IT SURPRISED ME, BUT I slept that night. Maybe the effects of a large whisky and a row with Simon were soporific. But when I woke, I felt guilty. A man had died, but he hadn’t disturbed my rest, though I had woken once to a night-filled room, thinking of Inspector Pillay’s questions about my afternoon and sure that I had seen something going down the road. But it was like waking after a dream: the more I tried to pin it down, the more it edged away.
In the morning, I did minimal housework and then dashed out to get some stuff from the supermarket: all I had been able to find for supper last night were eggs and cheese and a part-eaten Woolworths snoek paté whose sell-by date was nearly as long ago as the sinking of the Mendi. Not that I had been hungry, but a cheese omelette had not proved to be an exciting meal and I needed to stock up with some other options. I took Grumpy for a quick walk, taking the hard road that skirted the plantations and keeping him on a lead all the way, much to his displeasure. I didn’t want to go near the scene of yesterday’s discovery. That done, I headed into the studio. I wasn’t in the mood for painting, but I could think about the other pieces I needed for the exhibition. But before I got going I flipped through the morning paper.
The murder made it onto page three, though there wasn’t a great deal to be said: the victim had not been identified at the time of going to press and all the reporter had been able to go on was the police statement. There were a couple of paragraphs, but all they succeeded in saying was that the body of a man had been found by a member of the public on a popular dog-walking path – the name of our road was misspelled – and that police investigations were ongoing. I was glad that neither Daniel’s nor my name had been mentioned.
Daniel phoned me mid-morning. I was pleased: he had been angry and upset yesterday and I wanted to talk to him. He asked if he could come round, and said he still wanted to model for my next painting. He turned up at lunch-time, and we had a sandwich together but conversation remained stilted. I remembered he had been about to say something when the police had come into the garden yesterday afternoon, and wondered if I should ask him about it. But I didn’t want to push. He obviously had something on his mind.
I did, however, ask him about Johannesburg and how things were going there. He admitted there had been some trouble a couple of months ago: a group of Zimbabwean and Somali traders had been beaten up by locals, and he had got involved with a group of immigrants who patrolled their area. There had been a couple of scuffles, and he had been among those taken in for questioning. No one had been charged, and it all seemed to have died down. I got the feeling he wasn’t telling me the whole story, but maybe it went some way to explaining his reluctance to have anything to do with the police.
“Come on, let’s see if we can do a photograph. What fruit have you got?” he asked, changing the subject. I had found mangos in the supermarket that morning, and I showed him.
“They’re quite nice big ones, and they’re tropical. And the colour’s good. I like that green and red. Stronger colours, deeper than on the apple, but in the same palette. And the inside should be a good contrast. What do you think?”
“Let’s see once they’ve been bitten into.”
We took the mangos and camera and went into the studio, positioning Dan against a wall to catch the light. It was the same spot where Mike had photographed my hand, but while the apple had been in my right, we put the mango in Dan’s left to create a mirror image. I had a piece of orange-coloured, hand-printed cloth, which we hung as a backdrop.
Dan sliced into a mango, then took a bite and we contemplated the result. The colour was good, a vibrant orange, a more powerful shade than the background cloth. The fruit was ripe, and the juice began to trickle out of the bite.
“Great. That looks luscious and you can exaggerate the drip. Go for it.”
I got the camera, and fired off various shots. “Just try another one, Dan. See if the colour’s different.”
We photographed three of the mangos, with different-sized and angled bites. For a while, we managed to put yesterday out of our minds and worked together for the best part of an hour. Then I switched on the computer and began to download the pictures. Dan lounged on the sofa, and picked up a guava from the fruit bowl, taking a bite. I had bought a couple of early ones in case they worked better than the mangos, but the colour was too muted, the fruit too small.
“Yeuuch!”
I turned. “It’s got a worm.” Dan spat the flesh of the guava into his hand as we contemplated the maggot jerking up and down in the fruit he was holding.
“Don’t worry. It’s a whole worm. It’s when you see half a worm that you need to worry.”
Dan gave me a dirty look, and got up to wash his hand. But somehow the mood had soured. The maggot had made me think of the corpse, and Dan too seemed to be preoccupied as he sat down again.
“Laura, you know that photograph the cops found on the body?”
He stopped. I nodded, but for a long moment he sat, looking at his knees. Then he got up. “I didn’t know the man – never seen him before. But I wonder if he was looking for me.”
“Why? Why would he be looking for you?”
“I told you I was thinking about this exhibition of colonial stuff. Well. I had been trying to make contact with descendants of Mendi survivors. I wanted to hear the stories, see if there was something I could use. I had heard of a man originally from the Eastern Cape, the Pondoland area, who was a teacher in Durban. His grandfather had been on the Mendi, and had been rescued after the sinking, gone on to the war, and had come back to South Africa at the end of it. I contacted this teacher chap on the phone, and he said he would like to talk to me. I told him I was coming down here, and if he was around, coming up to Pietermaritzburg at all, maybe we could meet. So … I suppose that could have been him. When I saw the photograph of the man with the bicycle, just before we walked back up here, then I began to wonder. And when the sergeant asked about the Mendi, well, it seemed too much of a coincidence.” Dan turned to look at me.
“But why didn’t you say anything to the cops yesterday? I mean, if you think he might have been the guy you were going to meet, it could help them to identify him.”
“I don’t want to be involved. Not in any way. Look, Laura, you have no idea how tough it is to be an immigrant here, a refugee. You saw that man, Dhlomo, yesterday. He obviously wanted to have a go at me. Just because I’m not South African. It’s easy for you to say, ‘Go to the cops.’ But no, I want nothing to do with it. The cops don’t like Zimbabweans any more than anyone else does. And anyway, in Joburg recently … I just don’t want to have anything to do with them again.”
“But, Dan, for God’s sake, a man is dead. If you think you know something about him, you have to say so.”
“It may just be a coincidence. If they find out who the body is, and if it’s the same man … then maybe I’ll say something. But not unless. He was probably carrying ID anyway. They just didn’t tell us. And if it was him, why was he here, in this road? I never told anyone I was coming here, except Verne, in passing. And he wouldn’t come looking for me: we were going to set up a meeting. He was coming to Pietermaritzburg for other stuff as well.”
We stared at each other. Dan had articulated exactly what I was thinking: why here? If it was the same man, and Dan told the police now, they were certainly going to wonder why he hadn’t said anything yesterday. He was making all this worse for himself. They had already picked up on the Mendi connection: our reaction to their questions yesterday had made sure of that.
“What was the name of the guy you contacted?”
“Phineas Ndzoyiya. That’s all I know.”
“Daniel, I really think you have to tell the police. Say you were shocked yesterday, and the Mendi thing came out of the blue. But that this man had said he wanted to talk to you about the survivors’ stories. There can’t really be a connection. I mean, no one would be killed because he was going to repeat stories his grandfather had told him of things that happened in the First World War. It’s nearly a hundred years ago.”
Daniel shrugged. “I’ll see. I’m sure the cops will be back anyway. Look, thanks for lunch. I’m going to head off now.”
He left, rather abruptly. I went back to the computer and started fiddling with a couple of the photographs in Photoshop, cropping and highlighting until I got the effects I wanted. But my heart wasn’t really in it. What the hell was going on?