by Deon Meyer
‘What about the vultures?’
I’d been wondering when she would get to that. Phatudi didn’t like the question. He got up from his chair and waved his hands. ‘The vultures. Tell me, madam, who killed the animals in this country? Who hunted the quagga until not one was left? And the Knysna elephant? The black people?’
‘No, but …’
‘Look at the people of Limpopo, madam. Look where they live. Look how they struggle. There are no jobs, there is no money, and there is no land. What are they supposed to do? When the children have to eat tonight and there is no food, what do you do? You … the Boers did it too. Why did the Boer make Kruger Park? Because they, the whites, had killed nearly everything and they wanted to save the last few. Same with the elephants. Because the Boers were poor and ivory was good money, so they shot them. Thousands and thousands. But that’s OK, because they were white and it was a hundred years ago. Today, my people are poor. The problems are socio-economic. We need to make jobs for the people, then they will leave the vultures alone.’
‘Wolhuter said the poisoned vultures were an ambush, to get Jacobus there. But someone else murdered those people. Because they wanted Jacobus out of the way.’
Phatudi said something in his language, an expression of disbelief. The black sergeant shook his head.
‘Inspector, my brother is incapable of killing people.’
‘Then he is not your brother, madam. This Cobus, he is …’ Phatudi tapped a thick finger against his temple. ‘They saw him. Five children saw him with a firearm. He went into the sangoma’s house where the people with the vultures had gone and they heard him shooting inside and they saw him come out. He was running then. The children know him from Mogale; they came there with the school. They don’t know he hates the blacks. They don’t know about the politics and about how De Villiers talks about “the kaffirs”. They say what they saw.’
Emma didn’t want to hear it. She looked away.
Phatudi sat down again, opposite Emma. His voice was gentler. ‘This De Villiers, he is not like you. He can’t be your brother.’
‘Then why was Wolhuter murdered?’
‘Who says he was murdered?’
There was a query on her face.
Phatudi pointed a finger in the direction of the animal pens. ‘That lion killed him. Wolhuter went in there last night. They say he sometimes has to get the honey badger out. The lion and the badger were together in the pen when they were small, now it sometimes goes under the wire and makes trouble with the lion and then it gets hurt. This morning they found the honey badger at Wolhuter’s house, so it was out of its cage. Wolhuter did the wrong thing, he didn’t dart the lion with the drug first. These things happen here.’
Emma stared at Phatudi as if she were weighing every word for truth. The stare continued once he had finished speaking, until she sighed and let out a long breath that made her shoulders droop, a gesture that indicated she had no more questions.
It engendered a degree of sympathy in Phatudi. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. What for? I wondered.
Emma nodded without speaking.
‘Yesterday I didn’t have your number. I would have told you that I’m sending my people to look after you. The community is very angry. They say if they find De Villiers they are going to kill him. When you came looking for me at the police station. Someone heard what you said. Then I started hearing the stories, how they were going to …’He lifted a hand to his bald head and scratched behind his ear. That wasn’t the only sign that he was lying. It was in his voice, too. Up till now he had been on solid ground in all his statements, but in this explanation there was a change of gear – a faint plea that said ‘believe me’.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Emma.
Phatudi got up. ‘Mrs Le Roux, I have to go.’
His sergeant and constable also made moves.
‘Thank you, Inspector.’
Phatudi said goodbye to her. He ignored me until just before he walked out, when he looked me in the eye. I wasn’t sure whether it was a warning or a challenge.
Emma and I remained behind. She put her elbows on her knees and dropped her head. She sat like that for a while. Then she murmured something.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I can’t go in here now. I can’t ask if Wolhuter left anything for me.’
On the road back to the Mohlolobe Game Reserve, Emma asked me to stop at the butcher’s shop in Klaserie. She went in and came out five minutes later with a brown paper parcel.
She climbed into the car and handed it to me. ‘This is for you, Lemmer.’
I took the parcel.
‘You may open it.’
It was biltong, at least two kilograms of it.
‘I saw how much you enjoyed it yesterday at Stef Moller’s.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘Only a pleasure.’ But she wasn’t the old Emma. The spark had gone out. We drove to Mohlolobe in silence. When we parked in front of the suite she said: ‘Never mind, I’m awake,’ with a wry self-deprecating smile.
She gave me a chance to check in and around the Bateleur before she went in. The midday heat had reached perfect pitch, a high, unbearably sweltering note. When I indicated that she could enter, she disappeared into her original room, leaving the door ajar. I heard the bedsprings as she lay down. I weighed up my options. Sitting on the veranda was not one of them. I picked up a magazine, Africa Geographic, and sat on one of the chairs in the sitting room, where the air conditioner was the most effective. A short snooze wouldn’t do any harm. I flicked through the magazine, stopped at a double-page spread: ‘Rough … Tough – Honey Badgers’. This was the animal that had apparently been responsible for Frank Wolhuter’s death. Cobie de Villiers had associated himself with it.
I read. To be described in the Guinness Book of Records as ‘the most fearless animal in the world’ is no mean feat, especially when the animal stands a mere thirty centimeters tall and weighs fourteen kilograms at most.
A man who went into hiding when he was suspected of murder was not necessarily fearless.
The badger’s appetite for snake seemed insatiable; we once watched a twelve-kilogram male eat ten metres of snake over a period of just three days. The author went on to describe a badger that had caught a puff adder, was bitten, but in three hours was up and about and consumed its prey.
Unfortunately there hadn’t been one around the night before last.
I heard her.
I put down the magazine and listened, to make sure. Quiet sobs in the bedroom.
Damn.
What should a bodyguard do?
I sat still.
Bouts of weeping were interspersed with the sobs, the sound of total heartbreak.
I got up and went over to the doorway. I peered in cautiously. She lay on the bed, her body racked with her crying.
‘Emma.’
She didn’t hear me.
I repeated her name, louder, more carefully. She didn’t respond. Slowly, I went in, bent down and put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Emma.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said through the sobs.
‘No need to be sorry.’ I patted her shoulder and it seemed to help a little.
‘Nothing makes sense, Lemmer.’
Two hours ago she had been the wildcat. ‘Never mind,’ I said, but that was no comfort.
‘Nothing.’ She wiped her nose with a soggy tissue and abandoned herself to weeping.
‘There, there,’ was all I could think of to say. It wasn’t very effective. I sat down on the bed beside her and she shifted, sat up and wrapped her arms around me. Then she let loose and wept as if the world would end.
It took a quarter of an hour for her to cry herself out on my chest. She clung to me initially as if I were a lifebuoy, while I continued to pat her back awkwardly, without the faintest idea of what I should say in addition to ‘there, there’. But she calmed down, the sobs diminished, and her body relaxed.
Then she fell asleep. I d
idn’t realise it at first. I was too conscious of my cramped legs, my deficiency with words, the warmth of her body against me and her scent and the dampness of her tears on my shirt. Eventually, I realised that her breathing was slow and deep and, when I looked, that her eyes were closed.
I eased her softly down against the pillows. The air conditioning had made the room cool, so I pulled the bedspread over her and crept back to my chair.
I would have to reassess my opinion of her. She might just be a lovely young woman who wanted her brother back very badly. Maybe hope had faded with every fragment of new information, but she’d held fast to it, had clung to the possibilities of conspiracies and secrets, until this morning. Now she was trapped between two equally unacceptable alternatives: her brother was Cobie de Villiers – and a murderer. Or he was neither. It would be like losing him all over again.
Or maybe I should be careful. Maybe I should rewrite Lemmer’s Law of Small Women so that it read: Don’t trust yourself.
I couldn’t concentrate on the magazine. My hand remembered the contours of Emma’s back and my heart remembered her helplessness and despair.
I was just the bodyguard, the one available. She would have cried on anyone’s shoulder.
She was an intelligent, socially adjusted, extremely rich, highly educated and attractive young woman, and I was Lemmer from Seapoint and Loxton. I should not forget that.
I realised that it was the second time in twenty-four hours that I had put Emma le Roux to bed. Perhaps I should ask for a bonus.
18
Late that afternoon, Emma spent more than an hour in the bathroom. When she came out she said, ‘Shall we eat?’ You couldn’t see that she’d been crying. It was the first time I’d seen her in a dress. It was white, with tiny red flowers, and it left her shoulders bare. She had white sandals on her feet. She looked younger, but her eyes were old.
We walked through the dusk in silence. The sun slipped away behind dramatic towers of thundercloud in the west. Lightning flickered in the snow-white cumulus. The humidity was unbearable and the heat incredible. Even the birds and insects were still. Nature seemed to be holding its breath.
Susan from reception, the Afrikaner blonde who would speak only English, intercepted us on our way to dinner. ‘Oh, Miss le Roux, how are you? I heard about the mamba, we are all so sorry. Is your suite OK now?’
‘It’s fine, thank you very much.’ Muted, clearly still depressed.
‘Wonderful. Enjoy your dinner.’
As we sat down, Emma said, ‘I really should speak to her in Afrikaans.’
‘Yes,’ I said without thinking.
‘Are you a language fanatic, Lemmer, a taalbul? She asked without much real interest, as if she already knew that I would avoid the question. Or it might have been part of the new depression.
‘Sort of …’
She nodded absently, and reached for the wine list. She stared at it for a while and then looked up at me. ‘I’m so silly, sometimes,’ she said softly.
I saw that there were shadows under her eyes that the light makeup couldn’t disguise. She tried to smile, but struggled. ‘If I spoke Afrikaans to her, there would be this moment. She would say, “Oh, are you Afrikaans?” and pretend to be surprised, but we would all know that she had known all along and it would be this moment of … discomfort.’ She attempted to smile, but didn’t succeed. ‘And that’s typical Afrikaner. We always avoid discomfort.’
Before I could think of a response, she turned back to the wine list and said with determination, ‘Tonight we are going to drink wine. What would you like?’
‘I’m on duty, thank you.’
‘No, not tonight. White or red?’
‘I’m not really a wine drinker.’
‘A beer?’
‘A red Grapetiser would be nice.’
‘Do you drink at all?’
‘Not alcohol.’ I depended on her not to ask more. As with the Afrikaans question, there was enough probability of an uncomfortable answer. I was wrong, as I had been in most of my predictions of Emma.
‘Is it a matter of principle?’ she asked carefully.
‘Not really.’
Emma shook her head.
‘What?’ I said.
She waited before answering, as if she needed to gather energy. ‘You are an enigma, Lemmer. I always used to wonder what it meant when I read about someone who was an enigma, but now I know.’
Maybe it was because she had referred to me as ‘stupid and silent’, or perhaps it was because I wanted to cheer her up, that I said, ‘Explain to me what’s so great about alcohol, because I don’t get it.’
‘Don’t tell me that’s an invitation to a real, actual conversation?’
‘You said I’m “off duty” tonight.’
‘Aah.’ She put the wine list down. ‘Very well.’ She looked up at the candle sconce above us, drew a deep breath and spoke, slowly at first, trying to find the right words. ‘I like red wine. I like the names. Shiraz. Cabernet. Merlot. Pinotage. They roll beautifully off the tongue, they sound so secretive. And I love the complex aromas. There is a mystique to the flavours.’
Then more quickly, freeing herself: ‘It’s like sailing on a trade route past islands of fruit and spices. You can never see the islands, but from the aromas that waft over the water, you can guess what they look like. Exotic, bright colours, dense forests, beautiful people dancing by firelight. I love the colours and the way they look different in sunlight or candlelight. And I love the flavour, because it forces me to taste, to concentrate, to roll it around my tongue and look for the goodness. And I like all the things it stands for – the bonhomie, the company of friends. It’s a social symbol that says we’re comfortable enough with each other to enjoy a glass of wine together. It makes me feel civilised and grateful that I have the privilege to enjoy something that has been made with so much care and knowledge and art. So, tell me what’s not good about that.’
I shook my head, partly because I disagreed with her, partly because I couldn’t believe I was doing this. ‘Wine doesn’t taste nice. Period. It’s not as bad as whisky, but it’s worse than beer. It’s not nearly as nice as grape juice. But grape juice isn’t sophisticated, even though it looks different in sunlight and candlelight. Sweet wine is the exception. But nobody drinks that in cultivated company, not even a good late harvest. Why not? Because it simply does not enjoy the same status. And there’s the whole answer. Status. It’s an old thing. Our civilisation originated in Mesopotamia, but grapes didn’t thrive there. The Mesopotamians made beer out of grain and everyone drank it. But the rich don’t want to drink what everyone drinks. So they imported wine from the highlands of Iran. And because it cost more, because the common people could not afford it, it gained status, regardless of how it tasted. So they created the myth – wine is for the cultivated tongue, for the well-to-do taste. Eight thousand years later, we still believe it.’
I liked the way she looked at me while I spoke. When I’d finished, she laughed, a short happy sound, like someone who has unwrapped a present. She was about to say something, but the wine waiter arrived and she turned her attention to him and said, ‘I would like this bottle of Merlot and I want the best red grape juice that you have and bring us two extra glasses please.’
The waiter jotted his notes and when he had left she leaned back in her chair and said, ‘Where have you been hiding, Lemmer?’ She held her tiny hand up and said, ‘Never mind, I’m just glad you’re here. Are you a reader? How do you know these things?’
Four years in jail, Emma le Roux, is a lot of time on your hands.
‘I’ve read a bit.’
‘A bit? What do you read?’
‘Non-fiction.’
‘Such as?’
‘Anything.’
‘Come on. Tell me about something you’ve read recently.’
I thought for a while. ‘Did you know that the history of South Africa was determined by grass seed?’
She raised an eyebro
w, the corners of her mouth twitched. ‘No.’
‘It’s true. Two thousand years ago there were only Khoi and San people here. They were nomads, not farmers. Then the Bantu people came down from East Africa with cattle and sorghum and they pushed out the Khoi and the San people to the western half of South Africa. Why there? Because the sorghum seed was a summer crop and the western parts are winter rainfall areas. That’s why the Xhosa never settled farther than the Fish River. They needed summer rain. Four hundred years ago the Europeans arrived at the Cape with winter cereals. The Khoi couldn’t stop them; the difference in technology was too great. Think about it: if the Xhosa and Zulu had winter grains, how different the history would have been, how difficult it would have been for the Dutch to establish a halfway station at the Cape.’
‘Astonishing.’
‘It is.’
‘Where did you read that?’
‘A book. Popular science.’
‘And the language thing?’
‘What about it?’
‘You said you were a taalbul?’
‘Yes. Sort of.’
‘And?’
‘Well, take Susan, for instance. She knew we were Afrikaans. She could tell from your name and surname. She could hear your accent. But she speaks English to us. Why?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Because she works with foreigners mostly and she doesn’t want them to know she’s an Afrikaans girl. There’s too much baggage. She wants the tourists to like her, to think she’s cute. She doesn’t want to be judged and labelled by her language and its history.’
‘She doesn’t like the positioning of Afrikaans as a brand.’
‘That’s it, exactly. What I don’t understand is why she … why we all don’t do something about that position. The solution is not to hide away. The solution is to change the perception of the brand.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Isn’t that what you do?’
‘It is, but a language is a little more complex than ketchup.’
‘The difference is that everyone who cares about the ketchup will work together to change the perception. The boere simply won’t do that.’