Sacrificed

by Chanette Paul

  She had left it with Fien in South Africa, along with her baby and her conscience, but that would be the wrong answer. “It’s in a safe place,” was all she could think of saying.

  “He says you must look after it. Very carefully. The spirit of mask and statue are very strong. Keep it close. And look out for Tabia’s son. He asks a lot of questions about almasi. He knows there are more almasi than his mother has.”

  She stood frozen to the spot while he walked down the street. By the time she wanted to call him back, he had vanished into the crowded Antwerp street.

  Ammie went back inside the gallery but the woman in charge couldn’t help her. “Aron sent his son after you, but then he left. I understand they’ll be returning to Zaire soon,” she said. The woman didn’t know where the two were staying. All she had was a price list of the artworks and the details of a bank account in Lubumbashi.

  It had been more than twenty years since Ammie had left South Africa. Fien might have got rid of both objects. Yet she felt obliged to try and save what could be saved. Not only because the two items were so valuable. Aron’s son had made her ashamed of her casual treatment of Aron’s handiwork. Works of art he had specifically created to protect her. And there had been an urgency in the words of Aron’s son that seemed more than an idle warning. Something that stirred up a deep anxiety. Especially the last part: look out for Tabia’s son.

  He wasn’t only Tabia’s son. He was César’s too. African magic, genetically combined with European hunger for power.

  Against her better judgment, Ammie wrote to Fien. It was as if a force beyond reason was driving her. She still had the Rietfontein address, but after the letter was forwarded a few times, it miraculously reached Fien.

  There was something to be salvaged after all. Fien had kept the mask and figurine in the garage with a load of other stuff she couldn’t throw away, yet didn’t want in her home.

  Fien reluctantly agreed to take the items to a bank for safekeeping, as long as Ammie paid. They agreed that Ammie would send Fien the money.

  The first annual payment, for 1982, went without a hitch. For some reason the 1983 payment did not reach Fien.

  Fien wrote a sharply worded letter. Something to the tune of: I had to pay the bank myself. As if it’s not enough that I had to care for your ungrateful brat for so long. The so-called payment I got for raising your child didn’t nearly make up for the trouble she caused. She even insisted on going to university. What for, I ask you? She’s out there in the wilderness now, doing what with her precious degree? But thank God she’s married, even if her husband is a young twerp with an oaf for a father. And for your information: you’re going to be a grandmother. Make sure I get the money at once.

  Ammie would never forget the expression on Jacq’s face when she walked in and found him with the letter in his hand.

  It was a terrible, yet liberating, moment.

  “You have a child?” was all he asked. She told him everything.

  Jacq could accept the fact that she had been married before, but not that she had committed adultery, especially not with a man like Elijah. He was dumbstruck when she told him she had never divorced her first husband and that she didn’t know whether he was still alive. But to Jacq, the worst thing by far was that she had abandoned her child.

  It had been careless to leave Fien’s letter lying on her desk. Later she would wonder whether, at a deeply subconscious level, she had wanted Jacq to see it. Wanted him to find out. She could no longer live the lie.

  The revelation steered her life in a new direction, but she had devastated a good man. She could not have predicted that Jacq would be unable to get over his distress.

  She sometimes wondered what her life would have been like if she had torn up that letter like the ones before.

  If Jacq hadn’t found out about her past, she might have stayed in Leuven, trapped in a soul-destroying marriage that wasn’t legal but, because Jacq didn’t know it, was as binding as a legal one.

  Jacq was a highly intelligent man and took good care of her, but he wasn’t exactly exciting. He was far too fixated on sin.

  Would a life with him have been better than the one she had lived in the end? She didn’t think so. She would have liked to be a part of Luc’s life and follow his career. But in the end, she suspected, as a grown man he was just as tedious as his father had been.

  She knew she was coldhearted. Perhaps even without a conscience. Africa did that to you. That and other things. It taught you to deceive, to hate, and how thin the veneer of so-called civilization was. All that was deep and dark floated to the surface so much more readily there.

  In Africa forgiving and forgetting didn’t come easily, if it ever came. If César ever found her, she could expect no mercy. That was the shadow she had been living under for more than half a century. It had determined everything she had done.

  César would be an old man, if he was still alive. Eighty-seven.

  He had at least one son. With Tabia. And he had a daughter. Born from her own body, but belonging to Fien. Evil of the kind found in César couldn’t help but be genetic. It was too strong to be diluted by blood that was less evil.

  “Elijah,” she muttered. “Elijah, if only things had been different.”

  Caz

  Ghent

  Caz felt guilty when she returned to Tieneke’s house after nine.

  It was silent as the grave. Only the hall light, which burned day and night, was on. Tieneke was probably asleep. She had to be exhausted.

  Because the sun went down so late, Caz hadn’t realized what the time was when she had ordered her food after a long wait to be served. Though she had chosen one of the smaller, cheaper restaurants off the Graslei, it was still bustling.

  The stairs creaked, no matter how softly Caz tried to tread.

  Tieneke’s door opened just before Caz reached the second flight. “Cassie?”

  “Yes. Sorry to bother you.”

  Tieneke came out, tying the girdle of her dressing gown. “I thought I’d drop off immediately, but it seems exhaustion is not enough. Shall I make us some hot chocolate?”

  “Yes, please, if you’re having, but don’t make it specially for me.”

  “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want some myself.” Tieneke brushed past her and went down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Meekly Caz followed.

  When she had put the milk on the stove, Tieneke turned and folded her arms. “So, Mother is dead and life goes on.”

  Talk about stating the obvious. Caz nodded. “Are you okay? I mean in the circumstances?”

  “I feel strange. Removed from reality. It’s weird not to be listening for sounds from the bedroom all day. Not to be on standby. I feel restless.” She turned to the milk on the stove, then back to Caz. “Mother wanted to see you this morning. I refused. I didn’t think it would do either of you any good.”

  Caz gritted her teeth. She hadn’t particularly wanted to see Fien herself, but now she’d never know whether Fien had wanted to tell her more. How dare Tieneke make the decision on her behalf and her mother’s? But of course Tieneke had made other important decisions on Fien’s behalf as well. Like when to die.

  “Mother said she knew you only came because I let the cat out of the bag about your biological parents but she still appreciated your coming.”

  Caz gave her a sceptical look.

  “She got upset because you look so much like Ammie. You’re much taller, of course, and Ammie had straight hair, but even though you’re quite a bit older than Ammie was at the time and not as breathtakingly beautiful, your features are very similar.”

  Talk about a backhanded compliment. Or maybe no compliment at all.

  “She wanted to tell you about Leuven and Doel.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Leuven is a city and Doel a town here in Belgium.
Places where Ammie lived.”

  Caz drew out a chair from under the tiny kitchen table and sank down on it, her legs suddenly shaky.

  Just in time Tieneke saved the milk from boiling over. In silence she made the hot chocolate and sat down opposite Caz.

  “You see, Ammie contacted Mother. By letter. Years ago. You were pregnant with Lilah. The postal address was Leuven. It’s a university city and capital of the province Flemish Brabant. Not far from Brussels.”

  “She asked about me?” So she hadn’t been forgotten after all.

  “No, it was about the two awful African objects. Apparently they have some value and she asked if Mother still had them and, if so, would Mother put them in a bank for safekeeping.”

  So two African curios were more important than her daughter. Well, life was full of surprises.

  “It’s not important now. The point is, she was living in Leuven at the time.”

  “Not any more?”

  “No, she and her husband separated when he found Mother’s letter. The one in which she mentioned you and your pregnancy. We learned of it when he wrote to Mother a few months later. He asked if we thought you would want to make contact with him. Said he might not be your father, but he felt you’d been treated unjustly and he wanted to let you know he hadn’t been aware of your existence. If he had, he would have contacted you long ago. He also wanted to find out more about you.”

  At least one person had been concerned about her welfare, no matter how briefly and superficially. “Mother Fien refused.” She didn’t ask.

  “No, she didn’t refuse, she just didn’t answer. She tore up the letter and wrote ‘address unknown’ on the envelope of the next one, and returned it without opening it.”

  “Was that after Lilah’s birth?”

  Tieneke nodded.

  “And Mother Fien didn’t think I might have benefited from someone actually caring about me? Even a stranger in a strange country, one who didn’t know me from Adam? A man who might have been able to tell me where I, and especially my daughter, come from? Or at least where Ammie Pauwels was so that I could find out from her what the hell was going on?”

  “Be reasonable, Cassie. Mother would have had to spill the beans. We’re talking about illicit diamond trade. And she was still upset about Father’s death. And of course about Lilah and you and everything.”

  “Reasonable? Tieneke, she never wanted to see me again. She told me so in no uncertain terms and kept her word until a few weeks ago. Anyone’s interest, even a stranger’s, would have been welcome. I could have found out about Lilah. It’s not my fault that Father traded diamonds illegally. Do you have any idea how alone I was, how overwhelmed, how confused? I had to find a place to stay and a job. Try to survive on so many levels. In the meantime I had to figure out how to look after a baby.”

  Hentie had given her five hundred rand behind his father’s back. Magdel two hundred. Later, when he had cooled down, Andries had deposited a thousand rand into her account. Seventeen hundred rand was a lot of money then, but it could only stretch so far, no matter how careful she was. And that was only the financial side of things. At times she had thought she would lose her mind—usually when Lilah whined and wailed as if she would never stop.

  “Let’s not open up old wounds. We can’t change any of it now. There’s another reason why I’m telling you about the letter. There was a letterhead.”

  Caz looked at her expectantly.

  “KU Leuven. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Ammie’s husband must have worked there. I don’t remember the initials, but his last name was DeReu. The university’s admin might know where he is, if he’s still alive. And he might know where Ammie Pauwels is, if she’s still alive.”

  Caz allowed the possibility to sink in while she sipped her hot chocolate. A starting point. That was all it was, but at least she had one now. “And Doel?” she asked.

  “I found out about Ammie’s connection with Doel only this morning. It was what Mother had wanted to tell you. I said she could tell me, and I’d tell you. I didn’t want a repeat of yesterday. For both your sakes.”

  Caz waited while Tieneke sipped her chocolate.

  “Doel is a town on the Scheldt—the river—in a district known as the Land van Waas,” Tieneke continued. “In East Flanders, same as us. About fifty, sixty kilometers from here. It’s a ghost town today, but Ammie lived there for a while after she left Leuven. Around 2000 or 2001, Mother recognized her in a photo in the newspaper. The residents had yet again been told to leave the town to make way for an extension of the port of Antwerp and she was one of the protesters. Only a few people live there today. One of them might be able to tell you where she went from there.”

  “Fourteen years later?”

  “I take it it’s the diehards that are left. People who have been living there for years and years. They must have known Ammie. It was a small town, even before what happened put it on the map.” Tieneke took the two empty mugs, rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher.

  It made sense. If Ammie had been one of the protesters, at least one of the so-called diehards must have known her.

  “You have at least two starting points: Leuven and Doel. I’ll write down the wifi code tomorrow, and you can do some research. Just don’t spend hours on the internet or download large files. Now I’m going to bed. Sleep well, Cassie.”

  “Goodnight, Tieneke, sleep well. And thanks.”

  Caz sat staring at the kitchen table when Tieneke had left. She had both ends, now she just had to look for the sausage. Where that silly thought had sprung from, she didn’t know. Maybe from a proverb she vaguely remembered? But it wasn’t important. What was important was whether she was going to embark on this crazy search or not.

  Did she—if Ammie Pauwels was still alive—want to look her birth mother in the eye? The woman who had been more concerned about objects you can buy in a curio shop than her own flesh and blood? Did she really want to do that to herself?

  Caz sighed. Sleep. She needed sleep. She just had to connect her cellphone to the charger again. She couldn’t believe how quickly the battery ran out. She charged it last night and had scarcely used it since. She hoped there wasn’t something wrong with it. But she couldn’t worry about that as well. The day had brought more than enough of its own troubles.

  Thirteen

  Saturday, September 20

  Caz

  Ghent

  “I have to get to the undertaker and go and see the minister,” Tieneke said tersely after a breakfast of bread, jam, cheese and a boiled egg. “Let people know about Mother’s death and so on. Can I drop you somewhere?”

  Tieneke’s accommodating attitude of the night before had vanished. Caz had noticed it the moment Tieneke had given her the wifi code with barely a greeting.

  “Is there anything I can do for you? Help you with?”

  Tieneke shook her head. “You don’t know anyone, and you don’t speak Flemish or Dutch. How did you think to help me?”

  “I don’t know, Tieneke, but if there’s anything, just tell me. Babette, the woman at the shop down the street, understands me quite well, by the way. I speak Afrikaans to her because she doesn’t know much English.”

  “That may be so, but I’ll manage. I want the funeral to be as soon as possible. I’m thinking of Tuesday. If I can manage it, there should be no reason for you to stay after Wednesday. You don’t have to go to the notary’s office with me. I’m familiar with the contents of Mother’s will. Everything comes to me.”

  As if there could have been any doubt. What bothered Caz more was that Wednesday was the twenty-fourth. Fourteen more days until Lilah returned. Two weeks without accommodation.

  “Look, Tieneke, I understand you’d like to be rid of me. There’s no further reason for me to stay. But I’d like to ask you a favor. You know how much luggage I have. A lot of it I brought along
for Lilah, but I won’t see her before October the eighth.”

  “October the eighth? I’m sorry, but you can’t expect me ...”

  “Hang on,” Caz stopped her. “I had a look at Google maps. After the funeral I want to go to Doel and then to Leuven. But I’d like to leave most of my luggage here and travel light. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, a few days at most. As soon as I return I’ll think of something else.”

  Tieneke thought for a moment. “Fine, I can lend you a smaller suitcase. Just stack all your bits and pieces neatly so that I don’t fall over them.”

  Caz nodded. “Thanks, Tieneke. And yes, you can drop me in the town centre. Please. I’ll take the bus back.” Tough luck if Tieneke didn’t want help, but she was definitely not going to stay here alone. The place was suffocating. It was as though Fien was still hanging around in ethereal form.

  “I’ll get the car. Wait at the front door.”

  Caz was surprised when an almost-brand-new Polo drew up with Tieneke behind the wheel. It was a very snazzy car for such a stingy person.

  “Nice wheels,” she said when Tieneke pulled away.

  “A woman on her own needs a reliable car.” Tieneke kept her eyes on the road.

  “Mother Fien agreed?”

  “Mother was an invalid long before I bought the Polo. Quiet, I have to concentrate.”

  Caz grinned to herself and wondered how many other things “Mother” had never known of.

  Luc

  Damme

  When he woke up this morning Luc knew he had opened a door that should have stayed shut.

  Laura had definitely read more into their outing than there could ever be. It was clear from the way she had kissed his cheeks when she said goodbye. Not like a colleague. Surely it was enough to air kiss only one cheek? But no, left, right, left the kisses had come, the last one a lingering one. Definitely not an air kiss.

  Not that he could do anything about it at the moment. He would just have to keep his distance in future. She would realize soon enough they could never be more than colleagues. She was a nice person, but the thought of two equally boring people together was simply unbearable.