Daddy Long Legs

by Vernon W. Baumann

  ‘It’s fine, man. It didn’t even take an hour.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Van Wyk laughed as he slapped Human’s arm. The easy-going, extroverted nature of van Wyk was a perfect complement to Human’s own reserved personality. They had been working together for almost three years now and had achieved an intuitive bond that allowed the two investigators a seamless and easy working relationship. It was only one of the many reasons for the success of their partnership. ‘Hey, are we still on for Friday? Davida’s making her famous Bobotie.’

  Wayne Human nodded. ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘Hey man, what about tonight? The ous (guys) are meeting for a few drinks afterwards. You coming?’

  Human didn’t meet the detective’s gaze. ‘I ... I don’t think so, Saints. I got something planned with Magda.’

  ‘Really?’ Van Wyk stared at Human with disbelief. ‘Really? Something planned with Magda? Come on, ma se kind, we both know Magda never goes anywhere. I’m surprised she even agreed about the Friday dinner.’ Van Wyk was, of course, right. Human’s wife never went anywhere. Ever. And yes. It had been a titanic effort to convince her about the dinner at the Van Wyks.

  Detective van Wyk sat on the edge of Human’s desk. ‘Hey.’ He slapped Human’s shoulder when he didn’t respond. ‘Hey, my larnie, (a term meaning ‘fancy’, usually denoting white people) look at me.’ Human met his friend’s worried gaze. ‘You know it would make things a helluva lot easier if you just hung out with the guys every now and then.’

  ‘What’s the use,’ Human said bitterly. ‘I’m not like them, Saints. I don’t drink ... I ... I don’t like talking kak (shit) all the time, you know.’ Human sighed. ‘I’m just here to do my job, that’s all.’ Saintes van Wyk was, of course, right. And Human knew it. But with the exception of maybe one or two, he had given up trying to ingratiate himself with the numerous white detectives in their unit. And he was paying the price every day.

  The relocation to Pretoria had been a difficult one. For both Human and his wife. Although Pretoria was a mere 60km away from the industrial heart of South Africa, socially the two cities could not have been further apart. At least for introverted detective who had grown up in the south of Johannesburg. For one thing, Pretoria was predominantly Afrikaans, Johannesburg mainly English. But it was a lot deeper than that. There was a certain rugged machismo to the nation’s administrative capital that grated the quiet detective. In a unit whose white component was almost exclusively Afrikaans, Human stood out like a sore thumb ... doused in mercurochrome and wrapped in a pink bandage. Tall, thin and wearing spectacles, the detective from Johannesburg appeared more like an academic than a policeman. His placid and guarded nature did not help matters. Initial efforts by the socially hapless Human had only served to make him appear superior and aloof to the burly Afrikaans men that populated the police force. Once Human had decided to abandon any semblance of socialising, the die was cast. Yes. Saintes van Wyk was right. But Human could as little change his own nature as he could stand the alcohol and womanising that was the staple of Pretoria policemen.

  ‘Ag, screw ‘em all,’ van Wyk said wryly. ‘You’re the best, and those Dutchmen know it.’

  Human smiled at his friend ‘I –’

  His cell phone rang. It was Ilse. ‘Skattebol (darling), the media people are here. In the main conference room on seven.’ Ilse was referring to the state-of-the-art media room that the National Police Commissioner had constructed on the floor above them.

  ‘Thanks, Ilse.’ Human ended the call. ‘You coming?’

  ‘No ways,’ van Wyk said laughing. ‘They wanna see you. Who wants to look into the skollie (thug) face of a Kleurling (Coloured) from the Cape Flats, eksê.’ Van Wyk affected a Cape Coloured accent so distinctive of that area.

  Human laughed. ‘Okay, well then ... I’m off.’ He sighed laboriously as he contemplated the job that lay ahead of him. ‘See you.’ He exited and headed for the stairwell that would take him to the seventh floor. The hallway leading to the media room entrance was a hive of activity. At least a dozen people crowded the narrow area. Human recognised at least three people from the communications and liaison division of the SAPS, including its director, Marelise Potgieter. He paused and took a deep breath as he realised the importance of the media event that was taking place before him. Marelise Potgieter spotted him. She waved him over. ‘Detective. Detective. Over here. They’re waiting for you.’ Human walked over and formally shook the tall woman’s hand. ‘They’re just busy wrapping up with the Director. When Human peered through the throng of people into the media room, he saw Joe Ndabane, the Director for Priority Crime Investigation. Barring the presence of the National Police Commissioner himself, this was about as senior as things got.

  The make-up artist for the TV crew noticed Human and waltzed over. ‘Detective, can we do a quick once-over?’ All around him there were several people vying for his attention with shouts of ‘Detective! Detective!’ Human felt his introverted heart thunder in his chest. A cold sweat broke out on his brow. He felt himself gasping for breath. He felt a panic attack blooming in his chest. Marelise Potgieter looked at him with concern. ‘Detective Human, are you alright?’ The make-up artist looked at the pale and sweating policeman with worry. She dug in a bag slung around her shoulder and extracted a more heavy-duty make-up kit.

  Human struggled to breathe. The thought of it all and the ecstatic attention that surrounded him made him dizzy. He felt like fainting.

  About an hour later – after three breaks during which the make-up artist had dusted his profusely sweating face – the interview was over. Thankfully. Various police representatives shook his hand and congratulated him once again. The obligatory pleasantries were exchanged. Eventually the crowd dissipated and Human found himself alone outside Wachthuis. Thoroughly drained. Social engagements like these placed a severe strain on his introverted character. He was glad it was done.

  The rest of the day passed in a haze. For once there was nothing new on his plate. The good people of Gauteng, South Africa had, it seemed, taken a temporary break from murder and mayhem. Human spent the day thankfully cloistered in his office, wrapping up much needed admin work. And then, as night settled, it was time to head home.

  He climbed into the police-issue sedan then slowly wound his way through the last remnants of the evening rush hour traffic. He was tired. Exhausted. Heading home should have offered him solace. And yet.

  Pretty soon he entered the large and sprawling middle-class Pretoria suburb of Centurion. Where he owned the house that, in all truth and honesty, he could not afford. The house he didn’t even want. Presently he pulled up in the driveway. Instead of climbing out, he remained for a minute or two. Staring at the dashboard. The bonnet of the car. His reflection in the rear-view mirror. Then. With a deep sigh. He exited the Toyota. And headed for the front door.

  Inside the dimly lit house, Magda Human was sitting on her favourite couch in the lounge, ensconced in a pink dressing gown and matching slipper socks. She was staring morosely at the TV, watching Celebrity Apprentice. ‘Good evening, honey,’ Human said guardedly. There was no reply. He carefully placed his briefcase on an antique chair by the entrance. When he turned around again, she was staring at him with resentment.

  ‘Where have you been all afternoon?’ she said slowly, taking care to enunciate each word with mounting bitterness. Human stared at her. Dumbfounded. ‘I have been trying to contact you all afternoon. All AFTERNOON, Wayne.’ She slammed a little clenched fist down on the couch’s armrest. At least three crumpled tissues went flying into different directions. ‘I must have tried to phone you at least a dozen times.’ Human had seen the missed calls on his cell. There had been three. ‘You know I’m as sick as a dog, Wayne. Sick as a dog. And you know I need my medication from the chemist.’ She looked at him, eyes glowering above a red nose. ‘So where were you all afternoon, Wayne? Huh? Gallivanting in the dirty streets of Johannesburg with your filthy black whores.’ The words were almost s
pat out. She reserved, however, her most sickly vitriol for the last four words. ‘Big detective Wayne Human.’

  Despite his tiredness, Human was vexed into anger. ‘Gallivanting? For God’s sake, Magda. Don’t you watch the news?’

  Magda jumped up from her couch. This time an entire box of tissues and a bottle of nasal spray went flying. ‘Don’t you dare verbally abuse me, Wayne.’ She pointed at the untidy lounge around them. ‘Does it look like I have time to watch the news?’ She strutted towards Human. ‘I spend all day, slaving away, working my fingers to the bone. Trying to keep this house immaculate for you.’ Human looked at the unkempt and littered interior of their house. He said nothing. Magda sniffed loudly. Then rubbed her red nose with the tattered tissue in her hand. Effortlessly she slipped from confrontational to self-pitying mode. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You know Wayne, it wasn’t my idea to become a housewife. It was never my idea to stay cooped up in this dungeon all day long.’ For emphasis she swung her arm wildly, indicating the dungeon around her. The same dungeon she had nagged him about – for more than three months. The same dungeon that was now slowly driving him to bankruptcy. ‘It was never my idea to become a daily prisoner in this hellhole, Wayne. Never!’ Detective Wayne Human stared at his rumpled wife with the wild eyes and the untidy hair. And clearly remembered her words just over a year ago. Lamenting the stress and pressures of her low-level office job. Begging him to find a way for her to become a stay-at-home wife. So that she could better ‘take care’ of him. Once again, Human said nothing. He had learnt better over the years.

  ‘I’m sorry I swore at you, Magda,’ he said wearily. ‘Please excuse me. I have a lot of work to do.’ He turned to leave, hoping for the solitude of his study, when Magda grabbed him.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Human was arrested by the hostility in her voice. ‘What are you –’

  She grabbed his lapel and pinched from its surface a long, golden-blonde hair. ‘What the hell is this, Wayne Human?’

  Human stared at the long blonde hair in perplexed confusion. Then he remembered the embarrassing incident in the corridor outside the media room. When he had temporarily fainted. The hair must have been transplanted when the helpful reporter helped revive him. ‘For God’s sake, Magda ...’

  ‘Don’t you dare bring the Lord’s name into this.’ She stared hard at Human. Back at the long hair clutched in her hand. Then back at Human. ‘You cheating little bastard. Who have you been fucking?’ She threw the hair aside then fell on her knees in front of the mortified policeman. He knew exactly what was coming.

  ‘Oh God, Magda, please don’t.’

  With clumsy fingers, Magda Human forced open his fly.

  ‘Please don’t.’

  She inserted her morgue cold fingers into the fly of his boxers and cruelly pulled his penis from his pants.

  Human felt the deep crimson blush of humiliation creep from his collar and wash over his face.

  Magda Human carefully studied her husband’s penis. Then bringing her nose right up against the head, she took a deep sniff. Then another.

  Above her, Wayne Human shrank deep into himself. Eyes clenched shut. Head turned. In the deep. Deep. Deep recesses of his mind. He thought of a dead girl. In a Hillbrow flat.

  After what seemed an eternity, Magda Human stood up. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she said wrapping her nightgown tightly about her thin frame. ‘I’m going to bed. There’s leftover food in the fridge.’ She turned without saying another word and shuffled off to the master bedroom. Leaving his penis dangling from his fly. Human slowly dropped his manhood back into his pants and zipped up. His face hot with shame.

  With a huge, dead black anchor around his neck, he ambled towards his easy chair in the corner of their deserted lounge. He sat down and immediately changed the channel. The news was on. The conviction of Michael Moffat was the lead story. Suddenly Human’s face flashed onto the screen. With a burst of embarrassment, Human shut off the TV screen. He hated seeing himself in the media. It was a deep aversion that even extended to ordinary photographs. An affliction that explained why he possessed virtually no photographic evidence of the twenty seven years of his existence.

  Human waited a few moments then switched on the television again. He finished watching the remainder of the broadcast in silence, not focusing on any of the images and audio. His mind far away. In another time. In another place.

  Eventually he fell into a fitful and restless sleep on the couch. The TV buzzing in the dark. He dreamt of dark serial killers. And the most beautiful girl in all of the world. A lost precious girl. A dead girl. Called Sasha.

  Two

  Prostitutes were dying.

  Dead bodies were showing up everywhere. And no-one gave a damn.

  Wayne Human was dreaming about dead prostitutes. A time in his life more than seven years before.

  Wayne Human was dreaming about the love of his life. A dead girl. Called Sasha.

  His greatest joy.

  His greatest sadness.

  And his deepest darkness.

  Her name was Sasha. And their time together would be brief.

  Far too brief.

  Far too ...

  A few months after her death a colleague introduced him to a girl called Magda. Six months later they were married.

  That was then and this is now.

  Some things are separated by barriers greater than time and space.

  ***

  On the morning after the humiliating encounter with his wife, Wayne Human was woken up on his couch by the persistent ringing of his cell phone.

  Something terrible had happened in a little town in the Northern Cape. A place called Hope. A spectre from the past had resurfaced.

  A plane ticket and accommodation had been arranged. He was to fly to Kimberley that night.

  That was then.

  And this is now.

  Three

  On top of a little hill overlooking Hope, a group of people gathered around a six-feet hole. All around them, a cold wind whispered ugly rumours through winter-stripped trees while the drowsy town beneath sleepwalked through yet another day.

  Kyle stood motionless as he watched the mechanical device lower the last remains of his mother into the cold earth. To his right, someone sobbed quietly. Tannie Koekie, Kyle thought to himself. His mother’s closest friend. His mother’s only friend. Kyle wasn’t surprised. Stern and aloof. Judgemental and surly. His mother was hardly a people magnet. The tiny group of people that now crowded her last resting place was testament to that.

  Kyle surreptitiously surveyed the small cluster of people that had made the effort to attend the dreary ceremony. They were all elderly. His mother’s age. People who had known better times. In another country, so different to this one. They had been ostensibly friendly to Kyle. Courteous. Yet, he couldn’t deny that there was a latent hostility. A quiet condemnation. Sometimes it was implicit. And at other times almost palpable. They still blamed him. After all these years they still blamed him. Un-fucking-believable! Kyle could hardly believe it. The town of Hope may have been small. But its memory was huge. Gargantuan.

  Two days before, Kyle had cruised into Hope. And found a place that had been radically transformed by the years. This was no longer the town of his youth. Sure. Corruption was endemic. Incompetence and ineptitude characterised the civil administrations of many municipalities, especially in the rural areas. Yet nothing could have prepared Kyle for what he saw when he entered Hope. The buildings and premises that flanked Wide Street, Hope’s main artery, were all in various states of decay and dereliction. What had, in his youth, been the business centre of Hope was now a collection of shabby and dirty buildings. The pavements were littered with garbage and Wide Street (Hope’s only tarred road) was marked with potholes and cracks. And everywhere, the streets were crowded with the unemployed. And the indigent.

  At the town’s undertaker he found his mother’s embalmed corpse in a cheap plywood coffin. The beak of her nose. Th
e drawn gauntness of her cheeks. Her sunken eyes. Everything seemed to project one last recrimination at her eldest – and last remaining – son.

  Over the ensuing two days, with the saintly help of tannie Koekie, Kyle had finalised all the funeral arrangements. And so, with a signature here ... an EFT there ... and a handshake to round it off, an entire life had been concluded. Terminated. And forever consigned to that ethereal thing we call memory. The bitter and reproachful presence that had been his mother was dead. Long live Elsa Jane Devlin.

  Now, atop the little hill overlooking a sleepy Hope, Kyle watched as the coffin sank into the earth.

  Then finally, to Kyle’s great relief, the last clod had been strewn. The last verse had been read. The last prayer had been chanted. And it was all over. An awkward and bitter bundle of a woman was now forever consigned to the hard soil of Hope. His mother was dead. Yet her stern visage would forever haunt his thoughts.

  Kyle remembered the last time he had visited her. The only time he had visited her. The only time since his hasty departure from the town of his youth, more than a decade before. He had rung the doorbell with trepidation. A clouded anxiety that had proven more than justified. Because when she had opened the door, she had stood there, silent and barren. There had been no greeting. No happy motherly smile to welcome back her son. She had stood and looked at him as if he had merely gone to the local shop. As if he had been gone a few hours. Not ten years. On the other side of South Africa. And then the simple words. ‘Come in.’ It wasn’t an invitation. It was an acknowledgement. Almost ... a grudging acquiescence.

  They sat around the kitchen table with its tattered linoleum. Trying desperately to make conversation. At least Kyle was trying. He told her about his life in Johannesburg. His successes. His triumphs. A film crew had done a segment on one of his TV ads. He tried to impress her. To make her proud of him. But her hazy eyes and the far-away look on her face told him that she was barely listening. They spoke. Haltingly. And awkwardly about the town. About South Africa. About the things that had changed since their last meeting. But all the time a dead boy hung like an exclamation mark over their conversation. And something else. The unspoken accusation. Kyle hated little towns with big memories. He had planned to stay the weekend. But later that same day he had headed back to Joburg. Relieved. Disappointed. His mother always managed to evoke in him a mad, confused swirl of conflicting emotions. Damn!