Never pausing, never yielding, the arm of night sweeps across the city. The people would rise, but they are smothered by the cloud that comes with darkness. There is no sight. There is no thought, no gentleness in this our lovely land. We live within the depths of this fortress of dusk.
A passage printed directly from a computer had a theme with some similarities:
I have no life, but the life of this darkness. I have no light, but it is covered by the cloud of this reality. I see no stars, no moon, only the blankness of this fog, only the blank, featureless cloud. Even by day, the fog haunts me. Trees and mountains disappear, friends fade into its depths, only fear remains.
On the next page another paragraph needed rereading:
All of life is a pretense. We spend every hour of every day pretending to others that we are more than we really are. Everything we do, every word we speak: all are aimed at misleading others as to our virtue, our bravery, our competence, our attractiveness. Truth and honesty are beyond the grasp of any human being.
On the very last page he found something altogether different, and lingered over it longer than he had over any other section:
The fertile seed brings forth much fruit. The corrupt seed too results in a harvest, but what is the value of such a harvest? Only death, decay and fear are the fruits of the evil seed. The failing harvest is not to blame. The decaying fruit is not at fault. Nor should the dead growth stand accused. Look only to the seed for that is where the guilt lies.
At the back of the file, lying loose inside the back cover, was the photograph of a young African man. It was the photograph Abigail had studied the night before. Extreme leanness, slightly bulging eyes and hollow cheeks gave the impression of malnourishment. The whites that were visible right around the pupils gave his face a startled look. His forehead was broad, his cheekbones high and his jaw firm. Despite everything, it was a strong face. Yudel believed that the state of mind of any person was reflected on that person’s features. The slight smile reflected a self-assurance that stood in contrast to the rest of the face.
He looked at the back of the photograph. Someone had written his name, Tony Makumbe, there. He thought about the young man’s state of mind and what the contents of the parcel revealed. It was possible that the photograph could be deceiving. He believed that the writing could not.
He remained motionless behind his desk for longer than he had intended. Eventually he reached for the phone to call Abigail.
Robert Mokoapi answered. There had been occasions in the past when he had called Abigail later than Robert had considered appropriate—or reasonable—or both. Yudel paused too long before speaking. “Is that you, Yudel?” Robert asked.
It’s been years and he still remembers that episode, Yudel thought. “Yes, I wondered…”
“She’s still awake. I’m passing the phone to her.”
“Yudel,” Abigail said.
He was surprised at the joy he felt at hearing her voice. “Yes, it’s me.” To find some pleasantry as an introduction to the conversation was not within Yudel’s scope. “Your man…” he began. “I believe he could be a schizophrenic.”
“My God. Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure. Who is he?”
“He seems to be a cousin of mine.”
“Let me meet him. I’ll be able to make a better assessment.”
“That won’t be possible. Listen, Yudel, I need to speak to you to discuss this—soon, tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s not possible, I’ve promised Rosa…”
“It must be tomorrow.” There was still the same insistence on getting her way that he remembered. Perhaps that was not fair. Perhaps it was simply her determination to get things done. And they were always important things. “Tomorrow evening. Robert and I have been invited to the Tikkun SA launch of an art exhibition to support a project of theirs. Will you be there?”
“No.”
“But you’re Jewish. Didn’t they invite you?”
“I didn’t respond to the invitation.”
“Come anyway. Please come. It’ll be the only chance I have to speak to you.”
“I don’t know.” The thought of the meaningless chatter of a cocktail party and the speeches that were bound to be made was too much. He had done what she asked, spent hours on it, and told her what he thought. Was that not enough? “I don’t think I…”
“Please, Yudel, please. You and Rosa come. I have to speak to you. Say you will.”
“I…” It was almost impossible to avoid her.
“Say you will.”
“I…”
“You will come.”
“All right, Abigail. I’ll come.”
Rosa was usually a good sleeper, but tonight when Yudel entered the bedroom she was in bed, but not asleep. “You’re still awake,” he said.
“Tell me what’s in that file.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of her hands in his. “Just the writings of a very disturbed boy. Nothing else.”
“Is there a case against him?”
“He’s a Zimbabwean and he’s one of those who oppose that government.”
“But everything’s changed there, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t think so. Those who have controlled the real power all along, still control it.”
“So he’s in trouble.”
“It sounds that way.”
“At least it’s not here.”
“No.”
She sighed. “I know I sound selfish. But I was so afraid last time.”
“I know. Will you be able to sleep now?”
“I think so.”
“I think you should take a pill. I was given some samples of the best sleeping pill in existence. I’ll get one.”
When he came back from his study, he had the pill in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Rosa was looking searchingly at his face. “Yudel?” Her voice had acquired a surprisingly sharp tone.
“Yes, my dear.”
“You’re not giving me a placebo, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“I’d hate to think that I was allowing myself to be deceived by a sugarcoated pill.”
“Rosa, I would never do that,” Yudel said sincerely. “I would never patronize you by giving you a placebo. It would be an insult to someone of your intelligence. This pill will put you to sleep inside thirty seconds. It’s the most effective sleeping drug available on the planet.”
“Thank you, Yudel.”
Yudel handed her the water and the placebo and she swallowed them. She was asleep with ten of the thirty seconds to spare.
Yes, my dear, he thought. Your mind is the most powerful drug of all.
10
The mist had stayed away for more than twenty-four hours. The little light there was in the cell came from a lamp somewhere beyond the cell’s only window. By this faint glow, Tony Makumbe could still see the length of it and the seven men in it. Since at least four that afternoon all had been lying down. No one had moved in that time, except to roll over to give another part of the body the chance to do battle with the concrete floor. They had sleeping mats woven from reeds, but the mats did little to soften the unyielding surface of the floor.
He had tried to get up around midday, but had gotten no further than raising himself onto his hands and knees, and then only for perhaps five minutes. He wondered how much he had eaten. He remembered the food coming and thought that he had offered some of it to others in the cell, but none of it was clear. Anything that happened while the mist was around him was lost to memory. Not eating would account for his weakness. But the other men were all weaker. With the sparseness of their rations, it was not surprising. A few of them had tried to talk through the inspection flap in the door to prisoners in adjoining cells. None had made the effort more than once.
The big man he had noticed before was on the mat next to his. “Tony, my man, you awake?” He spoke softly to avoid disturbing the others.
; “I’m sorry,” Tony said. “I don’t remember your name.”
“Jacob. People say Big Jake when they talk to me.”
“Hello, Jake.” It was always difficult to look for the sort of information that he wanted from Jake now. “Have I been here…” He looked at Jake and saw only a sort of fatherly, stern-faced sympathy. “Have I been here long?”
“Yes, you were sick. A week, maybe a day or two more.”
“Could you tell me, have I been eating?”
“A little. When you didn’t eat, some of the others took your food. You get better food than us and…”
“I know. It’s all right.”
“Me also, I took some of your food too. I hope you don’t mind. None of us are strong anymore.”
“Jake?”
“Yes, my brother.”
“Why are you here?”
“Armed robbery. Awaiting trial.”
“What did you rob?”
“A supermarket.” Tony waited too long, thinking about the reasons a man robs a supermarket. Big Jake spoke again: “Not to feed my family or anything like that. Wife and children died last year. I was just tired of all this. I wanted to take the money.”
“I understand.”
This seemed to surprise Big Jake. “You feel like that too, an educated man like you?”
“Sometimes. We all do.”
Big Jake seemed to think about that for a while, but when he spoke again his mind had been seized by something altogether different. “Tony?”
“Yes.”
“You see the man in the corner, over there on the other side?”
“The old man with the gray hair?”
“You see him? He lies very quiet.”
“I see him.”
“He died yesterday.”
“Do they know?”
“I told them.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
“I went up to him to see. He’s not breathing. Heart’s not beating.”
Tony looked at the body of the gray-haired man for a while, then he closed his eyes to cut out the sight.
“Tony?” It was Big Jake again.
“Yes.”
“If we stay here, we’re all going that way.”
For Tony, there was no point in taking the matter further. Conversation was both pointless and too great an effort. Everything was.
Eventually the fog again rose from the ground until Tony could see none of the other men or even the far walls of the cell. Nor could he hear Jake’s voice when the big man spoke again.
11
The exhibition was at the Sheraton, directly across the road from the gardens of the Union Buildings, the same place where, according to Abigail’s anonymous friend, Robert had dallied with the PA, the pretty blond temp with the milky-white breasts.
These were Abigail’s thoughts as they neared the hotel, Robert driving the BMW four-by-four, while she sat silently, her hands folded in her lap. He had tried to make conversation a few times but, with little response from her, had given up.
Abigail had been surprised at the invitation to what she thought was an all-Jewish affair. “No,” Robert had told her. “They’re looking for donations wherever they can get them. And the work they’re doing is genuinely good.”
Joshua Berman, the chairman of Tikkun SA, eighty years old and near the end of an active business career, greeted them as they stepped from the lift. He was wearing a tuxedo and smiling warmly at all new arrivals. He read their registration tags very skilfully without them being sure that he was doing so. “Robert,” he said, beaming, “and Abigail, I’m delighted you could come.”
Berman’s speech, delivered a few minutes later, was short. The artists had donated their paintings and the money was all going, every last penny, to an antipoverty initiative in an impoverished part of the Eastern Cape. The hotel had donated the venue and Tikkun SA’s donors had picked up the administration costs.
The paintings were not being auctioned. Like any other exhibition, they carried prices, personally inflated by Berman, “for a cause that is second to none for social impact.” The guests, perhaps a hundred representatives of the region’s wealthier families and most profitable businesses, milled among the works of art making appreciative sounds. Berman, who had little interest in art, but much interest in publicizing his efforts to alleviate poverty, watched the scene through benevolent eyes.
Abigail had just begun examining the paintings when she saw Yudel and Freek approaching from the direction of the lifts. Yudel looked as distracted as ever. Next to him, Freek was smiling at her in that way he had that was part friendly uncle and part alpha male. It was Yudel who had introduced her to Freek, at a time when she needed police help badly. “Hello, boys,” she said.
Robert had come up behind his wife while Freek took one of Abigail’s hands and held it a little too long. “May I suggest, in the presence of your husband, that you look most charming tonight?” he said.
Robert looked past him. “I suppose we’ll survive it.”
Abigail tilted her head in Freek’s direction. “Thank you, sir. By the way, where are Rosa and Magda?”
Freek explained, “Magda’s out of town and Rosa is … I believe powdering her nose is the commonly used term.”
“You both look very handsome tonight.”
Yudel looked at Freek. To his eyes, Freek did not look especially handsome. He felt sure that he personally did not look handsome to anyone. Perhaps Abigail’s remark was not meant seriously.
Rosa arrived and Abigail hooked an arm into hers, guiding her away from the men and through the crowd of businesspeople who were, for the evening, connoisseurs of African art. It was already clear that, from an income-generation point of view, Berman’s exhibition was on its way to success.
Rosa stayed close to the younger woman. “My dear, I’m afraid Yudel and I can’t possibly afford these prices.”
“You’re not here to buy paintings, Rosa. You’re my guests, not old Berman’s.”
If the prices of the paintings were weighing on Rosa’s mind, there was something that bothered her more deeply. “Abby, this other thing—it won’t bring Yudel into danger, will it?”
“I just want his thoughts.” The way she spoke, Rosa knew this was the truth. “Only that.”
“Thank you, Abigail.”
Opinions, of greater and lesser enlightenment, were being offered in every corner of the room; none more loudly and insistently than that of a politically well-connected and newly rich woman who called herself Baroness Drubetskaya. Ten years before, at the age of nineteen, she had married her sixty-year-old employer, who claimed to be descended from a line of Russian barons. Since his death a year later, she had only ever allowed herself to be addressed as Baroness. She wore a close-fitting red evening gown that was a size or two too small. She had already bought two paintings. In a penetrating voice she was lecturing one of the other guests on the convergence of line, color and texture that had attracted her to the works. As she paused for breath, her eyes fell upon Yudel. “Professor Gordon,” she yelled. “Professor Yudel Gordon. I heard a talk you gave at university while I was still a student. It was on rehabilitation, I believe. You said it was impossible to rehabilitate anyone.”
Damn you, Yudel thought, mangling my work at the top of a voice that has all the elegance of the screeching of brakes on the Blue Train. What did I do to deserve you this evening?
The baroness swarmed up to Yudel in predatory fashion. “And who is the handsome man with you?” She looked coyly at Freek.
“Police Commissioner Freek Jordaan,” Yudel said, taking a step back to leave the field to Freek.
“I’m Baroness Gaynor and I love a man in uniform,” she said archly, although Freek was wearing a suit. It seemed that she saw herself as so well known to the other guests that the rest of her name was unnecessary.
Yudel’s attempt to leave her with Freek turned out to be a failure. Before he could back away any further, she rounded on him, waving a h
and at one of her purchases. “I would love your impression, Yudel. May I call you Yudel?”
Yudel ignored the question. Abigail was standing close to Robert on the other side of the painting, and Rosa perhaps a step behind them. To his surprise, the entire mezzanine floor fell silent, waiting for his reply.
To hell with it, he thought. She’s the one who asked. “As far as the arts are concerned…” he began. Rosa raised a hand to cover her eyes.
“Yes Mr. Gordon … Yudel?” The baroness was encouraging him to continue.
“As far as the arts are concerned, I enjoy music that is melodious, prose that makes rational sense, poetry that rhymes…” The baroness was beginning to feel uneasy, her eyes casting around in the direction of some of the other guests. Yudel had moved to get a better look at her purchase. “… movies that feature movie stars and visual art in which the colors go well with the curtains.”
The silence continued for longer than the baroness would have liked. Rosa had covered her face with both hands now. Freek was grinning and Abigail was laughing softly.
“You’re a Philistine,” the baroness murmured in a stunned voice that was still too loud.
No one else spoke. Rosa, who after many years should have grown accustomed to Yudel’s inappropriate remarks, had not come out from behind her hands. It was Joshua Berman who broke the silence with a loud chuckle. “No, he’s not a Philistine. He can’t be. He’s a good Jewish boy.” The guests, seeing that it was in order to laugh, joined in. “Mr. Gordon’s just joking, folks. He loves the paintings.”
Yudel took a last look at the picture in which the convergence of line, color and texture had made such an impression, before moving away. As for the exhibition, it returned to its earlier confusion. He was at the balcony rail, looking down into the lobby when he heard Abigail’s voice at his shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
Those Who Love Night Page 6
