Your father?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”
I have made Moira’s day. I can feel the glee coming off her in waves. And the fact that I told her about it before it was announced in the media is the icing on the cake
I don’t resent her attitude. It is very human. We are far enough removed from the incident for the horror of it to have lost its freshness. I’ve been living with it for a long time, and Moira has been living with it through me.
“Are you sure it’s true, though? That policewoman might have got the wrong end of the stick. In fact, she probably did. Let’s face it, it doesn’t sound likely.”
Moira hopes it is true. The disappointment in her voice is palpable. I am able to reassure her.
“I didn’t believe it at first either, but when I saw how the lawyer reacted to me, I realised it was true. And my father hasn’t contacted me since that first phone call. Normally he would be ringing me night and day to bring things to him and do things for him, but I haven’t heard a word.”
“Why, though? Why would he do that? I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure. The insurance fraud makes sense. He has always hated the house in Worcester and everything in it. I can see him taking a match to the whole lot. He has the life he wants now. The bachelor flat. The lock-up-and-go lifestyle. No family obligations.”
“What gave him away after all this time?”
I can answer this because I was part of it. “He got greedy. The insurance company have been dragging their heels over the payment. I think they often do when there’s a fire involved. There is always a question mark hanging over a fire. Did the owner set it himself? But they were on the point of paying out when my father made his mistake. He wildly over-valued the contents of the house. Every painting was an old Master. Every ornament was a fragment of the True Cross. It made them suspicious, so they started looking more closely at the claim.”
“That makes sense.”
Moira’s frustration is obvious. She doesn’t want to talk about insurance fraud. I take pity on her.
“He didn’t want them to steal anything like money or electronics, right? He took those with him when we escaped.”
“Okay.”
“But there had to be a motive for breaking in besides just setting fire to the house. So, the motive was rape.”
“Right.”
Moira looks at me. Her mouth is open as if she wants to say something, but no words come. I don’t mind. I would rather have her here, struggling with inarticulacy, than be left alone with my thoughts.
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going to live. I am going to work and eat and sleep. I might see Eugene if he contacts me again.” A memory starts to glow in my brain. “I meant to ask—have you seen his cousin again? Raz?”
Moira smiles. “No. But it was good while it lasted.”
“How long did it last?”
“An afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“I see that look on your face. You’re casting me in the role of slutty best friend. I’m the loud and amusing one who keeps you entertained with her sexual exploits. But from my point of view, I’m the star of the movie, and you’re the weird best friend struggling to come to terms with her difficult past.”
“I don’t think of you as a sideshow. You’re not my light relief.”
But of course she is right. Other people are the bit players in the absorbing big-screen drama that is my life. The role of villain was played by the men who raped me, but now their part has been usurped by my father.
If my father is the major villain and my rapists are the hired goons, what does that make John Coetzee? It isn’t easy to assign him a role in this revised narrative. I see him as a kind of Faust-Machiavelli-Uriah Heep hybrid. He is the great manipulator who profited from my tragedy.
It annoys me that his narrative has remained stable while mine has changed. Fiction-Lucy is still the Madonna, chosen to bear the redeemer-child who will lead South Africa into the promised land. I was one kind of victim, and now I am another. I was an unfortunate casualty of that South African phenomenon known as the farm invasion. Now I am an even more unfortunate casualty of my father’s viciousness. No longer farm violence, but that far more common beast, family violence.
* * *
ME: Am I your most interesting client? I am, aren’t I?
L. BASCOMBE: I couldn’t possibly comment. Why does it matter to you?
ME: Am I not allowed to be interesting? The media finds me so. Since they got hold of this story, they have been fascinated by what I went through.
L. BASCOMBE: That should suffice. You have my professional interest.
ME: What does your professional interest say about this latest development?
L. BASCOMBE: It is . . . significant. It must have changed your perspective in various ways. But I think the most important thing is that you shouldn’t feel guilty.
ME: Guilty? What do I have to feel guilty about?
L. BASCOMBE: I mean you shouldn’t waste time thinking about your childhood and wondering what you might have done to anger your father so deeply that he would want to do this to you.
ME: It hadn’t crossed my mind.
L. BASCOMBE: Well, good.
ME: Until now. You’re saying I did something to deserve this?
L. BASCOMBE: No, no. I’m saying you mustn’t think that.
ME: I suppose I might have been an annoying child from time to time.
L. BASCOMBE: Now you are being deliberately contrary. I would never blame the victim in a case like this.
ME: You have planted a seed in my mind. I will consider it.
L. BASCOMBE: You are trying to make me feel unprofessional.
ME: I thought this session was about me.
L. BASCOMBE: It is. Of course it is. Have you had any contact with your father since he was arrested?
ME: No. They are calling him a monster, you know. The media. They are calling him the Monster of Worcester.
L. BASCOMBE: And how does that make you feel?
ME: It makes me wonder what a monster is—what a monster looks like. Does it wear Lacoste golf shirts and offer me a glass of sweet sherry when I am invited for lunch? Does it worry constantly about whether I am doing okay financially and hide its relief when I say that I am? Did it sometimes bring an ice lolly for me from trips into town when I was a child?
L. BASCOMBE: Medical science struggles to understand psychopathology. Has your father had a difficult life? Unresolved traumas?
ME: Not to my knowledge.
L. BASCOMBE: There must have been something. It’s not necessarily a major event like death or abuse, but something that might seem quite trivial to the outsider.
ME: His parents were happily married. They died when he was an adult. He lived a comfortable, middle-class life. He never went to boarding school. He married a woman who came from a moneyed background. He has been solvent and enjoyed good health his whole life. He lost his wife eight years ago, but seemed more relieved than grief-stricken. That’s not my definition of a hard life.
L. BASCOMBE: You can find no mitigation for what he has done? His crime is unforgivable as far as you are concerned?
ME: I didn’t know it was my job to forgive him. I didn’t realise the onus was on me to decide that.
L. BASCOMBE: It is going to be very hard for him to move forward without knowing that he has your forgiveness. It will hold him back.
ME: Why do we care whether he moves forward or not? He’ll be spending the rest of his life in prison.
L. BASCOMBE: We’ll see.
* * *
White South Africans react with relief when an act of apparently random violence turns out to be personal. I know this to be true because I have reacted that way myself.
Random violence makes us nervous because it could happen to any of us. If people all around you are being hit by comets, you start worrying that you could be hit by a comet too. And you know there is nothing you can do to protect yourself because comets strike without warning. There is no hiding or evading to be done. You could be in a high, high building or a deep, deep hole, and still be hit by a comet.
But if you find out that the comets aren’t random acts of God at all but are sent by someone with a specific grudge against the victim, you start to feel safer. You tell yourself that no one in your life hates you that much, so you’re all right.
When Shrien and Anni Dewani were attacked in Gugulethu on their honeymoon, I felt the same dismay as other middle-class South Africans—the shame that tourists were not safe in our country. And when the accusations started to fly that Shrien Dewani had orchestrated the hit on his wife, I felt relief: South Africa wasn’t at fault after all.
Then there was the case of Ina Bonette who was kidnapped, tortured and raped, and whose son was murdered in front of her. It turned out that her estranged husband had orchestrated and participated in the whole thing. The media dubbed him the Monster of Modimolle.
He didn’t look like a monster any more than my father does. He looked like a middle-aged white man of the sort one sees in South African small towns.
Evil really is banal.
I know there were people who read about what happened to me, and felt a shiver of dread. A home invasion makes you feel as if you are not safe anywhere. And being raped inside your own home is a nightmare for any woman.What happened to me must have made the threat feel closer. It must have made them feel less safe in their beds at night.
Now when these women read in the media that the whole thing was orchestrated by my father, they will feel relief. They will review the men in their own lives and conclude that they are safe because not one of them poses such a threat.
What they don’t realise is that I once felt like that too. I also believed my personal circumstances made me safe from danger—that there was no man in my life who hated me enough to hurt me.
* * *
My father phones the next morning. It is seven o’clock and I am still asleep. A glance at my phone tells me it is a local landline number, one I don’t recognise.
“Hello?”
“I need you to do some things for me. This is all a misunderstanding, but that lawyer hasn’t managed to get me out yet. There will be a bail hearing on Tuesday and then I’ll be out of here, but until then there are things I need. Have you got a pen and paper, girl?”
“I . . . yes.”
“You must go to my flat and bring me some money and some cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes? I thought you stopped smoking.”
“They aren’t for me. Cigarettes are currency in here. I need them to get privileges from the guards. You will find them in the drawer next to my bed. I also want some books, so that I don’t get bored. Just bring me three from the shelf. It doesn’t matter what.”
There’s a pause while I write this down.
“Are you still there, girl? Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“You must come here at three o’clock this afternoon. I am still at Mowbray in the police cells. They will let you see me at three. Don’t forget, hey?”
“I won’t.”
“You have that key I gave you? The one for my flat.”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Good. You are the only one, see? You are the only one who has the key.”
It is all a misunderstanding and I am the only one who has the key, so I go to my father’s flat at midday and let myself in. This is the first time I have been there without him. I’ve had a key since he moved in, but have never used it before.
This is the scene of our occasional Sunday lunches. Approaching the front door makes me taste sweet sherry at the back of my throat. The flat has been empty since Saturday. The air is settled and heavy. As I push the door open, the displacement makes dust motes dance upwards, before falling back to earth exhausted.
I can smell my father in the air. It is the smell of his exhalations and eructations. It is the smell of his sweat trapped in clothes that are not washed frequently enough, and of urine left to accumulate on toilet seats. His housekeeper hasn’t been around in a while. His level of self-care is adequate, but not exemplary.
It is still better than mine.
There is a bread roll on a plate in the kitchen, with several bites taken out of it. I imagine it is what he was eating when he was arrested on Saturday. How annoyed he must have been to have his lunch interrupted.
I have never been in his bedroom. A duvet has been pulled over the bed, but it is not properly made. I pull the duvet down, exposing the intimacy of sloughed skin cells, pubic hair and random stains. I ask myself what I am doing, but no answer comes. I tug the duvet back into place and open the drawer of his bedside pedestal.
There is an open pack of cigarettes in there, just as he said. I put it in my bag and take three books from the bookshelf. They are The Crimean War: A History, The Rommel Papers and The Science of War.
What else did he ask for? Oh yes, money.
I look for money, but this is one secret the flat does not yield. There are coins on a shelf in the bedroom, but they don’t add up to anything significant. I can’t find real money—an amount that would make his life easier in jail. I search half-heartedly for a safe, but I’m not sure what I would do with one if I found it. I don’t know the code. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I have a key to my father’s flat only on the understanding that I never use it. If he gave me a code for his safe, he would have to change it afterwards.
What could he have meant by money? I can’t ask him, because I don’t think you can phone the police station and ask to speak to a prisoner.
Then I realise he meant that I should bring him money—my own money.
There is a part of me that protests against my compliance with these requests. Why should I help him? He is accused of doing something truly dreadful. Do I owe him filial obedience?
Objectively, I know I don’t, but it seems petty to refuse to do this small thing for him. So I will take his cigarettes and his books. But will I also give him money? My money?
I will decide later.
I throw the bread roll in the bin and wipe crumbs off the kitchen counter. I put the plate in the dishwasher. I consider giving the toilet a quick swirl with detergent, but that is a bridge too far. The impulse in me to regard the housework as my duty is astonishingly strong. I am in the house of a male relative, and as such am powerfully inclined to regard it as my province to clean and care for it.
Not to do so seems sluttish and neglectful. I bustle into the bathroom, filled with housewifely fervour. There is a bottle of detergent in the cupboard and a toilet brush next to the toilet. I squeeze a line of detergent under the rim and around the toilet bowl. Then I stand with my forehead resting against the wall and the smell of ammonia in my nostrils.
I turn my head as someone walks into the bathroom.
It is the girl child. This is the happy, carefree child I met at the house in Worcester, not the troubled, questioning one who visited me at my home.
“Why do you hesitate?” she asks. “Why do you not clean the traces of your father from the lavatory bowl?”
“He did a bad thing to me. A terrible thing.”
“That doesn’t absolve you of your duty. I would do it if I were in your position.”
“Here, then. Take it.” I hold the toilet brush out to her.
She shakes her head, her braids dancing around her face. “No. Because I am not in your position. I can only be in my own position.”
“You have been brought up on the farm under the aegis of Petrus, have you not? Did he teach you to consider the domestic sphere as your particular responsibility?”
“Of course. The boys have their duties in the fields, and the girls have their duties in the fields and in the house. While the boys play their games in the evenings, we prepare the food, serve it, and clean up afterwards.”
“So it is not Uhuru, this life that John Coetzee conceived of.”
“It is a life of great racial harmony and belonging. Everyone has their place. Everyone has their role. Everyone is at home in this country.”
“But it is still a place of gender inequality.”
“My creator didn’t see that as a problem that needed addressing.”
“Do you mean God?”
“I mean John Coetzee.”
I stand and stare at the toilet bowl, detergent in one hand, toilet brush in the other. When I look around again, the child is gone—and with her, my enthusiasm for cleaning. I bundle up the books and leave, locking the door behind me.
* * *
I stop at an ATM machine to draw money on my way to the police station.
The first person I see when I get to the station is the lawyer, Abigail Nkabinde. She stands as I arrive and walks towards me, blocking my progress with her body.
“Hello, Ms. Nkabinde. Are you here to see my father too?”
“He told me you were coming to see him, so I came here at once. I will accompany you on this visit.”
“That’s not necessary. He asked me to come. He asked me to bring him some things. I’ll give them to him and then leave.”
“Nevertheless.”
There is a subtext here that I don’t understand. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my father alone, but I am looking forward to seeing him in the company of this woman even less. She has the air of a guard dog, but whom is she guarding? Do I need protection from my father, or does he need protection from me?
She seems to feel that elucidation is required because she says, “Unless I am with you to smooth the way, it is unlikely that you will be permitted to give your father anything at all. I am here to help.”
I don’t believe this. I don’t think she left her office close to rush hour on a Monday afternoon simply to smooth the way. I pretend to believe it.
“Give me the cigarettes and the money you brought for your father.”
I hand over the box of cigarettes and she waits while I fiddle in my wallet for the money I drew on the way here. I hand that over, too. She takes a handful of cigarettes out of the pack and peels off five hundred rand from the slim sheaf of money. She gives the rest back to me.
“I don’t understand.”
“This is for the guard. If I don’t give him his cut, he won’t allow us to give anything to your father. It is against the rules, but he will look the other way if we make it worth his while.”
Ms. Nkabinde looks at the meagre amount of money left in my hands.
“Is that all you brought? It’s not much, is it?”
“It was all I had in my account. I should get paid for an editing job soon, but until then I can’t manage any more.”
“There was no money at your father’s apartment?”
“Not that I could find. Only coins.”
“You drew your own money to give to him?”
“Yes.”
She opens her mouth to say something and shuts it again. There is a world of pity in her eyes. For a moment, I see myself as she must see me—the very model of a modern Stockholm syndrome. Then it is gone, and she is all business again.
“I’ll see if they are ready for us.”
She goes to the customer services counter and has an emphatic conversation with the constable on duty. When she turns back to me, she is smiling.
“Let’s go,” she says.
She leads me to the same interview room I was excluded from on Saturday. This time I am allowed in. My father is waiting there. He is still wearing his normal clothes. There are shackles on his ankles, but his wrists are unencumbered. There is a guard in the room. Ms. Nkabinde consults briefly with him, and hands over the money and cigarettes. He takes a step back, and leans against the wall, watching us closely.
I approach my father, intending to take a seat at the table opposite him. The lawyer blocks me again. She interposes her body between us in a manner that is clearly protective.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Please don’t approach my client.”
“I was going to sit down.”
“You can sit if my client agrees, but you will not get within arm’s length of him. Please don’t make any sudden movements, Ms. Lurie, or I will be forced to escort you out.”
She looks at my father, and he nods. It is okay for me to sit down.
I slide slowly into place at the table, trying to keep my movements as un-sudden as possible.
“I brought the things you asked for.” I take out the rest of the cigarettes and the money and slide them across the table. I glance at the guard, but he is staring over our heads.
My father is happy with the cigarettes, but disappointed with the money. “Is that all?”
“It’s all I have. I should get paid later this month, and then I can bring more.”
“I won’t be here later in the month,” he says with a look at his lawyer. “I’ll be out of here on Tuesday.”
Abigail Nkabinde’s face urges caution. “One way or another,” she says.
“What do you mean?” My father’s face falls. The whole superstructure of his cheeks, lips and chin sags downwards. It is the look of a baby processing its disappointment and about to cry.
“You will either be released on bail or you will be taken to join the awaiting-trial population at Table Bay Prison. I already explained this, Mr. Lurie.”
“If you do your job properly, I’ll be released on bail. You will do your job properly, won’t you, Ms. Nkabinde?”
“I will, but it’ll be up to the magistrate to decide. There is always that element of unpredictability in any court proceeding.”
“But they’ll listen to you, won’t they? A black woman, I mean. They know you wouldn’t argue something unless you really believed it.”
“Mr. Lurie, I will represent you to the very best of my ability because that is my duty to you as my client. My personal beliefs don’t enter into the matter. They are irrelevant.”
“Okay, but for you as a black woman to stand up and defend a white man . . . well, it looks good, doesn’t it? It looks like I can’t be such a bad guy after all if I’ve got this black woman representing me.”
The lawyer’s mask of professional courtesy disintegrates for a second and I glimpse the frustration beneath. She composes herself.
“I promise to do my very best for you, Mr. Lurie. You can count on it.”
My father seems satisfied with that.
I turn towards him. “Where are they keeping you?”
Again, Ms. Nkabinde moves to body-block me. “Please keep your distance from my client, Ms. Lurie.”
“I’m not going to hurt him.”
My father subjects my face to a long and anxious scrutiny. Then he laughs. “You don’t have to worry about the girl,” he says. “She doesn’t want to hurt me. You can let her stay there—she won’t do anything to me. I told you she would understand.”
The look on Ms. Nkabinde’s face indicates that he told her the exact opposite. And now I understand where this fear comes from—this belief that my father has to be shielded from me lest I attack him physically. It comes from him. He asked the lawyer to protect him from me. Now that he feels safe again, he is withdrawing that request and painting her as the anxious one.
He is light-headed with relief. “Didn’t I say she would understand? She knows what’s what, this girl.”