Talion

by Beyers de Vos

  Ben sighed and shrank back into the shadow of his table, taking another bite of his burger. This whole business was much easier and more profitable than he’d first suspected.

  He smiled.

  Maybe he could get an ice cream for dessert.

  4

  Pretoria, high summer: storms come in the afternoon, quick and violent. Just as the heat is getting too oppressive, too cloying, the wind picks up: the dry mid-afternoon breeze turns frenzied and directionless; great blasts of heat and dust tumble everywhere. Doors and windows are closed, streets empty. Everything darkens, deepens. Bruised and heavy clouds stampede the sky. Inside the belly of the cloud-beast, there is lightning; it shoots across the purple horizon in blazing white streaks. The instinct to cower is overwhelming. And just as the sky becomes so powerful it could tear a hole through the city, leaving it burning and broken – there is thunder!

  Roaring, the sky falls open. A downpour of heavy, angry rain.

  A few minutes later, clean, crisp air rushes in; a cool burst of fragrant relief tames the wind. The rain washes away all the dust, clears the arid air; when the clouds dissipate, the world is sweet and soft and full of life.

  Ben loved the summer storms. There was something about all that icy water breaking through the heat that was mighty and impressive and liberating.

  But the storm hadn’t started yet.

  ‘Pretoria is such a shithole,’ Leo said, emphasising each syllable with a flick of his lighter, the flame bursting into life only to be blown out again by the rising wind.

  ‘I dunno.’ Ben turned his body inwards and lit his cigarette in the crook of his lap. ‘It’s not that bad.’ The first hit of smoke was murky and sweet. He looked out over the street, the darkening sky. ‘I really like this time of day.’

  They were sitting on Leo’s balcony, the sliding door closed. Leo’s room was filled with the fumes of fresh paint; they’d spent the afternoon painting it a stark, vivid blue. From beyond Leo’s bedroom, Ben could hear Eric playing Guitar Hero.

  ‘It’s bad enough,’ Leo said, rolling a cigarette, using his favourite vanilla-flavoured tobacco. He was shirtless, and his tree tattoo was rippling as he hunched over, his stomach slightly wrinkled by the action. Ben had had secret visions of living in that tree, of climbing into it and refusing to come down, like a spiteful child. Leo smelt like candy, and sex. Ben smiled as Leo fumbled and small pieces of tobacco lifted onto the breeze, drifting between them.

  ‘I can’t wait to get out of here,’ Leo said, curling a hand through his dark hair and tucking his fringe behind his ear. They had been drinking beers and playing poker when their cards were swept off the balcony by a gust. In the street below, Ben could see the queen of diamonds, the smirking knave of clubs. ‘You mean jack?’ Leo said.

  ‘My mother always called it a knave. Old habits.’ Ben exhaled slowly.

  The pre-storm silence was getting to him. ‘I’m not in a hurry to go any­where.’

  ‘You don’t want to get out?’ Leo slipped into his hoody. There was a cheese stain on the black fabric; last night’s dinner. Ben had cooked.

  ‘I do, obviously,’ he said, trying to be reassuring. ‘Eventually. But it’s a nice place to be a student. Hatfield is like a small campus town, but surrounded by this big city. Best of both worlds.’

  ‘Not that big.’

  ‘No, suppose not.’

  ‘But you’re right. It’s a pretty cool place. If you’re a student. Or a dentist.’

  ‘Or a kid.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m so happy I’m not a kid any more.’

  Ben shrugged. ‘I liked my childhood.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘While it lasted.’ He was feeling lightheaded. ‘It’s difficult to imagine being anywhere else,’ Ben said. ‘My sister and I have always been in Pretoria.’

  ‘Just promise me you won’t become one of those people who never leave. Who becomes a speech therapist and moves to Faerie Glen and has two kids and just stays. For ever. And doesn’t break the cycle.’ Leo was quiet for a moment, then snorted. ‘Faerie Glen. Like it’s some magical forest and not a suburban hellhole.’

  Ben couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Dude, relax. I promise I won’t become a Faerie Glen dentist. I just don’t know what I want to be when I grow up yet.’ Leo looked him up and down – it was the same expression that sometimes drifted across his face during sex, like Leo didn’t quite recognise him.

  ‘Well, when the fun’s over,’ – Leo swept his hands across Hatfield – ‘I’m out. This place is too fucking dull to be a grown-up in.’

  Ben knew that Leo was right; he knew that he would leave. Leave the city which had been so indifferent to his suffering, his loss. Pretoria was too cheerful, too disinterested; evil things were whitewashed by the mendacity, the conventionality that drifted through the streets like the breeze. Lately, Ben had been craving to get away. There were better places to live. Places with bigger, taller buildings. Places with better art, better music, better parties. Places next to seas, on the slopes of mountains, on beaches. More beautiful, sunnier, lighter. Not surrounded by all this yellow grass, all this dryness, all these years.

  But he wasn’t ready to fully admit that yet. Not to himself, not to Leo. Not to Freya. Especially not her.

  The cigarettes were finished. The parking lot beneath them was littered with their stubs.

  Ben wanted to ask Leo about his childhood in the same casual way that Leo had asked him. With the same flick of eyes and twist of smile that let you feel completely present, gave you permission to be honest.

  Instead, Ben asked, ‘Is Steve okay? He was acting weird when I saw him earlier.’

  ‘His mother died last week,’ Leo said casually. ‘Got shot on their farm.’

  Ben didn’t know what to say to this; he felt somehow unmoved by the news. He hoped Leo didn’t notice that.

  ‘Yeah, one minute your life is normal and the next it’s enveloped in violence. It’s a cluster fuck,’ Leo said. Then: ‘How is all that going by the way? All that stuff with Steve? The drugs.’

  ‘Fine. Good. It’s easy. He gives me some; I sell it to my friends and give him the money.’

  ‘Have you met the big boss yet?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s who I mean. He’s much younger than I thought. He seems to like me.’

  ‘Ooh, a promotion?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Leo paused before giving Ben a gentle kiss. ‘Come on, let’s go buy more cigarettes.’

  ‘’Kay, cool.’

  When they reached the door, the last strum of Eric’s air-guitar vibrating through the flat, Leo turned to Ben and said, ‘I love you. Be careful.’

  And Ben, taken aback, said, ‘I love you too, babe.’

  Although he wasn’t sure he meant it.

  Murder

  October

  1

  Next to a dusty road, on the outskirts of Pretoria, is an abandoned school. Neglected for years and eventually set aside for demolition, its pupils and teachers were relocated to a newer school, nearer to the settlement in which they live. The old school has been a dead space for such a long time now, most of the stories that used to live beneath its foundations have faded, their echo, their vitality, dispersed by the feverish winds. There are no trees, no streets, no minds in which these stories can live, not any more. Even the city has near forgotten this corner of itself.

  Until one night, something appears. Something that breathes new life into the mortar of the fallen building, the flesh.

  A painting now adorns the edge of the school. White paint on red brick, beautiful and gruesome, its fine, carefully drawn lines spread across the entire wall.

  It’s a tree.

  A jacaranda tree, floating.

  Its branches are bare, its roots exposed. In place of leaves or blossoms, each branch terminates in the crude, imprecise shape of a bird. A dove. Each dove is attached to the tree by a noose, its limp neck grotesquely elongated.

  A flock of corpse
s.

  In the chest of each dove is an outline of a perfect, anatomical heart: drawn as from a textbook, in bright purple ink.

  Beneath the tree it reads: I have seen the future, brother.

  And inside the roots of the tree, a system of loops and bonds, bent and twisted and gnarled together, the city awakens. The city remembers.

  Friday

  2

  A strange, ghostly twinge in his stomach, an indigestible paranoia.

  He is walking through the strip of uncultivated woodland to an old building at the back of the school. The building is surrounded by tall yellow grass and creaking pine trees, severed from the sounds of the school – the shouts of pupils, the constant traffic. The path turns the corner and he is alone; the shed feels more remote than it is, as if it doesn’t quite belong to the world. It is only sporadically used, in those periods that the school offers shooting as an extra-mural activity. Otherwise, nobody sets foot here.

  He slips the cross off his neck. His wife’s cross, he can’t bear to wear it while he has a gun in his hand. Religion came late to him – came only after Peter died; after he killed that man in the parking lot. It came when he needed it the most, like a sledgehammer to the skull, which is why he believes in it. It gave him a purpose, a way forward. What had been sharp, unpredictable days became dependable, certain days. He needed to become reliable, for his daughter, but he also needed something to rely on. And it was more than that, besides. He needed a way to be good. A way into goodness. For a very long time, he felt that everyone around him seemed to know intrinsically what was good and what was bad, what to do and what not to do. But he didn’t know; he wasn’t in on the secret. And so, when he found God, he felt he had been shown something which had been utterly incomprehensible to him before: a clear, unassailable way to behave.

  He stands with his gun is his hand – light and familiar, not heavy at all, no burden – and shoots off one round after the other. Between the plosive roars, the memories come.

  Bang.

  He had been drinking. Alone, sitting in the tiny, ugly bar. Shiva’s Rock it was called, all threadbare blue carpet and bad jungle-themed art. It was Heavy Metal Tuesdays. The music – the screaming, shattered music – raged over him: a sorrowful noise. He had gone there because no one would see him, no one would know him. Surrounded by ageing men with long hair and leather jackets, cigarettes dangling from dry lips, staring at him: the interloper, the brown man in a tie and jacket. He could feel it: the whiteness of the place, the unwelcomeness. He didn’t care. He wanted to feel other – other was good compared to the unbelievable weight of the familiar.

  Brandy was his drink of choice; the acrid, dark smell of it wafted up to his nostrils and made him feel thinner, less real. He didn’t want to go home to Sara. The Sara who knew what he was doing, and didn’t care that he was doing it. Which was worse. Because her son was dead. Her son. Their son. The son. The barman glowered every time he asked for a refill. But he was staying until they kicked him out, staying until the choice was no longer his.

  Finally, his ears still filled with the razor-sharp pricking of the blasting speakers, last round was called, and the lights switched on to full brightness. He stumbled out into the parking lot. Into his car, his beloved red Mercedes, the first car he had been able to afford, the car that had represented bright red independence, the car he couldn’t part with even though he knew he should. He reversed slowly, drunkenly, out of the parking space. The palm trees in the parking lot – leaves forming spiked shadows against the sky – moved strangely, unnaturally. Such an odd tree to see in the city. An exotic tree, a sun-tinged tree.

  He felt it before he heard it, the thump. He knew what it was immediately. He knew, he knew, he knew. The knowledge grabbing hold of his softened senses and stinging it into sobriety with near-holy vigour.

  The man he hit with his car was young. Thin and bony underneath his leather, chain-swamped uniform. It was the same young man who earlier had said: ‘What is this fucking oke doing in our bar?’

  And for a minute Mr October felt triumph, before everything melted into panic.

  And there it is: his dirty, shameful, powerful, blistering secret. There was no one to see him drive away and leave that man lying there in the empty lot, dying, dead. No one to see but God.

  Bang.

  They lost the baby, he and Sara. It died inside her. She named it Peter, the tiny corpse that came out of her.

  Bang.

  He has always done what is expected of him. He worked hard, made his parents proud, got a bursary, went to university, married a nice girl, had children, moved into a better neighbourhood, made a good life for his family, gave them everything they needed, made their happiness his core. Their happiness was his happiness. He didn’t stray from the path; he didn’t lose his way in the face of tragedy. He believed that being good would make his life good. He was strong. Why could no one be as strong as he was? Why couldn’t they resist like he could? Why was he burdened with strength; why did he have to harden his resolve while everyone else indulged their weaknesses?

  Bang.

  What choice did he have? She was a danger to Sophie; she was bringing drugs into the house. She wasn’t being a mother to her daughter. He had to lock her away. He built a prison for his druggy wife. He couldn’t afford to commit her. Not again. She had been to so many rehabilitation centres, had tried so many times. But as soon as she saw Peter’s empty bedroom, she relapsed. She could never recover while she lived inside the house she refused to leave, the house with that dark, dead heart at its centre.

  He provided her with food and shelter; he even gave her art supplies. He trusted her not to kill herself; she was much too selfish for that. He thought he was showing Sara mercy.

  That first night he locked her inside the shed he built, she pulled a knife from her skirt and told him she knew what he was trying to do, and she wasn’t going to be kept locked away. She wouldn’t yield, she said. She used that word. Yield. It came out of her mouth in an ugly bubble. A challenge. Her teeth were nearly gone by this point; short black stumps. She came at him with her knife. And pushing her aside and taking the knife away from her was so easy it broke his heart. Then he sat outside, flicking the tip of the knife across his fingernail, sending the sharp scratch into the silent, hot air. It was a Sunday, and everyone was at church. Everyone except him. He looked at their small house, at the greenless landscape. And he thought about killing her; the thought skimmed across his mind so swiftly and with so little protest, he found himself almost getting up to do it.

  Bang.

  The night he found Sara dead on the floor, surrounded by her artwork, her cries for help, the cold, crisp feeling that fluttered through him wasn’t sadness or shock: it was relief. Relief that she was finally dead, that she was no longer hurting, that he no longer had to facilitate her shame or her grief. He never knew, never found out how she managed to get her hands on more drugs, but by the look of things her overdose had been gruelling and violent. Her blood had foamed; her heart had exploded.

  Bang.

  The day he found his daughter trying to take down the things in the shed – the things he’d started thinking of as The Creatures – he’d screamed; he’d screamed until she came down from the ladder and slapped him. Her hand struck his cheek and he closed his mouth and they looked at each other until she went back inside the house. She never touched him again.

  Bang.

  In the aftermath of the final shot Mr October is reeling. He is trying, trying to channel all these moments, these small intense moments he can’t control, can’t explain, which burst to the surface, through the barrel of the gun. The gun gives him some measure of control over the past.

  But the gun is there for something else too, of course. The gun is there to protect them.

  To protect his daughter, he would die. To protect her, he would kill.

  3

  When Slick gets in the car, his knife is in his hand. ‘Do you have my cash?’ he says. />
  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but not here. Not in front of the house.’ The boy she’s with obeys her silent command and drives away, down the sleepy street.

  ‘Hello, Lucky,’ he says. The tall boy says nothing, simply nods.

  Once they’ve moved on to a bigger, busier road, she hands over the cash; he counts it. ‘At this rate, it’s going to take you all year to pay me back,’ he says.

  ‘That’s the best I can do.’

  ‘Just as long as I get every single cent.’ She nods, her lips tight, eyes hard. ‘Hey now, I’m not the one who came to negotiate on behalf of my mother,’ he mocks, ‘who made promises I couldn’t keep. I’m not the one’ – he touches the back of her head with his dirty fingers – ‘in debt.’

  She pulls away from him, doesn’t reply.

  ‘Now you’re going to do something else for me. I need you to go and make a stop outside The Dank Den. Go there and talk to a man named Bra Joe. You’ll know him when you see him. Get a bankie from him, and then drive away from Hatfield towards the Engen on Church Street. Do you know where that is?’

  They both nod.

  ‘The police will be watching you. They’re going to follow you. Pull over at the Engen. Let the police search you. But don’t worry, nothing is going to happen. I just need the pigs patrolling the street to be distracted tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s what I need.’

  She nods.

  He looks out at the Pretoria streets, flooded with light. The tar still wet from the storm earlier, the jacaranda trees shattered against the spring sky. He smirks, feeling the adrenaline rush to his brain, fill him.

  ‘Do you have a smoke?’ she asks him.

  ‘No,’ he says. But Lucky hands her a cigarette, and a moment later she is inhaling deeply.

  ‘Is it difficult?’ he asks her.

  ‘Is what difficult?’

  ‘Being powerless.’

  She swallows and lifts her chin. Takes another drag of her cigarette and shares a look with Lucky, passes Lucky the cigarette.