Fever

by Deon Meyer

  He bellowed again, shook his big head, dropped the pan, gripped his massive hands around my throat. I hit him on the forehead with my left fist; in his eyes I could see the blow had shaken him, but still he strangled me. I hit my right elbow against his mouth. He spat out a tooth, choked me harder.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I hit him again with my elbow, on the mouth again, desperate, I couldn’t breathe. He spat blood and spittle over me, throttling me harder still.

  I grabbed his hands, I had to loosen them.

  I had to get air.

  I couldn’t.

  Only then did I realise: it was too late, his hands were too big and strong, his grip too tight; the world spun around me. I jerked and dragged on his hands, and kicked and twisted and wriggled and strained, my mouth gaping in search of air, but I couldn’t get any in my lungs. I couldn’t see, I was dying, I was – like my father – going to be murdered by this man.

  Sofia Bergman

  Remember, no one had told us about Pastor Nkosi and spies and hidden weapons and the three Toyotas that raced away from Luckhoff. That would only come out later. Much later. So that night I sat with my Alpha teammates, and never said a word about Nico. To anyone.

  I regained consciousness when Pastor Nkosi threw a bucket of ice-cold water over me. I coughed and spluttered, groaned and choked and snorted, I dragged the air, the heavenly oxygen, deep into my lungs, and he said, ‘What the devil is the matter with you?’ The words slurred through his broken mouth.

  I tried to get up. ‘I’m going to kill you.’ My voice was hoarse, my body weighed a ton.

  He tramped a big foot on my chest. He pushed me flat on the floor. My right hand hurt. My ribs too.

  ‘But why, Nico?’

  ‘You know,’ and I tried to sit up, I grabbed his foot, but my arms weren’t working well.

  He pulled the pan on the table nearer. ‘I will hit you again.’

  ‘Kill me. You had better kill me.’

  ‘I am not going to kill you, but I will hit you again if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on.’ He raised the heavy pan, threatening.

  ‘You killed my father, you bastard.’

  ‘I did what?’

  ‘You killed my father.’

  The pan dropped to the floor with a hollow clang. I saw Nkosi’s whole body react, saw his shock. ‘Your father? Your father is dead?’

  He was a swindler, a liar. ‘We saw your pick-ups, yesterday.’

  ‘Pick-ups?’ He looked completely dismayed, defeated.

  ‘Three Toyota pick-ups in Luckhoff.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That was me.’

  Rage blinded me, I grabbed his foot which was pressed on to my chest. He jerked it out of my grasp, stepping away from me. He said, ‘Nico, please! I had nothing to do . . . Tell me, when . . . how did your father die?’

  I stood up. I walked towards him lifting my left fist. ‘You shot him yesterday at four o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Oh, dear God.’ And he staggered backwards as if I had hit him, and sat down on a kitchen chair.

  My father told me an asteroid ten kilometres wide struck the earth two hundred million years ago.

  It formed a three-hundred-kilometre-wide crater, the largest on Planet Earth that we know of. The crater has long since disappeared completely due to erosion, but in the middle is a geological structure, a half-moon of hilly terrain that we call the Vredefort Dome, near Parys in the Free State.

  Only months before the Fever scientists discovered an extensive series of caves in the hills of the dome. It was in those caves that my father and I lived when the Fever destroyed the world.

  It was in those caves that I fell ill with the Fever.

  What I relived in that night in Pastor Nkosi Sebego’s kitchen were the dreams of delirium. While he sat with his head in his hands at his kitchen table and prayed to the Most High, I remembered that my father was also sick in those caves, but less so than me. Pa nursed me while the delirium dreams ran through me like heatwaves, they came and went, I didn’t know if I was awake or sleeping. With every feverish dream the sensation was the same: it seemed to me like looking at the world through a very narrow, misty window. My limbs, my hands especially, felt fat and swollen, heavy, strange, but they weren’t. From head to toe I felt slow, as though swimming through thick, bitter syrup. It was strange and frightening and completely surreal.

  In Nkosi’s kitchen I felt that way again.

  I towered over him, filled with hate and physical and emotional agony, but I felt slow, I felt trapped, my head, hands and fingers thick and useless, and I wanted to give my pain to someone else. Nero says that’s what you do when you experience unbearable pain.

  ‘I loved your father,’ said Nkosi. The words were like lead, heavy, sluggish. I absorbed them slowly, took an eternity to process their meaning. I said he was lying, lying, he hated Pa and Domingo.

  And he said, ‘No, I’m just scared of Domingo,’ and I screamed at him, ‘You killed him because you’re scared of him?’ He stared at me as if I’d gone mad and then asked in confusion, ‘Domingo?’ and I could now see he was in the same delirious dream, we were both lost.

  ‘You killed Domingo.’

  ‘Domingo is dead?’

  ‘You killed him, and you killed my father.’

  ‘Heaven help us.’

  I took the pistol out of the holster on my hip. I looked at Nkosi through the narrow, steamy window of my fever, and I pressed the pistol against his temple. He just sat there, blood dripping from his split lips on to the table, slowly shaking his head as he said, ‘I didn’t kill anybody, Nico.’

  I pressed the safety catch to off.

  ‘You let your people do the killing?’

  He didn’t say a word. Just shook his head to say no.

  He closed his eyes.

  Chapter 106

  The investigation of my father’s murder: III

  I couldn’t pull the trigger, because beyond the fever and hatred, the rage and overwhelming emotion, I knew he was telling the truth. I could see it in the way his head drooped, with his eyes shut, I could hear it in his voice, I could feel it in the way he resigned himself to the executioner’s bullet. In the way he stopped fighting, in the way he had let me be free. In his pyjamas and bloodied dressing gown he was a broken, innocent man. And he was grieving. For my father.

  I stood there with my pistol to his head, waiting for the fever to abate, to flow out of me. It took the pressure and the intensity with it.

  I clicked the pistol’s safety up again and I sagged, gripping the table for support. I went and sat down opposite him.

  He slowly opened his eyes. ‘How did they die?’

  ‘They were shot.’

  ‘I am so sorry, Nico.’

  ‘But you were there.’

  ‘I was in Luckhoff.’

  ‘They were in Witput.’

  ‘Dear Lord . . .’

  ‘Why were you there?’

  ‘I went to fetch my rifles. And ammunition. Our share.’

  ‘In Luckhoff?’

  ‘I was sure they were there. I was so absolutely sure. You used Luckhoff for military purposes. That whole town. It was Domingo’s playground. Exclusively. In the Cabinet we often talked about settling people there, it was closer than Hopetown, it had lots of canal water. And Domingo just refused, he said it was Special Ops’ training facility, you needed it. So I thought that’s where he hid the arms. We went there yesterday. We searched the town. We looked in every house. We even had a metal detector, we thought they might be buried somewhere . . .’

  His voice trailed away.

  We sat there in the deep twilight, the paraffin lamp burning low, taking deep breaths.

  I didn’t want to believe him. He was such a sly man.

  ‘You spied for Number One,’ I said.

  A sound popped over his lips, blood sprayed over the table.

  He shook his head.

  ‘I saw you, that first da
y,’ I said to him. ‘I saw you.’

  ‘What first day?’

  ‘When you came to Amanzi.’

  ‘You saw me?’

  ‘Yes. I saw how you looked at Domingo. You hated him.’

  He looked at me. I couldn’t really see his expression. It sounded like a brief and bitter laugh. Then he got slowly to his feet. ‘Would you like some brandy?’

  I had never drunk brandy.

  ‘Yes.’

  It tasted like horrible cough mixture. It burned my mouth, throat, made me choke.

  Pastor Nkosi Sebego would probably have smiled if his mouth had been whole and circumstances different.

  He sat down again opposite me. He said, ‘Do you know what that tattoo on Domingo’s hand stands for?’

  ‘No.’ I had long forgotten about the tattoo on the back of Domingo’s hand, two curved swords and a rising sun. It was so much a part of him, I was so used to it, it had no meaning.

  ‘It means he was a member of the Twenty-Sevens.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘The Twenty-Sevens. The Numbers gangs? You’ve never heard . . .? Never mind. They were prison gangs, the Numbers, in the old days. Before the Fever. You had three divisions. There were Twenty-Sixes, who were the least violent, they were the thieves and the con men and the burglars and the fraudsters. Then you had the Twenty-Eights, they—’

  ‘How do you know this?’ I asked him because I didn’t want to believe anything bad about Domingo.

  ‘As a pastor it was my duty to visit those parishioners who were in prison, Nico.’

  ‘Domingo wasn’t a criminal.’

  ‘Then why did he have that tattoo? The sign of the Twenty-Sevens? The most violent of all the prison gangs, the killers. The assassins.’

  ‘It was just a tattoo.’

  ‘I’ve seen many of them, Nico. He was a Twenty-Seven.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Go ask Sarge X.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was a policeman. And . . . Do you remember when Matthew Mbalo was killed? Our first murder.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you remember who the only person was that Sarge X interrogated, right after the body was found?’

  I could remember. We had watched, there at Luckhoff, how Sarge and Domingo stood and talked beside his pick-up. How angry Domingo was. But I said nothing.

  ‘Sarge X didn’t tell us about it,’ said Nkosi. ‘Until I confronted him, about a week after the murder. I called him lazy and inefficient, because there was absolutely no progress in the investigation. Then he told me, he said he had interrogated the only real suspect. The only Amanzian with a known criminal record who had been up and about that night, moving freely according to his responsibilities. Domingo. So I asked Sarge, how do you know Domingo has a criminal record? And Sarge says, that tattoo, Pastor. And he told me what I already knew. Domingo had been in prison, and he was a member of the most violent Numbers gang.’

  I still didn’t want to believe it.

  The pastor saw that. ‘I know you were very fond of Domingo.’

  ‘Yes. He was my hero.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He was a very brave man, and he was a good man.’

  ‘Yes, he was brave. And we can be good and bad, Nico. We can do good and bad things. That’s the way God made us.’

  He stood up, went to the cupboard where the brandy bottle was and poured another for himself. I never knew he drank alcohol. He held up the bottle, asking if I wanted more. I shook my head. The stuff was horrible; I still had some in my glass.

  ‘You have my deepest sympathy for the loss of your father,’ he said, sipped and came back to the table. ‘I had the utmost respect for him. He was an exceptional man. I did not leave Amanzi because of him.’ He sat down. ‘I left because of Domingo. Because there was no real democracy. No real liberty. No real freedom of religion. Because there was one state religion in Amanzi. Domingo’s. He ruled that place. With an iron fist.’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Just think about it, will you? Just look at the facts. Ask yourself: why did he hide the arsenal?’

  ‘Because you’re a spy.’

  Again he made that snorting sound. He touched his mouth, it must have hurt.

  ‘Really, Nico? Really? A spy? Okay, so I might be a spy. But answer these questions: do you know who else is called “Number One”? Go ask Sarge X. In the Numbers gangs, the top structure are called Number Ones. If you’re a leader of the Twenty-Sixes, you are a Number One. And do you know what the speciality of the Twenty-Sixes was in prison? Smuggling. Smuggling and selling. Remember when Trunkenpolz came to Amanzi the first time, do you remember how Domingo didn’t like it at all? How uncomfortable he was that night? Why? Because maybe he saw a tattoo on Trunkenpolz. And Trunkenpolz saw Domingo’s? Go ask yourself, when Trunkenpolz could have killed Domingo, when he was standing there with a pistol to Domingo’s head, why didn’t he just pull the trigger? Because, perhaps, he saw somebody he could blackmail? Ask yourself: who arrived at Amanzi on a motorcycle, Nico? A motorcycle. Think about it. Ask yourself: who killed that Marauders man, the one you took prisoner, what was his name . . .?’

  ‘Leon Calitz.’

  ‘Yes, that one. Who killed him, who shot him and their radio man before you could bring them back for questioning about human trafficking?’

  ‘That was because of the . . . Domingo saw the women, the Seven . . .’

  ‘Okay. Do you remember when the KTM attacked us, that day when you shot ten or eleven of them?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Yes. Twelve. Do you remember, there were two of the attackers trapped in the truck? And they were shouting, “We give up, we give up!” and Domingo walked up to them and he executed them. Shot them right between the eyes. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because they were animals.’

  ‘I wonder who the real animal was, that day. Why did he have to kill them? Why were there never any people to interrogate? Just ask yourself why, that’s all I’m saying.’

  I shoved the glass away and stood up.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  His gesture said he didn’t really care.

  ‘I’ll find out if you’re lying.’

  ‘I took my people away from Amanzi, because they deserved better than Domingo’s tyranny.’

  ‘Domingo’s tyranny was good enough for my dad.’

  ‘Are you sure, Nico?’

  When you are seventeen, and you’re tired and confused, and everything you know and believe is threatened, the easiest solution is to flee.

  I didn’t answer him. I just walked out, so that the darkness of New Jerusalem could swallow me and the Jeep.

  Chapter 107

  The investigation of my father’s murder: IV

  To this day I don’t know how I reached the bridge over the Seekoei River.

  It is forty kilometres north of Colesberg, just before the old R369 becomes a gravel road.

  That was where I regained my senses at about four in the morning, when the Jeep’s headlights lit up the silver of the steel railing and the grey concrete, and I suddenly hit the brakes, for no good reason except that I was suddenly awake, back in the real world.

  I stopped, because I had to, because I didn’t know where to go.

  I switched off the Jeep and its lights and got out and walked to the front of the vehicle. I looked out at the incredible firmament, billions of stars twinkling. Pa said the night sky was a time machine, each star in its own era, so many light years away. I need a time machine, Pa, to turn the clock back.

  I didn’t see the breathtaking beauty. I just felt small, immeasurably small, insignificant and lost, but above all to this day I recall the overwhelming unbearable weight of loneliness that pressed down on me. My mother was dead, and my father was dead, and Domingo too. I was a real orphan now, fit for the Orphanage.

  Part
of the weight I felt had to do with loss of confidence, loss of certainty. Who did I believe? What did I believe? Where was truth? Another addition to this mass was the loss of an ideal, of an idea, as Amanzi had been my father’s idea. His vision, his dream. Suddenly there was nothing. No future, just the pitch darkness.

  I didn’t feel self-pity. I was just aware of the absolute loneliness. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at the heavens. It could have been ten or twenty minutes.

  And then I heard the crackling of the radio in Domingo’s Jeep, and I heard the voice of one of Sarge X’s guards: ‘Base, this is Sector Three. Four o’clock, and all’s well.’

  I was close enough to pick up the radio signal.

  I lowered my eyes to the horizon. I could see the faint glow of Amanzi. Our place of light.

  Sofia Bergman

  I was lying asleep on the rock-hard tarmac of the road across the dam wall when I felt someone pressing my shoulder very gently, and I woke with a start. It was Sarge X. He said, ‘Sofia, I need you to track for me.’

  I felt embarrassed that he had caught me sleeping, I wanted to explain. I said, ‘I wasn’t on duty,’ and he said, ‘I know, my dear, I know. But the sun will be up in half an hour, and I want to start searching the crime scene for tracks as soon as there’s enough light.’

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ I said and got up and I wanted to ask if I had time to wash and brush my hair and teeth, but he was already walking to the three parked APS vehicles, the pick-ups of the Amanzi Police Service, each with hand-painted stars on the doors.