I wondered if the share of the money Gloria had given Fritz to arrange the murder was on his person or in his luggage. I couldn’t imagine him leaving it in his house out on the Cape Flats while he was in Amsterdam, because, the Cape Flats being what they were, he couldn’t even be reasonably sure that his house would still be standing when he got back. But Fritz seemed relaxed, gazing about in his black beret, sunglasses, tie-dyed shirt, bell-bottoms and sandals. He all but whistled as the security agents rummaged through his khaki shoulder bag, the one plastered all over with peace symbols and decals bearing images of clenched black fists. If some other security agents went through his checked baggage with as much zeal as these were going through his carry-on bag, they would surely find something incriminating—even trace amounts of drugs. If Fritz was detained or taken into custody, would Gloria be next, and if so, what might lie in store for Rachel and me?
But we boarded the plane without incident. Max and Gloria sat in first class, dressed in their SAA uniforms, with Bethany, Rachel and I seated three abreast in coach, Fritz and Carmen several rows behind us.
As we taxied down the runway, I remembered Rachel telling me how she had felt during the Soweto riots in ’76 when she waited for her plane to lift off from the airport in Johannesburg. It seemed entirely possible to me that our plane would be stopped and boarded by police come to arrest Gloria and Fritz, and to detain the rest of us for questioning or worse.
After takeoff, I kept waiting for the pilot to say that we were returning to the airport, kept waiting for the plane to bank in a series of turns that would point us back the way we came. Even when I felt certain that South Africa no longer lay beneath us, it occurred to me that all of Africa and the Middle East lay between us and the relative safety of Holland—relative because there was nowhere in the world, now, that we could go and be absolutely certain that we were out of reach of the South African police, or Interpol or any other number of agencies, or the man Fritz had hired.
“Hey,” Bethany said from her window seat, “Remember the Edinburgh Castle?”
Rachel nodded and smiled.
“I remember looking at all the other kids who got on board in Cape Town and wondering how many of them were leaving home for good like us,” Bethany said.
“I bet that almost none of them were,” Rachel said. “I bet that most of them came back and grew up in South Africa. We must have looked out of place in first class, all six of us, I mean.”
“Maybe that’s why Mom and Dad aren’t in any of the photographs from the boat.”
“Maybe,” Rachel said. “Whenever I’ve left South Africa, it’s been with them. It seems strange, leaving without them. I wonder if I’ll ever come back.”
“Of course you will,” Bethany said. “You’ll come back to visit us.”
“I suppose,” Rachel said. “But don’t you plan to get out of there as soon as you get the chance?”
“I can’t think that far ahead. I can’t imagine having choices.”
Later, Bethany moved to the empty row behind us, stretched across the three seats and went to sleep. As I was wondering, yet again, what she and Rachel would think if they knew what Gloria had told me, Bethany rose up and stuck her face between our headrests. “Raitch,” she said, “I read The Diary of Anne Frank last night. I’d forgotten most of it, no offence. God. For almost two years, she slept in a tiny room with that dentist, Fritz Pfeffer. Don’t you think he sounds kind of creepy? Maybe it’s just because his first name was Fritz. No wonder she didn’t like him very much. And he ate far more than his share of the food. I bet he was dashing in a chubby, disgusting sort of way.” Bethany laughed but Rachel didn’t. “Sorry. I shouldn’t make jokes about the sacred book. Prinsengracht 263. One of the most famous addresses in the world. I can’t believe Otto Frank died only a few years ago. He lived a long life even though he lost his wife and his two daughters. No one thinks about Margot. The forgotten sister. He survived Auschwitz, somehow, and then he lived for another thirty-five years. He lost everything, but he never gave up. He must have been very tough.”
“He was a great man,” Rachel said. “A great father. At least, I hope he was.”
“The four of us have been to Amsterdam so many times, but we’ve never been to Anne Frank’s house. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Not at all,” Rachel said. “We didn’t go because I went nuts about Anne Frank. That and the fact that Mom didn’t want Dad finding out that we’d been there. This might be my last chance to see the Achterhuis. I feel like I have to see it.”
“Well, I have to say that I don’t think you visiting her house is a good idea.”
“I don’t either,” I said.
“I feel like it is,” Rachel said to Bethany. “Just like you feel that you’re fat.”
“Ouch. Oh well, I’m penniless, pregnant and stark raving mad. What do I know? Who knows when I’ll get back to Amsterdam again? And, by the way, a pregnant woman gets fatter the more pregnant she gets. It’s not her imagination. I’ll finally be able to convince other people that I am getting fatter. I’m starting to think that Gloria is the most normal one of us all. Scary thought.”
Bethany went on like that as if she might keep it up all the way to Amsterdam, but she eventually went back to sleep.
As was the case on the flight to South Africa, the passenger announcements from the captain and flight crew were made in English, Dutch, German, French and Afrikaans. I was tired of being surrounded by people who seemed to be able to get by in any language. Half the time over the past few months, I hadn’t understood what anyone was saying. Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Swahili—I couldn’t speak any of them.
And there was one language whose very existence affronted me—Arellian. Written by no one but Rachel. Comprehensible to no one but her. Never spoken except, rarely, by her. I had never heard it. A non-existent language? I again wondered. Over the past few days, every time she’d said the word Arellian, I’d felt like screaming at her that there was no such thing.
What went through Rachel’s mind while she was “writing,” I couldn’t begin to guess, even after months of living with her. Nothing, perhaps. Surely the most obsessive, the most delusional thoughts, would be better than nothing. I wondered if she would ever get back to writing in the diary for only an hour a day, let alone rid herself of Anne Frank and the book. I knew what would become of her, and of us, if she got worse.
I was glad I had given in to Gloria’s plea that I keep her secret. What chance of a return to even near-normalcy would Rachel have if she knew what Gloria had done?
As if my unspoken question had triggered her, Rachel took a large notepad from her seat pocket and began to write at a furious pace, hunched over her serving tray, her hair hanging like a tent around the page.