Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  Then, unexpectedly, at the very edge of the crowd, Barney caught sight of Mooi Klip. She was dressed in red, with a red plumed hat, and she was standing next to one of her Griqua cousins, a tall and serious half-caste in a dark funeral suit, and a black floppy necktie. She did not wave to Barney, or give any indication that she had seen him, but appeared to be waiting with great patience for the outcome of the trial.

  Barney raised his hand, and then stood up. ‘I will vouch for Mr Havemann,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ replied Stafford Parker. ‘You’ll have to speak up a little.’

  ‘I said, I will vouch for Mr Havemann.’

  ‘You? And who are you? Will you introduce yourself to this court?’

  ‘You know who I am, Mr Parker. We met at Gong Gong.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Stafford Parker, ‘but this court didn’t meet you at Gong Gong. Only myself, in my personal capacity.’

  Barney took a breath. The sweat was clinging in his eyebrows and running down the back of his shirt. All around him was a confusion of bright pink faces and staring eyes, like a bucket of freshly-caught shrimps. ‘I come from Oranjerivier, where I work a dairy farm. Dairy and beef, that is. I’ve known Mr Havemann for some years. In fact, I knew him in the United States, before either of us came out to the Cape.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Stafford Parker. ‘So you’re fellow Americans?’

  ‘Correct, sir.’

  ‘Do you know anything of Mr Havemann’s business reputation in the United States? Was he fair? Honest, was he?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ said Barney, wiping sweat away from his mouth.

  ‘And how about his personal life. Reputable, was he? And religious?’

  ‘Very devout, Mr Parker.’

  ‘Well, I accept your opinion,’ said Stafford Parker, ‘and I’m sure that you’d make a most reliable watchdog. But what guarantee does the court have that you would maintain a continuing interest in Mr Havemann? Can we be sure that you would be willing to maintain your duties as keeper for any reasonable length of time?’

  ‘You have my word,’ said Barney, simply.

  ‘Aha,’ said Stafford Parker. ‘Your word.’

  ‘You don’t trust my word?’

  ‘I have no reason not to trust it. On the other hand, I have no reason to trust it, either. There are plenty of men in Kimberley who live their lives very fast and loose.’

  ‘You’re trying to corner me, Mr Parker,’ said Barney.

  Stafford Parker tugged at his beard in satisfaction. ‘I’m simply trying to establish your credentials, Mr –’

  There was a pause, as suspenseful and heavy in the afternoon heat as a glob of honey on the brink of dripping from a honeycomb. Everybody turned to Barney, including Mr Knight, and waited for him to finish Stafford Parker’s sentence for him.

  Barney closed his eyes. The salt perspiration stung the pupils, like tears. Then he opened them again, and said, ‘Blitz. My real name is Blitz. Mr Havemann’s real name is Blitz, also. We are brothers. That, I would have thought, would be enough to quell any doubts about my continuing interest in his welfare.’

  There was another burble of conversation, but Stafford Parker quickly brought the court to order.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I believe that I’m happy that Mr Havemann, or Mr Blitz, as we now know him to be, cannot be proved guilty of illicit dealing in diamonds. And I am also happy that he will be supervised in his future prospecting by a close and interested relative of the same religious and ethnological strain. Mr foreman, does the jury have any other opinion on the matter?’

  A tall blond Englishman with a noticeable speech impediment stood up and said, ‘We, we, we, we’re happy to abide by that decision, Mr Parker. We, we, we, we thank Mr Knight for his excellent appeal.’

  Stafford Parker walloped his gavel one more time. ‘This court is dismissed. Thank you, gentlemen.’

  Joel shook Barney by the hand. His face was glittering with sweat. ‘My God, Barney, you’ve actually done it. And you, Mr Knight, thank you. I don’t know what I can say.’

  Mr Knight stood straight, and replaced his hat on his head with exaggerated care. ‘It appears that the result of the appeal was a foregone conclusion,’ he said, coldly. ‘Mr Parker seemed already to have made up his mind.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Barney. ‘He was very impressed by what you said.’

  Mr Knight stared at Barney with disdain. ‘I regret that I can’t say that the admiration is mutual.’

  ‘Mr Knight –’ began Barney, but Mr Knight lifted a hand to silence him.

  ‘I can understand why you deceived me,’ he snapped. ‘You are a Jew, and I am quite aware that many Jews feel envy and frustration which leads them to attempt to break into Christian society. But, the facts remain that you lied to me; that you made improper advances to my daughters while leading them to believe that you were eligible; and that you are a Jew. I do not mix with Jews, my family do not mix with Jews, and I can assure you here and now that there will never ever be a Jewish member of the Kimberley Club.’

  Barney said, ‘Agnes is fond of me. You can’t deny that.’

  ‘You can be fond of a dog until it bites you,’ retorted Mr Knight.

  ‘I would like to continue courting her,’ Barney insisted.

  Mr Knight pulled a sour face. ‘It’s quite out of the question. Courting? What on earth is the point?’

  ‘Don’t you think love is the point?’

  ‘Love? Piffle! Agnes doesn’t love you. And neither do you love Agnes. In any case, I forbid it. Now – I must go. I think I’ve made quite enough of an ass of myself for one day, without compounding the embarrassment.’

  ‘Your fee?’ Barney shouted at him, furious, as Mr Knight stalked off.

  Without turning round, Mr Knight waved his hand dismissively. ‘I want no fee. What I have had to endure from you this afternoon cannot be paid for. Not in money.’

  ‘But you’ve won!’

  Mr Knight stopped, and then walked back a few paces. ‘I haven’t won, you ninny. Stafford Parker has won. At my expense, and especially at yours.’

  Barney watched Mr Knight take Agnes’s arm, and tug her away from the court at a brisk march. Agnes did not turn around even once to look at Barney, and there was something about the way in which she held her head that communicated disdain, and rejection. Agnes had rubbed thighs under the dining-table with a Jew; she was not likely to be quick in forgiving herself, nor him.

  At last, there was nothing but a disarray of chairs, and a collapsed awning, and a few kaffirs sweeping up. Barney stood in the descending light of the sun, and took off his hat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Joel.

  ‘Hm,’ said Barney, shaking his head. ‘You’ve no need to be. It was my choice, to tell them that you were my brother. I’m proud of you, Joel, we’ll make our fortune together, in spite of these Christians.’

  From the other side of the court, walking slowly and demurely in her red dress, her hands clasped together, came Mooi Klip. She stood a little way away from Barney, her face concealed by the shadow of her hat, and waited.

  ‘Mooi Klip,’ said Barney, so quietly that she could scarcely hear him.

  She came to him slowly, her hands still clasped in front of her, and then stood in front of him with tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘I understand now,’ she said, with such sympathy that Barney had to raise his eyes away from her, up to the blue and empty sky. ‘I understand now everything. I’m sorry.’

  Barney spent two more days in Kimberley after Joel’s acquittal. Then, while Joel re-registered his claim as a fifty-fifty partnership, and cleared the site ready for further digging, Barney took Donald and Mooi Klip back down to Oranjerivier, to deliver Monsaraz his money and tell him that he was quitting Derdeheuwel for good.

  There were heavy electric storms in the sky when they drove in their surrey along the banks of the Orange River, and the bush grass rippled like a fractious sea. At last they rea
ched the avenue of poplars which led up to the farm, and Donald relaxed his hold on the reins so that the horses could trot home at their own pace.

  ‘I feel bad things,’ said Donald, as they reached the courtyard. Barney stepped down from the surrey and stretched himself, and he had to agree. The farm looked as broken-down and deserted as the first day he and Donald and Simon de Koker had driven up here. There were no horses in the stables; the krall gate was hanging loose; and it looked as if part of the feed store had been damaged by fire.

  ‘I feel ghost,’ said Mooi Klip anxiously, staying where she was on the seat of the surrey. She wore a grey travelling-coat, and a feathered hat which Barney had bought her in Kimberley, at Madame Francesca’s. Strangely, she looked duskier and more Hottentot when she dressed in very severe European clothes.

  Donald led the horses to a hitching-rail beside the stable, and then walked with Barney towards the house. The front door was hanging open, and the screen was lying flat on the boards of the verandah.

  ‘Where are the kaffirs?’ Barney wanted to know. ‘Where’s Adam Hoovstraten?’

  Donald inserted two fingers in his mouth and let out a weird, carrying whistle. He waited for a while, but there was no reply. Beyond the farm buildings, on the curve of the nearby hills, the trees stood as if they had been planted on the very brink of the world. Barney said, ‘Maybe Monsaraz decided to quit.’

  Cautiously, Barney stepped up on to the verandah, and peered in at the front door. Dust and straw had blown into the hallway, and there were dozens of empty wine bottles lying on the carpet. ‘Monsaraz?’ he called. His voice sounded as flat as somebody calling into a linen cupboard.

  With Donald a few steps behind him, he walked along the corridor as far as Monsaraz’s bedroom. It was then that the smell first reached him; the stomach-turning odour of death, and it was all that he could do to stay where he was, and not retreat from the farmhouse as fast as possible.

  ‘You smell that?’ he asked Donald.

  Donald, grey-faced, gave a nod of sickened assent.

  Picking up a walking-cane from the floor, Barney pushed the door of Monsaraz’s bedroom open a little wider. He did not need to go inside to see what had happened: the blinds that Monsaraz had usually kept drawn tight had been broken away from the window-frame, so that a geometric pattern of daylight fell across the bed.

  Monsaraz had been hacked to pieces where he lay. There was blackened blood halfway up the wall behind the bed, and his white bearded face had fallen back at a ridiculous angle from his chest, where his assailant had half-severed his neck. His white suit was stiff with dried gore, and his waistcoat had been slit open so that he could be spectacularly disembowelled. He had been castrated, too – probably first, before any of the other injuries, so that the rutting dog of Derdeheuwel should suffer the greatest agony of all.

  ‘Jealous husband,’ remarked Donald, laconically. ‘I tell him two or three times to take care.’

  ‘My God,’ whispered Barney.

  They went outside again, into the breeze. Barney felt as unsteady as if he had been drinking. He grasped the verandah rail for support, and from the seat of the surrey Mooi Klip frowned at him in anxiety.

  He walked across the yard. ‘He’s dead. Murdered. Somebody’s cut him into pieces.’

  Mooi Klip stared. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know who his relatives are, or anything. I don’t even know where he kept his money.’

  ‘But the farm … is the farm yours now?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We’re going to have to go through his papers to see if he left a will.’

  Donald came over, stripping off his coat and then rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. ‘I will bury him,’ he said, firmly.

  ‘You’re sure? I don’t know whether I could even go back in the house.’

  ‘I was a guide, remember, Mr Blitz. Many times travellers die, and I bury them. I see worse.’

  While Donald dragged Monsaraz’s remains out of the bedroom, wrapped up in a brown blanket, Barney and Mooi Klip went into the drawing-room where Monsaraz had kept his disorderly array of papers and bills. Mooi Klip picked up a picture of a pretty French actress, torn roughly from a magazine, and said, ‘This Monsaraz was lonely?’

  ‘He had plenty of women – but, yes, I guess you could say he was lonely, alav ha-sholom.’

  They were both silent as they heard the soft bumping sound of Monsaraz’s bare feet being pulled along the corridor outside. Then Barney said, ‘Why don’t you make us some tea? The kitchen’s through there.’

  He sat down at Monsaraz’s desk and began to sort out some of the documents. There were scores of credit and debit notes from the Credit Bank of La Coruna, as well as a heap of scrawly letters and half-finished diary entries in Portuguese. There were some dog-eared copies of a German illustrated magazine showing buxom Black Forest maidens with plaited hair, copulating with donkeys; and a small black book with a silk moiré cover which was thicketed with accounts.

  Mooi Klip came back into the room just as Barney was trying to tug open the bottom left-hand drawer, which seemed to be jammed with waste paper. She said, ‘Barney,’ in a voice which made him look up straight away. Her hand was pressed over her mouth and her eyes were watering as if she felt sick.

  She sat down shakily on the dusty sofa while Barney went into the kitchen. She had left three cups and a teapot on the table, and a tipped-over caddy of Lapsang Souchong. Barney looked around, frowning, unable to make out at first what it was that had upset her. Then he peered into the shadows of the scullery, and saw the bloody handle of a machete protruding from the sink.

  He walked across the kitchen, quickly at first, but then he slowed, and stopped. Apart from the machete, the sink contained the sloppy remains of Monsaraz’s genitals.

  Barney went back into the drawing-room. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Mooi Klip, tightly. ‘I didn’t know. I’m really sorry. Do you want a drink? There’s bound to be some whiskey around.’

  Mooi Klip shook her head. ‘I feel better now. It was a shock. I don’t know what it is till I look close.’

  Outside, they could hear the echoing sound of a pick, as Donald dug a grave for Monsaraz in the hard-baked soil. Barney sat down again, and pulled at the bottom drawer of the desk as hard as he could. At last, with a ripping of paper, it came open, and banged on to the threadbare rug.

  ‘My God,’ said Barney, picking up crumpled handfuls of paper.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mooi Klip. ‘Is it money?’

  ‘Is it money? British five-pound notes, hundreds of them! Just stuffed into this desk like rubbish. There must be thousands of pounds in here!’

  Mooi Klip came over and stood beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re rich, then,’ she said.

  Barney burrowed through the drawer, digging out more and more money. He held some of the notes up to the window, and as far as he could see they all bore watermarks from the Royal Mint, and they were all genuine.

  ‘There must be nine or ten thousand pounds here. Maybe more. It’s unbelievable.’

  ‘What will you do with it?’ asked Mooi Klip.

  Barney smoothed one of the crumpled notes on his knee. He thought for a moment, and then he lowered his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It isn’t mine.’

  ‘But it is yours! Whose can it be, if it isn’t yours? Monsaraz is dead!’

  ‘Monsaraz stole it in the first place, or embezzled it. It didn’t belong to him any more than it belongs to me. Why do you think a bright young man like that was rotting away in Oranjerivier? He was hiding from the people he robbed.’

  ‘But who will ever know?’ asked Mooi Klip. ‘Nobody knows this money is here. If they did, they would come to take it. But even the man who killed Monsaraz did not take it.’

  Barney let the smoothed-out note flutter down on to the rest of the heap. ‘The man who killed Monsaraz was nothing more than a jealous kaffir. And kaffirs aren’t even human, remember?
The poor man had probably never seen a five-pound note in his whole life before. Apart from that – I expect he ran off as soon as he’d done what he came to do. He wanted blood, not money.’

  Mooi Klip frowned. ‘You will leave the money here, for somebody else?

  Barney reached up and touched her hand. ‘I’ve found something out this week,’ he told her. ‘I’ve found out that it’s no use pretending that I’m anything else but a Jew.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘I don’t understand myself. When I was crossing the Great Karoo, on my way here to Oranjerivier, I made up my mind that I was going to put my religion behind me. I didn’t think my beliefs were enough to help me survive in this place. I didn’t think the rabbis in New York could possibly know what it was like to think of making your fortune in a country as wild as this one.’

  He nudged the drawerful of five-pound notes with his foot. ‘I didn’t think, either, that anyone could get rich here unless they were a Gentile. How could I make friends with men like Stafford Parker, being a Jew? How could I become a member of the Kimberley Club? How could I court a girl like Agnes Knight?’

  Mooi Klip caressed his fingers. She said nothing.

  ‘Well, pretending to be a Gentile doesn’t work,’ said Barney. ‘There isn’t any disguise that can hide the fact that you’re a Jew. Not masks, not names, not lies. So all I can do now is make the most of it. Make more than the most of it. All I can do is make sure that I’m the richest Jew in the colony.’

  ‘But what about the money?’ asked Mooi Klip.

  Barney sighed. ‘I’ve probably gone too far away from God to make my way back,’ he said, ‘but this is as far as I go.’

  Mooi Klip waited outside while Barney finished going through Monsaraz’s desk. At last, at the very bottom of one of the drawers, Barney found the deeds to Derdeheuwel farm and its surrounding acres. He tucked the deeds into his coat, dusted his hands off, and came out to join Mooi Klip and Donald in the courtyard.

  ‘I’ve found the deeds,’ he told them. ‘After everything I’ve done here, I think I’m entitled to keep the farm. I’ll rent it out, most likely.’