‘Johann!’ he said as he scrambled out from under the bed. Johann dropped the wallet he’d been holding and shouted, ‘Jissus! Werner! Bliksem, man – you gave me a fright!’
‘What are you doing here?’ Werner asked.
‘Nothing. Nothing. I’m just . . . looking around.’
‘I saw you.’
‘Saw me what?’
‘You were stealing.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Johann said. He quickly repacked the bag he’d been rifling through. Werner hesitated for a moment, but knew he would have to do the same.
‘And what were you doing?’ Johann asked. Werner closed the suitcase, fastened the buckles and leant it back against the bed.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Werner said.
They ran across the camp-ground. Werner felt the spreading tingle of hysteria and excitement across his body, feeding his muscles with a mad energy, so that when they broke into the bushveld he screamed and giggled and whooped. Even Johann laughed, scrambled up a tree, jumped down and did a handstand.
‘I thought I was a goner,’ Johann said, after he caught his breath. ‘I thought it was the reformatory for sure!’
Werner said, ‘Ja – you would have been in big trouble.’
Johann scowled at him. Did Johann not understand that he was compromised? By his poor family, his alcoholic father and his fat mother, who may or may not have been a whore; by his dependence on the state, the fact that he lived too close to the blacks and that he had on occasion been seen playing soccer with them in one of the dusty clearings, during the year he had absconded from school? But when Werner had made his point, when he said pointedly, ‘Ja – you would have been in big trouble,’ he saw that his friend was hurt, and Werner didn’t feel like fighting. So he offered Johann a cigarette and they smoked and chatted and it was forgotten.
Standing on the stoep, Petronella watched Werner and Johann walking along the road that led to the house.
‘Werner!’ she called. The boys sauntered. Their casual attitude towards her was irritating. Johann was having a malign influence on the boy. It was unfortunate. She did not like to think of a child as being inherently bad, but everyone knew there was a point when a person’s character was fixed and there was nothing that could be done about it. Johann’s parents were a disgrace. They lived in the bundus, and the too-many children crawled over the old motorbikes and broken-down cars. As for the mother, lying there in the bed like a fat sow, popping out one after the other – there was no other word for it: infestation.
‘Werner, when I call you, don’t drentel!’ The boys quickened their pace. ‘Who do you think I am? Huh? When I call you – you run, boy.’
‘Ja, Ma,’ Werner said.
‘Johann,’ she said in greeting.
‘Hello, tannie.’
‘Werner – this is a school day.’
‘I know.’
‘Have you finished your homework?’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘Johann, I don’t know how your parents feel about the matter, but in this house weekdays are for school and homework. Not playing around.’
‘Ja, tannie,’ Johann said.
‘Ma – I said I don’t have any homework.’
‘Don’t you backchat me.’
‘This is so unfair.’
‘Werner! Enough.’ She looked at Johann. His shorts were too small; they hardly extended beyond his crotch; so tight they were cutting into his thighs. His T-shirt, with its frayed collar, was stained. Around his ankles were flea-bites. That’s what comes from living in a house filled with dogs and cats. She could just imagine them sleeping on the settee and the beds. ‘Johann, you need to go home.’
‘Bye, tannie. Bye, Werner,’ Johann said as he turned around to make his way back down the road.
‘You – inside!’ she said. Werner did not move. She folded her arms. ‘Werner?’ she asked threateningly.
‘You don’t like Johann.’
She swallowed. ‘It has nothing to do with that.’
‘You think you’re too good for them.’
‘That’s enough. I’ve told you why I don’t want you to be friends with Johann.’
‘You think they’re white kaffirs.’
‘I never said that.’
‘You think they’re dirty white kaffirs. And that makes me a dirty white kaffir-lover.’
‘Shut your mouth! Go to your room!’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘Go to your room now!’
‘I won’t, you old cow!’
Petronella lunged forward and grabbed Werner by his shirt collar. She was deciding whether to slap him across the face or, if she still had the strength, drag him inside the house, put him over her knee and beat him. But she hesitated too long. Werner tore free with such force that she lost her balance and fell over. He sprinted down the road. Petronella got up and started chasing after him. She picked up a tree branch and threw it at her son, but it only travelled a few metres.
‘You just wait till your father comes home!’ she screamed. ‘He will beat you to within an inch of your life!’ She picked up a stone and hurled it in the direction of her son, who had by now almost disappeared from view. She wanted to beat that arrogant defiance right out of him She wanted to beat him until he begged her to stop. She wiped her palms on the front of her dress. Her thigh throbbed where she’d fallen awkwardly on the stoep and she knew it would leave a bruise. Evidence, she thought. Wait till Hendrik sees that. As she walked back to the house she saw a wide-eyed black girl standing still in the bushes. Typical bantu, she thought. One little white domestic and they stand there like the blarry world is going to end.
‘What are you looking at?’ she said. The girl started walking away quickly. ‘Hey – come here!’ Petronella called. The girl, head down, walked towards her.
‘Missies,’ she said.
‘Who are you?’
‘Lerato.’
‘Lerato, huh? What are you doing here?’
‘I clean, missies.’
‘Clean here?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I haven’t seen you before. You work here at the camp?’
‘Yes, missies.’
‘Who gave you a job?’
‘Baas Hendrik.’
‘Baas Hendrik gave you a job? Cleaning here? I know nothing about this. We don’t need any more cleaners. Since when have you been working?’
‘Last week.’
‘Did you come here asking for a job?’
‘No, missies. The baas he come to the farm.’
‘Which farm?’
‘Moedswill, missies.’
Werner ran. He was certain his mother was still chasing him, so without looking around he cut through the bushveld. Tree branches whipped his legs and his face and his arms, but he didn’t stop. When he reached the river he ran along the bank and, when the growth became too thick, he hopped from stone to stone until he came to a small clearing. Finally he stopped to turn around, expecting to see his mother chasing after him, lifting up her dress as she stepped awkwardly from rock to rock. He struggled to catch his breath. His chest was burning and his face and arms were cut. He had a deep gash above his left eyebrow, from which ran a trickle of blood. He splashed his face with water and picked the bits of twig and branch from his shirt. He sat down, leant against a tree and closed his eyes. The vibrating pitch of the bushveld became louder and more insistent. His senses became thick and his movements felt slow and clumsy. He drew his thighs up to his chest, crossed his arms over his knees and rested his head on his forearms. He’d wondered if this wasn’t the way in which Jesus spoke. Perhaps he used the sounds of the world – the dogs and tractors and cars and crickets, the sound of the vacuum cleaner and the lawnmower, but also the bushveld and the river and the bantus singing, and the boys at the camp shouting and fighting and playing, and the washing machine and the loud hum of the fridge; Jesus in your ear, speaking in all the frequencies of the world, louder and louder, more and
more urgent, in his multi-tonal screech-speech. Werner couldn’t stop the noise. He had to sit down until it passed. Even his breathing sounded strange. Even his breathing was talking to him. He sat and he waited with his eyes closed for a long time, until it passed.
There was no point in hurrying home. He was sure that if he went back now, or at midnight, the consequences would be the same. He stood up, brushed himself off and started walking in the direction of Johann’s house. Someone, other than his parents, needed to acknowledge his act of rebellion. There could come a point when you simply stopped doing what people told you to.
Petronella sat down on the small bench outside the kitchen door. She sipped a cup of tea and smoked a cigarette. The temptation, when her husband came home, was to talk to him about everything. She did not know what to think about Lerato. She lit another cigarette, breaking her own rule, but these were unusual circumstances. The situation warranted a number of cigarettes. Smoke up the whole packet, she told herself. She heard Marius open one of the kitchen cupboards.
‘What are you doing, Marius?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, Ma.’
‘But I can hear you are opening a cupboard.’ Marius closed the cupboard. Petronella stood up and went into the kitchen. The boy had a guilty look on his face. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What do you have behind your back?’
Before he could answer, she grabbed his arm and pulled it towards her. In his hands were two slices of white bread that he’d crushed in an attempt to hide them.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ she asked. Marius, wide-eyed, stood still and said nothing. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to eat before dinner? And why do you lie to me? I asked you: What are you doing? “Nothing, Ma.” That’s what you said. “Nothing, Ma.” But you weren’t doing nothing, were you? No – you were up to something. Lying and thieving. You and your brother. Do you not get enough food? Huh?’ She grabbed the bread out of his hand, a sweaty dough-ball, pushed it into his mouth and smeared it over the side of his face. ‘Come on, Marius – eat it up, so that you can be nice and fat like your brother.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Hendrik dropped his bag on the kitchen floor. Petronella turned. He was smiling. ‘What’s the little bugger done now?’ he asked.
She looked at him for a moment and then bent down to pick up the pieces of bread. ‘Marius – go to your room.’ He darted out of the kitchen.
Hendrik opened the fridge and grabbed a can of beer. He took a large sip, belched and put the beer down on the counter.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘You’re late,’ she said.
‘Ja – there were a few things I needed to sort out. Is everything all right?’
‘Werner called me an old cow.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘He was wild, Hendrik – completely wild. I only told him to come inside and he screamed at me. He pushed me to the ground. Look!’ she said. She pointed to a patch of dirt on her dress.
‘He pushed you?’
‘He’s run away. I don’t know where he is. It’s Johann. That family is trouble – nothing but trouble. Why do they have to live here? Why doesn’t the government do something about them? I can’t believe Werner did that to me. His own mother! Threw me to the ground. Threw me, Hendrik – like a piece of rubbish.’ Petronella started crying.
Hendrik took her into his arms and for a moment she pressed her face against him, took in his smell and surrendered, while he rubbed her back and said, ‘Ag, Nellie – you’re just having a bad day. Huh? He’s just a kid. You know what they’re like. He’s becoming a teenager. I’ll sort him out. Huh? Come now – don’t cry. Don’t cry, Nellie.’
She was about to say, ‘And what about this Lerato girl?’ but thought better of it, pushed her husband away, wiped her tears and said, ‘Well – what are you going to do about Werner?’
‘Nothing. We’re going to have dinner – and then I’ll deal with him when he comes home.’
‘Are we just going to let him do what he wants?’
‘No, Nellie, but I am not going to go chasing after him. I won’t let him be a disruption. Eventually, when it starts getting cold, he’ll come home.’
‘And what if he is with that family?’
‘He will have to come home eventually.’
Petronella took the chicken out of the fridge, drizzled oil over the skin and rubbed in some salt. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. She looked at her husband. ‘Steyn,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘Go and check that he’s not with Steyn.’
10
IN HIS DESK drawer, beneath some papers, Werner has put the three vials of insulin, a syringe and a pack of Ambien. He’s not decided whether he will need the sleeping pills; in fact he has not decided upon a course of murder, but he likes to be prepared. He has considered a number of scenarios and even performed some tests. For instance, he thought it might be wise to dose his mother’s wine with a sleeping pill and he tested this on himself. The effect of the pill was unmistakeable. His mother would immediately recognise a drug-induced drowsiness. His main concern is that his father wakes up as he’s injecting and makes a noise. This will wake his mother. She might catch him, needle-deep. What his mother will actually do is an interesting question. He doubts that she will report him to the police. It is this belief, above all, from which he draws his courage.
Some further groundwork has been laid in that both his mother and father now accept that he often spends a few hours watching television in his father’s room. His father has come to relish the visits, for Werner invariably gives the old man some whisky. Now it is simply a question of resolve. He has been having nightmares. In one, a man from campus security collects him from his office. He tells him it’s about stolen cellphones. Would Werner accompany him to identify the suspect in a police line-up? Werner protests. He doesn’t know anything about this. It doesn’t matter. The men behind the glass all have nooses around their necks. There are seven levers in front of him. ‘Choose!’ the man from campus security yells. He finds he cannot speak. He is compelled to pull a lever. He does so. The trapdoor opens and the man falls. There is a sickening thud as the body pulls the rope taut. The man then leads Werner behind the glass partition and places a noose over his neck. He knows he must not protest. To protest is an admission of guilt. So he stands silently and waits. They bring in the boy from the bar. Werner should not be able to see through the glass, but he can. He must not reveal that he can see the boy. But he stares. He can’t stop himself. He stares at the boy, and the boy sees. The boy says, ‘That’s the fat cunt. He tried to kill me.’ He pulls the lever and Werner wakes up. When he has these dreams, he has difficulty in falling asleep. The only thing that calms him is to sit in his father’s room, to prove to the universe that he will not kill him tonight. But the agony is such that he knows relief will only come when the thing is finally done. The trauma of the imminent crime is making him unstable.
He is trying to get along with his mother. Every night they watch the soap opera together. He is beginning to wonder whether he has it in him. It is a revelation to discover, after all these years, how well he and his mother can get along. It’s not that he enjoys her company. She is a tedious woman, but after a decade of squabbling, peacefulness feels akin to friendship. She has stopped complaining about his drinking. In part he thinks this must have something to do with the time he’s spending with his father. Sometimes she smiles when she sees him walk into his father’s room. She is careful, though. She does not say, ‘I am so glad you are spending time with your father. He’s very lonely.’ She and her son have never got on well enough for her to know exactly what might upset the balance. One evening as they wash the dishes she says, ‘Werner, is there any chance you can help me take your father to hospital next week?’
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.
‘Nothing. He’s doing very well. It looks like the infection has cleare
d up nicely. Just a check-up.’
He nods and clears his throat. He takes a sip of water because his mouth has gone dry. They will remove the line.
‘When?’ he asks. His voice is shaky.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I will ask at work tomorrow.’ Tomorrow is Friday. Three days. If it does not happen in three days, it will never happen. It is, he tells himself, for the best. He cannot go on living like this. If it is done, it should be done quickly. Should he do it tonight? His hands start shaking and he’s worried that he will drop a dish. He goes to the bathroom and washes his face. Not tonight, he tells himself, then conceals a thought about not intending to do it and then, somehow, getting caught up in the momentum of it all and doing it anyway. This must be the only way a sane person can commit murder: to tell themselves they won’t, while admitting the possibility that they may, and then seeing if circumstances open up a pathway of the possible.
He and his mother watch television together. At nine she will go to the bathroom, wash her face and brush her teeth. Then she will get into bed, read her book for fifteen minutes, before switching off the bedside light. Does she fall asleep right away? He does not know. It is rare, though, for his mother to get up in the middle of the night.
Petronella yawns and says, ‘I’m going to bed. Don’t forget to switch the front light off.’ She says this every night.
Normally he just says, ‘Night,’ but now he says, ‘Don’t you want to watch a little more TV? There is a new American comedy on.’
‘No, thanks.’
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