Talion

by Beyers de Vos

  Freya walks back into her room and sits down on the bed. She places the Bible on the bedside table. Looks at the naked Greg next to her. He is erect. His penis is gazing at his navel. Sitting back against the wall, she lights a cigarette. She begins nudging his erection with her foot, pulling his foreskin back with her toes and then releasing it, willing him to wake up. She wants him to leave. When he does wake up, she doesn’t stop him when he gets on top of her, and while he is inside of her, she says, ‘I need a gun. Can you get me a gun?’

  He slows down as she speaks, and says, ‘I know a guy, yes.’

  When he finishes, she turns her back on him and says, ‘Please go,’ and when she hears the door close behind him, she is already living somewhere else, a gun in her hand, a smile on her face.

  Friday

  24

  The world is bright and full of laughter. Carnival music is playing in the background, and Mr October can hear the earnest yells of a friendly rugby game taking place on the field in front of him. There are stalls just like his all along the field, and in the distance a three-legged egg race is about to start. The amplified voice of Mrs Rossouw – who likes to wield the megaphone whenever she has the opportunity – can be heard refereeing.

  Bang.

  A balloon pops right behind him and a young girl, looking up at him, yells, ‘Sorry!’ with a wide smile, her body slightly bent and her feet planted firmly on the burst balloon. She runs away.

  Mr October views it all through a cold, blue glaze.

  It’s a charity day, and the school is hosting. There are games and music, a puppet show, races and a bake sale. Mr October is manning the coffee stall. And keeping an eye out for trouble. He is busy counting out the money in the small, grey tin. Some of it is missing. ‘Elbers,’ he says to a tall pupil walking past, ‘Elbers, come here. Have you seen Tshabalala?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, if you do, tell him I need to see him. He is supposed to be helping me. He was here earlier but now he’s vanished.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Elbers?’

  ‘Is Ms Hendricks going to be, you know, okay?’

  ‘I don’t know, Elbers.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Mr October moves back into the shade of the canopy above him. He has never got used to these sunny, dehydrated Pretoria winters where the temperatures climb dramatically during the day and midday is warm and unpleasant. The day smells of dry grass and pine. His skin itches. Ms Hendricks, that poor young girl. She didn’t live that far from his own house, and he’d given her a lift after work once or twice. He had told her she shouldn’t live by herself. Warned her. ‘Nonsense,’ she’d said, ‘it’s perfectly safe.’

  ‘No,’ he’d replied, ‘but it used to be.’ And she had shaken her head like young people do at old people.

  ‘Do you have hot chocolate?’ The balloon-killing girl is back.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have hot chocolate.’

  Mr October looks at her sternly until she runs off again. This morning there was a steady stream of customers, but now the ice-cream stand is doing steadier business.

  A young woman is walking towards him, from out of the sunlight, her hair blowing in the wind. She stops in front of the counter, sun-speckled eyes meeting his, and he has to stop himself from taking a step back.

  She has the saddest eyes he has ever seen.

  25

  ‘May I help you, young lady?’

  His eyes are large and assured, the colour of strong tea. His nose is a hard, tough line. Everything about his face is straight, open. It has no quirks or unexpected angles, no idiosyncrasies. Everything except his earlobes, which are oddly descended, forming little half-things, little tadpoles. Freya can’t believe she is face to face with him. Can’t believe she is looking into the eyes of a killer. Can he feel the hatred coming off her? Can he see her anger? She feels as though her whole body is an arrow; a glowing, red arrow, and all her energy is going into appearing calm and normal.

  ‘Young lady?’ he asks again, smiling. When he smiles, it looks as though his earlobes are trying to swim up his ears.

  ‘May I have a coffee, please?’ she says.

  He turns around to prepare her drink. Freya’s eyes bore into his back. It’s broad and slightly bent over the table. It would be so easy to slip a knife into his spine. She could disappear before anyone noticed, before he even got a scream out.

  Freya stands with her hands clenched in her pockets. There are people all around her, pupils and parents walking between the different stands of food and crafts, and younger children running between them, yelling with glee, playing games. There is music: weird fairground music, like you hear in old movies about the circus.

  ‘There you go. Ten rand, please.’

  Freya hands over the money as a customer walks up beside her.

  She remains standing there for another second, watching him as he works. For some reason she is disappointed. She thought something more would happen. She thought . . . what had she thought? That he would recognise her? That he would run? That they would come face to face and something would change? That there would be some great, dramatic shift?

  But nothing has shifted. He served her coffee. And she felt . . . nothing. Not really. If anything, she felt more certain. Here he was, definite and solid, standing in front of her completely unaware of her identity or her history (which she felt was always visible to the world, always billowing out behind her like tendrils of alien matter).

  But she is very sure of his. She knows him. She’s seen the interior of his life, the dirty corners of his mattress. She could be close to him, touch him, hold him, and he wouldn’t know who she was or what she wanted. It’s comforting; comforting, not frightening, not enraging, not electric. But reassuring.

  She should call the police. Call the police now. He can’t be allowed to be here, in the world, existing. Maybe now is the time. She has him. She knows where he lives and works. She has found the car.

  ‘Excuse me, are you in the queue?’

  Freya shakes her head and moves to the side.

  But something inside her resists; the same thing that rejects the thought every other time she’s had it. The same thing that stopped her from telling that detective about it. It is something borne from the months and months she spent after Ben’s death calling the police. Months of no news, no leads, nothing. Just a constant refrain of ‘We’re still waiting for evidence.’ And something else too, something from before the day Ben was killed; something still entrenched, deep and immovable, from the night their parents died.

  And Freya knows that even if she could lead the police here, right now, there is nothing they could do. Would they arrest him? Take him in for questioning and then let him go? What proof did she have, really? It isn’t good enough. It would be his word against hers. That detective had essentially confirmed that. And then he would know her and she would have to stay away from him.

  And then what?

  What would life be like then?

  Would she go back to lying in bed all day? Going out all night and drinking so that she could sleep all day? Feeling nothing, being no one. Numb with the grief. Wanting to die. That is unimaginable. That is unliveable.

  No. This is hers. He is hers. She will follow him until she has found proof. Concrete proof that he killed her brother, until she can make sure he will be arrested and put away. Only then can she stop. Only then can there be any hope.

  26

  Slick surveys the school through tinted glasses, leaning into the shadow of the pavilion.

  This is too early to be awake, and the sun and the laughter aren’t helping his headache. He’s chewing on a Chelsea bun, the sugary icing and cinnamon-encrusted pastry melting on his tongue, and that, at least, is a little relief against the joylessness of a school ground.

  He is here for only one reason: to get his money.

  There is a group of women – the ones he bought the
Chelsea bun from – talking about him surreptitiously, their whispers disappearing into the air before he can catch them. They’ve congregated in a little huddle and are eyeing him up and down. He knows this look. This is a look he gets a lot. It’s the he-doesn’t-look-like-he-belongs-here look. It’s the look they’ve been giving him ever since he arrived. He licks his fingers slowly, savouring the sugar.

  Three, two, one . . .

  One of the women, overweight and wearing a tracksuit, breaks away from the group and walks over to him. ‘Good day, sir,’ she begins.

  ‘Hello,’ Slick says, turning his eyes on her – it probably doesn’t help that they are bloodshot.

  ‘I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to help . . . You seem lost – are you looking for someone?’ She has her arms folded and her feet planted wide apart. There is a streak of purple in her hair, which she has shaved very short. Her chins are wobbling.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask that if you don’t have any business here, you please leave.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Slick is sure to make eye contact with her. He is taller than her, and he wants her to know it.

  ‘Or I will have to call security.’

  Slick gives a deep chuckle. ‘What security?’

  She looks unsure now, and the first flash of fear crosses her face. She takes out her phone and says, ‘Or I can call the police.’

  Slick almost wants to dare her to do it, wants to call her bluff. But he doesn’t have time for games today. ‘Relax,’ he says, ‘my brother is in this school. I’m here supporting your thing.’ He holds up the empty Chelsea – bun packet. ‘You know. Charity.’ He grins.

  She looks uncertain. ‘Who is your brother?’

  Slick peers over her head, sweeping his eyes across the rugby field and all the people on it. He points. ‘Over there.’

  ‘That’s your brother?’

  ‘Yup.’

  The woman relaxes her body, which seems to defy all the laws of gravity and sags further down. ‘Oh, well. Oh. He’s a good boy. He’s in my science class. I’m Mrs Retief.’ She holds out her hand for him to shake. Slick takes it, revelling in the look on her face when her hand touches his sweaty, dirty one. She nods and begins to walk way.

  Slick looks over at the teacher, who is talking to a tall boy dressed, like all the other pupils milling around, in a khaki uniform. His heart fills with a deep and pure hatred at the sight of the old man, but he can’t act on it today. Not here, not now. He takes out his phone. I’m waiting, he texts, hurry the fuck up.

  Then he retreats further into the shadow of the building, cursing the sun.

  27

  Freya moves away from the stall.

  Her mind is calm; she is clear about what needs to happen now, which steps she needs to take. She has decided.

  But her muscles have gone slack, tender. And she is breathing heavily, like she has run a long way. She feels nauseated; the coffee has turned her stomach acidic. She needs to sit down, needs water. Why does she feel like this, like her system is crashing? All around her people are talking, laughing, buzzing; a woman standing next to her smiles at her and says, ‘What a lovely day,’ while taking off her jersey. Freya is still cold, colder than before.

  She tries to smile back, but then has to stop herself from stumbling. She needs to sit down, needs to eat something.

  She half-collapses on a stone bench further down the field, away from the food stalls and the fatty smells of frying things. The blue stone is cool against her back and smells like moss. It gives her goosebumps, which rise like alert soldiers down her arms, her spine.

  The bench seems to be the centre of a designated smoker’s area, although no one else is sitting there. The only other people here is a group of about five women, standing in a half-circle, a circle of gossip. Freya balances a cigarette between sweaty lips and tries to look uninteresting. There is no wind today; the women aren’t going to any trouble to keep their voices down.

  ‘Strange that it hasn’t been hijacked, isn’t it? That great red car of his, just sitting there in his garage.’

  ‘But he was robbed, man. I saw it.’

  ‘You never . . .’

  ‘Yes. Last year. The man came running past me when I was out with Skoffel, masked and everything. Ran straight past me down the road. And Abraham was sitting in his driveway. He had a big bruise over his eye. Said the man tried to take his car.’

  ‘And Abraham scared him off?’

  ‘Ja. He had a knife with him.’

  ‘A knife? Nee man, regtig?’

  ‘Ja. I tell you, he’s dangerous when he wants to be.’

  ‘Did he call the police?’

  ‘He said he didn’t want the hassle.’

  ‘That’s very strange for a man always going on about the rules.’

  ‘That’s what I thought too. But he hasn’t been quite right since Sara died.’ There is a silence among the group, the kind of silence in which everyone is thinking the same thing and waiting for someone else to speak first.

  The words come out slowly: ‘You don’t think,’ one of them ventures, nose to the ground, ‘that he ever hurt Sara?’

  Freya’s cigarette end drops from her mouth, and she squashes it neatly beneath a black boot.

  ‘Nee, man. Sara’s problem was drugs. She overdosed. I saw her a few times, there near the end. It was definitely drugs.’

  The women nod, relieved. ‘Where do you think she got the drugs?’

  ‘Nee, how am I supposed to know? Where do the children get it? Where does anyone get it? Maybe she had connections.’

  ‘It’s a shame, she was a nice lady.’

  ‘Ja, she was.’

  ‘Ja, shame.’

  ‘Shame.’

  Monday

  28

  Nolwazi mistakes the two flickers – as they come bright and orange through the tangled foliage hanging over the curve in the road – for the headlights of a car parked on the hill; a hill people frequently use as a venue for sex or drinking. Which, technically, is trespassing. And the old fort up there doesn’t need any more graffiti on its crumbling walls. But when she rounds the corner, the sky opening up before her, she sees that she was wrong: not the headlights of a car, but two stars, brighter and fiercer than all the rest, sitting very close to each other in the sky. Jupiter and Venus, closer than they’ve been in two thousand years. Like omens, like the eyes of gods.

  Without thinking, she finds herself taking the winding path up the hill.

  Fort Schanskop – built by the British a long time ago and now one of the city’s meagre tourist attractions – isn’t her destination. Rather, she is heading for a series of small lookout points halfway up the hill, overlooking the city and its bright lights. The spot she chooses is isolated, surrounded as it is by sparse forest. The road is hidden behind the trees; dead grass crunches underneath her boots. The night smells like wood­smoke.

  The city is frozen, quiet at this hour.

  The fort is built on one of the many hills that enfold the valley Pretoria is built in. Between the fort and the city, there lies a belt of sparse woodland, which in summer turns the city into a green land, airy and bright. But now, blemished by winter, it pushes the city further away. Directly beneath her is a very large traffic circle. The circle is the meeting point of two highways and two of the city’s main roads, at the centre of which there is a series of elaborate fountains on full display in the glare of dozens of spotlights.

  From up here, the city centre resembles a giant inverted comma – the bulb end in the distance a concentration of lights (people living on top of one another, people not living at all), and the twisted leg of the comma disappearing to her right, the city spreading wide, plateauing for kilometres in all directions. Like a spill.

  Beyond that, the lights of the city are spread thinner: bigger houses, bigger yards, better lives. She’s just come from one of those yards, from deep within the city’
s older, wealthier neighbourhoods, touched with what Nolwazi thinks of as European splendour. Tasteful houses surrounded by tranquil gardens where ancient oak trees spread comfortable shade. Tree-lined boulevards, manicured parks, private schools, dentists’ offices, exclusive malls, café-strewn courtyards. Bliss, boredom.

  And tonight, slightly tarnished by a stolen car (‘How could someone? How could they? I feel so violated!’). She shouldn’t have gone out for a simple car burglary. But there is a hijacking ring operating in the area – her new high-profile case. Given to her with a stern warning: solve this one quickly. As if she deliberately allowed her cases to drag out for years, as if the police weren’t as frustrated as everyone else at the speed of the system.

  Her phone vibrates, the light glaring out through the thin plastic of her police jacket. Frik. She doesn’t answer. But then, moments later, a text: About Benjamin Rust, pick up. And the phone rings again. ‘Mngadi.’ She tries to sound professional, but she just sounds tired.

  ‘They lied about how their parents died.’ His voice is rough but friendly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Freya Rust told us that her parents died in a car accident. They lied. Bjorn and Angelica Rush were killed in an armed robbery in 2011.’

  ‘Christ. Were the perpetrators caught?’

  ‘No. Case has gone completely cold. There was a whole string of them during that time in that neighbourhood. We couldn’t ever make any headway. The robberies stopped after the neighbourhood was boomed off.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why would she lie to us?’

  ‘Because it took the police two hours to respond. Angelica Rust was alive when Freya Rust called 10111. The state’s pathologist agreed that had an ambulance arrived on the scene sooner, she could have lived. We paid out a settlement to the two of them a year later. A big settlement.’

  ‘So she has no reason to trust us.’ Nolwazi is pacing from one end of the lookout point to the other as she talks, trying to keep warm. She comes to a stop in front of a thin tree. Its trunk is covered in short stubby thorns, and she runs a thumb over the thorns absent-mindedly, pricking it. A drop of blood squeezes out of the small hole in her skin. She wipes it off on the collar of her shirt. A spider scurries across the trunk of the tree, quickly followed by another. The spiders are made white by the moonlight.