The Olifantsbos hike is one of those life events that almost convinces me that I could be different from the way I am.
We have agreed to meet at eight in the morning, so that we don’t walk in the midday sun. This means I have to set my alarm for half-past-six. I have almost forgotten how the alarm on my phone works, so I test it several times. Even then, I don’t quite trust it. I don’t sleep well the night before. I keep waking up and looking at the time, convinced I have overslept.
At half-past-six, I am relieved to leave my bed. I take a shower because it seems like the right thing to do. My three companions will have showered, and so I will too. While I am in the shower, I wash my hair. I have to wash it three times before it feels clean.
I towel myself dry, aware that I have emerged from the water a different creature.
This person who is awake and showered before seven is an unfamiliar version of me. I feel washed clean of sin and born again. The puritanical virtues reside in my sinless self—early rising, hygiene, brisk exercise in the morning air, sexless camaraderie with others.
This is how you get over a rape. You clean yourself from the inside out. You are a sponge held under a running tap. Each time you are squeezed out and filled with fresh water, you become cleaner and cleaner until no speck of contamination remains.
I need to put something pure into my body. Tinned peaches for breakfast may be technically a fruit, but they are not pure. They are processed, preserved, coated in sugar, and therefore not up to the task of washing me clean of sin. I rush out the door and down the street to a shop, where I buy organic apples. If they don’t do the trick, nothing will.
I put my contact lenses in for the first time in a year.
I am waiting at the entrance to the reserve at five minutes to eight. No one else is here. I am the first. This is virtue of a magnitude I have been incapable of for two years.
The others arrive at almost ten minutes past eight, full of apologies. I accept their contrition with the patient good humour of one who has been cleansed by organic apples. Eugene and his cousin Raz arrive together, and Moira a moment later. Raz looks like a version of his cousin who has faded in the wash. Where Eugene’s hair is glossily black and Byronic, Raz’s is flecked with grey, receding, and cropped close to the skull. Eugene holds himself upright like a young David. Raz is a little stooped and his paunch is losing the fight against gravity.
Nevertheless, Moira seems quite taken with him.
She holds onto his fingers after shaking hands. “Well, aren’t you the handsome one? Why didn’t Lucy tell me that her new boy had a good-looking cousin?”
She sounds like someone from a movie.
We set off along the marked path with Moira and Raz leading the way, and Eugene and me following. My self-satisfaction took a knock when I saw what the others were wearing. I thought I had dressed appropriately for the occasion, but I was wrong. Maybe five years ago, when I last did something like this, it would have been appropriate. I am wearing a pair of jeans, a baggy, long-sleeved T-shirt, and trainers. A hoodie of sorts is knotted around my waist by its sleeves.
The others are wearing professional hiking gear in engineered fabrics that cling to the body and undertake to “wick” sweat away from the skin. They don’t wear trainers, but hiking boots with textured, trail-gripping soles. Their sunglasses wrap around their heads, so they can’t fall off, and their hats are made of shiny, sun-reflecting neoprene. Armstrong went to the moon with less technology than these people have employed for a morning walk.
This morning I was proud of myself for having reduced my suit of armour to a pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt. I felt like a Victorian maiden flashing her ankles. Now I know that I still look wrong.
I prod my psyche in an attempt to figure out how I feel about this. Do I wear my rape as a badge of honour? Do I choose to single myself out as the girl who was raped? Or are my multiple layers of clothing a genuine expression of the vulnerability I feel? I can’t answer this, not even in the privacy of my own head, because I don’t know any more.
As we walk, Moira chats animatedly to Raz. She laughs at the things he says, flinging her head back and exposing her throat. She touches his arm constantly, establishing a zone of intimacy between them. He is reserved at first, but she wears him down. Soon he is chatting and laughing too, and giving her little dabs and shoves.
“They’re hitting it off,” I say to Eugene, swallowing resentment like sour milk.
“Your friend has a gift. Raz tends to be shy, but she’s taken him out of himself. He’s having fun.”
“That’s good.”
Are we? I wonder. Having fun?
Is this what fun feels like? The sun is hot on my cheek, making me wish I’d brought sunscreen, but my body is still cold. I have to resist the urge to walk with my arms folded around my chest for warmth. I make myself swing my arms like the others are doing.
The scenery is pretty. At least, it would be pretty if it were framed and cropped in a photograph, with a dramatic filter applied to play up the contrasts between blue and green. As it is, it seems messy—as though the set designer hasn’t got to work yet. There is low-growing, grey-green scrub everywhere, and it is not picturesque. We have passed several places where litter is caught in the scrub.
The rocks are untidy and asymmetrical. There are drifts of shingle that we avoid. We are walking partly on a trail and partly on the beach.
Conversation does not flow between Eugene and me. His beauty makes me tongue-tied. I want to impress him, but fear of failure keeps me silent. It’s much easier when he is just a photograph on my screen and the messages fly between us.
Then we come to the first wreck, and everything becomes easier. The sight of the twisted iron skeleton strikes even Moira dumb. It has ribs that reach up out of the sand, like the carcass of a buck. The predator that has been chewing on it is the sea.
We have been alone on the trail until now, but no longer. There is a man inspecting the wreck. He stands ankle-deep in the water. We were warned at the visitors’ centre not to clamber over the wreck or even venture too close. There is submerged wreckage everywhere, and it is heavily corroded. By getting too close you are risking injury, tetanus, and other undesirable consequences.
If I am dressed inappropriately, this man is entirely out of place. He wears long khaki trousers with a deep crease ironed into the front. His jacket is navy blue and fitted tightly at the waist. It reaches almost to mid-thigh, with brass buttons down the front. The lapels are wide and decorated with various pins. This makes him sound rather neat and point-device, but he is anything but.
The cuffs of his trousers are sodden and frayed. He must have been wearing boots, but now he is barefoot. One of the buttons on his jacket is missing and another is hanging by a thread. His hair is over-long and hangs into his eyes. It is his eyes that are especially arresting, because they are aflame with the light of madness.
I have been longing to inspect the wreck, but now I want to hurry past and get away from this man.
It is too late. He has seen us. He strides up the beach towards us. I stand still in dismay, but the others keep walking towards the water’s edge.
“It was murder, you know,” he says in a loud American voice. “Sabotage. The compass was out by 37˚. We were in heavy fog and there were U-boats all around. We hugged the coast as closely as we dared.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why sail so close to land when you couldn’t see two feet in front of your face? Was that not reckless?”
“It was our practice in bad weather, especially in war time, when the German submarines patrolled these waters constantly, looking to pick off Liberty ships like ours.”
“You must have known you were terribly close to the rocks.”
“I tell you I didn’t!” he thunders. “I thought we were near Robben Island. The compass was out by 37˚. But what else would you expect from a ship that was built by women?”
“The Thomas T. Tucker was built by women?”
“Most of the Liberty ships were. She was laid down by the Houston Shipbuilding Corporation in June of 1942. The men had all gone to war, so women were building the ships. And you see the result. She was on her maiden voyage from New Orleans to Suez when she ran aground here.”
“You were the captain. You were disoriented and too close to shore. You ran her onto the rocks.”
He turns away from me. “It was a terrible day. Just terrible. Dark as night in the fog. And a sound to freeze your blood. The sound of your ship running onto the rocks. The stern splitting asunder, and a terrible groaning like souls in hell. I can’t sleep for hearing it in my head. She started taking on water almost immediately. I called for the lifeboats, but there were rocks everywhere, so they were next to useless. We swam and clambered to safety. Our uniforms were in tatters, our legs and feet running with blood.”
Eugene comes to stand next to me. “What are you looking at?”
“Captain Ellis. He was in charge of this vessel when it foundered.”
He thinks I am joking. “Never shake thy gory locks at me?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s cool. Help me choose a filter for this pic. The Crema is nice and moody, but the Slumber gives it more of a sepia look. Which do you prefer?”
I pick the Crema, but he decides to go with the Slumber. When everyone has finished taking photos, we agree to walk on. I don’t bother with pictures because I was there. I saw it. I heard the screams and saw the terrible listing of the ship as it came to rest on the rocks.
We find the boiler of the Thomas T. Tucker further up the beach. And beyond that, we come across the wreck of the Dutch coaster, the Nolloth. There is no one around. It ran aground in 1965, so perhaps everyone is still alive.
Moira and Raz have been restored to full vivacity now that they are away from the dampening chill cast by Captain Ellis. The banter flows like wine between them until they are drunk on it.
“This is the best day of my life,” declares Raz.
“Because it’s the day you met me?” asks Moira.
“Because the sky is blue, and the oystercatchers are strutting around, and the gulls are wheeling above. It has nothing to do with you.”
“You took one look at me and realised what had been missing from your life all these years.”
“I took one look at you and realised the importance of shaving every day.”
“Are you implying I have a moustache? I don’t have a moustache, do I?” Moira appeals to the rest of us, but her eyes are firmly on Raz.
“Well . . . it’s not a very big one.”
“It must be my Mediterranean blood. I’m half-Greek, you see.”
“Which half?”
“The top half, apparently.”
They are hilarious, these two. The Hepburn and Tracy of Cape Point. And still silence hangs between Eugene and me. The repartee fails to sparkle. The wit does not flow. Our lack of rapport is highlighted by the ease that exists between our companions.
I don’t like to be beaten, especially by Moira, so I initiate a conversation.
“Do you like hiking?” I ask, at the exact same moment he says, “What did the police want with you the other day?”
There is no question as to whose conversation starter is the more compelling. Mine hops out of my mouth and lands on the sand between us, where it sinks away like sea foam. His hangs in the air—a big bully of a topic, demanding an answer.
The possibility of saying that I don’t want to talk about it doesn’t even occur to me. He has asked, and I must answer. The silence between us must be banished.
“They came to talk about the day my father and I were attacked in the farmhouse. They said the insurance people had raised certain questions.”
“How strange, after all this time. Do you think they have new leads?”
“It didn’t seem like it. They kept asking me if I knew them—the men who attacked me. If my father knew them. If we’d ever seen them before. But we hadn’t. They were strangers.”
“In Coetzee’s book they weren’t strangers, were they?”
I am surprised to find that his mind runs on similar lines to mine. From my story to Coetzee’s story, and back again. Perhaps it is only because we have spoken about it. He knows it is a preoccupation of mine.
“That’s right. In Coetzee’s book, Lucy and her father both knew the men. They were labourers who worked on the farm, plus a wildcard character who was known to be volatile. It was an intimate crime—between people who had known each other a long time. In my case, it was a crime between strangers.”
“Do you think they believed you?”
Again, the workings of his mind astonish me. He has put his finger on precisely what has been troubling me.
“No. I don’t know why, but they didn’t believe me. They wanted to question my father and me separately from each other. They wouldn’t allow me to warn him that they were coming. It was as though they didn’t want us to collaborate—to have time to get our stories straight.”
“That is certainly strange. You were the victims of this crime. Do you have any theories?”
I want to end this conversation on the grounds that it is making me unhappy, but to do so would take more resolution than I am capable of.
“I think they don’t believe me. They suspect that my father and I invented the rape story between us and set fire to the house ourselves to get the insurance money.”
Eugene looks taken aback. “But you were examined, weren’t you? They have evidence proving what happened to you.”
He sounds so certain, so quod erat demonstrandum. He has no idea of the extent to which a rape victim feels disbelieved. But he is right. They do have physical evidence. Unless they have lost it.
“Yes, there is evidence. I don’t know why they’re behaving like this now.”
Actually, I do have an inkling, but I won’t share it with Eugene. I barely have the resolution to take it out and examine it in the privacy of my own head.
I think (I fear) that my father’s inflation of the value of the household contents has triggered alarm bells for the insurance company. Now they are re-examining the whole claim. They suspect it to be fraudulent and have decided to involve the police. Any moment now, my father will be notified that the insurance company have decided to repudiate the claim.
It is his own fault for being greedy. If he had estimated the household contents at their correct value, he would have been paid out by now, and we would both have been spared this scrutiny.
But what a venal sin. What a small, forgivable, human thing to do. Who among us wouldn’t try to see how much we could take the insurance company for? (Not me, but that’s because I have an exaggerated respect for the law.)
I choose not to share this with Eugene because I don’t want to expose my father’s failings to his pure vegan gaze.
We walk back the long way, turning our expedition into a five-kilometre hike rather than a three-kilometre one by adding Sirkelsvlei to the route. And then suddenly we are back at the parking lot. Moira and Raz are edging towards their cars, whispering and giggling. Eugene suggests that we go somewhere for coffee to round off our morning, but they make unconvincing excuses.
Moira texts something into her phone. Raz’s phone beeps. He checks the message and they smile at each other. It couldn’t be any clearer that an assignation has been made. There is a flurry of cheek-kisses and handshakes, and they peel out of the parking lot, unable to wait another moment before getting their hands on each other.
I wait for Eugene to suggest that we still go for coffee—just the two of us. But he doesn’t.
“Oh, well. Another time then,” he says.
* * *
I get home in time for lunch. I separate two slices of white bread from a loaf in the freezer. I cut slices of cheese and place them on the bread. Then I heat this in the microwave. I am just settling down with this meal when the doorbell rings.
It is a female child this time.
“I was about to eat my lunch,” I protest.
“I’m sorry. I’ll come back another time.”
She looks so downcast I can’t bear to send her away. “No, it’s okay. You can come inside.”
She approaches diffidently, unsure of her welcome.
“You are very different from your brother,” I remark.
“No, no, sorry. He is not my brother. I am he, female. And he is me, male.”
“Would you like a glass of water? Or some cheese melted onto bread?”
“No, thank you. Sorry, I didn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“You apologise a lot. Why do you say sorry all the time?”
“If I occupy space too emphatically, I will be accused of aggression. I have to be accommodating. It is a question of survival.”
“Does it work?”
“No. My existence makes men angry. It’s okay in private spaces, but in public I have to be careful.”
I chew a morsel of bread and cheese and watch her perched on the edge of the sofa. She is careful not to take up more space than necessary. “Are you also the Christ-child?”
“I am too female for that. The Christ-child can be born of me, but I can never be him. The most I can do is bear the new generation. I am a conduit, no more.”
“Do you think John Coetzee considered the possibility that you might be a girl?”
“No. He refers to the child as ‘he’—as a child of this soil. The father in the book asks the daughter whether she loves ‘him’ yet. Referring to the baby, you understand. The possibility that the child may be female is not considered.”
“The redeemer-narrative doesn’t work if you are a girl. Females are not redeemers. The only way it can continue to make sense is if—as you say—you are the conduit that gives rise to a line of redeemers.”
“Am I a vessel then, and nothing more?”
“You are a vessel,” I agree.
“Then I choose not to be born,” she says, as she disappears.
I chew the last mouthful of my sandwich in silence. I can’t blame her for choosing non-existence. Her male self has better prospects than she does. It makes sense for her to pass the mantle on to him.
I contemplate the afternoon ahead, wondering what happened to the energy I had this morning. What happened to the person who was up and showered by six-thirty, who went for brisk hikes in nature reserves on Saturday mornings? She has dissolved like the mirage she was.
My head slips back and my jaw droops like a tired lily. Soon I am noisily, droolingly asleep.
My phone explodes into life, causing my heart to pound in a way that can’t possibly be good for it. I don’t recognise the number. It is a local landline. I am too dazed to ignore it.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
It is my father. Something is wrong—I can hear it in his voice.
“I’m at the police station. They brought me here. You need to come.”
My brain labours to process this. Why would they have taken him to the police station, and why do I need to come? Perhaps they want to question us together. But today is Saturday. I must be missing something. My mind hasn’t woken up yet.
“You’re not . . . you’re not under arrest, are you?” I feel stupid even asking the question.
“Yes, that is what has happened. I am under arrest. They are keeping me in the police cells, but they let me make a phone call.”
“But that is ridiculous. They’ve gone too far this time. I’ll come right away, and I’ll bring your lawyer. What is his name again?”
“It was Corno Claasen, but I think he has left the firm. He was going to retire. The firm is called Claasen, Nkabinde and Marriot. You need to phone them and get them to send someone to the Mowbray police station immediately.”
Adrenalin floods my body, banishing the last wisps of sleep. I am ready to do this. I am ready to gallop to my father’s rescue. No son could be more capable or more determined. My fear of driving is nothing next to my need to be of service to my father.
Twenty minutes later, I am in my car rushing to Mowbray. I phoned the attorneys and they told me someone would meet me there. They said they took very few criminal cases, but I reminded them that my father was a long-standing client and that this was a matter of alleged insurance fraud, and therefore more civil than criminal anyway.
The traffic is light for a Saturday afternoon and I make good time. I come down off the highway to Main Road in Woodstock, where the traffic lights are in my favour until I get to the big intersection at Roodebloem Road. As I bring the car to a stop, I am boxed in. There are cars in front of me, behind me, and on either side of me. The usual collection of hawkers and beggars moves between the cars, selling phone chargers, and asking for money.
My door isn’t locked. As a hawker approaches, I slide my hand sideways and lock the door with a clicking sound that reverberates up and down the street. The man motions for me to roll down my window, which I do.
“You locked your door as I approached,” he says. “Would you have done that for a white man?”
“Of course. One is always vulnerable at intersections. It had nothing to do with the fact that you are black.”
He stares at me in silence. The interrogation in his gaze unmans me. Unwomans me.
“You’re right,” I say. “It had everything to do with the fact that you are black. I profile black people all the time, especially black men. I associate them with criminality.”
“And how do you suppose that makes me feel?”
“Hurt. Abused. Angry. Overwhelmed by frustration and a sense of injustice.”
“Precisely.”
“I’m sorry. But I do have an excuse.”
“And what might that be? You were mugged by a black man? Your house was broken into? Your mother had a bad experience with a black man?”
“I was raped by a group of black men nearly two years ago. They broke into the farmhouse I was visiting with my father and raped me. They set fire to the house and we barely escaped with our lives.”
The accusation in his eyes doesn’t fade. “You do realise that your individual suffering does not weigh in the balance against the systemic and historical suffering of my people over many generations—three hundred and fifty years, to be precise?”
“I do realise that. But I can’t control my visceral reaction when a black man approaches me. Something inside me flinches. My therapist calls it a form of PTSD. It is the thing I resent most about having been raped—the fact that it has turned me into an emotional racist. I know I was already the beneficiary of a racist society that privileges my skin colour above all others. But now I have become a visceral racist as well, and I resent that.”
“This isn’t about you,” he says. “It’s about me. You are attempting to hijack this narrative—to recast it with yourself in the starring role.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Would you like to buy a stick-on holder for your licence disc?”
“No, I would not.”
“Then your sorry-ness extends to words only. You are not sorry enough to pay a few rand that would make very little difference to you, but a great deal to me.”
The traffic light changes to green, and I drive on.
At the Mowbray police station, there is no sign of my father’s car. I wonder if he really is here. Perhaps I only imagined that he phoned me. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Then I remember that he was arrested. They probably went to his flat and made him get into their vehicle. They would have driven him here.
My father’s car might not be here, but a gleaming BMW seems to be waiting for me. When I get out of my car, a middle-aged woman climbs out of it. She introduces herself as Abigail Nkabinde from the attorneys’ firm.
“I’m here to ensure that your father’s rights are protected. We will try to secure the best possible outcome for him.”
I thank her, and try to ignore the misgivings plucking at me.
If I am a reluctant, post-traumatic racist, my father is an enthusiastic, dyed-in-the-wool one. He believes that the elevation of any black person to a position of responsibility is “political correctness run mad.” To say that he will not be happy to have a black woman representing him would be a dim understatement of the case. But it is a Saturday afternoon, and lawyers are thin on the ground around here.
“This should be easy to sort out,” I tell Ms. Nkabinde. “They suspect my father of insurance fraud. I’m not saying they are right, but there is no reason to detain him over the weekend. Perhaps he will have to forfeit his insurance payout, or even pay a fine or something, but there is no reason for this excessive zeal on the part of the police.”
The lawyer gives me a look. “Why don’t you take me to my client?”
I squirm. Watching my father interact with black people like a feudal lord bossing the serfs around makes me uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable enough to confront him about it. Not since I was a teenager and steeped in self-righteousness. But that’s what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it? As politically aware white South Africans we are supposed to take every opportunity to educate our less conscientised brethren. We are supposed to take a stand at braais and around dinner tables. We’re meant to pound our fists and say, “Enough. Your attitudes are unacceptable. You can’t treat people like this. We won’t allow it.”
How many of us do that, I wonder? I imagine myself saying to my father, “Don’t speak to Abigail Nkabinde like she’s a lesser human being. She is your lawyer. She knows more about the law than you do. She is here to help you and she deserves the same respect you would give to a white man in her position.”
It would lead to an irrevocable breakdown in our relationship. I would become estranged from my only living relative. A wave of self-pity washes over me as I think of the sacrifice I’d be making in the name of political duty.
“Why don’t I go and speak to my father while you negotiate with the police?” I suggest.
“I need to speak to my client.”
She will pay for her implacability by being patronised.
We announce ourselves at a desk called Customer Services. A police officer disappears for a minute. Then he comes back and escorts us to an interview room where my father is sitting. I half expect to find him in an orange jumpsuit, but he is wearing normal clothes. A crocodile peeks out at me next to the breast pocket of his mauve shirt.
I step forward to run interference between him and the lawyer.
“Hello, Dad. How are you? I’m so sorry this has happened. But we’ll get it sorted out, I promise. I phoned the lawyers like you asked and it turns out that Corno Claasen has retired, just as you thought. They’ve sent their very best criminal attorney, Dad. This is Abigail Nkabinde, Dad—she’s one of the partners.”
I have to breathe in deeply before I pass out.
The lawyer steps forward with her hand extended. “Mr. Lurie, it’s good to meet you.”
I wait for my father to turn towards me, eyebrows raised in incredulity, demanding to know the meaning of this. Instead he grasps her hand and shakes it warmly.
“Hello, ma’am. Hello. Thank you for coming. This is good. This is very good.” He turns to me, rubbing his hands together. “You’ve done well, girl. Now we’ll get somewhere at last.”
I bask in the unaccustomed praise. “We’ll get you out of here soon, Dad. It’s ridiculous for them to have arrested you at all. This is a misunderstanding. Just tell Ms. Nkabinde exactly what they’re accusing you of, because I would have thought that insurance fraud was more of a civil matter than a criminal one.”
A glance passes between my father and the lawyer. She steps forward, interposing her body between us. “Ms. Lurie, I’d like to speak privately with my client. Could you wait outside?”
“That’s not necessary. I know all about it. I was part of it, in a way. They’ll probably call on me to testify.”
She touches my elbow and guides me out of the room. “This won’t take long, Ms. Lurie.”
The door is shut in my face. I try not to take it personally. Attorney-client privilege is king. This isn’t about me. I need to let the process run its course.
I take a seat on a bench in the passageway. I smell dust and lemon polish. It is the smell of boarding schools and public institutions. It is a smell that strips away one’s illusions of selfdetermination. You become a cog in the machine, but not a useful cog. Not a cog that knows its place. You become a cog that rattles around uselessly while the other cogs move together with oiled precision. They are going about their business—policemen and women in uniform striding up and down the corridor, clutching paper. Their weapons jut from their hips, thickening their silhouettes and giving them a wide-based gait.
I retreat into the world of my phone, scrolling through social media posts and news sites. It is a soothing world. Everything that appears in my feed is designed to reinforce my world view. I permit no cognitive dissonance to intrude. It is a world I can lose myself in for hours.
I am in the middle of reading about “10 things that Muslim women wish white feminists would stop doing” when I become aware of a weight descending onto the bench next to me. It is a policewoman. She is fanning herself with a manila folder.
She glances at me and smiles.
“Whoo!” she says. “Hot today.”
I nod in agreement, although it isn’t particularly hot. The way she is sweating, I suspect she is having a hot flash. She is of menopausal age and seems grateful for the opportunity to sit down.
“Is it always this busy?” I ask. I am anxious to get back to my scrolling, but she expects conversation.
“Not always. Not on a Saturday afternoon. But today we have made a significant arrest, and that generates a lot of paperwork. It is just a matter of time before the media hears about it and then we have to be prepared. There will be a media briefing this evening.”
I am so disconnected from quotidian reality that I have no idea what she is talking about. I know more about Buzzfeed listicles than I do about what is happening right now in Cape Town.
What high-profile case is she talking about? I am ashamed of my cluelessness.
“Oh, yes . . .” I say vaguely. “That was the case about the . . .”
“That girl who was gang-raped on a farm a couple of years ago. Do you remember that story? It was all over the news. We still haven’t caught the guys who did it, but this is the closest we’ve ever come. Because who do you think organised the whole thing? Her father. It turns out he hired the men to break in and rape his own daughter. Can you believe that? Some people are wicked, hey? It looks like he did it for the insurance, because he got them to burn down his house afterwards. Anyway, we’ve got him now. He is being questioned with his lawyer.”
I open my mouth and the words come out as steady as a ship on calm seas. “How do you know it was him?”
“We got a tip-off. Probably from one of the guys he hired, who is now looking to make a deal. The station commander is very happy. This is going to be a big feather in his cap.”
She heaves her weight forward and stands.
“I’d better get on. You should go and wait over there by customer services. Some space has opened up. They’ll attend to you soon.”
I thank her and take her advice. I go to customer services to wait with the other citizens of this municipality who are queueing to report stolen cars, traffic accidents, pickpocketings and burglaries.
On some level I think I always knew. There was something in my subconscious warning me about what had really happened—a certain level of awareness that tipped me off. Something that seemed to tell me he was involved from the very beginning.
No. I can’t keep it up. Not even inside my own head.
I didn’t know. I had no idea. My mind is blank. There is a stillness inside me, like breath drawn in before a scream. The emotion that struggles to the surface is incredulity. I don’t think this can be true. This isn’t something that fathers do.
As I look around the waiting area with eyes that have been struck blind, one image resolves itself. The lawyer, Abigail Nkabinde, is getting two cans from a vending machine—one for her and one for my father. I get to my feet noisily, and she glances in my direction. Our eyes meet for a second before her gaze flicks away from me as if I am hot.
Pity and disgust. Disgust and pity.
She keeps her head down and bustles back to the interview room to resume her support of my father in the face of police interrogation.
There is nothing for me to do here. I will go home. Would a concerned friend warn me not to drive in this condition? Possibly. But there is no one here, and I don’t like myself enough to insist on taking a taxi.
It is dark now. The sun went away while we were in the police station. I must get back for supper. I know I am driving erratically, but I can’t seem to correct this. If a policeman pulls me over, perhaps he will take me back to Mowbray police station. I could join my father in jail.
The red light at Roodebloem Road catches me, as it always does.
The population of itinerants has changed over to the night shift. The panhandlers are gone. Now it is just beggars. It is a chilly night, but one man is dressed in rags only, with bare feet and limbs. He clutches at his thin arms and shivers. As cars arrive, he abases himself on the road in front of them. When they drive away, he stands up again.
It is theatre, yes. But there is truth behind the performance. He is poor and desperate, and we are well-heeled and comfortable. As I wait for the light to change, he stands up and starts moving up and down the line of cars, asking for money. He approaches my car and I wait for the fear to kick in.
It doesn’t.
He comes right up to my window. My usual reflex is to lock the door, but this time I don’t. Instead, I feel in my bag for some money and hand it to him through the window. He thanks me and moves on to the next car.