by Damon Galgut
‘So I see.’
‘I’m sure you’ll want to have your lawyer look it over.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll sign it now. Give me a pen.’
She was astonished. ‘Don’t you even want to read it through yourself?’
I tried to, but even from the first line – the marriage of Karen and Frank has broken down irretrievably – my eyes slid off the words. It had all been talked about so endlessly, and none of it had anything to do with the way my life was now.
‘Is there anything in here I should know about?’
‘Meaning what? That I would cheat you? I wouldn’t cheat you, Frank. What a horrible suggestion. It’s all just confirming the arrangement we have now. What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours. What do you have, for God’s sake, that you think I would want?’
‘Just checking.’ I took the gleaming fountain-pen she had set down on the table and signed the last page. The scratching of the nib made an almost inaudible rustle that maybe only my ears were tuned to: the sound of eleven years collapsing.
‘There,’ she said. She turned each page for me to sign. Then she took the document and the pen and carried the whole lot through to the bedroom, out of reach, as if I might change my mind. When she came back in she was more at ease with me.
‘You shouldn’t just sign things without checking, Frank. It’s typical of you, not to care. You never know what could happen.’
‘It’s typical of you to get irritated that I might think you were cheating me, and then irritated because I didn’t check that you aren’t.’
She smiled as if I’d complimented her. ‘Well, it’s done. The court thing is just a formality. I’ll let you know when it’s over. Do you want something to drink?’
‘No, thanks. I’ve had some coffee already.’
‘I always drink juice in the morning. I’m going to give you some juice, Frank. It might improve that colouring of yours.’
There were maids flitting through the background here too, but Karen went to the kitchen herself and came back with two tall glasses of orange juice. She sat in a different chair now, closer to me, and I realized we were going to have a personal chat.
‘Frank. I want to ask you something. Bluntly.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘How do you feel towards Mike? I mean, these days, now that the dust has settled.’
‘How do I feel towards him? I think he’s a snake who stole my wife from me.’
‘Oh, Frank. Come on. It’s been years. Can’t we move on?’
‘I have moved on. But I haven’t forgiven him.’
It was odd how clear this was to me: even though my love for Karen had dwindled to a faint interior glow, my hatred for Mike still burned big and bright. Past a certain point, maybe, a person’s character defines itself and stays fixed in your mind. I could see Mike’s picture on the wall, a recent one, and even though the balding, corpulent figure hardly resembled the young man I’d been friends with, something in him – or in me, perhaps – felt constant, unchanging, immovable.
‘That’s such a pity, Frank. It’s such a pity you’re so... vengeful. Mike wants to get past it. He wants to... I don’t know, purge himself before we go. He’s told me, actually, that he misses you sometimes.’
‘Has he?’
‘Oh, why do I bother? I thought that maybe now the divorce is all signed and official... but I can see it’s a waste of time. Why are you so bitter, Frank? Is it from being stuck up there in the bundu for so long? Don’t you think it’s time to come back to civilization?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think we feel sorry for you? Mike says you like to suffer to get attention.’
‘I don’t care what Mike says.’
‘Well, it’s a pity. That’s all I can say. He likes you, actually.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You may not believe it, but I want to be there. In my own way I’m nearly happy.’
She studied me for a bit, then leaned towards me, and I could see she was going to be daring.
‘Do you have... somebody... up there...?’
‘Yes,’ I said, startling myself with the certainty of my reply. And it was startling, too, how readily the image of Maria came to mind. Alone and waiting in the rough wooden shack. For me.
Karen nodded, smiling tightly. ‘Who is she? One of the other doctors, I suppose.’
‘No. Somebody else. From outside the hospital.’
‘Well, I can hear you aren’t going to tell me more. But it would be nice, Frank, if we could get together. Me and Mike and you and your lady friend. We could go out for dinner or something. Think about it.’
I almost laughed. It was absurd to think of Maria amongst these people – even among this furniture. And I saw how far I had moved from the normal way of things.
I drank the orange juice and set the glass down. ‘I’d better get going.’
‘All right. I suppose you’ve got to do the family thing. I was sorry to hear about your father.’
‘What?’
This had dropped so casually into the conversation that I almost didn’t catch it.
She looked taken aback. ‘Well, I... I heard he was ill.’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘I don’t know, Frank. I’m sorry, forget about it, I never spoke.’
But I kept thinking on the drive back and when I got to the house I called Karen again. She was speaking in a brisk, defensive voice again; our intimate moment was over.
‘I really want to know,’ I said. ‘Whatever it is, I wish you’d tell me.’
‘I don’t know anything, Frank. I got confused with something else I heard.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Don’t believe me then. But I wouldn’t lie to you.’
I spent the rest of the day at the house, wandering in the long passages and the narrow paths of the garden. My stepmother hovered anxiously, between repeated expeditions to the shops, the hairdresser, the garage, and once or twice I almost brought myself to ask her: is he ill? But the question was too big and brash for all the fake gentility around us. It would have seemed rude.
It was evening when my father got back from the club. He said he’d played badly. He’d had a few drinks and seemed irritable, but he didn’t look sick to me. His voice was still loud and sure of itself, expressing opinions like truths, making jokes, and it was only when we came to dessert that he remembered I wasn’t there on holiday.
‘Oh, Frank. I meant to ask you. It just went out of my mind. How did it go, your talk with Karen?’
‘All right. It’s signed and done.’
‘What? The papers? Finished?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I... I thought it was just a talk. Was it wise to rush through things like that?’
‘It’s been a few years, Dad. No rush involved.’
‘I’m sorry, Frank, that it’s ended up like this.’
‘It was pretty inevitable, Dad.’
‘Yes. Still. I wish you’d let me try to work something out with Sam.’
‘It would’ve made no difference.’
‘Maybe. Maybe.’ He fiddled with his napkin. ‘Are you going to stay with us for a few days more?’
‘Afraid not. I have to go back in the morning.’
‘So soon?’ Valerie put on her sad face. ‘You only just arrived.’
‘I know. But I had to get special permission to come. They need me up there.’ And though none of it was true, and I had only just decided to leave, I knew I didn’t belong here. My place was somewhere else, in the rural hospital room full of cheap government furniture, where none of my father’s certainties applied.
‘They need you?’ His tone was scoffing. ‘Are you still taking orders from that black woman? Isn’t this the time, Frank, to think about moving back here?’
‘I think I’m on the verge of something up there.’
‘The verge of what?’
‘Promotion. It looks as if I may become head of the hospital
soon.’
‘But we’ve been hearing this story for years already. You were supposed to be the big boss when you went up there in the first place.’
‘I know that. But it’s all shifting around. It really is going to happen now.’
‘I could speak to people down here, Frank. We could get you a post in one of the local hospitals. Nothing special, but with better prospects than you have right now.’
‘My prospects are fine.’ Indignation rose in me, and I found myself describing, in self-righteous tones, what my future was going to be: Dr Ngema would leave, I would step into her shoes, I would make things happen, in a few years I too would be eligible for another post somewhere... As I sketched out this sequence of events, it seemed virtually certain that everything would happen just as I’d described it. And the hospital – which my father had never once visited – became like a place I’d never seen either: a necessary place, full of patients and work and selflessness, where adversity and sacrifice were joined.
‘Well, I don’t know about any of that.’ He pushed his pudding away, half-eaten. ‘This country has changed so much I don’t recognize it any more. All I know is, I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t mind working under a black, but taking orders from a woman...’
This was his idea of a joke; Valerie laughed dutifully, feigning outrage. But I didn’t smile.
‘I can’t finish this, Val, it’s too rich. Let’s have coffee in the study.’
So we all went through to the inner chamber again. Valerie and I sat down in the same armchairs, my father settled himself behind the desk. He was pretending to be happy, but I could see that our conversation at the table had upset him. He was moving things around on the top of the desk, looking around the room, till finally his peevishness fixed on a point, and stayed there.
‘Valerie. Those flowers. I’ve spoken to you already.’
‘I keep telling the girl...’
‘Well, tell her again, right now.’
‘Just a moment, darling, till she brings the coffee.’
We sat in silence until one of the maids, an elderly woman, barefoot and aproned, came in with a tray. While she poured, Valerie spoke sideways to her: ‘Betty, the flowers...’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Don’t you want to take them? They’d look so nice in your little room...’
‘Ma’am.’
Betty carried the brown, limp leaves from the mantelpiece to the door.
‘Betty!’
‘Master?’
‘You’re dropping petals, Betty. All over the place. Please, please...’
And the old lady in the nice blue uniform set the dying flowers down and got on to her knees. She started crawling across the floor, picking up bits of flowers as she went.
‘There, Betty,’ my father murmured, pointing patiently, ‘... there... another one there...’
While I sipped the sour coffee, hearing the rim of the china cup clink against my teeth.
12
I came back in darkness, late at night. All the lights were out, except for at the front entrance and in the duty room. Framed by the window, I could see Laurence sitting at the desk inside, very upright and alert, his hands clasped in front of him. Wearing his white coat.
There was a lot of wind and he didn’t hear the car. I sat for a long time watching him over the intervening gravel and grass. Neither of us moved. He seemed deep in thought, but I wasn’t thinking anything particularly. I just wanted to see what he would do. But he didn’t do anything.
I didn’t go in to see him. I went straight to the room and got into bed, and my sleep was like a continuation of the numb momentum of the drive: a falling forward into a landscape that rushed perpetually past and into me.
I only woke when it was light and he was sitting on the other bed, looking at me. His face was tired, but his eyes were shining with a peculiar glow.
‘What?’ I said, sitting up. Something about his look alarmed me. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, smiling.
But he went on looking at me in that way.
‘Oh, Frank,’ he said at last. ‘So much has happened since you left.’
‘I’ve only been gone for two days.’
‘Yes. But everything’s different now.’
He was happy when he said this, despite the tiredness. And I will admit that his happiness perturbed me. But when I’d got myself out of bed and splashed some water on my face, the story that came out was not a happy one.
He’d thought a lot, he said, about what I had told him. About Tehogo and the stealing. It wasn’t right that nothing should happen. And in the end he decided to do something.
‘What did you do?’
He went to see Dr Ngema. He approached her in her room on the night that I left. And he told her the story of what had happened to me as if, in fact, it had happened to him. The knock on the open door, going into the room, seeing the bits of metal lying around.
He told me this blandly, with no expression, and I imagined this might have been the way he’d told it to Dr Ngema too. But when he’d finished talking he blushed suddenly, a hot red colour.
‘What did she say?’ I asked.
‘She said, was I sure? How did I know where the metal came from? I said I was sure. She said, why did I go into Tehogo’s room if he wasn’t there?’
‘She said that?’
‘She said something about I had no right.’
‘I didn’t break in,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if I picked the lock. Jesus.’ A hot flush passed across my face too.
But his blush had gone and the happy smile was back. ‘It was terrible, Frank,’ he said. ‘She called Tehogo in.’
‘She called him in?’
‘Well, it was like a farce. I was busy talking to her and there was a knock on the door and it was Tehogo, looking for something. So she said to him, you’d better come in. There’s something serious we have to discuss.’
‘And?’
‘We sat there looking at each other, just like you’re looking at me now. She made me tell the whole story again. He just kept shaking his head, like he knew I was lying. I was lying, Frank – that was the thing. It wasn’t my story, it didn’t happen to me. It felt like they both knew, they were listening to me and nodding and waiting, but they knew.’
‘But they didn’t know, Laurence. Oh, Jesus. What happened then?’
‘Then he said, let’s go and look. He got up, very calm, and we went with him to his room.’
‘And?’
‘And there was nothing there.’
I stared at him.
‘Nothing,’ he repeated sadly, still with that strange smile on his face. ‘The room was a mess and everything, just like you said, but there was no metal or anything like that. I looked everywhere.’
‘They moved it out,’ I said. ‘Tehogo and that friend of his. Whatsisname, Raymond. They took it.’
‘Maybe. But it was terrible, Frank. I just had to stand there and say, but it was here, I promise you, it was here. And they kept looking at me. I was lying, Frank, don’t you see? I knew it myself, so they must’ve known too.’
‘And?’ I said. ‘And?’
‘Well, it was all over by then. Pointless, you know. There was a bit more talk —’
‘What kind of talk?’
‘We went back to Dr Ngema’s office. There was a bit of discussion, this and that, and then Tehogo asked me why I’d gone to his room. What I wanted him for. And I just didn’t know. I had nothing to say. What did you go there for, Frank?’
‘Tapes.’
‘Tapes?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Forget about it. Go on.’
‘Well, there was no use pretending. We all just stared at each other. It was so horrible, that silence. I’d been caught out, you see.’ He sat for a while, shaking his head, then went on in a different, lighter tone: ‘So I told them. It was no good pretending any more. They could see.’
‘You told them? Told th
em what?’
‘That it hadn’t been me who went into the room. That it was you. You saw the stuff, you told me about it... oh, all of it, I told them. I had to.’ His smile was big now. ‘I felt so much better afterwards, Frank. To get it all out in the open. It was the lying I couldn’t take. It’s not in my nature. What’s the matter, Frank, what’s wrong?’
The smile had gone. I was up and walking towards him. I think it was actually my intention to commit some action, but when I got close I veered away and stood staring out of the window. The same view, the overgrown yard with its ragged leaves, the peeling, blistered wall. I stared for a while, then I went back to my bed and sat down again, trembling.
‘But it’s sorted out, Frank,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to worry. I explained everything to them.’
‘Explained what exactly?’
‘That it was me, the whole thing. Coming to Dr Ngema, telling the lie about what I’d seen – it was all my idea. I told them that. I told them that you weren’t going to say anything, that you felt sorry for Tehogo. How I was the one who... But it’s sorted out now, you don’t need to worry. We even shook hands.’
‘Who?’
‘Me and Tehogo. I said I was sorry and we made it up. It’s all sorted, Frank. No problem for you.’
Incredibly, his expression of dismay was gone and that smile was back again.
‘What are you smiling about?’ I said.
‘Things are good, Frank. It’s all worked out for the best. It always does, somehow.’
I didn’t know what this meant. My mind was occupied elsewhere. And I was too distracted to focus on what else might have happened while I had been gone. This was big enough for now. But I was soon to find out more about Laurence’s smile.
‘You’d better go and see her,’ he added quickly. ‘She did want to talk to you.’
‘Who?’
‘Dr Ngema. It’s just a formality, Frank, don’t look so worried.’
I went to her office. She was working at her desk, but the moment she saw me she got up and closed the door conspira-torially. We sat in the low chairs, our knees almost touching.
‘It’s been a bit of a mess, Frank,’ she said. ‘But it’s sorted out now, I think.’
