Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Jacques Strauss
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
It’s not possible to undo what happened in 1976.
In rural South Africa a family massacre takes place; a bloodbath whose only witness is the family’s black maid. Hendrik Deyer is the principal of a state-run school camp who lives nearby with his wife and their two sons, Werner and Marius. As Hendrik becomes obsessed with uncovering what happened, his wife worries about her neighbours, a poor white family whose malign influence on her son Werner is – she believes – making his behaviour inexplicably strange and hostile. One night another tragedy changes each of their lives, irrevocably.
Two decades later, Werner is living with his mother and invalid father in a small Pretoria flat. South Africa is a changed place. Werner holds a tedious job in the administration department of the local university and dreams of owning his own gallery. His father is bedridden, hovering on the edge of death, and furious, as he has been for twenty years. As Werner feels his own life slip away, and his thoughts turn to murder as a means to correct the course of all their futures. He can’t undo the past, but Werner’s desperation to change his own his fate will threaten not only his own family but also those still living in the aftermath of what happened all those years ago.
About the Author
Jacques Strauss is a 33 year old South African. He studied philosophy at university, obsessed over Derrida and now writes reams of corporate copy for a London firm.
Also by Jacques Strauss
The Dubious Salvation of Jack V.
For Ricky
The Curator
Jacques Strauss
1
Barberton – 1976
WHEN WERNER DEYER first saw Salvador Dalí’s Christ of St John of the Cross he was overcome. He was thirteen years old and had spent his life in the rural town of Barberton. He did not know that the painting he was looking at was only a reproduction. It was good. Miss Hammond, the owner of the store, had developed a talent for copying famous artworks and sold these along with furniture and kitchen utensils. Werner noticed that the woman was watching him.
‘Do you like the picture?’ she asked.
‘Yes, miss,’ he said in English.
‘It’s by a famous artist called Salvador Dalí.’ Werner nodded. ‘He has a great big moustache.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘There are no nails. In his hands or his feet.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t think my Sunday-school teacher would like this painting.’
‘I suspect not.’
‘Is it for sale?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘Thirty rand.’
Werner nodded. It seemed an unthinkable sum, but no painting he encountered since had quite the same effect on him.
When Werner returned home he tore blank pages from his maths exercise book and stuck them to the wall of his bedroom. He called his younger brother.
‘Marius!’
‘Yes, Werner?’ his brother said as he walked into the room.
‘Take off all your clothes – except your underpants.’
Marius did as he was told because his brother could be cruel. When Werner was eight and Marius six, Werner pushed him off a fence. Their mother watched from afar, helpless to intervene. Marius only had time to put out an arm to break his fall on the sun-hardened earth. Although Werner did not feel guilty, the crack of bone did make him feel something; when his brother’s arm snapped, it sent a shiver up his spine and his breathing quickened.
‘What are you doing, Werner?’ Marius asked.
‘We are going to make a work of art.’
‘Like a picture?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do I have to be in my underpants?’
‘Because,’ said Werner, ‘you’re going to be Jesus.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s blasphemous.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It is, Werner. We’ll go to hell if you say things like that.’
‘Stand against the paper and hold your arms out, like this.’ Marius submitted as Werner manipulated his arms and legs into an approximation of a crucifixion.
‘Don’t move,’ Werner said, and with a pencil he traced his brother’s outline.
Werner and Marius were afforded an unusual degree of privacy because of a family massacre that had taken place the previous week and mesmerised the residents of Barberton, including the boys’ parents, who were distantly acquainted with the people at the centre of it all. Petronella sat at the kitchen table, reading.
‘Have you seen the newspaper today, Hendrik?’
‘What?’ he asked. He was busy with an inventory form.
‘They say in the paper that the doctors are pessimistic about the Labuschagne boy. He’s so unstable they don’t even want to take him to Pretoria.’
‘I heard.’
‘Maybe it’s best if he dies.’
‘I don’t know, Nellie. Life is life.’
‘Some lives are not worth it. Sometimes it’s better that the Lord says, “Ag, shame, he has suffered enough. I will take him.” Sometimes it’s a mercy to die.’ She sipped her tea and skimmed the article again. ‘They need to get to the bottom of this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They must do an autopsy on the man. They must check his brain.’
‘For what? Rabies?’
‘Don’t be daft. Tumours. Brain cancer.’
‘I don’t know about these things. You’re the nurse.’
‘Why do you have to be like that?’
‘Like what, pet?’
‘You know what.’
Hendrik put down his pen and removed his glasses. ‘Sorry.’
‘Maybe all I do now is scrapes and bruises, but I have seen things. A man doesn’t take a shotgun to his family unless there is a reason. Maybe he was a schizophrenic.’
Hendrik knew better than to suggest what everyone in town said. If you were looking for an explanation of a family murder, the first place to start was the bank. And if the bank didn’t offer any clues, the next place to go looking was his bedroom. The very last place you needed to go digging was inside the man’s brain. But Petronella could not abide the fact that within a sane man there was the potential for such violence.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘they’re still talking to the maid. She came into the house in the middle of it all.’
‘While he was shooting them?’
‘That boy at the chemist’s told Maria that the maid tried to stop him. I don’t believe that.’
‘How do we know?’
‘If you see a man shooting people, you run away. You don’t try and stop him.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maria is obsessed with the thing. Every day she says to
me, “Missies, I can’t believe.” It’s like she thinks I can explain it to her because I’m white. And now she’s got this story in her head about the maid. If this boy dies, who can say the maid is lying?’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘Because it does matter. If someone wants to be a hero, fine – let them be a hero. But let’s get the facts first. Otherwise, what’s the point?’
2
Pretoria – 1996
WERNER RETURNS FROM work just after five. He opens the door to his father’s bedroom to see if he is still alive. It is often difficult to make out the rise and fall of his chest. On more than one occasion he had been convinced that his father had finally died, but when he rushed towards the bed to check, the man opened his two yellow-green slits a crack and stared at his son with undisguised loathing. This afternoon Hendrik is definitely sleeping. He has a chest infection that makes his breath raspy and loud. Werner considers opening the windows in the hope that a cold breeze might hasten things, but Pretoria is warm and the fresh air will only do his father good. He puts down his briefcase in his bedroom and fetches a glass from the kitchen. Just outside his father’s room he urinates into the glass. As quietly as he can manage he creeps into the room, keeping the glass behind his back. Hendrik turns and makes a noise. Werner stands still and waits. When the man settles down, he walks to the bed and gently pours the warm urine over his father’s crotch. The smell is sharp. Seeing the yellow stain makes him want to laugh. He hurries out so as not to wake his father.
In the kitchen he pours himself a glass of wine. His mother will be home around six. He wonders who it will be that discovers that his father is dead. If his father dies in the night, it will probably be his mother. She usually checks on him around five-thirty in the morning. If he dies during the day, his mother will get a call from the nurse who leaves at four. For financial reasons Petronella has accepted that there is one hour, between four and five in the afternoon, when Hendrik is without care. So this is the time that Werner hopes his father will die. When he comes home from work, just before his mother’s shift ends at the hospital, he will walk into the room and find him dead. Then he will pour himself a glass of wine, ease his bulk into the wicker chair by his father’s bed and think about how his life, at the age of thirty-three, can finally begin.
When his mother comes home she asks whether he’s checked on his father.
‘I popped my head in,’ he says.
‘You could talk to him, you know. He’s lonely.’
‘He was sleeping.’
Petronella goes to her room and gets changed. He can hear that his father has woken up. He moans. Werner walks down the passage and peers into his father’s room. Hendrik has noticed the wet sheets and, with the half of his body that is still functional, is trying to pull them off. He wants to hide them before Petronella sees. It’s funny watching the man struggle like this. He’s trying to be quiet, but the frustration is getting the better of him. He moans again.
‘Werner,’ Petronella calls. ‘Please check on your father. Something is not right.’
He walks into his father’s room.
‘Pa? What’s going on? Are you all right?’ He looks at the wet sheet in surprise. ‘Oh, bugger. Ma!’ he calls.
The old man moans and then with his lame mouth says, ‘No! Don dell.’
‘Don’t be silly, Pa. Ma has to know about this stuff. For your own good.’
‘No!’
‘Ma – you’d better get in here.’
‘What is it?’ she shouts from the bedroom.
Hendrik looks beseechingly at Werner. ‘Lease,’ he says.
‘Sorry, Pa – I can’t understand you.’
‘Cun. Fukin. cun!’
He bends down towards his father and says quietly, ‘You miserable old fucker. Did you call me a cunt?’
Petronella walks into the room. ‘What’s going on here?’
Werner points to the wet, twisted sheet.
‘Ag no,’ she says. ‘Hendrik? Did the nurse not take you to the toilet today?’ He looks out of the window and ignores his wife. ‘Hendrik – it’s nothing to be ashamed about. I just need to know if I should get a new nurse. These girls are very lazy sometimes.’
‘I don’t think it’s the nurse’s fault, Ma,’ Werner says. ‘She took you, didn’t she, Pa?’ he asks.
‘Cun,’ Hendrik says.
‘What did he say?’ Petronella asks.
‘I think he called me a cunt.’
‘You watch your mouth.’
‘It’s what he said.’
‘He didn’t. And I won’t tolerate language like that in my house.’
‘I pay half the bills around here.’
‘My roof.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Now help me with your father. We need to get this cleaned up.’
Together they lift Hendrik, ease him out of his sodden pyjamas and put him naked in the wheelchair.
‘Strip the bed,’ Petronella says. ‘I’ll clean up your father.’
She grabs a handful of moist wipes and starts rubbing him down. She flips his dick from side to side and rubs under his ball-sack. Werner looks at his father’s limp cock. Previously his mother would have asked him to leave the room while performing an intimate task, but now they are both so exhausted by it all that neither of them much cares for Hendrik’s dignity. Werner remakes the bed. Even though it’s his own urine, the soiled sheets disgust him. He’s a consummate performer because he believes his own lies.
Werner and his mother stand in the kitchen making macaroni and cheese.
‘I think we should put him in nappies,’ he says.
‘Are you mad? There is no reason to put him in nappies. The nurse must have forgotten to take him to the toilet.’
‘I don’t want to come home from work every day to change piss-sheets.’
‘You won’t have to.’
‘Let’s put him in nappies.’
‘No – I’ll talk to the doctor.’
Petronella and Werner have an agreement. If he helps care for his father, then Petronella will relinquish all claim to Hendrik’s two hundred and fifty thousand rand, to be paid out upon his death. When they came to the agreement it seemed fair. Now Werner regrets ever having contemplated it. At the time he did not think his father would live to see another year. Every month the money is worth less. He has thought about cutting his losses. He could split the money with his mother. If the state medical aid agrees to provide a night-nurse, she might even be persuaded to give him a hundred and fifty thousand rand. It will not be enough, but he cannot wait any longer.
‘I’m tired,’ he says.
‘Go to bed,’ she says.
‘I’m tired of this.’
‘No one is forcing you to stay.’
‘I don’t have friends any more.’
‘I don’t understand why you don’t go out and meet someone.’
‘I’m too old. I’m too fat.’
Petronella says nothing, and by her silence Werner understands that she agrees. She scoops some of the macaroni and cheese into a Tupperware container and walks to Hendrik’s room. Werner is left alone in the kitchen. He eats quickly and goes to his bedroom. On the small desk, beside his computer, is a box labelled Arcadia 235. He does not wish to be taunted tonight, so he puts the box under his bed. Maybe tonight Hendrik will choke to death on the mac and cheese. It would be better if his mother were not a nurse. His mother is always doing things to keep his father going a little longer. There was a graph he’d learnt about in high-school maths. He couldn’t remember its name. The line of the graph approaches the axis; it gets closer and closer and closer, but never touches, until infinity. This is his father’s life. He is getting closer and closer to death, but will never die. Werner has given up so much time waiting. Perhaps the old man knows. Perhaps he draws strength in denying him. That would be like him. Werner relents, gets the box from under the bed and starts paging through the note
s he’s been making all these years. On a loose sheet of paper is a list of artists – recent graduates at the time – that he’d hoped to exhibit at his gallery. Most of them have long since given up on art but, against the odds, two of them are successful, have exhibited overseas, sold paintings, become rich, celebrated, lauded, loved. This is what he wants. It can still happen, but there is so little time. His frustration is eating him up from the inside. He clenches his fists and shakes with rage. ‘Die!’ he hisses. ‘Die. Die. Die.’
3
HENDRIK STOOD IN the kitchen with Maria, their maid, sipping coffee while Maria made porridge. With the Labuschagne business, he was having difficulty invoking the persona that would be required for the next ten days: a stern veld-school principal. The twelve-year-olds were easy to deal with. To exercise control over sixteen-year-olds coming together from different schools required a level of sustained vigilance that left him drained by the time the last child left. These ten-day camps had become a right of passage for white schoolchildren across the country. The curriculum included a curious blend of survival skills, patriotic lectures, religious sermons and outdoor activities. He had lost any sense of the greater purpose that veld-school was supposedly in service of, but believed that ten days in the bushveld was good for anyone.
‘Maria, is there any beer left?’
‘I think, baas, maybe five bottles.’
‘Okay, can you ask Petrus to get another two cases?’
‘Ja, baas.’
‘And can I ask you to make me some vetkoek?’
‘Ja, baas, with the jam?’
‘Some with jam and some with mince. Is there any mince left?’
‘Ja, baas.’
‘There will be eight teachers tonight.’
‘Yo – it’s too many.’
‘Ja – I know.’
He looked at the itinerary for the next three days. They were due to go abseiling, but there had been a small mudslide at the site they normally used. He would need to see if it was still safe. He lit a cigarette as he made notes.
‘And cigarettes, Maria?’
‘Maybe one carton. Must I ask Petrus that he buys some more?’
The Curator Page 1