Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

Who was he really? A murderer. She was alone in a deserted house with a murderer. She should be running from him, not sitting here calmly with the sheets primly wrapped around her shoulders. She should be running and screaming and calling the police. A wad of panic was tightening inside her chest, creeping up her throat…

  But then he leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. He said simply, ‘Justine, don’t you know me?’

  Something broke inside her. The pent-up tension and anxiety shattered like glass. She placed her hand against her mouth.

  Slowly, very slowly, he got to his feet, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. He eased himself onto the edge of the bed and the mattress dipped underneath his weight. She watched him, but didn’t move, even though his face was now so close to hers, she could see tiny red veins in his eyes, thick stubble against his jaw.

  ‘You know who I am,’ he said. A statement this time, not a question.

  ‘Yes.’ No hesitation. ‘I know who you are.’

  His fingers brushed the skin stretched taut over her collarbone, and his fingers were hot. He touched the swell of her breast—a butterfly touch—but she imagined she felt the tips of his fingers pulsing along with the beat of her heart.

  She did not pull away. She gave a kind of sob and grasped his hand in hers.

  He closed his eyes briefly.

  ‘I have been looking for someone to walk with me,’ he said.

  She answered, ‘You have found her.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  MARK BOTHA glanced at his watch and pushed his chair away from his desk. It was time for him to make his rounds. He was especially anxious to see how Mrs Brewer was doing. When she came in earlier today he was convinced he had a case of malaria on his hands. The fact that she had just returned from a trip to Outjo—malaria country—had seemed to clinch it. But something had nagged at him and he had ended up doing a spinal tap. Just as well. It had turned out to be meningitis, not malaria.

  As he walked down the central corridor of the tiny hospital, his eye fell on the windowsill jutting out from underneath one of the windows. The dust was almost an inch thick. He should talk to Nurse Roode about it. Although, to be fair, with the constant wind and only a thin sheet of glass separating the inside of the hospital from a vast ocean of sand particles, it was a near impossible task to keep the desert at bay.

  He was just about to enter the female ward when he heard his name being called. He looked over his shoulder. Rita was standing at the end of the corridor. In her hand she held a letter. She was smiling.

  ‘What is it?’ He walked over to his wife and gave her a brief kiss before taking the letter from her hand.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, but the back of the envelope told me who it’s from and I opened it. I couldn’t bear to wait until you came home this evening.’

  His heart quickened. He pulled the stiff sheet of paper from the envelope. At the top of the page was an official-looking stamp. His eyes passed quickly over the formal sentences.

  ‘You won.’ Rita spoke quietly, but there was a note of triumph in her voice. ‘There will be no hotel on Pennington’s Island.’

  ‘No.’ The joy and relief that gripped him was intense. ‘No, there won’t be, will there?’

  ‘I wonder if Yuri Grachikov knows?’

  ‘He probably got a letter just like this one.’ He looked at the page in his hands and his eyes skipped through the two terse paragraphs once again as if to reassure himself that he hadn’t misread it the first time around. But no. The message was unequivocal. Pennington’s and its fragile marine terrace would be spared a rape by greedy men and their destructive machinery.

  ‘I wish Adam was here to open that bottle of champagne with us.’ Rita smiled. ‘You haven’t heard from him?’

  ‘No.’ Every morning he woke up wondering if he was ever going to see his friend again. Eight days had passed since Adam had left. He knew Adam would not contact him while he was in England. One day he would simply walk through the door unannounced, just as he had nine years ago. That is, if he made it back.

  He shook his head as though he could physically clear his mind of unpleasant thoughts. Placing his arm around his wife’s shoulders, he said, ‘We’ll open the bottle of champagne, anyway. We’ve won a good fight. What can go wrong now?’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SHE WAS SITTING on her heels, balancing easily, reading from the newspaper spread out on the floor in front of her. Boyish knees. Pink toes. The wintry sunshine slanting in through the window, turning her short fair hair into silver dandelion fluff. She was so tiny, he thought. The picture in the magazine had not prepared him for how small she was. The first time he had held her, it had been almost a shock; it was like having the skeleton of a bird in his hands. The delicate sculpture of her rib cage, her fragile wrists and ankles. Infinitely breakable. But the beat of her heart insistent, urgent, flooding her body with electric blood.

  Sitting there like that, rocking on her heels, she looked almost a child. But then she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and the smile around her lips belonged to a woman: seductive, brightly sexual.

  He wanted to hold her to him. His desire for her broke from his skin like sweat. Desire for her body, for her mind and her clear, hard intelligence. He had to stop himself from constantly reaching for her. His hunger was too desperate, too needy. He was afraid of scaring her and voiding the miracle—the miracle of her accepting him as he was. He; a scarecrow, with his split pockets, untidy smile and damaged heart. He had entered her life like a thief in the night, but she accepted him unquestioningly.

  • • •

  LATER, HE WOULD think back on those days and nights at Paradine Park and marvel at what a celebration, what an adventure, they had managed to fit within such a tiny bubble of time.

  Every sensation heightened. His senses so alert, he thought he might hear the stealthy growth of the moss on the trees. The winter colours not drab at all but leaping out at him as vivid as a shout of joy.

  Justine, her face alight with mischief, running away from him into the maze of hedges in a crazy game of hide and seek. Justine, listening to Brahms, her eyes as serene as the eyes of a Madonna. Justine sitting on the branch of a tree, legs dangling. ‘Catch me!’ and suddenly she was falling forward—so swiftly, so unexpectedly—he felt his heart jump into his throat. And then she was in his arms, a tangle of legs, skinny arms and wide mouth laughing; covering his face with short, dry kisses. He was able to pull her deep, deep within his embrace until she laughed and pushed him away, struggling to find her breath.

  In the desert he had drawn pictures of her in his thoughts. He would search for her image in other women: this woman’s hair, that one’s bright eyes, this one’s way of carrying herself. He sifted through the images like someone desperately trawling for treasure, clutching to him those aspects he thought he recognised. But when he tried to combine the sorry fragments into a unified whole, they crumbled into nothingness. She was always hovering at the white edges of his dreams. Unattainable. Just out of reach.

  But now he was able to study her face in every detail. The blue veins at her temples, the tender knob of her upper lip, the breath-catching way her pupils would swell under his gaze. He could feel her pulse surging underneath the tips of his fingers, hear the rhythm of her heartbeat, catch the sparks flying off her thoughts.

  The smooth surface of her inner arm and the strong fold of muscle. The sweat-slicked hollow at her neck. Her damp skin bonding with his and his body sensing the crackle of electricity generated deep within her brain, running through every cell in her body, a lightning storm of muscle, tissue, mind.

  ‘Say my name,’ he said to her, and her lips formed the word ‘beloved’.

  Her words were made of water, his of sand. When they whispered together in the night, it was water seeping into sand and a desert blooming.

  • • •

  SHE RESTED her head on his shoulder and listened to his voice in the darkness. He was describing to her a land
thousands of miles to the south, a sterile land bordered by a bountiful ocean whose generosity ceased at the line where water met shore. A land of once prosperous diamond settlements, now abandoned, the only sounds the patter of the webbed feet of seabirds and the creaking of doors crumbling on their hinges. A land where beautiful Himba women tended sacred fires, their skins gleaming red with ochre powder, butterfat and aromatic herbs. A place where the Welwitschia grew, living fossil plants dating from the time of Christ.

  And the windwalkers—creatures made of blood and dreams. Warm-blooded animals miraculously able to roam the dunes without any water, relying solely on moisture drawn from their food. Survivors, just like every creature who dwelled in that barren land. And the sky that spanned this wilderness was a sky like no other sky in the world. At day a blistering cloudless blue. At night blacker than black, blazing with stars burning phosphorescent white: the Southern Cross and the pale swath of the Milky Way.

  She moved her head. In the icy blackness outside their window there were no stars, only a murky darkness thick with clouds and long trailing fingers of mist.

  ‘I think I will like it there,’ she said.

  He was quiet for a moment. ‘You’ll be sharing your life with a fugitive.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Have you thought about how you will explain it? Your parents, your friends—won’t they find it extraordinary that you would want to live there?’

  She smiled ruefully. ‘I can assure you no one finds anything I do odd any more. I’ve done so many off-the-wall things in my life, they would probably find it strange if I did something normal for a change. No, they’ll just sigh and shake their heads and say “that’s Justine for you. A hopeless case”.’

  ‘I love hopeless cases.’

  She smiled into the warmth of his shoulder. ‘Of course you do. That’s why we were meant to be together.’

  ‘Yes.’ He picked up her hand and pressed his lips against her palm. ‘In every life to come.’

  In every life to come. He said these words often and with such certainty. But the truth of it was that she did not believe they had more than one life to live. She believed passionately that they were meant for each other, yes. But the possibility of the two of them travelling together through all eternity—a vast cosmic ocean with no limits of time or space—was somehow too devastating to contemplate. Her brain shrank from the immensity of the thought.

  But as she rested there in the crook of his arm, listening to his voice so calmly impassioned, all she said was, ‘You really believe it, don’t you? That we have successive lives?’

  ‘I believe we wander from death to death, yes.’

  She shivered. ‘Successive lives sounds better.’

  ‘We’re travellers—vagabonds—on a journey during which we have to pass through many closed doors.’ She felt him shrug. ‘Each life, another door.’

  She ran her fingers down his arm, paused when she reached the soft skin between wrist and elbow. In the darkness she couldn’t see the tattoos, but she knew they were there. It still took her breath away—images transferred onto her shoulder one summer afternoon many years ago had found their way onto his arm as well. But whereas she had picked the images at complete random, he had chosen with care.

  ‘Doors. Pascaline said that’s why you have the wolf on your arm.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Explain it to me.’

  ‘Wepwawet. Opener of the ways. Also called the desert jackal. Sometimes portrayed as an animal with a man’s body. In war, he opened pathways for the pharaoh to cut into the armies of the enemy. He was worshipped especially in the Egyptian city of Assiut. The Greeks called it Lycopolis: the city of wolves.’

  ‘A war god.’

  ‘You sound disapproving.’ She could tell from his voice he was smiling.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘He also opened the doors of the underworld for the dead. And with his adze he would break open the mouth of the deceased during the opening-of-the-mouth ceremony to ensure that the person would retain all his faculties in the afterlife.’

  ‘Good grief. What the hell is an adze?’

  ‘Something sharp and thin with an arched blade, I believe.’

  ‘This is starting to creep me out.’

  ‘It shouldn’t. Don’t you find it comforting—the idea that there will be someone to open the door for you into the next life?’

  ‘Who is going to cut my mouth open with something sharp and thin. Yes, really comforting.’

  ‘You can take it.’ He laughed and placed his arm across her shoulder. ‘Life is war, you know. And you’re a warrior.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Justine?’

  ‘Warriors are brave,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What is it?’ He sat up straight and clicked on the bedside light. He looked at her searchingly. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She stared into the circle of light. ‘You have to know this about me, Adam. I’m not brave, I’m destructive. There is something in my nature that causes me to always step wrongly. I sabotage everything worthwhile in my life. I’ll even trip myself up at work. For a while things will go well and then I’ll start missing appointments, or quarrel with editors—just do something stupid to make things go sour. Where relationships are concerned, I’m a walking disaster. And Jonathan. He died not only because I was careless, but because I was petulant. Spiteful. I didn’t really want that cigarette. I lit up because I knew it would irritate him.’

  ‘Shh…’ He stroked the hair off her forehead, his fingers gentle.

  ‘I could hear him scream. He was screaming but he was on the other side of the house and I couldn’t get to him. And then the screams stopped because he was overwhelmed by smoke and suffocated. He was a good man, Adam. Not like me. He was the oak tree, I was the poison ivy.’

  He continued to smooth her hair. With the other arm he drew her close to his chest.

  She spoke again, her voice muffled. ‘I’ve always felt like an intruder in my own life, a stranger set on wreaking havoc. And all the time, I’d be conscious of this longing inside me. But a longing for what? I could never describe it to myself, could never give voice to what I was searching for. All I knew was that once I found it, I would stop being so destructive. Once I knew.’ She gripped his hand tightly. ‘I’ve found what I was searching for. But now I’m afraid.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘That this will end and never come again.’

  His fingers stopped smoothing her hair. Gripping her shoulders hard, he forced her to sit up straight, facing him.

  ‘Listen to me. We are soul mates. You are my life raft and I am yours. But if there is one thing I’ve learned during nine years in the desert, it is that there are some things only you can do. I can help you. But only you can heal yourself. The question is, can you do it?’

  She looked at him, stung. ‘And you? Can you do it? Have you healed yourself?’

  ‘No. It starts with self-forgiveness. I’m not there yet. But I’ve looked the devil in the face and I know who I am.’

  ‘And you’re saying I don’t.’

  ‘You haven’t even begun to learn to know yourself. You see ugliness and you close your mind and you don’t look any further.’

  ‘There’s not a lot left besides.’

  ‘Yes, there is. Don’t you know how incredibly special you are? Steel and grit and great determination: you have all of that within you.’

  She held her wrists out to him, pulling her palms backward so that the pink scar tissue stood out against the white of her skin. ‘This is not the work of a warrior. This is the work of a coward, and I am ashamed. I gave in to the despair. You didn’t. You kept fighting.’

  He was silent. When he spoke again, his voice sounded remote. ‘I did not dive for almost a year after I had killed Richard. The day I went back to the ocean and into the caves, I was filled with joy. I was home. It’s such a
quiet world down there, Justine. Inside the caves you’re in a place where you become aware of yourself like nowhere else—the beating of your heart, the sound of your breathing, even the ebb and flow of your thoughts. Your only link to the outside world is the guideline, which snakes back toward the light. Without it you’ll be lost in a labyrinth of tunnels and caverns which all look the same. So you understand—it is essential that you keep hold of the line.’

  He paused. ‘That day I felt happier than I had in a long time. The dive was going well. And then, all of a sudden, I looked at the line in my hand and I wanted to let go. At my back was the sun. In front of me was darkness. It was beckoning me. I wanted to lose myself in the maze of tunnels without ever finding my way back. The urge was overwhelming. I opened my fingers and let the guideline slide from my grasp.’

  ‘But you pulled back.’

  ‘Yes, I did. I managed to step back from the brink. But there was that one moment when I gave in to despair absolutely.’

  He placed his hands on her wrists and lifted them up to his face. Softly he kissed first one, then the other. ‘Don’t ever say to me again that you’re ashamed.’

  She could feel her eyes burning with tears.

  ‘Let’s make each other a promise, Justine.’

  ‘A promise?’

  ‘From now on we will live life ecstatically and with a vengeance. No matter what happens.’

  She nodded. ‘No matter what happens.’

  ‘My friend Mark always accuses me of hovering on the outside, looking in. He’s right. From now on I am going to embrace life. And so will you. Before moving on to the next life I need to redeem myself, make amends for Richard’s death. You also have a task ahead of you. You need to get to know yourself and fulfil your potential. Redemption and self-knowledge: we can’t achieve this if we do not engage fully.’

  She felt suddenly immensely tired. ‘I would like to sleep now.’

  ‘Sleep,’ he said.

  She closed her eyes and she felt him kiss her forehead, so gently.

  ‘I love you,’ she murmured.