“I’m ready to go right now, Father.”
Rousseau started up the stairs, shouting, “Margaret! The planes don’t wait, not even for the police!” He returned to his daughter, detected a rebellious set of her chin provoked by his badgering her mother. Before she could chastise him, he said, “Behave yourself in Stellenbosch.”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t let Kobus put his hands where they’re not supposed to be.” Petra jeered scornfully. “Young men are often carried away.”
“Father, I could slink toward Kobus totally naked and he’d keep his hands behind his back.” Rousseau narrowed his eyes, a rebuke to her for talking in such a worldly way. She added, “He treats me like a porcelain doll.”
“He respects you.”
“He respects you, Father.”
“He expects to marry you.”
“I can’t tell you how boring that is!”
Rousseau smiled. “You’re a good girl, Pet. You wouldn’t want it otherwise.”
“Pish-posh,” pouted Petra.
Rousseau chuckled, confident that his daughter was, indeed, a good girl. And even better, if passion threatened to overwhelm young Terreblanche’s respect for her, his awe of her father would intercede. There were worse ways to protect a daughter, he thought.
Margaret hurried downstairs, carrying a small valise. She handed it to her husband; he took it to the car. She kissed Petra lightly, pressed her cheek to hers, then looked deeply into her eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right here?”
“Mother, you and Father want me chaperoned every minute?”
“He feels your wild streak coming on.”
“I don’t have a wild streak. I wish I did!”
“You know. The one you inherited from me.”
“Yes, Mother, you’re a very wild woman. A regular Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy ought to write a novel about you—except he’s dead. Of boredom, I think.” The two women smiled together.
“He loves you very much,” said Margaret. “And so do I.”
“I love you both,” replied Petra, almost by rote. “Except when you smother me with all this care!”
The women went out onto the stoep together. Petra watched her parents drive off in the chauffeured car.
Once back inside the house, she walked meditatively to the kitchen. She poured herself some coffee, tasted its rich bitterness on her tongue, its heat radiating inside her. She returned outside, kicked off her sandals, and marched across the yard. She stopped, holding the coffee cup in both her hands, feeling its warmth. “Elsie?” No reply. “Elsie?” she called again. She approached the servant’s small dwelling attached to the garage. “Elsie?” She moved closer, knocked at the door. “Elsie?” No answer. The servant had gone to her family. Well, she had to make sure.
She hurried back to the kitchen, leaving her coffee cup on the counter, and through the house to the telephone alcove in the hall. She stared at the squat black instrument and wondered: Am I really going to do this?
She dialed the number quickly. When Kobus answered immediately, she groaned, her voice croaking, and asked, “Are you all right?” He assured her that he was. “You didn’t eat anything at that braai that made you sick?” No, no, he was fine. “Well, I feel absolutely crappy.” She heard the intake of his breath at her use of the vulgarism. “I don’t know any other way to put it.” She groaned again. “I have never felt so completely, totally crappy.”
He told her how sorry he was; he would come over immediately to be with her. “No, don’t come,” she said. “I just vomited. All over myself.” She knew that description would rattle him. “I don’t want you to see me this way,” she went on. “I’ve sent a message to Elsie. She’ll come be with me. I’ve called my aunt to say I can’t come today.” To sound convincing, she struggled with a cough. “You go out to Stellenbosch, start fixing up your place. When I’m better, I’ll take the train out.” She added, “I’ll probably be better tomorrow,” because if the Belgian officer didn’t show up at the coffeehouse, she wanted Kobus in reserve.
He pleaded that he was worried about her; he must see her. “No, no. I’ll be all right,” she assured him. “I can probably sleep it off.” Trying to get him off the phone, she said right now she needed to sleep. He told her he loved her. She rolled her eyes. They left it that he would drive in from Stellenbosch to fetch her when she felt better.
As soon as she hung up the phone, she whirled around the parlor, plotting her campaign against the officer, trying to decide what to wear.
GAT WOKE to the sound of pounding. Who was knocking now? The man with tea had wakened him some time before. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the door. Hit from the other side, it rattled in its mounting. Gat left the bed, crossed the room in his tee shirt and shorts, and flung open the door. Gabriel Michels stood across the threshold, his fist ready to strike the door. “You’re still in bed?” Michels said, surprised. “You alone?”
“What time is it?” Gat asked.
“Time to come have breakfast with me. If you’re alone.” Michels had combed his hair and trimmed the blond beard. He wore a light blue safari suit and shoes so new that they squeaked when he walked.
Gat nodded for his colleague to enter. “You look like you’re headed for Sunday school.”
“I bought a suit of pederast-bird’s-egg blue so they’d let me inside this pink elephant of a hotel. When I came by yesterday, they threw me out.” Gat laughed. Michels looked about the room. He went to the window, opened the shade, and peered into the garden. “This must cost you.”
“There’s cold tea there if you want it,” Gat said.
Michels swept the pastry from the tea tray into his mouth and poured red-brown liquid into the waiting cup. He took his tea to the bed and stretched out on it. “This beats what I’ve been sleeping on! What’s it cost to buy a woman in this whorehouse?”
Leaving the hotel, the two men walked through the warm summer sunlight toward town. They found a milk bar and bought coffee and rolls. They ate for some minutes in silence. “You had a woman since you’ve been here?” Michels asked at last. Gat nodded. Michels studied Gat. “Bullshit,” Michels tested. Gat shook his head. “How’d you find her?”
“She found me.”
“Bastard. Was she good?” Gat fluttered a hand levelly above his rolls. Michels stirred his coffee, staring into it. “I’ve been paying for it,” he said at last. “I know I told you I was getting it free. And all over town. But you know— What’s a little bullshit between comrades?”
“You said you were telling everyone what we did.”
Michels nodded. He took a swallow of coffee.
“That didn’t get it for you free?”
Michels shook his head. “Cape Town whores don’t give it away. Hell, every guy that visits them boasts he’s killed a kaffir. And if it’s been in the papers? Shame, as they say. They don’t read the papers.”
They fell silent. Finally Gat asked, “What have you done down here? Been to Cape of Good Hope?”
“No Good Hope for me. I’ve been having bad dreams. B-K dreams.” Michels watched Gat as if expecting him to acknowledge the same Belgo-Katangese affliction. Gat chewed his rolls and sipped his coffee.
“I’m having trouble handling this,” Michels said. “I spend my days wandering the streets. I’m looking for something. Not sure what. Women? Drink? Dope? Some place to crawl away and hide in? Maybe all of them.”
Gat said nothing.
“When I wake up in a bad dream,” Michels went on finally, “I like to wind myself around a warm woman. You know? I need something besides a pillow to hold in the night.” Gat nodded. He sipped his coffee, looking through the milk-bar window at people passing on the street. “When we got back to E’ville that night,” Michels asked, “you get laid?”
“I was busy vomiting.”
“I got drunk,” Michels related. “Went to the Princess. You know that place?” Gat nodded. “You know Nadia? Long black legs, no b
ody hair?” Gat shook his head. “Bought her for what was left of the night.” Michels gave Gat a piteous glance. “I couldn’t function. Front door, back door. In her mouth. Nothing happened.”
“You still having trouble?”
“No,” Michels answered quickly. “Just that night. And the next day.” Michels took the last roll and chewed on it. “I’m back in form. But it’s not much fun.”
“Whores stop being fun. That happens.”
Michels finally said, “Had a strange dream last couple of nights.” After a pause, he said, “White guy in a mask. He comes up behind me. Puts the cold snout of a gun right where my head meets my neck.” Michels put his hand on the spot and rubbed it. “Then he shoots me. So now I’m wondering: is it a dream or a warning?”
“What kind of warning?”
“That they’re sending someone to assassinate us.”
For a long moment the two men did not speak. “Why?” Gat asked.
“So we don’t go back and assassinate them.” Michels looked steadily at Gat. “When I saw you on the street, I thought they’d sent you to do me.”
“So you chased me through the streets? Why assassinate us?”
“To keep the lid on it.” After a moment Michels said, “You know what pisses me? We do what the colonel calls ‘our duty.’ And that makes us expendable. He betrayed us.” Michels examined Gat, wanting reassurance.
“Somebody up the line betrayed him.”
“You think so?”
“The rich exploit the poor,” said Gat. “The strong exploit the weak. The powerful exploit the powerless. Senior officers exploit junior officers. It’s the way of the world. We got caught in it.”
Michels asked, “You tell the woman you slept with?” Gat shook his head. “Walking into your hotel,” Michels said, “I half expected to see an assassin in the lobby.”
“I’m moving to a cheaper place this morning.”
Michels taunted, “You come here with Kasai diamonds smuggled up your ass?”
Beneath the table Gat opened his legs and put his hand to his groin. “The only jewels I brought with me are in my hands.”
HAVING CALLED her aunt to say that she felt poorly and would come tomorrow, Petra stood in her closet, examining her clothes. She heard a car pull in to the driveway. She went to look out the window. Kobus was leaning into the rear seat of the Chevrolet convertible, removing a large bouquet of roses. Petra ran to her bathroom, shucked off her clothes, tossed on her nightgown and robe. The doorbell rang. She disarranged her hair and examined herself in the mirror. Her face looked fresh, pink-cheeked. She took mascara and quickly shadowed her eyes. Not much of a job. Kobus rang the doorbell again. She tore open the bed she had made only minutes before and grabbed a pillow. The doorbell rang yet again.
She answered the door, the pillow held before her, wisps of her hair straggling into her eyes. She gazed disconsolately at Kobus. He smiled at her wretchedness, shoved the roses at her, and immediately took her into his arms. “You’re so cute!” he exclaimed. He kissed her voraciously and tried to open her lips with his tongue.
She broke the kiss and turned away. “I smell awful. Taste worse.”
He continued to press her to him, kissing her face and neck. When she pushed him away, he grinned at her with sappy affection. “I love it that you call to ask if I’m okay when you’re the one who’s sick.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her upstairs. At the top he sat her on the banister and nuzzled her hard, pushing against a newel post. He was more aroused than she had ever seen him. That stirred her. Also dismayed her. Did her weakness arouse him? Her womanly frailty excite him? She was not frail! She did not want him around. Not now!
He carried her into her room, set her gently on her bed. She thanked him, slid quickly under the covers, the pillow and the roses held before her. She laid the bouquet beside her, buried her nose among its roses, and pulled the bedcovers up to her neck. She laid her head against a second pillow, croaked, “Thank you, Kobus,” in a sickly way and closed her eyes.
Suddenly he was lying beside her, one arm crooked behind her back. The other reached across her to pull a rose from the bouquet. He kissed her yet again. He laid the rose beside her cheek, reached under the covers to pull away the pillow, and tossed it behind him. He put his hand beneath the covers and fumbled to open the robe. He slid his hand onto her breast, kissed her deeply. Kobus had never been so ardent. His hand slipped down her body, trying to pull up her nightgown. Petra felt excited. Her body tingled, but she said, “Don’t, Kobus, please! I really am feeling sick,” because if she was aroused, she was also alarmed. She felt ready for this to happen, but not with him. If it happened with him, he would feel he owned her, that she had given him the deed to herself. He would treat her in a manner that would tip off her parents to what had taken place in their absence. She would never live down their disappointment in her.
“Don’t,” she implored. “Please.” She turned away from him.
“I love you,” he said. She nodded. He had said this often before, but now he seemed to mean it more than ever. Finally he sat up on the side of the bed. He stroked her forehead. “You aren’t feverish,” he said. She placed her hands over her face as if she would cry. “Can I get you anything?” he asked. She shook her head. “Tea?”
Again she shook her head, thinking of her father’s warning. Could he know Kobus better than she did? “Thank you for carrying me upstairs,” she said. “And for the roses. I’ll try to sleep now.” She closed her eyes.
Kobus got off the bed. He knelt beside her, kissed her forehead, the smell of his shaving lotion strong in her nostrils. She heard him stand, felt the love-look in his eyes descend on her like a warm blanket on a hot night. She was afraid he’d insist on staying. Then she heard him tiptoe from the room, the unwanted heat leaving with him. She forced herself to keep her eyes closed until she heard the motor of his car and the hum of it pulling out of the driveway. She slid from the bed, crawled to the window, and peeked outside to watch his Chevrolet moving off down the street.
THE MEN returned to the hotel hardly speaking. Gat did not think for a moment that Michels’s dreams constituted a warning. Still they agitated him. His guts tightened. His eyes scanned the Monday morning streets on the lookout for danger. Having shared his apprehensions, Michels felt calm enough to whistle most of the way back. As they walked down the hall, Gat said, “In case there’s an assassin in my room, you enter first.”
Gat went into the bathroom to pack his shaving kit. Michels followed behind him. He looked around, sat on the toilet lid. “Did I tell you about the other night? After I saw you?” Gat said nothing, putting his toothbrush into a plastic container. “I was half drunk and horny. About midnight a woman came up to me on the street, offered herself for practically nothing. She pulled me into an alley. It was black as a kaffir. As I’m pumping into her, hands clap me on the shoulder. Start pulling us apart.”
Gat jeered. “Serves you right. Alleys are for pissing.” He glanced in the mirror and told himself, Ditch him. He’s what you’re trying to escape.
“It’s the fuck police,” Michels said. “Honest to God, they have such a unit. So the fuck police arrest us. At the station house the top dog informs me that this woman is forbidden to me by law. She’s Coloured; I’m white. Never the twain shall fuck.”
Gat returned to the room. He tossed the canvas kit onto the desk beside his suitcase. He heard Michels pissing in the bathroom. “You’re acting like you never left Katanga,” Gat called to him. “I’m trying to act like I never was there.” He added, “Be sure you flush.”
Michels flushed and returned to the room. “I spent the night in jail,” he said. “In the morning I explained to the top dog that all I wanted was a little fun. I thought she was white. I didn’t know it mattered if she wasn’t white. Turns out there’s an Immorality Act. These people are serious about separation.”
Gat carefully folded his suit and laid it in the suitcase. He gave the same attention
to the new shirts and the ties.
“I told him what we’d done up there.” Gat shook his head. Michels shrugged. “It got me leniency. A mere fine: a hundred rands. And a warning. ‘If you dip your dong in black or yellow, don’t do it where we can find you.’ So I paid. I’m pretty short now.” Gat realized he needed money. “It was that or spend the weekend in jail, then be prosecuted. These are hard people.”
Yes, Gat thought. Hard people. But Michels ought to stay out of alleys.
AS SOON as Kobus was gone, Petra shed her nightgown, slipped into her day clothes, and went to the phone. “What’s going on?” her cousin Hazel demanded. Petra had asked what she was doing that evening. “I thought you were going to Stellenbosch with Kobus.”
“Can you keep a secret?” Petra asked. Silence from Hazel. “Well, can you?”
“Not forever,” replied Hazel. “How long?”
“Just don’t tell Kobus.”
“Oh-oh. What’s going on?”
“I may be meeting a man at the San Francisco Coffeehouse.”
“What!!!” screamed Hazel. “How old is he?”
“He might be thirty.” Silence at the other end of the line. “He doesn’t know I’ll be there,” Petra explained. “And I don’t know that he will. If he does come, it’ll need to look like we kind of ran into each other.”
“And you can’t go there alone,” Hazel said.
“So you go with me. If he is there and comes over, then you leave.”
“Doesn’t he have a friend?”
“He doesn’t know anyone in South Africa.” Petra hesitated, then added, “Except me.” The girls giggled. Petra explained how she had come to meet Captain Gautier. “He looks at a woman the way she wants to be looked at.”
“You’re not a woman,” Hazel said. “We just completed O levels.”
“Of course, we’re women!” Petra insisted. “Plenty of platte-lander girls have babies at our age.”
Love in the Time of Apartheid Page 6