by Sally Andrew
‘I often see his eyes,’ I said.
‘I know what you mean.’
‘There’s this kudu I see, with Slimkat’s eyes.’
‘Ja?’
The kudu was trotting next to the bakkie as we drove. Its long thin stripes keeping in line with my window.
‘A trek kudu?’ said Jessie. ‘In the veld by you?’
Henk was walking towards us along the dirt road. He raised his hand, stopping us before we got to the ring of panel vans.
‘He’s come to tell you he’s changed his mind,’ said Jessie.
Henk had a serious frown. His moustache tips were turned down instead of up. He had not waxed them. He came to my window, and I wound it all the way down. He nodded at Jessie and spoke to me. I left the engine running.
‘We got some news about the Somalian woman you call Fatima,’ he said. ‘We don’t have the full report yet, but there’s information that she left Somalia as a wanted woman. She committed a crime for which the penalty is death.’
‘Jislaaik,’ said Jessie. ‘Hard core.’
‘We’ll take her in for questioning as soon as we get the report,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I said, and made as if to drive again.
‘Are you sure you want to go to this meeting?’ he said. ‘She carries a knife.’
‘I’ve got a knife too,’ said Jessie. ‘And a pepper spray.’
‘There’s more news,’ said Henk. ‘They managed to get down to Nick Olivier’s black Golf. There’s no sign of a body.’
‘What?’ said Jessie. ‘That’s weird.’
‘We didn’t manage to set up surveillance cameras,’ Henk was saying, ‘but there are three of us close by. Piet will be working on the panel vans with Johannes. Reghardt and I will be close by. If there’s even the smallest smell of trouble, just shout.’
‘I’ve got a whistle,’ said Jessie, pulling it from her belt.
‘So there are no recordings of what we say in the group?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘But if there’s a confession, you will be the witnesses.’
We drove on and parked just behind the panel vans.
‘The smallest smell . . .’ said Jessie, smiling as she got out.
I looked at her and she winked.
We sat in our circle of plastic chairs in the afternoon sun. Jessie took a seat next to Fatima, who was wearing her usual long dress and headscarf. I put my handbag under my chair and sat between Jessie and Lemoni. Lemoni was in another lovely outfit of black and turquoise, her big handbag on her lap. Under her seat was a small silver oven tray, covered in foil. And then there was Ricus, in a dark-brown shirt and trousers, with hairy bits sticking out, and Dirk in his khaki shorts and veldskoene. Jessie wore her black vest and denim shorts, and I was still in my brown dress. Ousies squatted by the fire. Next to her, on some flat stones, my pineapple cake rested beside some big Tupperwares, which I guessed held the ingredients for our supper. Ousies was wearing a plaited headband of animal skin, and a cream necklace of ostrich-shell beads.
The shadow of a thorn branch cut across her face and made a sharp V of horns on her forehead. She looked across at Ricus, and I noticed then that he was also wearing an ostrich-bead necklace. I wondered for a moment if they had been satanists together. If they still were. If they had worked together to murder Slimkat, then Tata, as part of some weird ritual.
Fatima was suddenly at my elbow, and I jumped. She was offering me a cup of shaah tea. Ousies threw a handful of herbs onto the fire, and sparks shot into the air. The smell was strong and sweet. I was suspicious of everyone and glad to have Jessie by my side.
‘Welcome all, and to our newest member, Jessie,’ Ricus was saying. ‘We start our session with drinking this delicious tea. And with bringing our awareness to our bodies and our surrounds. Be aware of what you taste.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘And of the clothes on your body, and the air on your skin.’
It wasn’t cold, but I wished I’d brought a jacket.
‘Be aware of the earth beneath you, the sky above you,’ he said in his warm voice.
I looked out at the veld. The shadows were much longer than the bushes. Mielie was herding a lost lamb back to the flock. I wondered if it was Kosie.
Johannes fiddled with something on his little red van. Piet was in a mechanic’s overall on the other side by the Combi van. Reghardt and Henk moved slowly around the circle of cars, like prowling lions.
‘We will continue today,’ said Ricus, quietly, ‘with the theme of forgiveness. For healing to take place, we need to face up to what we have done, as well as what has been done to us. We need to confess the whole truth.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Dirk rubbed his hands on his knees and then sat up straight to speak.
‘It really helped me. A lot,’ he said. ‘When I told you guys everything last time. I am still an arsehole, I know that.’ Here Jessie nodded. ‘But that weight, it just doesn’t sit so fokken heavy on my heart any more.’ He banged himself in the centre of his chest with his fist. ‘I told you what an arsehole I really am, and the sky didn’t fall down.’
Dirk looked up as if to check it really wasn’t falling. There were some lines of clouds that were dissolving into the sky. It’s hard work being a cloud in the Karoo. Most clouds just give up and disappear into the blue.
‘You know what I did today?’ he said to Ricus. ‘I spent the morning with my boy.’ He looked at the rest of us. ‘You guys are the only people who know what I did to my boy, before he was born. Half of Africa knows what happened at Cuito, and most of Ladismith knows what I did to my wife. But only my wife and me knew about my boy. When I told you my story, it wasn’t that I actually forgave myself, but I was able to do something about it. I could go and spend time with him. At first I didn’t know what to do . . . but after a while, my boy was clapping his hands in that wild way of his. And the nurse told me he does that when he’s happy. But you know, they didn’t need to tell me that. I knew . . .’ His voice got stuck in his throat. ‘I knew he was happy. And I . . . I was happy too.’
Ousies was next to him, handing him a napkin, and he mopped at the wet bits that were leaking out.
‘Dirk, you did it, Boet,’ said Ricus. ‘You are on the path.’
We heard the soft call of a turtledove.
Dirk then made a few strange animal noises, which were a mixture of crying and laughing, and blew his nose and sat back.
I noticed the way Jessie watched him. It was the first time I’d seen her looking at him without that angry shine in her eye. She wasn’t lovey-dovey or anything, but she looked curious, like he was a creature she hadn’t seen before.
Ousies gave Dirk a fresh napkin and threw his used one on the fire. She picked up her broom and started sweeping the sand behind us.
Fatima cleared her throat. ‘Thank you, Dirk,’ she said. Her voice was stronger than her usual shy whisper, but she still spoke quietly, perhaps to avoid the men in the outer circle hearing her words. ‘To tell the whole truth takes a lot of courage.’
She wrapped her cloth around her a little tighter, as if there was a breeze. ‘The world is not always ready to hear the truth,’ she said. ‘In my country, the truth would sentence me to death. But maybe here, maybe now, I can tell you—’
‘Hey, stop!’ we heard Reghardt’s voice shout.
‘Don’t move,’ said Henk.
We looked in the direction of the noise. Henk and Reghardt were walking out towards a tall thin man who was limping across the veld. Piet and Johannes were standing up, spanners in their hands.
Henk and Reghardt reached the man and gripped his arms on each side. He wore creased grey trousers and a sweat-stained green T-shirt. It was Nick Olivier.
‘Please,’ Nick said, ‘I just want to speak to Ricus.’
Henk said, ‘Search him.’
Reghardt did the job and shook his head. Piet hopped onto the bonnet of the Defender panel van, and his gaze swept the veld like swallows.
O
livier said, ‘I’ll join the group. I don’t mind.’
‘Let him come,’ said Ricus. ‘He’s part of us.’
The three policemen allowed him into the circle but followed close behind.
‘Why aren’t you dead?’ asked Reghardt. ‘Your car—’
‘Ricus!’ said Nick, as the mechanic stood up.
Nick threw himself into Ricus’s bearlike arms. Ricus held him, and Nick shook and cried like a boy. He didn’t look like a man who’d fallen off a cliff and then been burnt to ashes in a Golf, but he did look like he’d had a hard day.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nick.
‘He’s okay,’ said Ricus to the policemen.
Ricus settled Nick onto a chair and gestured for the policemen to move away. They took one step back. Ousies brought Nick a cup of tea.
‘I did it,’ said Nick.
I looked at Jessie; her eyes were wide.
‘Nick, have some tea,’ said Ricus. ‘You remember that in the group, we don’t interrupt someone when they are talking? Now, Fatima here was talking when you arrived. We’re just going to let her finish while you drink your shaah.’
Nick’s hands were shaking as he held his cup. Ricus patted him on the back and looked up at Fatima. ‘Sorry, Fatima,’ he said. ‘Please go on.’
She shook her head like there was a bee in her ear. Her eyes were wider than Jessie’s, and she was looking at the three policemen that stood behind Nick.
‘Okay, Nick, Fatima is kindly handing the floor to you.’
‘I did it,’ said Nick again, dropping his cup of tea and lifting his fists in the air. ‘I killed it.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Ricus went back to his chair and asked, ‘What did you do, Nick?’
‘I killed the blasted automobile. The car. I took off the handbrake and rolled it off the cliff. Boom. It went boom.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘It won’t kill another living thing. Ever.’
‘Has it been killing things?’ asked Ricus.
‘Once, once I hit a spotted genet. It was terrible. I buried it in my garden and gave it a nice funeral. I didn’t go to my mother’s funeral; I had just been born. But I went to the genet’s funeral, and I did it right. Speeches and everything.’ He ducked his head a little and studied us, like he was deciding whether to tell us a secret. ‘But that was just the beginning. Every week on Route 62 there is another dead animal. Killed by the automobile.’
I looked at Jessie, thinking this man would get on well with Oom Jan the rabbit-guy. She nodded.
‘I gave each one of them a funeral,’ Nick said, hitting his fists lightly onto his thighs. ‘And I hold their hands at night. They are frightened at first, when they die, so I hold their hands.’ His fists melted into soft fingers, which he plaited together. ‘I keep them next to my bed.’
I remembered Henk’s stories about the animal paws, and swallowed.
‘And then, last year . . . the automobile killed my father,’ said Nick. ‘Oh, they said it was a heart attack, and it was, but what caused that attack, I ask you?! Yes, it was hard being an Englishman in an Afrikaans farming district. And of course the bird flu of 2012 was a terrible thing. Oh, the slaughter. But we had crates of feathers. Crates. In my grandfather’s day, we would have come through the hard times. Feathers were as valuable as gold and diamonds. Oh, the beautiful hats the women wore as they rode in their horse-drawn carriages. Those were the glory days!’ He gazed up at the sky, which was a deep afternoon blue, and he seemed to be seeing things from the past. Henk had told me about Nick’s room of ‘glory days’ memorabilia, and I could imagine all those lovely photographs.
Nick glared at us all, as if we were his enemies. ‘Why did they stop wearing those beautiful hats?’ Then I realised he wasn’t looking at us; he was staring at the panel vans that were around us. He stamped a foot. ‘Why?’
None of us said anything, so he answered his own question. ‘Because of the invention of the automobile! It moved too fast. Their lovely feather hats were blown right off!’
He raised his hands to his head, to the imagined missing hat.
‘And until today,’ he said, ‘I drove one of these damned things myself. But now, now it’s over. I killed it. I will never step foot in one again. Never again will I be a part of the killing of those poor animals, the demise of the glory days, or the death of my father.’
He sat back and folded his arms. A lamb bleated in the distance.
‘Did you walk all the way from the Huisrivier Pass?’ said Dirk.
‘I walked along the base of the Swartberge. Then I got a ride on a donkey cart, on a back road.’
The policemen backed quietly away, stepping over the ring of car parts, between the vans.
‘Are you feeling better now?’ asked Ricus.
‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘Much better. I know that the day of the automobile is not yet over. You, you even repair them. But I have stopped driving one. The contradiction was killing me. Now I can breathe.’
‘I am glad you are finding peace, Nick,’ said Ricus. ‘And that’s a good suggestion. Let’s all take a few easy breaths together. Watch your breath going in, and flowing out. Nice and easy. Be aware of all your senses.’
A bird in a thorn tree was trilling and another cheeping. And as we sat breathing, I slowly became aware of a whole orchestra of bird sounds stretching right across the veld. It’s amazing that they are always there, but most of the time I don’t hear them at all.
Henk, Reghardt and Piet stood just beyond the panel vans, their heads bent together. They were out of earshot now, which might be why Fatima was willing to speak again when Ricus said, ‘Fatima, you were saying that you wanted to tell us the truth . . .’
‘My husband and I,’ said Fatima, ‘had to run for our lives. We committed a crime, which in Somalia is punishable by death. You see . . .’ She took the scarf off her head, and her voice became deeper and louder as she said, ‘I am a man.’ Her braids were still there, but her hair had been cut short, the bun gone.
‘Fok,’ said Dirk.
‘I am a man, and I love a man,’ Fatima said in his man’s voice. ‘I know in my heart this is no crime.’
‘Go, girl,’ said Jessie. ‘I mean, um, go, boy . . .’
Fatima smiled at her. ‘I know what you mean. Thank you.’
‘You are very brave, Fatima,’ said Ricus.
‘Fadhi. My name is Fadhi.’
‘You are very brave, Fadhi. That took a lot of courage.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At last. I am brave.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY
‘How are you doing, Jessie?’ said Ricus, when the group had settled down again.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Anything you’d like to share?’
‘Sometime I’ll talk about my kidnapping, but not now.’
‘Were you kidnapped?’ said Lemoni. ‘Did they catch the guy?’
‘Yes,’ said Jessie, ‘he’s dead.’
‘Good,’ said Lemoni. ‘These people who just get away with robbery. It makes me so angry . . .’
‘You’ve been feeling angry, Lemoni?’ said Ricus.
‘Yes, since what happened here the other night. It’s just wrong. Wrong.’
‘The murder of Tata Radebe.’
‘Yes. It brought it all up for me. That night when they broke in and ruined the dinner. The Psari me Spanaki. They took everything. All my jewels.’ She ran her fingers up and down the handle of her bag. Her turquoise nail varnish sparkled in the late-afternoon light.
‘How are you feeling about that?’ asked Ricus.
‘I feel so . . . violated.’ She looked at Jessie, who nodded her head. ‘Sometimes I just can’t bear it . . . I can’t sleep.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Ricus.
‘You are sorry?’ said Lemoni. There were tears in her eyes now. ‘How could you possibly understand how I feel? Even my husband can’t, and he was there when it happened.’
‘I haven’t had the same experience as you,’ said Ric
us, ‘but all of us here have experienced some kind of violation. And the murder last week affected us all—’
‘Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I just get so . . . I’m fine.’
She searched in her bag but couldn’t find what she was looking for, and Ousies handed her a napkin. Lemoni dabbed it gently under her eyes, careful not to smudge her make-up.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I am fine.’ She made a circling movement with her hand. ‘Move on.’
‘How are you doing, Tannie Maria?’ said Ricus.
‘I am feeling a bit upside down,’ I said, looking at my cake by the fire. ‘I don’t know what to do. Like we said last time, forgiveness is not just forgiveness, it’s about what you can do to make things right. I don’t know if I’m making sense. Fatima, I mean Fadhi, was brave; so now he can forgive himself for being scared.’ Fadhi smiled.
‘Dirk can spend time with his son,’ I continued, ‘which helps him with . . . what he did.’ Dirk nodded. ‘Tata Radebe . . . Well, it’s too late for Tata.’
I looked at Ricus and said, ‘You, you can help others with their problems. To make up for your years of being selfish . . . But what if the thing you have done . . . what if there is no way to make it right? What then?’
‘There is always a way,’ said Ricus. ‘Is there something you want to tell us, Maria?’
‘I . . .’ I said. I hadn’t told Jessie that I’d killed Fanie, let alone how.
I tried again: ‘What happened . . .’ I sighed. ‘Sorry, I’m not ready. I must carry this a bit longer.’ Maybe till I die, I thought.
Jessie leant towards me and patted my shoulder.
The sun was getting low. ‘Shall we start making those toasted sandwiches, then?’ said Ricus.
Dirk jumped up and squatted beside Ousies. They unpacked the contents of the big Tupperwares and laid the sandwiches out on the fire. Grated cheese, sliced chilli biltong, sliced banana and tomato. There was butter on the outside of the bread, which would turn it golden brown. As they were working, Lemoni took her small silver oven tray over to Ousies.
‘This is for you,’ she said. ‘Because you liked the moussaka so much.’
