We drove past the house and the big gum tree and saw Anna’s bakkie parked behind Dirk’s 4×4.
Again we heard: Bang. Bang.
Silence.
Over the tops of the cars, we saw Dirk standing in a field, his left arm still in a sling. A revolver was clutched in his bandaged right hand and he was shooting from the hip.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Then, as we got past his 4×4, we could see Anna was there too, in her wheelchair. She lifted a double-barrelled shotgun and fired. Boom! Boom! Louder than Dirk’s gun.
But they were not shooting at each other, thank goodness. Who or what were they shooting at?
Jessie and I got out of the car and walked towards them. Something lay on the ground. As we got a bit closer we saw what it was . . .
A dead tree lay on its side. They had not killed the tree, it had been dead for a long time. It was grey and bare, and in its hollows were bright tins.
What with his injured arms, Dirk was struggling to reload the revolver, and he took the box of ammunition to Anna in her wheelchair. She had a shotgun resting on her plaster cast and half a glass of red liquid in her hand. She bent down to put the drink on the ground and then helped him load the bullets.
Then Anna broke the shotgun, the used cartridges popped out, and she reloaded.
She waved the shotgun at us, shouting, ‘Haai!’
Dirk grunted. We stood still.
Dirk shot into the tree. Bang. Bang. Bang.
‘Kolskoot!’ said Anna, as he hit an empty baked-bean tin.
She picked up her drink and raised it to him before having a big sip. Then she put it down and blasted a tomato tin. Boom! Boom!
‘Come!’ she called. ‘I’m using Dirk’s shotgun. He’s got my revolver.’
The way she said her S’s made me think it was not just fruit juice in that red drink.
‘We’ll just wait,’ said Jessie.
‘There are some roses here that need watering,’ I said.
There was a row of bushes that were missing Lawrence. The leaves were dry and the flowers wilting. I saw a tap with a hose attached.
Bang. Bang.
Dirk walked towards Anna again to reload, but it seemed the ammunition was finished.
‘Blikemmer,’ she said, throwing the empty box towards the tree.
But it did not travel as well as the bullets.
Anna bent down and slurped the last of her drink and handed the glass to Dirk. Then she propped the shotgun between her legs, leaning the barrels on her shoulder, and wheeled across the bumpy field towards us.
‘You got a 4×4 wheelchair there, Anna?’ said Jessie, walking to meet her.
I was still watering the roses.
‘Nah, it’s a piece of crap,’ she said.
Her white plaster cast was smudged with dirt, and splattered with drops of that red juice. Dirk walked in a wobbly way, holding the glass and the revolver in his right hand.
‘Do you like our Christmas tree?’ she said, pointing to the fallen tree, decorated with tins and bullets. ‘Come. Have a drink.’
She rolled towards the house. I turned the tap off and followed her to the stoep. Dirk was wandering a bit skew and Jessie herded him towards us.
Before we could catch up with her, Anna ditched the wheelchair at the base of the stoep stairs and dragged herself up the stairs with the shotgun under her arm.
‘Eina. Jou ouma se groottoon,’ she cursed as her plaster cast bumped against the stairs. Your grandma’s big toe.
I took the shotgun from her, and put it in a corner of the stoep. Jessie lifted the wheelchair up and we helped her back into it.
Dirk swayed from side to side, but managed to get up the stairs without falling over.
‘I gotta pee,’ said Anna. ‘Help yourself. That pomegranate juice is blerrie lekker.’
Dirk burped in agreement.
‘Dirk, get them some glasses for Christ’s sake.’
He bumped his thigh against the table on his way to the front door.
‘Donder,’ he swore.
On the table were empty bottles of a deep-red juice and vodka. As well as full bottles of vodka and juice.
Dirk brought clean glasses but even though he concentrated very hard, his pouring abilities were not so good.
‘Ag, fok,’ he said, as the juice dribbled down the side of the glass.
Jessie took over and poured us each a glass of pomegranate juice – no vodka. I closed my eyes and held it in my mouth before I swallowed. It was rich and sweet and tasted of the earth and of my childhood.
Anna came back and slopped a lot of vodka into her and Dirk’s glasses before topping them up with juice. She drank hers down like cooldrink. Dirk’s movements were awkward, as he tried to lift his bandaged arm all the way up to his mouth. He brought his head down to meet the glass. Some of the liquid dribbled onto his sling, but a fair amount went in. The bandages were hospital-white not so long ago, but now they were grubby, with pomegranated polka dots.
‘Anna, someone at the Spar said you were the one who bought the pomegranate juice,’ I said.
‘Ag, Dirk, jou sissie se vissie!’ Anna said. Your sister’s little fish. ‘Don’t waste the stuff, man. Here, sit up.’
She rolled across and lifted the drink to his mouth and he gulped it down. And burped.
‘Not just today, but last week,’ I said. ‘The day of the murder.’
Anna snorted. She poured herself another drink. She was quite accurate with the vodka, but not all the juice made it into the glass.
‘Kannemeyer is looking for you,’ said Jessie.
‘Let him come,’ Anna said.
‘Anna, we are worried about you,’ I said. ‘You should get a lawyer.’
‘Maybe I should get some ammunition,’ she said. ‘Dirk. You got more rounds for this shotgun?’
Now I was worried about Kannemeyer.
Dirk was looking out onto the lawn and the empty pond.
‘I miss those ducks,’ he said, in Afrikaans.
Then he started singing, his voice rough and croaky like a big frog:
Ek wonder wat my hinder!
Daar’s onrus in my hart,
of daar ’n bange vlinder
sag huiwer in sy smart.
I wonder what troubles me!
Unrest in my heart again,
like a frightened butterfly
trembling softly in pain.
Anna sat down next to Dirk and joined in:
. . . of daar ’n bange vlinder
sag huiwer in sy smart.
. . . like a frightened butterfly
trembling softly in pain.
They swayed slowly as they sang. Dirk was gazing at the empty duck pond and Anna’s eyes were half-closed.
Jessie cocked her head and we got up and went inside. The kitchen was a mess: unwashed dishes; ants all over, cleaning up bits of food on the counters. Grace must have left already. I wondered how Lawrence’s funeral went, and if she was in Cape Town yet.
Light was streaming in from the sash windows onto the metal sink and the wooden kitchen table. The fingerprinting dust had been cleaned up but the table was full of fresh crumbs and Karoo dust. It was strange seeing the place in the light of the day, messy but normal, without murderers or dead people. It looked a bit bigger: the open-plan kitchen and lounge, with the couch where Martine died, the pantry with the door full of gunshot holes. I peeked inside the pantry – the jam and flour had been cleaned up, the tins and recipe books on the shelves were all wiped and tidy. I touched the spine of Cook and Enjoy and felt sad that Martine was never going to read that recipe book again. In the lounge, the broken glass had been swept up. The wedding photograph of Martine and Dirk stood alone on a small table in its frame – without the glass.
We went into the study. Papers were all over the table and floor. There were books on the floor, their pages open.
‘What happened here?’ said Jessie. ‘This isn’t how we left it.’
‘Did the murderer have time to make such a mess?’ I said. ‘You’d think the police would’ve tidied it up. Or Dirk.’
‘Maybe Dirk was the one chucking things around. No harm in tidying up a bit,’ she said, ‘since the police are finished here.’
Jessie sorted the papers back into Martine’s filing cabinet, while I picked up the books and put them back on the shelf. I shook each one out, looking for papers hidden inside. Maybe it was silly of me, but I still wondered if she had kept our Karoo Gazette letters somewhere, hidden from her husband. The books were all empty. Then at last, inside a book on the Klein Karoo, a clipping from a newspaper fluttered out and down to the floor. But it was a recipe for an ostrich casserole. I read it in case my ostrich farmer might be interested. It was a lot like tomato bredie, but with more whole coriander. Coriander is very nice in ostrich biltong, so it made sense.
As we looked through the books and papers, they carried on singing outside:
’n Tortelduif se sange
het in my siel gevaar.
A turtledove’s song
ventured into my soul.
Anna raised her voice, interrupting their song: ‘You are a fokken bastard, you know that, Dirk. I should’ve killed you dead.’
‘Ja,’ he said.
‘Why did you donder Martine?’
‘I’m fucked up,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I just go bossies . . . I don’t know why.’
‘You should get help, y’know.’
‘Who would help me? Would you help me?’
‘Not me – I’m not your fokken nanny. Haai, jou sissie se vissie, you’re spilling again. I’ll hold it for you. No, man, get counselling, join a group of other arsehole men like you.’
‘Where?’
‘Just look, man. Ask your doctor or go on the fokken vleisbroek Facebook . . . I can’t believe you killed those ducks.’
‘I know you won’t believe me, but I thought I was shooting the enemy. From my army days. I thought they were terrorists hiding there in the reeds.’
‘Christ. You’d better fix yourself up or I’ll fokken kill you, for Martine’s sake, y’know.’
They were quiet a moment. I could hear a breeze swishing the leaves of the gum tree.
‘I miss her,’ said Dirk.
‘I miss her a moerse lot more than you.’
He started to sing again:
’n Tortelduif se sange
het in my siel gevaar . . .
Jessie shook her head and said, ‘I wonder if bastards like him can ever come right.’ She pointed to the filing cabinet in front of her. ‘Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything different here.’
‘Nothing missing?’ I asked. ‘Since when you looked?’
‘Not that I can tell,’ she said. ‘Her financial papers are in the biggest mess.’
‘Any sign of my Gazette letter?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s a newspaper cutting about the frackers that I missed last time.’
I heard a slow thumping sound, getting closer. Anna was bumping her wheelchair from one corridor wall to another on her way to the bathroom. She was humming the turtledove song. On her way back, she stuck her head in on us.
‘We’re just tidying up,’ said Jessie, closing the filing cabinet.
‘Ag, there’s no point in that,’ said Anna. ‘It just gets messed up again. He says it’s her spook, but that’s just rubbish twakpraatjies. I’ve cleaned the whole kitchen myself and seen him mess it up with my own two eyes.’
Dirk’s lonely frog voice called from the stoep:
’n Tortelduif se sange
het in my siel gevaar.
Anna’s eyes went all misty and she rolled back towards him and the song:
’n liedjie van verlange
wat glad nie wil bedaar,
’n liedjie van verlange
wat glad nie wil bedaar.
A song of longing that just won’t let go, a song of longing that just won’t let go.