Talion

by Beyers de Vos

  And only when the sun had risen did Ben come up behind her, still full of sleep, and ask her what she was doing. And in answer to his question, a policeman appeared outside the window mouthing ‘open up’ in an exasperated sort of way, as if it were her fault that it had taken them two hours to arrive, her fault that no one understood that she had needed an ambulance.

  And, of course, it was too late. Too late, too late.

  7

  The first time Slick saw the teacher, he was sitting on a couch in a living room he had never been in, charmed inside by Auntie October, fascinated by what he had come to recognise as her singular pain.

  His relationship with Auntie October had begun with a phone call: ‘I got your number from Sipho,’ she’d said, ‘he’s a friend of my daughter’s.’ She was relaxed over the phone, open and fearless. He met her on the trains like he met everyone on the trains. When she no longer wanted to meet on the trains – ‘my husband is getting suspicious’ – he arranged for the drugs to be delivered in person, an allowance he hadn’t made for a client before. But it was months later when she phoned asking for something else, something more. ‘Come to my house,’ she said. This time, she sounded scared.

  He liked Auntie October – she was sophisticated and sincere. And sad, standing in front of the large canvases she’d painted, all blues and greens and yellows. He hadn’t understood them, but they’d generated an odd feeling inside him, jarring and obtuse – the feeling that he had lost something, or was missing something he’d never had. He liked the way she reminded him of Mama Africa, complete with headscarf and enigmatic smile. He liked the way her house smelt of honey and cinnamon. He liked that she was kind to him. He enjoyed the liberated chaos the drugs brought out in her. She made him laugh.

  But the teacher had chased Slick away like he was a dog. And Slick had fled – of course he’d fled.

  After that he handed Auntie October off to one of his runners. He could not risk being seen by her husband again.

  That was until one misty morning when he was approached by a pretty girl in a green school uniform and a tall boy in a khaki uniform. Prestigious schools, both of them. ‘I’m Sophie,’ she said. ‘This is Lucky, Sipho’s brother. My mother sent me.’ And he saw a business opportunity he couldn’t refuse; he saw a way to turn debt into an asset.

  It wasn’t the first thing he said to Sophie October but it was the most important: ‘If you tell your father about this, I’ll kill both of you.’

  When the teacher appeared that night a few weeks ago, a devil out of hell, Slick knew. Knew that Sophie October had broken her promise. How else did the teacher find him there that night, if Sophie hadn’t told him? The moment the teacher came out of the dim winter light and attacked him in the street – drew his blood, broke his skin – was the moment Slick decided the teacher had to die.

  When the teacher’s fist made contact with his cheek, as the other man’s big harsh hands knocked the purple into his skin, broke it open, let it bleed, Slick remembered his mother lying on the floor, beaten down. His mind became a child, overcome with the past. He submitted. He let it happen. He hated himself.

  When Sophie asked him what had happened to his face, he shrugged it off. ‘A mishap,’ he said. She reached out a hand then, a soft brown hand with bitten fingernails, towards his wounds. But she stopped herself; she pulled back. A reflex she didn’t want to indulge. Instead, she disguised the movement, pulling an envelope from her jacket and handing it over.

  Now, as the train rattles towards Sunnyside, he imagines her hand reaching out towards her father’s corpse. He imagines the realisation that her father has been killed – killed by Slick, killed because of her own actions – ripping through her, spilling through her blood, her brain.

  Spilling into those defiant . . . those unwilling eyes.

  And his smile widens, as the train carries him into the heart of Pretoria, towards the teacher, and the end.

  8

  A list of things he feels as she speaks: anger, regret, sadness, fear, joy, relief.

  He lets her talk. He doesn’t let the deep, gutting hurt splash across his face. Neither does she, he notices. She speaks matter-of-factly; she speaks badly, like an actor on a stage. They are driving back home, in the small green car.

  There is nothing they could do for Lucky; they were not allowed to see him.

  ‘Why do you never drive the red car any more?’ she asks now.

  ‘I like this one. It reminds me of Ma.’

  ‘Even before then, you stopped taking it out on weekends.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

  She breathes deeply; she doesn’t look at him when she speaks. ‘Lucky was stealing. We were stealing.’

  Mr October says, ‘So he is guilty.’ She nods. Her soft brown skin is flushed, and her chest is moving up and down furiously; she is an animal trapped, wanting to run. He knows the feeling. ‘Why was he stealing?’

  ‘To help me. I owe someone money.’

  ‘You mean, him?’

  ‘Yes, Pa. Him.’ He understands. Finally, he understands. Is he surprised? It is possible to be surprised when he’s been walking along a hallway made from cardboard walls, trying to hold them up, trying to keep them from falling away, hearing the sounds – dark whispers and strained screams – behind them but refusing to listen; is it possible to be surprised when the walls finally come down, and what’s behind them is your own daughter?

  ‘You’re the one who brought Ma the drugs?’ he says.

  ‘She asked me, Pa. She asked me. She said I could ask Lucky, that he would know how to get in touch with him.’

  ‘Why Lucky?’

  ‘Lucky’s brother, he works for him sometimes. On the campus. Selling weed. Ma, she asked him about it one day. We thought . . . we thought she wanted weed, that’s all.’

  ‘How did you pay him?’

  ‘Ma had money, at first. And then after that, I gave him what I had. And then he said we could owe him, that we could get some in exchange for some odd jobs. He made Lucky sell at school, sometimes. Me too, but not that much. Then after Ma died he said we owed him. He said we had to pay him back monthly. I told him to go to hell, Pa. He said if we didn’t pay him back he would kill you. Lucky helped me, Pa. We carried on selling at school to pay him back, but that wasn’t enough. Sometimes we had to steal, sometimes we had to . . . do other things.’

  ‘The money in my room,’ he says, ‘the money the day of the charity drive?’

  Another nod. ‘That was us.’

  ‘You should never have got Lucky involved in this.’

  Sophie only smiles, and says, ‘Lucky has always liked you. He says you are a good teacher and a good coach. He always said I should treat you better.’

  ‘No, my girl. I should have treated you better.’

  She is crying now, pulling air into her lungs, heaving. ‘This is all my fault. Ma is dead because of me, Lucky is in prison because of me, because he loves me.’ How to comfort a child, how to reverse her distress? He doesn’t know, has never known.

  All he can think to say is, ‘Do you love him?’

  She shakes her head only slightly, but her answer is clear: no.

  ‘Do you love me?’ he asks.

  And she says, ‘I don’t think I know what love is.’

  9

  Freya still hears it, Ben’s voice. He speaks to her all the time; he lives inside her head. At first, in the days right after he died, he said encouraging things. He told her to get back up again, to carry on living; that he would always be there and that there was no reason for her to die, too. He told her that she needed to live so that both of them could live. She managed to quash that voice until it was nothing but a hoarse whisper, a shadow in a dark cave. Then – once she found Abraham October – came a new version of the voice: still Ben, but a younger, more innocent Ben. This Ben only said a few things. He said, ‘Be careful,’ and ‘Watch out,’ and ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, Sizz
le?’

  Be careful. That had been one of his favourite mantras. It came from their mother, whose favourite saying had been ‘Take care now’. ‘Take care now’ is how she greeted everyone: her children walking out the house on the way to school, her husband off on a business trip, the lady who worked at the till at the grocery store, the cat as it jumped into the garden at night. Everyone got these same words, always packaged in the same way: with both a smile and a frown. A light-hearted greeting, but also a serious warning.

  ‘I’m just going for a swim, Mom,’ Freya told her mother the afternoon before her parents died.

  Mom was lying on the couch, a magazine open and abandoned on her chest, lazily looking into the distance. ‘Okay, darling. Take care now.’

  ‘Nothing is going to happen, Mom,’ Freya said.

  ‘Something might,’ her mother said.

  As soon as Ben was old enough to talk, he’d adopted and changed the phrase, turning ‘Take care now’ into ‘Be careful’. He used the same equivocal tone of voice their mother did. He was always telling her to ‘be careful’ as they moved through their lives. With a little frown on his face. He was always feeling responsible for her. Always concerned for her safety, her happiness. She didn’t understand it. She had never been burdened with this sense of responsibility. Their father had said it was eldest-child syndrome. ‘See,’ Ben said, ‘it’s because I’m two minutes older than you.’

  Whatever, Rusty.

  Would Ben approve of what she is doing? She is doing it for him, after all. Avenging his death. Making sure that the meaninglessness of it, the suddenness of it, the unfairness of it, doesn’t go unnoticed or unpunished. For Ben, whose sense of fairness was always so gravely acute. Ben, who after their parents died, stopped telling her to be careful. Probably because being careful hadn’t helped their parents anyway; probably because it reminded him of their mother; probably because it sounded empty in the face of that much tragedy. But now here he is in her head again saying, ‘Be careful.’

  Even though she feels – has always felt – that being careful is exactly the thing she doesn’t want to spend her life doing.

  10

  A list of violences: Peter, dying inside the womb; Mr October drunk, killing Joey Jooste in a parking lot, fleeing the scene; Sara, dead; The Boy killing someone in cold blood – Mr October does nothing about it; later, finding The Boy on the street, attacking him.

  He is dazed, infiltrated by violence.

  ‘What’s his name, Sophie? The man, what is his name?’

  ‘Slick. His name is Slick.’

  A shift in the world, The Boy given an identity.

  ‘We only had one payment left, Pa. Last night Lucky tried to get into the tuck shop. We were all alone, we made sure the security wasn’t near. We were so close, Pa. So close. We only had one payment left, and then all of this would have been over.’

  ‘When were you going to give him the money?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When were you supposed to meet him?’

  ‘This afternoon. Lucky was, after rugby practice. At Magnolia Dell.’

  ‘What will he do now that you haven’t shown up?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Will he come to the house?’

  ‘No, I doubt it.’

  ‘Has he ever been to the house?’

  Sophie hesitates. ‘Once,’ she says. ‘He asked to meet at the house last week. It was weird. I think, I think he broke in. I was in my room waiting for his text and I heard the glass break. I hid. An hour later he texted and said he was outside.’

  She isn’t crying now, and she delivers her lines directly, unwavering. Like she knew this time would come, like she has made peace with it.

  ‘I’m so sick of keeping secrets, Pa,’ she continues. ‘Lucky. Ma. I’ve been so angry for so long because it seemed easier. But I don’t want to be angry any more.’

  They are driving slowly, because he isn’t sure. About anything. Because he wants to keep Sophie talking – confessing – and he wants to preserve this arrival, the arrival of the gentle Sophie; the hard, angry thing that has been living in his house isn’t there. ‘I’m sorry about the way I’ve been, Pa. But I had to protect you. I didn’t want you to know . . . that it was all my fault.’ He should return the favour, return what she is giving him. But he doesn’t; he wants to be a father again. He doesn’t want to say he’s sorry. Because deep down, he isn’t sorry. Not for Sara, not for that.

  They drive past Oxford’s, past the spot where he saw The Boy – Slick, his name is Slick – shoot someone in cold blood, and his foot almost slips; his hands begin to shake. Almost a year ago now, that night. He remembers: remembers that for a moment he thought he had pulled the trigger, actually pulled the trigger. He remembers thinking: a good thing has been done because that man deserved to die. But then he saw that he was wrong. He hadn’t pulled the trigger at all. The Boy had; Slick had pulled the trigger. And in the parking space Mr October had just decided to turn into, there was a blond young man lying dead in his seat.

  He had raced away. Raced away, fled the scene of a crime.

  Slick. That snake, that bastard: the ruination of his family, the man who profited from their grief. The presence he has been feeling ever since his wife died, the thing he has seen out of the corner of his eye, the shadow that he sometimes imagined was following him: all Slick.

  He had thought about going to the police that night. Of course he had. But what was he going to say? That his wife’s drug dealer just shot a man? He didn’t know what The Boy’s real name was then. Besides which, The Boy had been with Sophie mere moments before he’d pulled that trigger, and Mr October couldn’t drag his daughter into that. Nor could he risk Sophie knowing he was there. Most importantly, he had taken the Mer­cedes out that night, broken his promise to himself to keep the car locked away. And the ghost of Joey Jooste was a powerful deterrent.

  But if he couldn’t go to the police, he would make sure The Boy never got close to his daughter again. If his warnings to her – his attempts at reason – fell on deaf ears, then it would only be by following her, by knowing where she was at all times, that he was going to keep Sophie safe. That night, he held his gun in his hand and really considered what it would mean to kill another man: deliberately, in cold blood. He resolved that the next time he saw The Boy with his daughter, he would use his weapon.

  And then he did, on a Friday night a few weeks ago. Sophie was talking to The Boy outside of Oxford’s, leaning casually against the wall. The Boy was speaking to her with hurried gestures, before she turned and walked into the bar, back into the neon-soaked frivolity, the deep thud of music, the stumbling revellers, leaving The Boy behind. Before he knew it, he was parking his car – not at a safe distance in the street, but in the underground parking lot. His gun was in his hand. He was so overcome with fear, with hatred, that he left the safety of his vehicle and went up to the street, trying to find The Boy.

  All those moments: the quiet, still moments alone in his car, the hours and hours, months and months of watching his daughter, his finger on the pulse of a danger he couldn’t identify; the glee on The Boy’s face when he was caught in Mr October’s house with Mr October’s wife, the sly smile, the red beanie, the deep, unassailable triumph in his eyes; all the anger and the hatred, the fury and the fear, the violence he had been flirting with for so many months – all of it was galvanised when he saw The Boy talking to his daughter again, coming forth in a pure, mindless surge.

  And he struck.

  A violence so strong and unrestricted that it nearly blinded him. He struck The Boy like he himself had been struck. Sauntering down the road, the fool never saw him coming. He held his gun by the barrel, and struck the back of The Boy’s head. Then he kicked his feet out from under him. Not a sound came from The Boy – not when Mr October turned him around and held him by the throat, not as recognition flashed through his eyes or as he tried and failed to throw Mr October over, did The Boy make
a single sound. He brought the gun down five more times, breaking open The Boy’s face. He felt the muscles in his legs strain as The Boy tried to escape, the tendons in his arms stretch and recoil, and he struck and struck and struck.

  Before Mr October relented, before he stood, he smiled a small smile. He left The Boy there, bleeding on the pavement, confident that no one would see. Confident that there would be no retaliation.

  He did it for his wife, for himself. For Joey Jooste and for the young man he saw The Boy kill that night last October, neither of whom had deserved to die.

  He did it for his daughter. Especially for her.

  For every unfair moment, for every injustice, for every ounce of pain. For everything, for everyone. And it felt good. Even as he cleaned the blood from beneath the broken skin on his knuckles, as the thought that he should get himself tested fluttered through his mind like a moth in front of a light, it felt good.

  Sophie saw him that night, although she didn’t realise the extent of what she was seeing. She caught him while he was walking away, back to the car; he was high on the scent of the blood that had splashed back from the open wounds; high on the dark musk of retaliation. She called to him from the entrance of the bar; she said it like she was talking to a stranger: ‘Dad?’ Small and sick, the word came out like a cough. ‘Are you following me?’

  The already fragmented world broke again – broke again.

  Now he regrets not killing Slick that day on the pavement. He could have saved Sophie and Lucky so much pain, so much trouble.

  He is about to ask Sophie again when she will see Slick next, when she will pay him the last of the money. He could go with her, couldn’t he? He could go with her and finish this once and for all.

  But another thought interrupts him, comes unbidden and without mercy: Are you really so different from him?

  After he parks, Mr October takes Sophie into his arms, the mulberry tree towering above them. He hugs her close. ‘She wasn’t your mother any more. She was someone else. She was dangerous, sweetheart. She wasn’t in her right mind. Her addiction was all that mattered to her. We both did what we had to do.’ Sweetheart – it’s a breath of fresh air. A word that makes him feel like his old self. The rest of it he’s said so many times that the words are empty, all the meaning scraped out of them. ‘I’ll never let anything happen to you,’ he adds.