by Deon Meyer
He had nothing to say.
“And they’ve gone and abolished the death penalty,” the Boss Man said as he got up.
Thobela said goodbye and left and went and sat in his pickup. He put his hand behind the seat and felt the polished shaft of the assegai. He stroked the wood with his fingers, back and forth, back and forth.
Someone had to say, “This far, and no further.”
Back and forth.
So he waited for them.
When the minister moved away from her and sat on the edge of the desk, she knew something had altered between them, a gap had been bridged. Maybe it was just on her side that a certain anxiety had subsided, a fear allayed, but she could see a change in his body language — more ease.
If he would be patient, she said, she would like to tell the whole story, everything. So that he could understand. Perhaps so she could also understand, because it was hard. For so long she had believed she was doing what she had to, following the only course available. But now . . . she wasn’t so sure.
Take your time, he said, and his smile was different. Paternal.
The last thing Griessel could remember, before they took him to Casualty at Tygerberg Hospital and injected him with some or other shit that made his head soft and easy, was Matt Joubert holding his hand. The senior superintendent, who said to him all the way in the ambulance, over and over: “It’s just the DTs, Benny, don’t worry. It’s just the DTs.” His voice bore more worry than comfort.
She went to university to study physiotherapy. The whole family accompanied her on a scorching hot Free State day in January. Her father had made them all kneel in her hostel room and had prayed for her, a long dramatic prayer that made the sweat pop out on his frowning forehead and exposed the wickedness of Bloemfontein in detail.
She remained standing on the pavement when the white Toyota Cressida eventually drove away. She felt wonderful: intensely liberated, a floating, euphoric sensation. “I felt as though I could fly,” were the words she used. Until she saw her mother look back. For the first time she could really see her family from the outside, and her mother’s expression upset her. In that short-lived moment, the second or two before the mask was replaced, she read in her mother’s face longing, envy and desire — as if she would have liked to stay behind, escape as her daughter had. It was Christine’s first insight, her first knowledge that she was not the only victim.
She had meant to write to her mother after initiation, a letter of solidarity, love and appreciation. She wanted to say something when her mother phoned the hostel for the first time to find out how things were going. But she never could find the right words. Maybe it was guilt — she had escaped and her mother had not. Maybe it was the new world that never left time or space for melancholy thoughts. She was swept up in student life. She enjoyed it immensely, the total experience. Serenades, Rag, hostel meetings, social coffee-breaks, the lovely old buildings, dances, Intervarsity, men, the open spaces of the campus’s lawns and streams and avenues of trees. It was a sweet cup and she drank deeply, as if she could never have enough of it.
“You won’t believe me, but for ten months I didn’t have sex. I was one hundred per cent celibate. Heavy petting, yes, there were four, five, six guys I played around with. Once I slept the whole night with a medical student in his flat in Park Street, but he had to stay above the belt. Sometimes I would drink, but I tried to only do that on a girls’ night out, for safety.”
Her father’s letters had nothing to do with her celibacy — long, disjointed sermons and biblical references that she would later not even open and deliberately toss in the rubbish bin. It was a contract with the new life: “I would do nothing to make a ba . . . a mess of it.”
She would not tempt fate or challenge the gods. She vaguely realized it was not rational, since she did not perform academically, she was constantly on the edge of failing, but she kept her part of the deal and the gods continued to smile on her.
Then she met Viljoen.
In sharp criticism of the state’s handling of the case, Judge Rosenstein quoted recent newspaper reports on the dramatic increase in crimes against children.
“In this country 5,800 cases of rape of children younger than 12 years old were investigated last year, and some 10,000 cases where children between 11 and 17 years old were involved. In the Peninsula alone, more than 1,000 cases of child molestation were reported last year and the number is rising. “What makes these statistics even more shocking is the fact that only an estimated 15 per cent of all crimes against children are actually reported. And then there is the matter of children as murder victims. Not only are they being caught in the crossfire of gangland shootings, or become the innocent prey of pedophiles, now they are being killed in this senseless belief that they can cure AIDS,” he said.
“The facts and figures clearly indicate that society is already failing our children. And now the machinery of the state is proving inadequate to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice. If children can’t depend on the justice system to protect them, to whom can they turn?”
Thobela folded the article up again and put it in his shirt pocket. He walked down to the beach, feeling the sand soft beneath his shoes. Just beyond reach of the white foaming arcs spilling across the sand he stood, hands in pockets. He could see Pakamile and his two friends running in step along the beach. He could hear their shouts, see their bare torsos and the sand grains clinging to their skins like stars in a chocolate firmament, arms aloft like wings as their squadron flew in formation just above the waterline. He had taken them to Haga Haga on the Transkei coast for the Easter weekend. They camped in tents and cooked over a fire, the boys swam and caught fish with hand lines in the rock pools and played war games in the dunes. He heard their voices till late at night in the other tent, muffled giggling and chatting.
He blinked and the beach was empty and he was overwhelmed. Too little sleep and the after-effects of excess adrenaline.
He began to walk north along the beach. He was looking for the absolute conviction he had felt in the Yellow Rose, that this is what he must do; as if the universe was pointing the way with a thousand index fingers. It was like twenty years ago when he could feel the absolute rightness of the Struggle — that his origins, his instincts, his very nature had been honed for that moment, the total recognition of his vocation.
Someone had to say, “This far.” If children can’t depend on the justice system to protect them, to whom can they turn? He was a warrior and there was still a war in this land.
Why did it all sound so hollow now?
He must get some sleep; that would clear his perspective. But he did not want to, did not feel attracted to the four walls of the hotel room — he needed open space, sun, wind and a horizon. He did not want to be alone in his head.
He had always been a man of action, he could never stand by and watch. That is what he was and what he would be — a soldier, who faced the child rapist and felt all the juices of war flood his body. It was right, regardless how he might feel now. Regardless that this morning his convictions did not have the same impregnability.
They would start to leave the children of this land alone, the dogs, he would make sure of that. Somewhere Khoza and Ramphele were hiding, fugitives for the moment, invisible. But some time or other they would reappear, make contact or do something, and he would pick up their trail and hunt them down, corner them and let the assegai do the talking. Sometime or other. If you wanted to get the prey, you had to be patient.
In the meantime there was work to do.
“I was clueless about money. There was just never enough. My father put a hundred rand a month in my account. A hundred rand. No matter how hard I tried, it would only last two weeks. Maybe three if I didn’t buy magazines or if I smoked less or if I pretended I was busy when they went to movies or to eat out or chill . . . but it was never enough and I didn’t want to ask for more because he would want to know what I was doing with it and I would hav
e to listen to his nagging. I heard they were looking for students at a catering business in Westdene. They did weddings and functions and paid ninety rand for a Saturday night if you would waitress or serve, and they gave you an advance for the clothes. You had to wear black pantyhose and a black pencil skirt with a white blouse. I went to ask and they gave me a job, two sweet middle-aged gays who would have a huge falling out every fortnight and then make up just in time for the next function.
“The work was okay, once you got used to being on your feet for so long, and I looked stunning in the pencil skirt, even if I say so myself. But most of all I liked the money. The freedom. The, the . . . I don’t know, to walk down Mimosa Mall and look at the Diesel jeans and decide I wanted them and buy them. Just that feeling, always knowing your purse was not empty — that was cool.
“At first I just did Saturdays, and then Fridays too and the occasional Wednesday. Just for the money. Just for the . . . power, you could say.
“Then in October we did the Schoemans Park golf-day party. I went outside for a smoke after the main course, and Viljoen was standing on the eighteenth green with a bottle in his hand and such a knowing look on his face. He asked me if I wanted a slug.”
They must have injected him with something, because it was morning when he woke, slowly and with difficulty, and he just lay with his face to the hospital wall. It was a while before he realized there was a needle and a thin tube attached to his arm. He was not shaking.
A nurse came in and asked him questions and his voice was hoarse when he answered. He might have been speaking too loudly, because she sounded far away. She took his wrist and in her other hand held a watch that was pinned to her chest. He thought it was odd to wear it there. She put a thermometer into his dry mouth and spoke in a soft voice. She was a black woman with scars on her cheeks, fossil remnants of acne. Her eyes rested softly on him and she wrote something on a snow-white card and then she was gone.
Two colored women brought him breakfast, shifting the trolley over the bed. They were excitable, chittering birds. They put a steaming tray on the trolley and said: “You must eat, Sarge, you need the nourishment.” Then they disappeared. When the doctor arrived it was still there, cold and uneaten, and Griessel lay like a fetus, hands between his legs and his head feeling thick. Unwilling to think, because all his head had to offer was trouble.
The doctor was an elderly man, short and stooped, bald and bespectacled. The hair that remained around his head grew long and gray down his back. He read the chart first and then came to sit beside the bed.
“I pumped you full of thiamin and Valium. It will help with the withdrawal. But you have to eat too,” he said quietly.
Griessel just lay there.
“You are a brave man to give up alcohol.” Matt Joubert must have talked to him.
“Did they tell you my wife left me?”
“They did not. Was it because of the drink?”
Griessel shifted partially upright. “I hit her when I was drunk.”
“How long have you been dependent?”
“Fourteen fucking years.”
“Then it is good that you stopped. The liver has its limits.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“I also felt like that and I have been dry for twenty-four years.”
Griessel sat up. “You were an alky?”
The doctor’s eyes blinked behind the thick lenses. “That’s why they sent for me this morning. You could say I am a specialist. For eleven years I drank like a fish. Drank away my practice, my family, my Mercedes-Benz. Three times I swore I would stop, but I couldn’t keep my balance on the wagon. Eventually I had nothing left except pancreatitis.”
“Did she take you back?”
“She did,” said the doctor and smiled. “We had two more children, just to celebrate. The trouble is, they look like their father.”
“How did you do it?”
“Sex played an important role.”
“No, I mean . . .”
The doctor took Griessel’s hand and he laughed with closed eyes. “I know what you mean.”
“Oh.” For the first time Griessel smiled.
“One day at a time. And the AA. And the fact that I had hit rock bottom. There was no more medication to help, except disulfiram, the stuff that makes you throw up if you drink. But I knew from the literature it is rubbish — if you really want to drink, you just stop taking the pills.”
“Are there drugs now that can make you stop drinking?”
“No drug can make you stop drinking. Only you can.”
Griessel nodded in disappointment.
“But they can make withdrawal easier.”
“Take away the DTs.”
“You have not yet experienced delirium tremens, my friend. That only comes three to five days after withdrawal begins. Yesterday you experienced reasonably normal convulsions and, I imagine, the hallucinations of a heavy drinker who stops. Did you smell strange scents?”
“Yes.”
“Hear strange things?”
“Yes.” With emphasis.
“Acute withdrawal, but not yet the DTs, and for that you should be thankful. DTs is hell and we haven’t found a way to stop it. If it gets really bad, you could get grand mal seizures, cardiac infarction or stroke, and any one of the three could kill you.”
“Jesus.”
“Do you really want to stop, Griessel?”
“I do.”
“Then today is your lucky day.”
13.
She was a colored woman with three children, and a husband in jail. She was the receptionist at the Quay Delta workshop in Paarden Island and it was never her intention to send the whole thing off at a tangent.
The Argus came at 12:30 every day, four papers for the waiting room so that clients could read while they waited for their cars to be finished. It was her habit to quickly scan the main news headlines of the day. Today she did this with more purpose because she had expectations.
She found it on the front page just below the fold in the newspaper. The headline already told her that all was not right.
POLICE LINKED TO KILLING OF ALLEGED CHILD RAPIST
Quickly she read through the article and clicked her tongue.
The South African Police Services (SAPS) might have been responsible for the vigilante-style murder of alleged child rapist Enver Davids last night. A spokesperson for the Cape Human Rights Forum, Mr. David Rosenthal, said his organization had received “sensitive information from a very reliable source inside the police services” in this regard. The source indicated that the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit (SVC) was involved in the killing.
HIV-positive Davids, who was freed on charges of murder and child rape three days after the SVC had misplaced DNA evidence pertinent to the case, was found stabbed to death on a Kraaifontein street early this morning.
Senior Superintendent Matt Joubert, head of the SVC, vigorously denied the allegation, calling the claim that two of his detectives tracked down Davids and killed him “malicious, spurious and devoid of all truth.” He admits that the unit was upset and frustrated after a judge sharply criticized their management of the case and then dismissed it . . .
The woman shook her head.
She would have to do something. This morning when she went into her dark kitchen to get the bottle of Vicks for her child’s chest she could see the movement from her window. She had been a witness to the awful dance on the pavement. She had recognized Davids’s face in the streetlight. Of one thing she was absolutely sure. The man with the short assegai was not a policeman. She knew the police; she could spot a policeman a mile away. She had had plenty of them on her doorstep. Like this morning when they had come to ask if she had seen anything and she had denied any knowledge.
She looked up the telephone number of the Argus on their front page and dialed it. She asked for the journalist who had written the article.
“It wasn’t the police who killed Enver Davids,” she said
without introduction.
“To whom am I speaking?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“And how do you know this, madam?”
She had been expecting the question. But she could not say or they would get her. They would track her down if she gave too much information.
“You might say I have first-hand knowledge.”
“Are you saying you were involved in this killing, madam?”
“All I want to say is that it wasn’t the police. Definitely not.”
“Are you a member of Pagad?”
“No, I’m not. It wasn’t a group. It was one person.”
“Are you that person?”
“I am going to put the phone down now.”
“Wait, please. How can I believe you, madam? How do I know you are not a crank?”
She thought for a moment. Then she said: “It was a spear that killed him. An assegai. You can go and check that.”
She put the phone down.
That is how the Artemis story began.
Joubert and his English wife came to visit him that evening. All he could see was the way they kept touching each other, the big senior superintendent and his red-headed wife with the gentle eyes. Married four years and still touching like a honeymoon couple.
Joubert told him about the allegation that the unit was responsible for Davids’ death. Margaret Joubert brought him magazines. They talked about everything but his problem. When they left Joubert gripped his shoulder with a big hand and said, “Hang in there, Benny.” After they had gone he wondered how long it had been since he and Anna had touched each other. Like that.
He could not recall.
Fuck, when last had they had sex? When last did he even want to? Sometimes, in the semi-drunken state of his day, something would prompt him to think about it, but by the time he got home the alcohol would long since have melted the lead in his pencil.
And what of Anna? Did she feel the need? She didn’t drink. She had been keen in the days before he began drinking seriously. Always game when he was, sometimes twice a week, folding her delicate fingers around his erection and playing their ritual game that had begun spontaneously and they had never dropped. “Where did you get this thing, Benny?”