One afternoon, when Rachel was at her yoga class, Fritz called and invited us to visit him and Carmen at their house in Kommetjie, about an hour southeast of Cape Town, on the Cape Flats. “Come out next week,” he said. “You guys should visit us at least once while you’re here. I’m inviting Bethany and Clive, too.”
I told him I would ask Rachel, which I did when she got home. “I suppose we have to sooner or later,” she sighed.
Clive had to teach, but Bethany said she would go with us.
They lived half an hour inland because, Bethany said from the back of the car, the coast was too bourgeois for Fritz’s liking.
“That means he can’t afford it,” Rachel said as she drove along the winding coastal road, which was even more hazardous than the road to the Twelve Apostles. She drove slowly, much to the irritation of drivers behind her, who blew their horns incessantly until they had a chance to pass, coming within inches of us as they went by on the safer side. At the slightest nudge from them, our car would have plunged off the cliff.
“This is very relaxing,” Bethany said. “It’s so nice to get out and see the countryside. Living to tell about it would be a bonus, but that’s just splitting hairs.”
Rachel glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. “If you’d like to drive, be my guest,” she said.
“I wasn’t criticizing your driving, sweetie,” Bethany said. “After all, you’d perish with me and that would be punishment enough. How are you doing, Wade? Are you feeling emasculated because you’re not driving the car?”
“I’d be doing better if I’d thought of putting a couple of bags of sand in the trunk for some ballast,” I said.
“The baby and I will have to do,” Bethany said. “All eighty pounds of us.”
We made it to Fritz and Carmen’s house, a square, stucco-sided bungalow with a roof of gleaming, corrugated tin. There were a goat and a pair of chickens in the yard.
“What does Fritz do with all the money he makes from selling drugs?” Bethany said. “Does he barter with the Bantu for goats and chickens?”
The front door of the bungalow flew open and Carmen, in a T-shirt, denim shorts and flip-flops, ran down the steps, waving her arms as if signalling to Rachel from half a mile away.
“We’re cleansing,” she shouted. “Nothing but water and green grapes for the next six days.”
“Otherwise known as the poor woman’s anorexia,” Bethany said. Carmen seemed not to hear her. “Hi, Carmen,” Bethany shouted, but Carmen did not return her greeting or look at her.
“Don’t get out of the car,” Carmen said. “We’re all going on a road trip.” She pointed at Fritz’s car, a dented, rusting Saab plastered all over with peace signs and decals bearing clenched black fists and anti-apartheid slogans. “You guys follow us.”
“I’m not going down that cliff road again without taking a break,” Rachel said.
“No, no, don’t worry, we’re going the other way.”
The front door of the house opened again and Fritz appeared. Clad in his usual white V-necked, bluebell-bordered smock, his thick black chest hair looking like an undergarment, he jumped off the side of the steps, a khaki bag, also plastered with peace signs and black fists, slung over one shoulder.
“Well, he’s just a one-man salute to peace, isn’t he?” Bethany said.
Fritz waved to us and made a “follow me” motion with his hand. He and Carmen jumped in the Saab, which, despite its dilapidated look, started with a roar.
It turned out that, when Carmen said we were going the other way, she meant we were going to continue south on the treacherous coast road. “We don’t have to follow them to our doom, Rachel,” Bethany said as Fritz turned left. “We could just go back to the city.”
“If he doesn’t stop in ten minutes, I’ll turn around. I think I’d rather go off a cliff than be teased by Fritz for the next six months about how I couldn’t keep up with him.”
“I choose death by teasing rather than by a fiery crash,” Bethany said, “but I might not if I was a man who didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.”
“You’re in fine form today, Bethany,” I said. “Enjoy it. Soon, your fine form will be that of three basketballs tied together.”
She laughed, and so did Rachel, until Fritz began to pull away from us in a cloud of red dust.
After about five minutes, Fritz turned right onto a steep dirt road flanked by brush so thick and high it blocked our view of everything but his car—and soon, our view of that was blocked by dust. “This is like driving in a snowstorm,” I said, trying not to think of the possibility that Fritz might have to stop suddenly.
The slope began to lessen. The dust cleared. Fritz was well ahead of us now. Below stretched the bluest sea I had ever seen. A beach at least a mile long extended about half that distance from the water, where it ended in a kind of breakwater of thick brush. It looked as if no one had ever set foot on the pure white sand. It was not strewn with kelp or bordered by driftwood. It was empty of everything—people most conspicuously, given that it was superior to any beach I had seen so far in South Africa. We parked at the north end, beside the Saab. We got out and, for a few seconds, the five of us stared, wonderstruck, at the sight in front of us. “It’s so beautiful, Fritz,” Bethany said, as if complimenting him on one of his artisanal creations.
He nodded, pulled a Nikon camera out of his shoulder bag and, dropping to one knee, took a picture of the beach. “Fritz takes the best photographs,” Carmen said.
“You’d think this place would be very popular,” Bethany said.
“Too far out of the way for tourists,” Fritz said, winking at me.
“What’s it called?” Rachel asked.
“I have no idea,” Fritz said. “Nothing, I hope. Let’s go for a walk.”
Rachel, Bethany and Carmen took off their flip-flops and began to wade, three abreast, in the shallow waves. “Oooh, the water is so warm,” Rachel said. “We must have crossed over onto the Indian Ocean side. It’s not like the water at Clifton.”
“No,” Fritz said, “but it’s not the Indian Ocean. It’s just that the water here is shallow for a long way out.”
“Join us, Wade,” Rachel said.
“Maybe in a bit,” I said, not wanting to intrude on this rare moment of sisterly togetherness.
“The three of you hold hands and look at me,” Fritz said, and they did, the three of them wading through the water. “Beautiful, just beautiful,” Fritz said, snapping picture after picture as he shuffled backward along the water’s edge. “Too bad Gloria’s not here,” he said. “She would complete the picture.”
“Why don’t you walk in the water with us?” Rachel called to me again.
Before I could answer, Fritz said, “A man would throw off the symmetry. Besides, Wade is almost as white as the beach.”
“I burn easily,” I said. “I’d have worn a hat if I knew we’d be going to the beach.”
“Just go with the flow, Wade,” Fritz said. “Today’s flow, not the flow of history. The English won the Boer War, but the Boers got the last laugh—we got the Cape, South Africa, that is. Unfortunately, we fucked it up big time, oppressing our black brothers.” He snapped a picture of me. “Wade the oppressor,” he said, “plundering our women. Tsk tsk tsk. There’ll be no oppression and plundering in the new South Africa. The revolution is coming. God help the oppressors then. Whites like Carmen and me, the ones who helped the blacks and didn’t call them “coloureds,” will be welcome in that new South Africa. The rest will be in some very deep shit.”
“And you,” Bethany said, “you’ll be the official photographer of the revolution.”
“You bet your skinny patrician ass I will,” Fritz said.
“Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals,” Bethany said, flipping Marx’s famous dismissal of religion and quoting from a movie I had once seen. I wished I could think of something to say, but nothing wittily dismissive came to mind. There was something about Fritz that stifled, in everyone but Bethany, verbal response of almost any kind. Perhaps it was that I knew that nothing but a good pummelling would shut him up—and I couldn’t help wondering about that knife of his, though I hadn’t seen it since the day I’d first met him in St. John’s.
Rachel, Bethany and Carmen waded ashore as we neared the end of the beach, the three of them still holding hands, Rachel between her two older sisters—the sight made me think of the many photographs in the albums of them as children, all dressed alike.
“We’re on a mission of mercy,” Carmen said as she pulled her hand from Rachel’s.
“A mission of mercy?” Bethany said, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked about for signs of other people. Fritz put his camera back in his shoulder bag and began to walk away from the beach over a large sand dune. He beckoned for us to follow.
“Where are we going, Fritz?” Rachel called, glancing worriedly at me. Fritz crested the sand dune and disappeared down the other side.
“Wait for me,” Carmen shouted after her husband, and ran to catch up with him.
Rachel, Bethany and I plodded upslope through the sand. When we reached the top, Fritz and Carmen were waiting for us below. We followed them along a narrow path that wound through a grove of palm trees. At the end of it, we came upon a corrugated iron wall with a gap in the middle that afforded us a clear view of what might have been a long-deserted black township—there wasn’t a soul in sight.
“No, no, no, no,” Bethany said. “This is not a good idea.”
“Believe me,” Fritz said, “they already know we’re here. They’ve seen us coming for quite a while. That’s why they’re all indoors or hiding somewhere. That and the heat.”
“What’s up, Fritz?” I said.
“What’s up?” Fritz grinned at Carmen, who loudly laughed. “What’s up is that, if not for me, you would have had the piss beaten out of you by now, and the girls, well, I think you know what would have happened to them.”
“We should get the fuck out of here right now,” Bethany said.
“Everything will be just fine as long as no one runs or cries,” Fritz said, looking at me. “Did you hear me, Wade? No running, no crying.”
“Fuck off, Fritz,” I said, peering through the gap in the wall behind him. A small yellow dog watched us, sitting on its hind legs in the middle of the narrow road that ran between two rows of windowless tin houses.
Fritz patted his shoulder bag. “I have goodies to distribute,” he said.
“Fritz is the Johnny Appleseed of the revolution,” Carmen said, looking expectantly at Fritz, who didn’t acknowledge her.
“No one will bother you as long as you stay put,” he said. “They know me here. I come here at this time of day once, sometimes twice, a week.”
He went through the gate-like gap and was gone from sight. Carmen sat on the sand and patted it with her hand to suggest that we all do the same. “No wonder there’s no one on the beach,” I said.
“It’s fine,” Carmen said. “I wait here by myself sometimes and nothing ever happens. Sit down. Time for a toke, I think.” She fished in the back pocket of her jeans, withdrew a crumpled joint and lit it with a plastic cigarette lighter she took from the pocket of her top. She took a long drag, then held the joint toward us. Getting no takers, she shrugged and put the joint back in her mouth. “I’m going to get so stoned if you guys don’t help me smoke this joint. Especially since I’ve had nothing but green grapes and water for days. Cleansing is good for you, it really is, but I’d just as soon sleep through it.”
I shot Rachel a questioning look. “I think we’re okay,” she said. “If we turn back now, we might provoke them.”
“Jesus,” Carmen said. “Provoke them? They’re not dogs. Everyone’s a liberal in South Africa until they wind up in a place like this.”
“I don’t think everyone’s a liberal in South Africa,” Bethany said. “I think we might be related to a few non-liberals. And that leaves out the other ninety-nine per cent of the white population. Meanwhile, I think I’ll just stroll back along the beach.”
“You won’t make it halfway to the cars,” Carmen said. “Not by yourself. Too tempting. They leave me alone because they know that, if they don’t, Fritz won’t come back. No one will come back. But you—well, they don’t know who you are to Fritz. They don’t know you’re his sister-in-law. Some of them might not care because they’re wrecked enough already. I’d stay put if I were you. Sends them a message. If you don’t seem to be afraid, you must be someone important to Fritz, or just important, period, someone who’s used to these missions of mercy. No one sells to them for less than Fritz does. He practically gives the dagga away. So no one fucks with him.”
We sat on the ground in the shade of the palm trees, waiting for Fritz to return. Every now and then, I looked through the gap in the iron fence. The township seemed like some sort of temporary workers’ camp. In front of each of the metal shacks was a circle of scorched stones, makeshift fireplaces. Clotheslines from which brightly coloured clothing hung sagged almost to the ground, the clothes hanging limp because the wall blocked the ocean breeze.
A few small boys clad only in shorts eventually appeared at the opening to look at us, their wide eyes full of fear and curiosity. Rachel tentatively waved and they disappeared for a second behind the wall, reappearing one by one.
Then an old man arrived at what I had come to think of as the gate. He was barefoot, wearing slacks so smeared with dust I couldn’t tell their colour. He was shirtless but wore a tattered black sports jacket and a grey stocking cap beneath a dented fedora. He looked nattily dishevelled. He smiled and raised his hat to us. Carmen waved and held up what was left of the joint. One hand in the pocket of his slacks, he gingerly made his way to her, took the joint, raised it to his mouth and drew so deeply from it he had to let it drop before it burned his fingers. “I have another one,” Carmen said, standing up and reaching into the back pocket of her shorts again.
A middle-aged black woman wearing an orange head scarf, a green blouse and a light-blue sarong came out through the gate. “Get back inside, old man,” she said, pointing the way she had come. The rest of us got to our feet.
“No, Seri, I will not go back inside,” the man said. “I am not a child who must listen to a woman.”
She turned to face us. Every word she spoke she punctuated with a chopping motion of her index finger. “Why are you sitting here and watching us like this?”
“We’re waiting for Fritz,” Carmen said.
“You,” the woman said. “You must not give this old man drugs. He is my father. What would you think if I came to where you live and gave drugs to your father?”
Carmen laughed. “I’d think it was great.”
“Do not laugh at me, madam. I warn you, do not laugh. I have seen you here before with this man called Fritz. You are making nothing but trouble, the two of you.”
“Well, sorreeee,” Carmen said, “but I think you could use something to loosen that cork you have stuck up your ass.”
“Do not disrespect me. I do not use drugs.”
“Well, maybe you should.”
“Carmen,” Rachel said.
“Yes, Carmen,” Bethany said, “settle down.”
“The three of you are sisters. You have the same eyes. Three sisters selling drugs and giving them to old men.”
“My sisters don’t even use drugs unless they get them from a doctor,” Carmen said. She pointed at me. “He’s never smoked a cigarette, as far as I know. My sisters used to be cool—well, except for one, but she’s not here—but not anymore.”
The woman shook her finger at her. “The last thing we need here are drugs. They make people lazy and stupid. We stay home from work and lose our jobs. Our children fall asleep in school, if they go to school. No one takes care of the little ones. I would find a way to get rid of this Fritz, but, if I did, someone would get rid of me and another Fritz would soon show up.” She pointed at the township. “Someone from in there would get rid of me, or someone from out here. We turn on each other because of these drugs and all of you just walk away. I was a teacher, and now I am still teaching but I get no pay. That man, Fritz, should not have brought you here, and he should not have left you alone. He is a bad man and he is a fool.”
“Fuck off,” Carmen said. “I’ve been here dozens of times and nothing has ever happened until today.”
“Do not swear at me, young lady,” the woman said. “I am trying to help you. Some young men who have no jobs, no wives and no children are here. Young men, not old men like my father here. They are sleeping, maybe. If they come out and speak to you, don’t say a word.”
“She’s bullshitting,” Carmen said to us.
“Shut up,” Rachel said.
“If the young men come out, don’t run,” the woman said.
“Don’t run,” Carmen said in the voice of a whiny child. “Don’t shout, don’t cry. The big bad black men will get you. They can smell fear and will chase you if you run.”
“I would like to see that one run,” the old man said, pointing at Rachel. “She is very beautiful. They are all very beautiful. I would like to see them run.”
“I’ll run for you,” Carmen said.
“You do not know what you are saying,” the woman admonished her. “We are not allowed in your cities and towns and homes except to work for you for next to nothing. Now here you are in our home, but you haven’t come to work for us. You have come without asking our permission. You’ve come without cards like the ones we must carry when we are in your neighbourhoods. I am trying to help you. I am trying to keep you out of bad trouble. You are a foolish, stupid woman.”
Two young men showed in the gateway. Shirtless, they wore shorts and sneaker boots without laces. “They have nothing worth taking,” the woman said to them, her tone much softer.
The old man laughed and raised three fingers in the air. “Three young white women. I think they have something worth taking.”
“And you are too old to take it,” the woman said. She looked at Rachel. “Go away now. Take your sisters.” She looked at me. “Go away. Take these girls with you. If you provoke these boys, you will not see Fritz again. Go away, now. There is nothing here for you.”
Rachel and Bethany did not look at the young men but at the ground. I looked at them and they stared back at me as if in disbelief at how out of place I was. They might have been in their late teens or early twenties and stood there in silence, appraising me.
“They only came out because you started shouting at us,” Carmen said to the woman. She took another joint out of her pocket and held it out to the two men in the gateway. “Want some, fellas?”
Their eyes widened and they smiled. “Oh yes, miss,” one of them said.
“I will take it to them,” the woman said, plucking the joint from Carmen’s fingers as she spat on the ground at Carmen’s feet. She gave the joint to one of the young men, and the two of them went back inside. Four others soon took their place in the gap in the wall.
The woman came back to us, holding her sarong clear of the ground. “You are not from here. I can tell by your voices.”
“Yes, we are,” Carmen said. “Me, her, her and Fritz, we were born here.” She pointed at me. “He’s the visitor. But we all grew up in Canada, except for Fritz.”
“So you have come to visit the continent that your elders stole from us. Your parents are from here?”
“One of them is. Lady, I get it. I’m on your side. I know you got ripped off. I know about the slave ships and all that. Who doesn’t? You’re lucky you didn’t wind up in the States. I know that Africa was hunky-dory before the white man came. I’m just saying it’s not my fault where I was born. And I’d like to make up for what’s been done. I’d like to do my own little bit of reparation. I’m here to help you.”
“God does not help those who help themselves to what belongs to others.”
“I’m not God. Jesus. I’m not Jesus, either.”
The woman spat on the ground again.
“Fucking cunt,” Carmen said as the woman turned around and walked toward the young men, who obeyed her when she motioned them inside the gate. The old man blew Carmen a kiss and followed his daughter.
“Bitch,” Carmen hissed. “Maybe I’ll call the cops.”
“Shut up,” Rachel said. “Not another word.”
Fritz came through the gap in the fence. Walking at a steady pace, he went straight past us without looking at us. “Time to roll,” he said. He sounded nervous. We followed him. “The natives are always restless when I leave. Not everyone gets what they want and some get nothing. Don’t look back. And don’t hurry. Hopefully, they’ll just watch us until we’re too close to the cars for them to catch us.”
“Did something happen?” Carmen said. “Did that woman say something about us?”
“They tried to bargain me down even though I’m practically giving it away. I used the word polisie a lot. It was one of those days.”
“I bet that woman—”
“Never mind that woman,” Fritz said, picking up the pace in spite of having warned us not to.
“What the fuck did you bring us here for?” Rachel said, trying to keep up with him.
“Who else makes life easier for them?” Fritz said. “How would you like to live like that with nothing to take the edge off? No electricity, no toilets, no running water, almost no money?”
“I asked you a question, Fritz,” Rachel said.
“I sell them whatever I can get my hands on,” Fritz said, breathing rapidly. “It’s cheap because it’s grown or made right here at home. The cops know what I’m up to but they don’t bother me. The more wrecked the kaffirs are the better, as far as they’re concerned. As far as most whites are concerned, especially the government. But I can’t change all that. I can only do so much. It’s less risky than selling to the whites—though they’d pay a lot more. The government doesn’t want the whites strung out. They want to keep them on their toes so they can hold all of this craziness together. Whites buying drugs is bad for the economy. Money spent on drugs is money not spent on South African goods and services, not taxed, not invested in South Africa. Lower worker productivity, less efficiency, the loosening of social ties and family ties—you can’t afford that when you’re going it alone in the world.”
“Fritz,” Rachel said, “you’re on something and it isn’t dagga. Cocaine? Speed?”
“I’ve brought other people here,” Fritz said, “and nothing has ever happened. Nothing would have happened if not for that woman. She stirred up a lot of grumbling with all her shouting.” He glanced over his shoulder at Carmen. “And you, you should know to keep your cool by now.”
“She started it,” Carmen said. “Uppity bitch.”
She ran down to the ocean’s edge and stepped into the water.
“No frolicking in the surf on the return trip,” Fritz said. “They already took my camera.”
“Fuckers,” Carmen said.
“Just walk, okay, everyone just walk.”
“Uppity bitch,” Bethany said. “That’s a nice liberal expression.”
“Fuck off, Bethany,” Carmen said.
“Yes, Bethany,” Fritz said. “The only difference between you and them is that your drugs are paid for by your parents.”
“Well, soon I’ll be getting them from a chemist paid by Clive,” Bethany said. “So you think you’re their therapist and their chemist.”
“You bet I am. If it wasn’t for me, they’d be sniffing glue and drinking aftershave.”
“You’re a true humanitarian, Fritz,” Rachel said.
“That’s right, baby sister.”
“The woman that you said stirred everything up lives here. Someone who lives here was bound to complain about you sooner or later. You should have told us where you and Carmen were going.”
“If you’re so concerned for that woman,” Fritz said, “go back and introduce yourself. I bet you didn’t think to do that, did you? We came because we thought a great writer from Canada like Wade would like to see what a township looked like. I thought you and Bethany would too. But no more reality road trips from now on for third sister, baby sister and her boyfriend.”
“It will take a lot more than green grapes and water to cleanse you,” Rachel said.
“Baby sister—”
“Shut your trap, Fritz,” I said from just behind him. “Shut your trap and keep it shut until we reach the cars.”
I didn’t care if he pulled that knife of his, because I knew that, if we fought, I would win no matter at what cost to him or me. I would win because I had made up my mind to get away from this nightmare of a country as soon as I could convince Rachel that Bethany no longer needed her. I had had enough of all of it. I was overheated, thirsty and fed up with the beauty of the beach, the gentle surf, the treacherous perfection of the sea and sky, and the beguiling breeze.
We followed the Saab up the slope, Rachel wrestling with the gearshift as the car lurched, stopped, skidded sideways in the gravel. We stalled out several times as Fritz pulled away from us, navigated around potholes and tree stumps that Rachel couldn’t see until the last second in the dust Fritz’s car kicked up; she had to brake so suddenly that we kept on slipping back as if we might slide all the way to the beach.
“He is definitely on something,” Rachel said.
Fritz reached the top of the side road, turned left onto the coastal road and drove away, rear tires screeching on the pavement.
“Bastard,” Rachel said. “He just took off.”
“My fault,” I said. “I picked the wrong time to piss him off.”
She pressed the gas pedal harder as she tried to shift gears, and the engine stalled. “This would not be a good place to break down or get a flat,” she said as she restarted the car.
“Fritz gets the last laugh,” Bethany said, laughing.
“Very funny,” Rachel said.
“Or I get the last laugh,” Bethany said. “I’m laughing, right? Am I, Wade, am I laughing?” She poked my shoulder.
Rachel looked back at her. “You didn’t,” she said. “Bethany, tell me you didn’t.”
“I think I did, I think I did. I think I took two tabs.”
“When?” Rachel said.
I turned and looked at Bethany, who doubled over, laughing, her hair obscuring her face.
“Fucking Carmen,” Rachel said. “She knows you’re pregnant. She knows you’re on those pills.”
I began to face forward again when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what might have been the entire population of the township making its way toward us on the beach, led by a group of shirtless, barefoot young men, their running form so perfect that, under any other circumstances, I would have admired it. “Jesus,” I said. “Look.”
“Look, look, look,” Bethany said, shaking her head from side to side. “They’re giving us a royal send-off.”
“Goddamn it,” Rachel said, stamping the clutch and shifting into low, flooring the gas to no effect. “Please,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Bethany looked out her window. “What’s that? Something’s coming. It looks like a giant spider doing somersaults.” She banged her forehead against the window. “Whoops,” she said. “That hurt.” She laughed. “Better get out of the way, Raitchie, or that thing will run right over us.”
“I’m trying,” Rachel said.
The front-runners, their torsos glistening in the late-afternoon sunlight, were a couple of hundred yards away.
“It’s going to run us right over,” Bethany said. “I think it’s a train or something, Rachel, or maybe a bus, a big black bus.”
Suddenly, she was out of the car and in front of us, half running, half crawling up the road.
“Go get her,” Rachel said. I struggled to open the door, wondering how Bethany had managed to open hers so quickly with the car at such an angle.
Bethany had lost both her flip-flops. By the time I got to her, there was blood on her feet and hands and on her face. She patted her halter top and denim shorts as if ants were crawling all over her. “Get off the road, Rachel!” she screamed, looking back. When she saw me, she opened her mouth wide but no sound came out.
“Bethany, come back to the car,” I said. She kept crawling but I caught her, grabbing her upper arms.
“Let go, let go,” she said, kicking me with her bare feet. I put one arm around her back, the other under her thighs and picked her up as she struck me in the face with her fists. “Don’t leave my flip-flops. I love my flip-flops. They’re so blue. See how blue they are?”
I started back toward the car. The young men, streaming sweat, wide-eyed and smiling, had made it to the bottom of the road. They stopped there, ten or so of them, and looked up at me and Bethany, then back at the others who were hurrying toward them, gesticulating, shouting.
The woman who had argued with Carmen was leading the second group. I looked at Rachel, who was in tears, still trying to get the car to move. A kind of calm came over me—a feeling of resignation or indifference—even as Bethany continued to struggle in my arms.
Rachel got out of the car and stood by the driver’s door, looking down at the group of young men. Bethany stopped struggling and rested her head against my chest. “Wade’s heart sounds like a gun,” she said. “Bam, bam, bam.”
The woman in the orange head scarf reached the bottom of the hill, put her hands on her hips, looked up at us and shook her head in seeming disbelief.
“Is the young woman hurt?” she called.
“Just cuts on her hands and feet,” Bethany said meekly, but then she began to laugh uncontrollably. “There’s a gun going off in there,” she said, tapping my chest.
“There’s no gun,” I called. “She’s upset.”
“I know what she is,” the woman said. “Among other things, she is pregnant. I saw it in her face. Put her in the car and get into the back seat with her.” She pointed at Rachel. “You, get back behind the wheel. These boys will push you up the hill. You are all fools. All fools. You don’t know how big a bunch of fools you are.”
We did as she said. I sat in the back, holding Bethany. Rachel got behind the wheel and eased the car into gear.
“Push them, push them,” the woman shouted.
Soon, surrounded on the back and the sides by the young men, all of whom were laughing, the car began to move and Rachel managed to get it started. “Thank God,” she said.
We pulled away from the young men. At the top of the hill, Rachel blew the horn in appreciation but didn’t slow down or stop. We drove away while some of our rescuers waved and others raised their fists in triumph.
“She’s not going home to Mom and Dad like this,” Rachel said.
“She needs to see a doctor anyway,” I said. “Her hands and feet are cut up pretty bad from the stones and thorns on the hill. I hope there’s no blood coming from anywhere else. Those tabs of acid—will they hurt the baby?”
“I don’t know. Mixed with her pills, they might. I should have warned Carmen not to give her anything.”
“How long will the acid last?”
“Twelve hours, maybe more if she really did take two. She’s so quiet now. I’ve seen her on acid before. This is not how she usually acts.”
“Because of the other pills?”
“Maybe. I don’t even know what kind of drugs they are. She took one before we left and Mom gave her one to take later. I have a feeling that she took that, too. I hope she hasn’t overdosed. I don’t like how quiet she is.”
“So we bring her to the hospital—and then what?”
“Well, she’s not going home while she’s still stoned on acid, even if the hospital says it’s okay. When we get to Cape Town, I’ll call Mom and Dad and tell them that she wants to spend the night with us. They’ll buy it. Even if they don’t, they’ll pretend to.”
By the time we got to Groote Schuur, Bethany seemed to be unconscious, but she was breathing evenly. I carried her into emergency as blood dripped from her hands and feet. The admissions nurse saw us and grabbed her phone. We were halfway to her desk when medical staff came running at us from all directions.
We waited for ten hours in the emergency waiting room, much of which I spent more or less asleep while Rachel read Het Achterhuis and wrote in her diary at such a frenzied pace that people stared at her as they went by. Finally, a nurse took us to Bethany’s doctor, who looked not much older than me.
“What happened?” he said. As we told him what we knew, he stared at us, his hands clasped behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “She’s on lithium, antipsychotics and tranquilizers, and you give her LSD, a psychosis-inducing drug?” he said. “She’s lucky to be alive, given how much LSD she took. Not two tabs. More like ten.”
“We didn’t give her anything,” Rachel said. “Someone else did. It doesn’t matter who.”
“You drove the car. There are ways of getting an invalid out of the house that don’t involve drug pushers and tours of black townships.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. The doctor nodded and glared at me as if I was the person responsible.
“God knows why, but she hasn’t had a miscarriage,” he said. “She’s been inoculated for tetanus and typhus because of the lacerations on her hands and feet. She’s come down from the LSD. She’s telling us what she told us before and then retracted. Making accusations. I don’t believe her, but—”
“You still think she believes what she’s saying?”
“I think she’s still psychotic.”
“Why don’t you believe her?”
He shook his head. “Too complicated to go into. I didn’t want to discharge her before, but I was overruled. Not this time. My older colleagues agree with me that she’s likely suicidal, so she’s staying here unless someone reliable comes forward into whose care we can discharge her. That clearly isn’t you two. And given her accusations, it isn’t her parents. It isn’t her fiancé and his parents, either, because they’re too close to the van Houts.”
He pointed at Rachel. “She’s been asking to see you. Just you. Are you up to it? You look exhausted. More so than him.” He nodded at me.
“I’m fine,” Rachel said. “I do want to see her. But I have to phone my parents and her fiancé and tell them something.” He nodded.
Rachel phoned her parents and Clive and told them that Bethany had readmitted herself and that the doctors recommended that she have no visitors until she said she was ready for them. When she got off the phone, she told me that Clive had asked no questions. “In fact, he didn’t say much more than hello and goodbye. And my parents—Dad said, ‘Very well,’ and passed the phone to Mom. And Mom said, ‘I’m sure the doctors know best.’ ”
“Does anything get them upset?”
“For now, let’s concentrate on Bethany. I’ll come get you after I see her. I’ll tell the doctor she said it was okay.”
Rachel took me to her about an hour later—it was about seven in the morning. Bethany lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed. Her hands were bandaged and lay limply on the blankets. When she opened her eyes and saw me, she shrugged. “Welcome to my second home.”
She sat up in bed with the help of a nurse. I told her I was sorry that the day had turned out the way it had. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, glancing at Rachel. “I’m the one who took the acid. I pulled the two of you into all of this. I spilled the beans on Dad and let a lot of other people clean them up. And then I changed my mind and expected everyone to understand. Well, now I’m changing it back, for good. Dad did what I said he did, and Mom not only knew all along, she helped him, shielded him, made excuses for him. She was, she is, his one-woman alibi. Anyway, I want out of their house and out of my engagement. If I marry Clive, I will die. If I don’t marry him, he won’t die. He’ll be pretty broken up, but he won’t die. I want this baby. I want out of daughterhood. So I’ve asked Gloria and Max if I can live in their house when I’m released, and they’ve said yes.”
“You said before that they’d side with your mom and dad,” I said.
“They are siding with Mom and Dad. But the doctor spoke to Gloria and convinced her that, whatever the truth is, it’s better that I not be around our parents, at least for now. Once they take me in—well, I’m not leaving there until they kick me out. Maybe they won’t. It might not be so bad, having my baby in the Porn Palace of the Twelve Apostles.”
“How do you know all those other things you told Gloria about Dad?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t blame Gloria for telling you about that,” she said. “Remember, Clive and I have been corresponding since 1975. He told me things he overheard his parents say. You’d think that even Clive would have more sense than to repeat such things in a letter that Mom and Dad might intercept or find in my room, but, well, Clive was even more Clive-like back then. Peter drinks when he’s at home, when it’s just the three of them. Clive says he’s a closet alcoholic. When he drinks, he goes on about anything and everything. I don’t think Clive told anyone but me. In his letters, he tried to make out that it was funny that Dad told so many lies to get ahead. Peter said Dad was never really in the Dutch Resistance. And Dad got into trouble with some first-year student, a girl at the University of Cape Town. I never got the rights of it, but the university paid the student’s family to hush things up and made a deal with Dad that, if he left without a fuss, they would recommend him to another institution in another Commonwealth country. And that, my dears, is how we all came to move to Canada. Oh, and Clive said that Dad plagiarized parts of his master’s thesis. He stole them from a graduate student and bragged about it to Peter when they met up in Amsterdam one year.”
I looked at Rachel, whose expression was blank, eyes downcast.
“Do you still have any of Clive’s letters?” I said.
“Nooo,” Bethany said. “I destroyed them lest they fall into the wrong hands. My word is not good enough for you?”
I shrugged. I suspected that she was telling us half of what Clive had told her and that he had made up or misremembered half of that.
“Anyway, Doc says he’ll release me into Gloria’s care the day after tomorrow—he says he likes the sound of me living with a sister who has no vices. I didn’t touch that one. I am a mess, and it’s going to be a while before I’m not a mess. I hate being so helpless, so needy and dependent. So melodramatic. I hated having to say to Gloria that, without her help, I’d die.”
“You can’t keep forcing people to do things by threatening to kill yourself, explicitly or otherwise,” I said.
“I wish I was as virtuous as you think you are, Wade, or as strong as Rachel. Call it self-pity if you want, but I think I’ve been through a lot more than the two of you. So, here we are—I’m the one who’s in the nuthouse. Gloria and Carmen and Rachel—I don’t know about them. Maybe Dad did just pick on me. Easier to keep a lid on one daughter than on four? Lucky me. I don’t know what will become of them, Carmen especially. No one in South Africa is free. No one thinks it matters if you tell the truth, or even if you know the truth. The truth is whatever it suits you to pretend it is, whatever you can get away with pretending it is. I know I’m the pot calling the kettle black. And yet I plan to live here for my baby’s sake, because Max has money and I haven’t got a cent. Isn’t that heroic? Clive and Peter and Theresa won’t like me much. Mom and Dad, well, it’s not like I haven’t accused them in the past, to no effect. I’d disown them if I could, turn my back on them forever, but nothing less than a restraining order would stop them from keeping up appearances. Going forward, I’ll just have to make sure that I’m never alone with him. When we’re alone, I can’t say no to him. That’s a fact that almost no one understands, so I don’t expect you to.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “How could you stand to be in his company, even with other people around?”
“Don’t judge me, Wade,” Bethany said. “Clean Wade, from the pure white north. Unlike you, I don’t have a lot of options.”
“You need to rest, Bethany,” Rachel said. “We all do. You might change your mind about some things when you’re feeling better.”
“I want to confront them. Mom and Dad. I want to confront them.”
It was mid-evening and Rachel had just finished writing in her diary. She’d sat sideways on the sofa for two hours, writing and then crossing out what she wrote until her pen tore the paper to pieces. She dropped her notebook onto the floor. “All these accusations and I’ve never looked Dad in the eye and asked him if they were true. Or Mom. None of us have. Bethany spoke to them on the phone. And retracted on the phone. I’ll write to them, get it all down on paper, and then we’ll make a date to go see them. I’ll tell them about the beach and what Bethany told us when she was in hospital. I have to do this or I’ll always wish I had. I’ll write to them and dare them to meet me face to face. If I tried to say everything in person, they’d interrupt me and I’d get nothing said. Mom will tell Dad not to agree to it, but he will—I know he will. He won’t want it to look like he backed down from me.”
I was greatly taken with the idea of confronting the van Houts at last, of putting aside all delicacy and discretion and having it out with them.
A few days later, we met them in the house on Liesbeek Road. We knocked but there was no answer, so we let ourselves in. It was four in the afternoon. Hans and Myra were in the front room, standing side by side, dressed as if they were about to leave for some special occasion, Hans in a new-looking grey suit, white shirt and blue tie, his black shoes gleaming, Myra in a long, green, belted dress and high heels, her short, thick hair arranged just so.
“Right, then,” Hans said, clapping his hands, then putting them in the pockets of his slacks. He looked at Rachel. “So. So you have something to say to me?”
“I said everything I had to say in the letter,” Rachel said. “You should have something to say to me.”
“This is absurd, Rachel,” Myra said. “Taking LSD while she’s pregnant—no wonder Bethany is making more empty accusations. She’ll marry Clive and have her baby, and the three of them, with everyone’s help, will do the best they can.” She tilted her head and smiled as if to say she understood Rachel’s misplaced loyalty to her older sister and even admired her for it, but there were limits.
“She is very ill,” Hans said.
“All of your daughters are ill,” Rachel said. “Look at Gloria. Married four times by the age of twenty-five. Carmen is a heroin addict. Bethany is anorexic, depressed and suicidal. I’m writing and reading myself to death.”
“But, Rachel,” Myra said, “those are all different things. We can’t be to blame for all of them.”
“Why not? What does it matter that they’re different? What does that have to do with anything? Just because Dad might have done the same things to all of us doesn’t mean we should all react the same way.”
“I did nothing to you,” Hans said, pointing at her. “You were a virgin until you met this fellow. You told your mother. Bethany says it started when she was a toddler. Do you think I have nothing between my legs?” He grabbed his crotch with one hand.
“You—” I started, but he shouted at me. “You have no say in this. You are not part of this family.”
“There are many other things you could have done to us,” Rachel said, “things that leave no mark of the physical kind.”
“Might have done,” Hans said. “Could have done. Ridiculous. I have no idea what sort of filth you mean. Anyone might have done anything. As for Gloria, Carmen and Bethany, when it comes to virginity, we know how they lost theirs, because, like you, they told their mother about it.”
Myra nodded.
“You’re acting like a selfish and ungrateful daughter,” Hans said.
Rachel took two steps toward her father. “The Resistance,” she said. “You were never in the Resistance. You were never a war hero. The university got rid of you to save its reputation. You molested that student and used portions of student papers in your thesis. You got into so much trouble that, at the age of forty-three, you had to uproot us all and take us to another country. What should I be grateful for?”
“What proof do you have of any of this?”
“Clive told her things that Peter said—”
“Third-hand gossip. I will not be held responsible for what I am accused of by mentally unstable young women and the limp-wristed son of a weekend drunkard like Peter DeVries.”
“Have you lied for so long, both of you, that you don’t know how to tell the truth about anything? Mom, why did you always tell us not to mention the Resistance when Dad is around because it would only bring back unbearable memories of the girls our age that he tried to save but couldn’t, girls like me and Gloria and Carmen and Bethany that he risked his life for, girls like Anne Frank—”
“Anne Frank?” Hans said, forcing a laugh. “She never existed. That diary that you’re obsessed with is a forgery. Propaganda. The Jews, the goddamn Jews, made her up so that people would feel as sorry for them as they feel for themselves, the gentle, peace-loving, money-grubbing Jews. Look at him, your boyfriend, look at him and tell him that I laid a hand on you. LOOK AT HIM AND TELL HIM WHAT I DID TO YOU, TO YOU.”
Tears streamed down Rachel’s cheeks but she didn’t look at me. She stared at her father.
“There, you see? You can’t tell him because there’s nothing to tell. I never touched my daughters, but what if I had? You are my daughters. I can do anything I want with you.”
I lunged for him but Rachel grabbed my arm. “I have to do this,” she said. “He wants to provoke you. Then it will seem like you were in the wrong.”
I shook free of her but stayed put.
“Mom,” Rachel said. “Please tell the truth. Please. Is any of what Bethany is saying true?”
“We speak with one voice,” Myra said, taking Hans by the hand.
“I could easily hide behind an excuse,” Hans said. “I could say, ‘What was I supposed to do? Four young women parading naked around the house.’ I suppose your boyfriend thinks he wouldn’t be tempted. I’ve seen the way he looks at Gloria. He’d be tempted. Tits and ass everywhere I looked. But I didn’t lay a hand on a single one of you. No one gives you credit for crimes you might have done but didn’t do.” He pointed at me. “You can’t stand the idea that anyone had her but you. That’s what this is all about.”
“Or maybe,” I said, “you can’t stand the idea that anyone had your daughters but you?”
“Your proof?” he said. When I didn’t answer, he laughed. “Now look,” Hans said, turning to Rachel. “I’ve answered all your questions. We’ll forget this ever happened. So. Where are we going for dinner?”
“Dinner?” Rachel said. “Where are we going for dinner?”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“You have planted lies in her head,” Hans said, pointing at me. “She believes everything you say. She thinks you’re the only man on the planet with a penis. She wouldn’t believe Bethany’s lies if not for you, or put any store by what Peter says when he’s drunk, or should I say, what Clive claims Peter says when he’s drunk. You’ve poisoned her mind against us. If what Bethany says is true, why haven’t Gloria or Carmen accused me of something?”
“Maybe they will,” I said.
“Bethany will change her mind again,” Hans said.
Myra nodded. “Time will prove us right. Bethany will come back to us and so will you. Soon, I’m sure. You both value family above all else. Clive, the poor dear, will take her back again. Her baby won’t be fatherless or grow up without grandparents.”
“I could have given up and died like so many others did during the war,” Hans said to Rachel. “You owe your life to me. I ask again, who is Anne Frank to you? Have you ever met anyone who met Anne Frank? You spend your time writing in a language no one else can read, making up imaginary characters like her. You prefer that to the truth. Death is nothing when it happens in a book. Wait until you meet it face to face.”
He pointed again at me. “I betrayed Anne Frank, boy. I phoned the Gestapo. I got sixty guilders for those Jews, seven and a half for each one. I did it. Do you believe me?”
“No, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a word you say.”
“Look at her. She believes me.”
Rachel fled the house, sobbing. I ran after her, through the front door, which she had left open. She was already in the car. I just had time enough to climb in before she floored it in reverse, the rear tires spinning on the gravel, the Citroën barely missing the van Houts’ front steps and the rusting Ford Cortina, which she sprayed with stones.
“Rachel, slow down,” I said as she dodged the giant yellow tree fern, working the wheel as if she thought her father might come running after her at any second. She pulled out of the driveway and onto Liesbeek Road. “He was only baiting you about Anne Frank. Surely you know that.”
“I guess that visit wasn’t such a good idea,” she said, her tone eerily flat.
“Slow down,” I said.
She did, and also took a deep breath as if to slow her body down. “If he had even one family member who was still alive,” she said. “But of course, he doesn’t, except for some old aunts and an uncle who have always lived in Leiden and have no idea what he did in Amsterdam during the war.”
“You don’t need someone else to tell you that your father is an ineffectual accounting professor—assistant professor—who has spent his adult life trying to build himself up in the eyes of the world. It was mean and petty of him to pick on Anne Frank, but I don’t think he’s ever had the nerve to actually do anything except tattle to the dean about his colleagues.”
“Maybe he tattled on the Franks.”
“Please, please don’t get caught up in your father’s nonsense.”
“What if it’s not nonsense?” she whispered as if she was alone in the car. She was no longer crying but looked indescribably sad.
When we got home, she immediately immersed herself in her diary, scribbling at a frantic pace. A couple of hours later, she set it aside at last and, sitting at the kitchen table with me while I nursed a beer, began to speak as if she was picking up from where she left off writing.
“The informer had to be someone who had reason to suspect that Jews were being harboured at Prinsengracht 263.”
“Rachel, it’s ridiculous to think that your father—”
“Why? Why is it ridiculous? Because he’s a mere man who has lived in a place as far removed from Amsterdam as Newfoundland? A couple of months ago, he told us at dinner that he collaborated with the Nazis. He took it all back, but why would he say it in the first place?”
“I’ve already told you what I think. He only confesses to things that he didn’t do.”
“The war didn’t happen in the movies or on TV. It happened in places just as ordinary as St. John’s to people just as ordinary as your family. You’ve never been to Amsterdam.”
“I think it’s time we went back to what I call home,” I said.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “It is.”
“Thank God. I thought you’d want to stay for Bethany.”
“No. I’ve had enough. We should go home through Amsterdam and visit the Secret Annex.”
“Jesus Christ. Why? Do you think you can find out if your father betrayed Anne Frank by going there? Do all the secrets of the van Houts, if there even are any, lead back to Anne Frank?”
“I’ve never been there. I want to go there at least once.”
“All right, then. Fine. I don’t care what route we take or what we do along the way as long as we go home.”
A week later, unable to sleep, I got up and was reading when the phone rang on the table beside my chair. I answered it as quickly as I could, hoping to keep it from waking Rachel, who, after hours spent writing in her diary, had finally gone to bed.
It was Max. His voice quavering, he said, “Wade, I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”
By mid-morning, that news was all over Cape Town, in the papers and on the radio and on TV. A middle-aged couple who lived in the City Bowl neighbourhood had been murdered in their home by someone who was still at large. The killer, or killers, let themselves into the unlocked house on Liesbeek Road—their maid was asleep in the shed at the back of their garden—crept upstairs, where Myra and Hans van Hout were sleeping, and shot each of them once in the head. It did not appear to have been a botched robbery, since nothing had been stolen or disturbed.
I was still talking to Max, fighting to control my own voice, when Rachel came out of the bedroom in her nightshirt and grabbed the phone from me.
“Max, what’s happened?” she said. A few seconds later, she dropped the receiver, which I caught before it hit the floor. She covered her face with her hands. I hung up the phone and led her to the sofa, where we sat side by side.
“It can’t be true,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands, her head bowed. Tears seeped between her fingers and dripped onto the floor. “It can’t be true, it can’t. Mom was supposed to be spending the weekend at the Star of the Sea Convent School reunion with Theresa DeVries.”
“Theresa went by the house late in the afternoon to pick her up. But your mother said that Hans’s ulcers had been acting up badly and it looked as if he might have to go to hospital. She said she felt she couldn’t leave him alone. So Theresa went to the reunion by herself.”
I tried to take Rachel in my arms but she was rigid. She dropped her hands. Lips quivering, she said, “I knew it was possible, after that argument, that I would never see them again. I almost hoped I wouldn’t. But I would never wish for something like this—never…” Her voice trailed off. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “My God. A few days ago we argued and now they’re gone? What’s happening? In spite of everything he said, I thought that, someday, he might own up to the truth, whatever it was. I thought she might. I thought that, sooner or later, there’d be some kind of truce. I know it makes no sense, but it almost feels like they committed suicide.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I stammered.
“How is Bethany?” Rachel said. “And Gloria? What about Carmen? Does she know?”
“Carmen knows. Max said he spoke to Fritz. Bethany…Max said she’s in pretty rough shape. They want to take her to hospital to be assessed, but she refuses to go. Gloria…I don’t know. He didn’t mention her.”
Max had told me that Nora and the van Houts’ neighbours hadn’t heard any shots. Nora was woken by the sound of the front door banging shut. She heard a car drive off, tires spinning in the gravel beside the tree fern—just as those of the Citroën had done when we drove away from the house the last time. Terrified, Nora stayed in her shed for half an hour. Afraid to go into the house by herself, she eventually went to one of the next-door neighbours and told them what she’d heard. The husband went to check, saw that the front door was open and called the police, who, unsure if an intruder was still inside, entered with guns drawn. After finding Myra and Hans, they went to the neighbour’s house and interviewed Nora, who gave them the only family phone number she knew, Gloria’s. The police used a reverse directory to find Gloria’s address and drove to the house to tell them what had happened. And to interview both of them.
“They want to interview all the children and their spouses,” Max had said. “We gave them your number and address. They said it’s just standard procedure. They said to tell you to sit tight. They’ll be there as soon as they can. “I’ve also called Peter and Theresa and Clive. The police are going to speak to them as well.” I repeated this to Rachel.
“One thing before the police get here,” Rachel said to me, wiping her eyes, which were puffy and swollen. “If they can’t find out who did it, they will put the blame on Nora or her husband or God knows who, as long as they’re not white.”
The two inspectors arrived at our door just after eight that morning. Rachel and I had stayed up all night, me watching Rachel most of the time as she stood in silence at the window that overlooked Table Mountain as if she was staring at her own reflection. Only at sunrise did she move away from the window to sit down in an armchair, her eyes no longer leaking tears.
The inspectors were in their forties, but both were very fit, lightly muscled, blond, brush-cut and deeply tanned. They wore black suits and crisp white shirts. Detective Nap did all the talking while the other, whose name neither of them offered, scrutinized us and took notes. One of the first things Detective Nap said, after a perfunctory offer of his condolences, was, “So the two of you aren’t married? You’re living common-law, is that right?” It was an expression that Rachel and I hated, and she looked like she was about to say so, so I blurted out, “Yes,” and Nap nodded.
We sat on the sofa while he and the other detective sat in the two armchairs opposite us. Nap did not tell us what Gloria and Max had told him, but it soon became clear that they had told him quite a lot. “Did you bear any animosity toward your parents?” he asked Rachel. As if she had long felt the urge to tell her story to someone in authority, Rachel spoke without interruption for ten minutes as Nap, from time to time, shook his head in wonderment and distaste. Finally, he interrupted her. “And you are planning to leave soon, is that right? Go back to Canada with your boyfriend here?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“And the maid, Nora, she said the two of you argued with the van Houts for quite some time a few days ago, early in the evening. She could hear you from the shed. You must have been shouting.”
“All of us except for my mother were shouting,” Rachel said. As she recounted the argument for him, the other inspector stopped taking notes. Nap shook his head and sighed from time to time. At last, he interrupted her again.
“Terrible, terrible things. Or they would be if they were true,” he said.
“They could be true,” Rachel said.
“Now that your parents are deceased, there’s no reason for you and your sister Bethany to publicize your accusations, is there? Your sister Gloria, she seems to have thought quite highly of Professor van Hout and your mother. A war hero. He made it through all that, saving others’ lives as well, only to be murdered in his sleep by some animal.” He shook his head. “Your other sister, Carmen…well, she was quite distraught one minute, and the next she was laughing. I expect you know why. High as a kite on something. You don’t seem upset at all.”
“I’m very upset,” Rachel said. “I just don’t like to show it.” Nap nodded, approvingly it seemed.
“Anyway, Gloria and her husband say they were home all day yesterday, and all night, too, with Bethany, who was in bed for most of the time. Carmen and her husband, Fritz, also say they were at home, with friends. They gave us their names. And the DeVrieses—the wife was at the reunion in Kalk Bay, and the father and son each vouch for the whereabouts of the other. What about you two?”
“Except for the afternoon, when I went to yoga class and Wade went out running, we were here all the time,” Rachel said. I nodded.
“We rarely see this kind of crime in the City Bowl,” Nap said, “but when we do, we don’t always find the guilty parties.”
“Are they ever white?” Rachel said.
Nap frowned at her. “Don’t make any trouble for your dead parents,” he said. “Common human decency and all that. We’ve seen a few killings of this kind elsewhere in Cape Town. Money is often involved. Drug money, sometimes. The country is rampant with drugs. I’m not saying your parents had anything to do with drugs. Drug money is used for a lot of things. Loan sharking, for instance. Your poor father may have got in over his head with some very bad people. It happens. The most decent people can be drawn into situations when they’re desperate. A pair of killings like this, they send a message. This is what happens if you don’t pay up. We’ll catch them or we won’t, but I hope you won’t run around telling tales about your father. You should let him and your mother rest in peace. No need to sully their good names. The coloureds bring the drugs in, you see. Anything for a few rand. Often, they’re paid in drugs. It’s all too much for us to keep up with. The drugs come in from the north, from Rhodesia and South West Africa, from the jungle and the Bantu. There might as well be no borders. It would be one thing if the drugs stayed in the townships, but they don’t and here we are.”
“You’re very dogged,” Rachel said. The other inspector laughed.
“En Jy’s ’n saucy ’goed koop’meisie,” Nap said and the other inspector laughed again. They left abruptly, without saying another word to either of us.
“What did he say to you at the end?” I said.
“I think he said I was a saucy slut.”
Neither Gloria nor Carmen called Rachel, and she did not call them. The next day, on the radio, on the SABC television station, in the Argus and the Times, it was reported that the police were stymied. They hadn’t found a murder weapon; they had no suspects. Everyone on Liesbeek Road and nearby streets had been interviewed. No one had seen anything suspicious on the night of the murders.
“It’s only been a day,” I said.
“In South Africa,” Rachel said, “swift justice is the only kind.”
“Are you still worried about Nora?”
“Maybe the police are right,” Rachel said. “Maybe Dad borrowed money from someone he shouldn’t have and couldn’t pay it back.”
“Wouldn’t he have borrowed from Max if he had to?”
“Maybe. But that would have been a lot of pride for him to swallow.”
SABC reported a day later that newly obtained eyewitness accounts suggested that an as yet unidentified “coloured or black man” had been seen in the neighbourhood on the night of the murders.
“Surprise, surprise,” Rachel said.
We gathered up our nerve and drove past the house on Liesbeek Road. It was surrounded by police tape that read “polisie halte.” The doors and windows were sealed with yellow plastic. Two police cruisers were parked outside.
That night, after spending hours with her diary, Rachel lay sleeping on her side, faced away from me, her knees drawn up to her chest, her fists clenched on the pillow. She shivered as if she was freezing, shook with jolt after jolt, but she remained asleep, flinching, twitching, wincing, faint whimpering sounds coming from her throat.
We went to see Bethany the next morning. Max and Gloria left almost as soon as we arrived. “We’re off to Port Elizabeth for a couple of days,” Gloria said, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. “You’re staying here with her until we get back. Don’t even think of saying no.”
They hurried out the door without so much as a mention of Hans and Myra just as Bethany came downstairs to the front hall. She seemed self-possessed and untroubled. Noticing that I seemed surprised, she looked at me and said, “I have no tears left for them, Wade. Maybe I’ll have a delayed reaction, but I don’t think so. Have you told your parents?”
“I’ll wait till I get home.”
“And what about you, Rachel? You’re acting kind of weird.”
“Well, the last time I saw Dad, he told me he was the one who tipped off the Gestapo about Anne Frank and the others.”
“Did he also tell you that he killed JFK?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Obviously not,” Bethany said, “judging by the amount of ink on the side of your hand.”
“I don’t care who knows how much I’ve been writing. We’re your minders for the next two days, remember?”
“Don’t worry, I’m almost self-maintaining. Wade, I appoint you Keeper of the Happy Pills. It’s not that I might take the whole bottle. I might just forget to take them. One every eight hours, with lots of water, please.” She gave me an unopened bottle and a prescription for refills—the latter, she said, in case I lost the bottle. “Are we still on the outs with Carmen and Fritz?” she asked.
“I haven’t spoken to them,” Rachel said. “I barely had a chance to say hello to Gloria and Max before they lit out. I’ve kind of been waiting for everyone to call or drop by or something. We need to get together to make some decisions.”
“The police told Gloria it will be a little while before they give us Mom and Dad,” Bethany said. “That’s how Gloria put it.”
“Well, I’m not driving that cliff road out to Fritz’s place and, after two days here, I’ll be craving our apartment, no offence, so I think we should all meet there when Gloria and Max get back.”
And that’s what happened a few days later, after dinner. Gloria and Max and Bethany arrived first and everyone hugged awkwardly. When Carmen and Fritz arrived, Rachel warned them as they came in the door: “If one of you slips Bethany something—”
“Don’t worry, baby sister,” Fritz said. “I’ve been clean and sober and empty-handed for six days now. In case the cops come back to visit. Six very long days.” Carmen, sullen, dark rings beneath her eyes, didn’t say a word or look at either of us. She was clearly having a hard time dealing with being straight.
“Nice place,” Max said, looking about the room. “A bit small for seven of us, but nice.”
“It’s bigger than the Secret Annex, where eight people hid out for two years,” Rachel said.
“Mandiba is six foot two and he sleeps in a cell six feet long and four feet wide,” Fritz said. “Imagine that, Rachel. And he’s been there a lot longer than two years.”
“If I’d known that we’d be playing Name the Martyr with the Least Leg Room, I’d have done my homework,” Bethany said.
“I expect there’s not much meat on Mandela,” Max said. “But then again, it’s what he deserves.” Fritz laughed scornfully.
“Anne Frank was not a martyr,” Rachel said.
“All of this squabbling,” I said. “When does it stop? Does it ever stop?”
Fritz snickered. Rachel looked chastened but said nothing.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Wade,” Bethany said. “It’s just that our parents have almost never been murdered before. How would you recommend that we comport ourselves?”
Rachel put her hand on my arm before I could respond.
“Has anyone heard from the DeVrieses?” Bethany said.
“I have,” Gloria said. “I don’t think they’re long for Cape Town. Peter told me on the phone that they may move to Stellenbosch or Pretoria. He thinks he can get a job in either place. He said the three of them need a new start.”
“He means a place they’re unlikely to run into me,” Bethany said.
“I’m sure Clive needs a new start,” I said. “Engaged, dumped, re-engaged, re-dumped, a soon to be father who will never be a dad.”
“Lay off Bethany,” Rachel said.
“No, no, that’s all right, Rachel,” Bethany said. “It was kind of fun to hear Clive’s resumé recited by someone who grew up in Blissville, Newfoundland.”
“I wonder how Nora is doing,” Rachel said after a short silence.
“I can tell you exactly how she’s doing,” Fritz said. “She’s unemployed and living in Langa. No one will hire her. No one white, anyway. Not the kind of conversation piece you want around the house.”
“Poor Nora,” Rachel said. “Maybe we should give her some money.”
“Severance pay,” Fritz said.
“We’ll see what we can do,” Gloria said. “I’m not sure how to contact her, but we’ll try.” She wiped a tear away. “I can’t believe Mom and Dad are gone. And to go like that.”
“Fast. Painless,” Fritz said.
“You know what she means, Fritz,” Max said.
Fritz shrugged. “They’ll pin it on some coloured, but they’ll never catch who did it. They were very good, whoever they were.”
“And you know about things like that, Fritz?” Rachel said.
“Fritz Boonzaire,” Bethany said, “expert on the underworld.”
“You’d be surprised, baby sister,” Fritz said as if Bethany hadn’t spoken. “I know what I know.”
“So, Fritz, why would someone ‘very good’ kill Hans and Myra van Hout?” Max said.
“Money. What else? They did it for money. I know the type. Ex-cops, retired military. Which doesn’t narrow it down much in South Africa. What I wonder is, who were they working for? One thing I know: whoever did it was white. A black man, or black men, in that neighbourhood at night—well, they wouldn’t have been able to get into or out of that neighbourhood. Even the servants have to be in their sheds by nine o’clock.”
“What did you do in the national service, Fritz?” Rachel said.
“Enough,” Gloria said. “It’s our parents we’re talking about. Mom and Dad. Remember them?” She glared at Bethany. “Some of us are very upset.”
“They were murdered, Gloria. Shot in their bed. Has it occurred to you that they might have died that way because he messed with the wrong guy’s daughter? Or do you think someone shot them by mistake?”
“That really is enough, everyone,” Max said. “We’ve got things that need to be attended to. You can scratch each other’s eyes out afterward, for all I care.”
Gloria wiped her nose with a Kleenex, then said, “The police and the coroner have been in touch with me because I’m the oldest. The remains have been released, though they’re still in the morgue. Max and I were thinking cremation might be a good idea. We thought maybe we could scatter their ashes at the Cape of Good Hope. They used to like going there. We wouldn’t go out in a boat or anything. We would just scatter their ashes from shore.” This was met with silence, but Gloria nodded as if everyone had given their assent. She also told us she had written a joint obituary that she was going to place in the newspapers.
“Have you told your family, Wade?” Gloria asked.
“No,” I said.
“I thought we should run the obit in the paper in St. John’s.”
“I’ll write to them by first-class mail, then,” I said. “I might lose it on the phone. I haven’t heard their voices in months.”
“They’re very sweet,” Rachel said. “Very normal. They won’t know what to make of this.”
“We don’t know what to make of it,” Bethany said.
“Maybe some neo-Nazi took them out,” Fritz said, looking from face to face.
“There are still Nazis out there,” Max said. “Lots of them. Plenty right here in South Africa. Maybe Fritz is right. Hans was a member of the Resistance. Some Nazi nutcase might have done this.”
Rachel said, “It might be just as likely that a Nazi hunter did it, given some other things Dad claimed to have done.”
“It’s absurd to even think about,” I said.
“Will the rest of you come with us to the Cape of Good Hope to scatter Mom’s and Dad’s ashes or not?” Gloria said.
“Will the DeVrieses be there?” Bethany said.
“Not if you are,” Gloria said.
“I’ll go if it’s just us,” Bethany said.
“Mom and Dad didn’t have many friends,” Rachel said. “There’s no reason it can’t be just us.”
“We’re in,” Fritz said, glancing at Carmen, who was hanging her head as if she had nodded off. Gloria looked at Rachel, who looked at me. I nodded.
“Right, then,” Gloria said, pushing back her chair and standing up. “The Cape of Good Hope.”