IN THE HIGH COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA
(WESTERN CAPE DIVISION)
CASE NUMBER: 05/201901
In the matter between:
THE STATE
and
DAVID LURIE
AFFIDAVIT
I, the undersigned
LUCY LURIE
hereby make oath and state as follows:
1. The facts deposed to in this affidavit are within my personal knowledge and are true and correct.
2. I am the daughter of the defendant, David Lurie, currently residing in Sea Point, Cape Town.
3. I have always enjoyed an excellent relationship with my father and have found him to be responsible and loving in the discharge of his duties towards me.
4. My mother passed away eight years ago, and since then my father has been a conscientious single parent.
5. On the night of 3 April two years ago I was visiting my father at his farmhouse in Worcester. We were having dinner together. At approximately 20.00, six men broke into the house. They were carrying weapons. All six men assaulted me sexually. My father appeared deeply distressed by these events but was unable to assist because the men were holding a knife to his throat.
6. At no time, did I see any signs of recognition between my father and the men. No communication of any kind passed between them.
7. When the men left, they set fire to the house. As soon as my father became aware of the fire, he helped me to escape and called the emergency services.
8. Ever since that night, my father and I have continued to enjoy an excellent relationship.
9. I am not financially dependent on my father in any way.
LUCY LURIE
I CERTIFY THAT THE DEPONENT ACKNOWLEDGED TO ME THAT SHE KNOWS AND UNDERSTANDS THE CONTENT OF THIS DECLARATION, THAT SHE HAS NO OBJECTION TO TAKING THIS PRESCRIBED OATH AND CONSIDERS IT TO BE BINDING ON HER CONSCIENCE.
THUS SIGNED AND SWORN TO BEFORE ME AT CAPE TOWN ON THIS DAY OF ___
COMMISSIONER OF OATHS
I am back at the offices of Claasen, Nkabinde & Marriot.
I am here to sign the affidavit they have drawn up on my behalf, based on the statement I gave them yesterday. I am allowed to read it before signing it.
I read over it in the manner of one scanning the terms and conditions of the user agreement for their new mobile phone. My eyes flit across the page, looking only for the place to sign. I spot the signature line and pick up my pen.
My eyes are drawn back to a word further up the page.
“Distressed,” it says.
My father was “deeply distressed” by “these events.”
I kept my eyes closed during the rapes because every time I opened them, I saw my father watching. His face was calm, perhaps even a little curious. His eyes met mine without embarrassment. This was his new favourite show and he wasn’t about to miss a minute of it.
My eyes get stuck on other words. “Responsible and loving.” “A conscientious single parent.”
Abigail Nkabinde taps the signature line. “Please sign there, Ms. Lurie.”
I grip the pen and bend over the document.
More words. “Excellent relationship.” “Holding a knife to his throat.”
“We have a consultation starting in five minutes, Ms. Lurie. Please sign the document so we can lodge it with the court before five o’clock.”
“Unable to assist me.”
“Ms. Lurie, we’re all very busy. I have to insist that you sign.”
I sign on the allocated line.
When I straighten up, everyone is smiling. The attorney Gregory Marriot looks delighted. I understand for the first time how important my testimony is to their case, and how relieved they are to have it.
They shake my hand one by one and thank me for my contribution.
“This will probably be the end of it, but we’ll let you know if the state wants to take it any further,” says Abigail Nkabinde as she walks me to the lift.
It is only as the lift doors are about to close that I hear sounds of consternation from the consultation room.
“Mickey Mouse. It says Mickey Mouse.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“She didn’t sign it properly.”
“Get her back in here.”
* * *
L. BASCOMBE: You signed a sworn affidavit as Mickey Mouse rather than admit that you weren’t comfortable signing it.
ME: I didn’t plan it. Right up until the moment my pen touched paper, I believed I was going to sign my name.
L. BASCOMBE: And then?
ME: I don’t know what happened. I found myself writing Mickey Mouse. It was as though someone had taken over my body.
L. BASCOMBE: Automatism is a myth perpetuated by people who are too weak to take responsibility for their own actions.
ME: Right.
L. BASCOMBE: You made a conscious decision to ruin the defence’s case. Own it, Lucy. Accept responsibility for your actions. And then explain to me why you would do such a thing to your own father. He was counting on you to make a statement that helped his case.
ME: I know he was. And I still haven’t done anything to hinder his case. The net effect of my actions is zero. All that has happened is that I’ve made no statement at all.
L. BASCOMBE: In a case like this, that is just as bad as making a statement against him. He needs your testimony. The absence of it is the equivalent of an accusation against him. In fact, it’s worse. At least if you made a statement against him, his lawyers could cross-examine you on it. They could poke holes in your testimony and expose its weaknesses. Now you’re leaving them with nothing to attack. I call that unfair.
ME: I’m a bad daughter, I know.
L. BASCOMBE: After everything your father has done for you.
ME: I know.
L. BASCOMBE: Don’t sit there bleating, “I know.” You need to put this right. Go to the lawyers and tell them you’re prepared to sign the affidavit. It’s the only way to make amends.
ME: I don’t want to.
L. BASCOMBE: What? Why not?
ME: What if he did it? What if he hired those men to rape me? Does he deserve my loyalty?
L. BASCOMBE: There is a maxim in our law that states that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Your father is innocent of these accusations, Lucy. Until such time as a court of law convicts him, he is innocent.
ME: If he is innocent, my testimony can’t hurt him.
L. BASCOMBE: But if he did it, your testimony could put him in prison for life. How would you live with yourself if that happened? Imagine being responsible for putting your own father in jail. How will you deal with that?
ME: I wonder how he has managed to live all this time knowing what he did to me. And not only live, but thrive. He seems happier now than he has ever been.
L. BASCOMBE: Would you take that from him? Would you dash the cup of happiness from his lips?
ME: What about my lips and my cup of happiness?
L. BASCOMBE: Tell me, Lucy—were you a difficult child?
ME: What do you mean?
L. BASCOMBE: It’s not a trick question. Were you or were you not a difficult child? Did your parents find you challenging to deal with? Was parenting you a chore for them?
ME: My mother loved me. She didn’t find me difficult. She enjoyed being my parent.
L. BASCOMBE: Your mother is dead. What about your father?
ME: He seemed to resent me. My mother and I annoyed him. The farm annoyed him. He complained a lot.
L. BASCOMBE: Now we’re getting to the crux of it. You were a burden on your father, Lucy. Your very existence was an annoyance. Can you blame him for arranging to have you raped?
ME: Are you really saying this? Are you thinking it?
L. BASCOMBE: I don’t know, Lucy. Am I?
* * *
Lucy: You were right. They asked me to testify.
My text messages to Eugene often go unanswered for hours. Sometimes days. Today, the answer arrives in less than a minute.
Eugene: Which side asked you to testify?
I consider making him wait for an answer, but I don’t have the patience.
Lucy: Both.
Eugene: I see. And which one are you going to choose?
Lucy: I haven’t decided yet.
Eugene: Would you like to talk about it?
Lucy: Yes, please.
And that’s how it comes about that I have one last date with Eugene. He thinks he is coming over to help me wrestle with the thorny question of which side I should throw my weight behind in my father’s trial. I think he is coming over so I can have sex with him. We’ll see which one of us is right.
On the off chance that it is me, I make an effort to tidy my cottage. The crocheted blanket goes under the bed, along with a pile of clothes and underwear. I open the door and all the windows to air the place out. I splash detergent around in the bathroom. I open a black bin bag and throw many things into it. Then I wash the dishes, wipe the counters and put things out of sight in the kitchen.
The place looks better. It is now merely shabby, rather than dirty. I buy vegetables, cut them up and serve them on a plate with hummus for dipping. I can offer him coffee, but it is instant, so he might decline.
The hardest part is stripping off my suit of armour. I refuse to greet Eugene in a long skirt over tights and cycling shorts, paired with a high-necked blouse and a cardigan. But without my uniform I feel exposed and naked, like a white grub flailing in the light when you lift a rock off its back.
I put on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved top. They feel inadequate. I have to remind myself that I am not trying to keep everyone out today. There is someone I want to allow in.
Or do I?
I am struggling to access that surge of libido I felt a few weeks ago. Eugene will be arriving shortly, and I’m not ready. Perhaps seeing him in all his physical perfection will do the trick. But it’s not really about him. It’s about me. The engine of my libido is self-propelled. If I can’t get it to fire, this will be just another insipid conversation over coffee that reminds us both that we don’t get along.
I close my eyes and try to locate my inner heat. I am Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego preparing to enter the fiery furnace. But when I crank the door open, I find only cold, dead ashes. I keep seeing my father’s eyes colliding with mine over the shoulders of my attackers. It’s ruining the mood.
Is the human libido like a car battery? If you don’t use it, do you lose it? Do the power cells become depleted until they are impossible to recharge, and the whole battery is an inert lump? At least you can replace a car battery. You can take out the old one, throw it away, and replace it with a powerful new version.
I imagine myself lifting my old libido out of my pelvis. It is chilly and covered in dust. There are cobwebs hanging from its sides like tattered curtains. I discard it on the dust heap of things unremembered and unregretted. Then I fit myself with a shiny new libido. It is warm to the touch and hums with stored energy. My pelvis feels cosier already, and a gentle warmth starts to thaw the neglected parts of my body.
I open my eyes and smile.
It’s working.
Eugene presents himself at my door at the prearranged time of four o’clock. It is a Saturday afternoon, and he has once again told me he has to work this evening. He wants a reason to leave early if conversation starts to flag. I don’t mind.
Today he is wearing a pair of faded jeans and a checked shirt. His Instagram page is full of hipster friends of both sexes. I am glad he doesn’t personally affect the Edwardian beard or manbun of his fellows. The checked shirt is enough of a nod in that direction. His hair is short, but not militarily so. There are flyaway bits and suggestions of a curl that hint at the luxurious mass that would burst forth from his head if he allowed it to grow unchecked.
One advantage of the hipster plague sweeping Cape Town is that it makes my protective clothing look like a fashion choice rather than an iteration of fear.
“You look different today,” he says as I let him into the cottage.
“I felt like a change.”
His eyes sweep incuriously around the room, absorbing nothing. I wasted my time clearing up. He wouldn’t have noticed the signs of dysfunction.
As with many physically gifted individuals, Eugene doesn’t have to try very hard in social situations. He holds himself to a lower standard when it comes to interacting with others. His manner doesn’t have to be as ingratiating or his conversation as engaging as those of less strikingly beautiful individuals.
This probably extends to sex as well. I don’t mind that, either.
I put the vegetables and dip on the table and offer him coffee, which he accepts. As I prepare it, he asks whether I’ve decided what to do about testifying.
“Not yet. What do you think I should do?”
“I think you should say what happened. Whether it ends up hurting or helping your father, it’s the truth and it needs to be said out loud in open court.”
I take a carrot stick and dip it in flavoured mayonnaise. When I put it in my mouth, it assaults my tongue with barbaric flavours. I shudder and force myself to chew and swallow. I sip water, reassured by its blandness. My palate has become habituated to my meagre diet. Anything else feels like an invasion.
I wonder what Eugene will taste like. Will my mouth reject him too? Will his tongue taste acrid against my tongue? Will his skin leave a trail of salt on my lips? Perhaps my body will reject him like it rejected the carrot stick. I might have to smear him in tinned peach juice to make him acceptable.
Of course, it is possible to have sex without involving the mouth, but some humans don’t favour that option. I remember one of the men who attacked me planting wet, open-mouth kisses on every inch of me he could reach—my shoulder, my ear, my chin. I scrubbed for days to eliminate the sense-memory of his saliva on my skin.
When Eugene has finished his coffee, I take the cup out of his hand and lay it on the table. I move the vegetables and dip out of his reach.
He looks at me enquiringly. It is clear that my actions are not casual. I am initiating something, but he doesn’t know what.
“I want to have sex with you. Just once. It will be the first time since I was attacked.” My observation of Eugene has led me to conclude that this approach is the most likely to succeed. If I could have traded on his overwhelming physical attraction to me, I would have, but it is clear that the chemistry between us is tepid at best.
He can choose to believe that his magical penis has the power to fix me, if he likes, but I will know the truth—that I am taking a step towards fixing myself.
I have taken him by surprise. He looks at me with his mouth slightly open as he struggles to process my request.
“I am going to take my top off now,” I say. “If you don’t want me to do that, just put your hand on my arm and I’ll stop.”
I cross my arms over my body and take hold of my T-shirt at the hem. Then I pull it up, up, up very slowly, giving him all the time in the world to touch my arm.
He will do it now, I think as the T-shirt covers my face, blinding me and causing my breath to blow back at me. Now. He will do it now.
The T-shirt is off. The air in the cottage stirs against my skin, raising goose flesh on my arms and mottling my shoulders pink and white and purple. I expect him to avert his eyes, but he doesn’t. I allow myself to feel a man’s gaze stinging my body for the first time in two years. Panic threatens to rise, but I breathe it back down.
Eugene stands up and takes my hand, pulling me to my feet. He reaches behind my back and touches the clasp of my bra.
“May I?”
I nod.
He unfastens it and draws the straps over my shoulders and down my arms until it falls to the floor. He rubs my shoulders with his hands, trying to warm me up. It is the gesture of an adult to a child. I don’t want to be the child in this interaction.
I invite him to follow me to my bedroom. The air is heavier in here than it was in the kitchen. It is weighed down by the nights I have spent in this bed—the dreams I have dreamed. I take off the rest of my clothes and ask Eugene to do the same.
When we are both naked, I look at him for a long time. His body is even more beautiful without clothes. It is a great privilege for me to have access to all this perfection, but I can’t allow myself to feel grateful. The last time I had sexual intercourse there was an imbalance of power. This time I am determined that there shouldn’t be. Besides, gratitude is not sexy.
I am thinking too much.
I close my eyes and think about the furnace again—about lighting a spark and rekindling that furnace. About heating up the cold, dead ashes. About a warm glow and a slowly rising heat. About quickening and swelling and lengthening and expanding.
Sexual energy is a tangible force. When I open my eyes, I know Eugene can feel it in the room with us. He is becoming aroused. I move towards him and let the energy take over. Touching, tasting, stroking, licking. Our movements become clumsy and urgent. I want this to last, but I also want it over quickly.
The needs driving me are exigent, bold, powerful. But they are also fragile, weak, ephemeral. One wrong word, one impatient look, could banish them forever. The longer this takes, the more likely it is that something will go wrong.
I push the pace along, driving us forward with a momentum that won’t be denied. I want the moment of penetration to be frantic and mindless. I want to be out of my head and in my body when it happens. I don’t want to think about what it means.
Pressure is building inside me, a wave of tension that begs for release. I look down the length of my body and see that it has already happened. Penetration has occurred, and Eugene is inside me.
Disequilibrium strikes. All is fear and force. Seawater rushes in and extinguishes the furnace in a wave of disappointment. The ashes are not merely cold now, they are a swill—rainwater in an ashtray on a damp Sunday afternoon.
Eugene stops moving. He breathes, and I breathe, but he doesn’t withdraw. I tighten the ring of my vaginal muscles around his rubber-sheathed penis, feeling the three-dimensionality of it. It doesn’t hurt. I am hugging it into my body rather than being stabbed by it. Carefully, deliberately, I welcome it into me. I am the genial hostess, not the terrified victim of a home invasion.
The cold seawater ebbs away. The pilot light dries out. The tinder crackles with dry potential. Now the furnace is alight again, and Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego face imminent immolation. The fire roars through my body in a cleansing sheet of flame, reducing me to cinders.
* * *
Eugene behaves well afterwards. He lies with me without speaking after dropping the condom into my waste basket. He doesn’t check the time. He doesn’t allow restlessness to twitch at his limbs. He holds me in a way that mimics affection. I am the one who breaks the spell by sitting up. When I come back from the bathroom, he hasn’t moved. Perhaps he is dead.
“I think it might rain later.”
Not dead, then.
“Maybe,” I say.
“The air smells like rain. And I thought I heard a rumble of thunder.”
Cape Town is traumatised by the memory of a drought. People who normally don’t talk about the weather are obsessed with the will-it-or-won’t-it of precipitation.
“Goodness knows we need it,” I say, according to the accepted formula.
I start putting my clothes back on, which Eugene takes as his cue to do the same.
“Have you made up your mind yet?” he asks.
“About what?”
“About whether you are going to testify, and for which side.”
“Oh, that.”
I forgot that I used that dilemma as a pretext for luring him here.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ve decided. I know what I’m going to do.”
He glances at me, but I don’t elaborate. I have decided, and that is enough.