and lovers and he wanted that back. He wanted the bond and the camaraderie and the trust. Because that was a great part of who he had been, what made him what he had been.
And he wanted to be that again.
If he couldnt get Anna back, he had fuck-all. That was it.
She said: A person can never be like that again, and before he could react, she asked, Do you still love her? It made no difference how long he thought about that one, he could not answer her. He wanted to talk shit about what is love, but he kept quiet and suddenly felt weary of himself, so he asked, What about you?
What about me?
Why was it necessary . . . to become a prostitute?
A sex worker, she said, but in quiet self-mockery.
She moved slowly and he slipped out of her. A small moment of loss. She turned over so her face was towards him and his hand was off her breast.
Would you have asked me that if I was selling flowers? There was no confrontation in her voice. Her words were flat and without emotion. She didnt wait for an answer. Its just a job.
He drew a breath to answer, but she went on: People think its this dreadful thing. Bad. Damaging. Your work brings you damage too. Thats what you just said. But its okay to be a policeman. Just dont be a whore.
He thought if she hadnt been a sex worker, Sonia would have been safe at home, but he knew he could never say it.
When I began, I also wondered what was different about me. All my clients ask the same thing. Why did you become an escort? It makes you think theres something wrong with you. Then you think, but why should it be something
wrong?
Why cant it be something
right?
Why cant it just be that I think further than most people? What is sex? Is it so bad? What makes it such a bad thing?
She got up and walked away from him and he was sorry he had asked her. He didnt mean to upset her. He should have thought. He wanted to say he was sorry, but she had disappeared down the passage. He became aware of his trousers still unfastened so he zipped them up.
She came back. He saw her shadowy figure moving and here she was, but this time she sat at his feet.
Do you want a cigarette?
Please.
She put two cigarettes in her mouth and clicked the lighter. In the light of the flame he could see her breasts and face and bare shoulders.
She passed one to him. He drew deeply.
I was always different, she said and blew a plume of smoke that cast a ghostly shadow on the opposite wall. Its hard to explain. When you are small, you understand nothing. You think theres something wrong with you. My parents . . . I come from a good home. My father was in the army and my mother was mostly at home and they were okay with that. With their little world. With that kind of life. The older I got the harder it was for me to understand. How could that be all? How could that be enough? You go to school, you find a husband or a wife, you raise kids, you retire by the sea and then you die. You never upset anyone, you do the right thing. Those are my fathers words. My child, you do the right thing. Whose right thing? The peoples? Who are they to decide what the right thing is? You pay your parking money and you never drive too fast and dont make a noise after ten at night. And you do your duty. Thats another of my fathers classics. People must do their duty, my child. To your family, to your town, to your country. What for? What did they get for doing their duty? My father did his duty to the army and he was dead before he took his pension. My mother did her duty to us and she has never been to Cape Town or Europe or anywhere. After all the duty, there was never money for anything. Not for clothes or cars or furniture or holidays. But it was okay for them, because people mustnt be flashy, thats not the right thing to do.
Everyone wants you to be ordinary. Everything everyone teaches you, is just so you wont be different. But I was different. I couldnt help it. Its the way I am. If my parents or the school or whoever said that is what you should do, then I wondered what it felt like to do the opposite. I wanted to see what it looked like from the other side. So I did. I smoked a bit and I drank a bit. But when you are fifteen or sixteen, almost all the rules are about sex. You mustnt do this and you mustnt do that, because you must be a decent girl. I wanted to know why you had to be a decent girl. What for? So you could get a decent man? And a decent life, with decent children? And a decent funeral with lots of people? So I did things. And the more things I did, the more I realized the other side is the interesting one. Most people dont want to be decent, theyve all got this stuff inside that wants to be different, but they dont have the guts. They are all too scared someone will say something. They are afraid they will lose all the boring things in their lives. There was this teacher, he was so dutiful. I worked on him. And I slept with him on the Students Christian Association camp at The Island. He said, God, Christine, Ive wanted you so long. So I asked him why he hadnt done something about it. He couldnt answer me. And this friend of my father. When he came to our house he would look at me sideways but then go and sit next to his wife and hold her hand. I knew what he wanted. I worked on him and he said he liked young girls but that it was his first time.
She stubbed the cigarette out and half turned to him.
He was as old as you, she said, and for a second he thought he heard scorn in her voice.
She leaned her back against his feet. She folded her arms below her breasts.
Do you know why my parents sent me to university? To find a husband. One with education. And a good job. So I could have a good life. A good life. What does a good life help? What use is it when you die and you can say to yourself I had a good life? Boring, but good.
At varsity this guy was visiting me, third-year medical student. His parents lived in Heuwelsig and they had money. I saw how they lived. I saw if you have money you dont have to be dutiful and ordinary and good. Having money means more than being able to buy things. You can be different and no one says anything. Then I knew what I wanted. But how to get it? You could marry a rich man, but its still not your money. I got a job working weekends for a catering business. One night at a golf course I stood having a smoke and this man comes up to me. He had a car business in Zastron Street, and he asked me, How much do you earn? When I told him he said, Wouldnt you rather make a thousand rand a night? and I asked, How would I do that? and he said, With your body, love. He gave me his card and he said, Think about it. I phoned him that Mon
day. And I did it. In a flat, they were seven guys who had a flat in Hilton, and sometimes at lunchtime or sometimes in the evening they would phone me at the hostel and I would go.
But then, just before final exams, I got pregnant, she said. I was on the pill, but it didnt work. When I told them they said they would pay for the abortion, but I said no. So they gave me money and I came to Cape Town.
38.
Orlando Arendse had a fixed routine every morning. In his large, pretty house in West Beach, Milnerton, he got up at six without the help of an alarm clock. He put on slippers and a burgundy dressing gown. He picked up his reading glasses from the kitchen table, left his wife sleeping and went to the kitchen. He put the spectacles on the kitchen table and ground a 5
0
/5
0
mix of Italian and Mocca Java coffee beansenough for four large mugs. He filled the coffee machine with water and carefully poured in the ground coffee. Then he pressed the switch.
