“No advice! All the other men who like or say they love me—my father and Kobus—always give me advice. I don’t want advice.”
“Get out of South Africa,” he said.
She was quiet for a moment. “They don’t give me that advice.”
“Forget varsity, as you people call it. Go someplace. Now.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“You want to be a woman. Be a free one.”
“Don’t I need an education?”
“Of course, you need one.” He stroked her hair. “But you’re a bright girl. Go someplace where you can get into university. The UK. Where your brother is.”
They lay in the quiet of the night. “Going someplace: it would mean starting my life all over.”
“It’d be hard for a few years,” Gat admitted. “Eventually you’d make friends. Get an education, find a job, find a husband, have children. You’d be glad you did.”
She made no reply and turned her back to him. He moved against her, his chest against her back. He slid one arm under her neck and the other across her body and under her. Gat held her close, knowing that this advice made her feel very alone. She moved her hand to her face and brushed tears from her eyes.
“Are you crying?”
“This is my homeland.”
He held her even closer and whispered to her. “If you go to university here, you’ll marry a South African.”
“Is that so bad?”
“I’m sure he’ll be a very good chap. Quite overcome by your beauty, your goodness. Eager to care and provide for you.”
“Someone like Kobus.”
“Yes. And if you wanted to be with him, you wouldn’t be here with me.”
“He’s really quite a nice person.”
“Yes. And he’ll make sure you have a privileged life.”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to want?”
“You think that privilege is going to last forever?” She made no reply. Gat said, “I’ve just come from a place where white people are trying to make their privilege last. And let me tell you: there’s a cost involved in that. It’s a cost I don’t want you to have to pay.”
At last she said, “There weren’t enough of you. There are enough of us.”
Gat held her close and thought, No, there aren’t.
AS GAT held Petra, taking from her the warmth and comfort that he regarded, a little dramatically, as saving his life, Kobus Terreblanche was downstairs in his father’s den in his parents’ home in Cape Town, calling yet again to the Rousseaus’ hotel in Pretoria. This time the various operators put him through. “Colonel Rousseau,” he said, “it’s Kobus. I’m sorry to call so late. But the hotel kept saying you were out.”
“How are you, Kobus?” Rousseau had stopped reviewing papers for his next day’s meeting. Margaret was in bed, reading a magazine. “Everything all right?”
“Well, I’m not sure.”
“Where are you, son? Stellenbosch?”
“I’m still in Cape Town, sir.”
Rousseau glanced at his watch. “And Petra’s with you? Is she all right?”
“She’s not with me.” Kobus closed his eyes against the dim light of his father’s desk lamp. He sat in his underwear and was cold. “I think she’s with the Belgian officer, Captain Gautier. The man we had lunch with Sunday.”
“What?” Rousseau looked over at his wife. She put her magazine aside and sat straight up in bed.
“She told me she was sick yesterday,” Kobus explained. “I went over to see her and she did look ill. I went by again this morning. She looked fine. The captain was there cooking them breakfast and he hadn’t shaved.”
Rousseau stood. Margaret left the bed, pulled on a robe, and came beside him to listen. Rousseau tilted the phone away from his ear so that she could hear what Kobus said. “Is this some kind of joke, Kobus? Because if it is—”
“It’s not a joke, sir. I’ve been struggling with it all day—” Kobus stood as well. “Because I thought she loved me. But she spent last night with that bloke—”
“Spent the night with him? You mean—”
“I’m afraid so, sir.” Margaret drew her robe closer about her. “She told me he was driving her to Wits and when I went by this afternoon, your Ford was gone.” Rousseau and Margaret looked at one another, their mouths open in perplexity. “I thought you’d want to know, sir,” Kobus said. “Anything you want me to do?”
“No, I don’t think so. Thank you, son. We’re glad you called. Good night.”
Rousseau replaced the receiver in the cradle. He looked at his wife with an expression of complete bafflement. “Why would she have done such a thing?”
“Do we even know it’s true?”
“Kobus certainly thinks it’s true.”
“Kobus is a nice boy,” Margaret said. “But he tends to act as if he owns her. Petra may simply have wanted to give him a jolt.”
“That Belgian? Was he attractive, did you think?”
“Attractive enough,” Margaret said because her husband did not like her to find other men interesting. “He looked at her in a way Kobus never had.”
“And she would have—” Rousseau could hardly speak the words. “Have spent the night with him because of that?”
“It’s only sex, Piet. She had to try it out with someone.”
“But she’s so young!”
“You’d tried it out at her age.” She smiled at her husband. “Yes, I know you think it’s different for a man. But, after all, she’s on her way to varsity.”
Rousseau turned away from his wife. He did not want to listen to her. She saw one of his black moods coming on and knew to say nothing more. She hoped he would have himself under control the next day for his meetings.
Rousseau felt a quiet fury settle over him. He wondered what connection existed between Gautier and the man who’d been killed in District Six. The two men were connected; he was certain of that. They had come to do mischief in South Africa or flee mischief done elsewhere. He did not want this Gautier with his daughter. He called the hotel operator and had him put a call through to their home in Cape Town. Very shortly the operator called back to say there was no answer.
CHAPTER SIX
NEAR HERMANUS
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1961
Petra lay absolutely still. Gat’s arms were about her. They had been sleeping when suddenly he trembled, cried out, and sat up in bed. He had spoken to the darkness, words she could not understand. She had touched his back, felt the tension in it, and reassured him, “It’s all right. You’re here with me.” She had felt him listening to the night, peering into the darkness. She had stroked his back. He had turned toward her, wrapped his arms about her, and finally relaxed. The strength of his grasp lessened. He lay back and began to snore.
Now she stared into the night, heard the far-off sound of waves breaking. She wondered: Did he know that she was Petra and that he was holding her in a hotel room not far outside Cape Town? Or was she just Woman, any woman. Was he back in Katanga? Or wherever else it might be?
She thought: I’ve got to let someone know I’m all right. She wondered: Am I all right? Why was Gat crying out in the night? What had happened that made him turn with such need to her?
He mumbled again. The trembling started. She put her lips against the ridges of his ear, kissed them. He struggled. His knee came hard against her. She bit her lip so that she would not cry out. He sat up. He thrust his arm out before him and spoke very sharply to the darkness. Then he looked about as if suddenly realizing that his body was not in the place where his dream was.
Gat slid to the edge of the bed. He placed his feet on the floor. He rested his head in his hands. His breathing calmed. This is not Katanga, he told himself. I’m in South Africa. A girl’s with me. Petra. He reached toward her.
When he touched her thigh, Petra tensed. Let him want me! Please! She had just been wondering about him. Now she wanted him making her body hot and hungry, he
r head dizzy, her soul nervous. Yes! Was she dissolute? Yes! She felt shameless! Wanton!
“You okay?” she asked. The darkness grunted an assent. “Bad dream?”
He plodded to the bathroom and closed the door.
She wished his hand had slid to the top of her thigh. Vile thought! It seemed all they were doing was feasting on one another. She must stop thinking about his body. She rose quickly, tiptoed to her suitcase, found her nightgown and donned it.
When Gat returned to the room, he put a condom where he could reach it on the bedside table. Petra slipped into the bathroom. Washing herself she wondered if she were pregnant. She dried off, telling herself she could not possibly be. Gat was quite careful about that. But why the nightmares? Who was he anyway? She knew if she returned to the bedroom they would make love. She must not let that happen. She took a towel and spread it into the bathtub.
Lying in the tub, thinking about the last two days, she felt a physical aching for the lostness of her soul. She was wicked. She constantly wanted sex. When she and Gat drove through Afrikaner dorps on their way to Joeys, puritanical tannies, “aunties” who protected public decency, would recognize her wickedness and pull her from the car. They would beat her bloody for being immoral with Gat. Curled into the bathtub she wondered, this that she was feeling: was it love? She had never felt this way before. Dizzy like this. Did her parents feel this way about each other?
Her thoughts turned to her mother. On the afternoon of her eighteenth birthday Margaret had driven her down to Cape Point. Because she was now a woman, her mother said, because Kobus Terreblanche seemed to have decided he would marry her, Margaret would tell her about the first man in her life. He was a farmer’s son from Rhodesia. They had fallen in love her first year at varsity at Grahamstown. He lived in a room over a garage behind a house near the campus. For a long time she did not go there with him. He did not want her there because they felt such love for one another that neither was sure, if she went to his room, what would happen.
But she went there eventually and, to use the phrase that Margaret used, that was where she “became a woman.” She added, “a pregnant woman.” The “lad”—that was the term her mother used—was stunned by the pregnancy. Because they had been taking what they thought were precautions. Careful precautions were not always enough. That thought made Petra shiver in the bathtub.
Still, her mother had related, once the lad became accustomed to the idea, he was delighted. He wanted them to marry. He would have to leave varsity. Margaret meant more to him than his education. They could farm together in Southern Rhodesia. But she would not allow that sacrifice for her. In fact, Margaret told Petra, she’d had no desire to be a poor farmer’s wife. Living on a farm: that would kill their love.
So she left varsity. She went north to Rhodesia and told her parents she had found a job in Salisbury. In fact, she had lived on a farm managed by the husband of the lad’s older sister who was barren. She’d had the baby there. Somehow the midwife had gotten the baby registered as the offspring of the lad’s sister. The young family soon moved to a new farm where the baby, a boy, was accepted as their own. He was now twenty-four. He had heard of Margaret only as a Cape Town acquaintance with whom his mother exchanged cards at Christmas, often sending a photo of him.
After the baby was born, Margaret did go to Salisbury. She found a job there. When the lad came to visit, they were shy with each other. Their lovemaking, when they finally managed it, made them cry it was so lacking in the old passion. It turned out that the lad had progressed so well at varsity that he’d won a scholarship to England. Subsequently he emigrated.
For her part Margaret eventually went to Cape Town. There she met Piet Rousseau. It pleased him to be seeing a woman who was not an Afrikaner. “In those days your father was as feisty as you are,” Margaret told the now eighteen-year-old Petra. “When he asked me to marry him,” she confided, “I told him about the child. He was devastated. He thought about it for a week and decided it didn’t matter. But, of course, it does. It’s something we never discuss.” As Petra knew, there were a number of things that the family never discussed. “Sometimes he’ll make an oblique reference to it,” her mother continued, “when he wants to score points off me. He doesn’t know that I get Christmas notes from the family in Rhodesia. He would be horrified if he knew I was telling you.”
Petra asked if Margaret sometimes thought about the lad. Her mother admitted that she did. She said there was a movie, a story about young lovers at varsity. The couple had married and, despite having very little money, seemed likely to make a success of it. The movie upset Margaret for an entire week. She found herself suddenly weeping. She got over it. She had a good life, a good family. She loved her husband and her children. She would not cry over spilt milk.
Lying in the bathtub, Petra wondered if a quarter century down the road she would find herself crying over a song or a ride in a car that reminded her of Gat. Would she still wonder who he was? Wonder what had happened before they met that caused his need?
A knock sounded at the door. It opened. Although she could not see him, Petra felt Gat’s presence in the bathroom. “You in here?”
“In the tub.”
He crouched beside her, touched her shoulder, and felt the nightgown. “Why’re you here?”
“I sometimes do this at home.” They both knew it was a lie. “I’m thinking.”
“Come back to bed,” Gat suggested. Then: “What about?” “My mother. She got into some trouble when she was young.”
“We’re being very careful,” he said. “There won’t be any trouble.” When she said nothing, Gat returned to the bedroom, found underwear, and put it on. He returned to the bathroom. “Look,” he said, “I’m in my nightgown too.” She examined him. “Come to bed. I won’t touch you.”
“But I’ll want you to,” she confessed. “I’m kind of afraid of wanting you all the time.” He smiled and slid his hand onto her breast. She pulled it away. “I’ll be okay here.”
He took her head in his hands and kissed her. He left the bathroom. The kiss made her dizzy. She wanted to be back in bed with him. Then she thought again of her mother and the lad. Maybe she should flee. Desert her luggage. Rush back to Cape Town. Beg her parents to forgive her. Make it up with Kobus. Yes, that would be best—even though she knew that she really wanted to be back in bed with Gat.
GAT SLEPT fitfully, still bothered by dreams. An early morning breeze woke him, raising gooseflesh on his arms and chest. He patted the bed for Petra. Ah, yes, the bathtub. Seeking refuge from sex because it was so good. Gat tiptoed from bed, hoping that abstinence now would make her more ardent later on. He put on his swimsuit and a sweatshirt. He tiptoed into the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and left Petra in her enamel cocoon, lightly snoring.
Memories had disturbed Gat’s sleep, not nightmares. Memories of huts set afire. Of thatch crackling. Of villagers fleeing flames. Of a wailing child racing out of a hut. Of bullets spattering after the child. Reaching him. Knocking him off his feet. Before the child hit the ground, blood gushed from his stomach with a whooshing sound. The red of blood, the orange-yellow of the flames, their roar and stench and crackle. And worst of all, the excited, joyful yelling of his soldiers massacring innocents.
Even now on the beach, memories assailed Gat. Alone in the darkness, he fell to his knees. He held his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Please forgive me,” he cried. “I lost control of them. Forgive me for— Everything.” But to whom was he shouting? The breaking waves? The dawn?
He rose and ran wind sprints to get his blood circulating. He jogged along the surf and plunged through darkness into the white foam of a breaking wave. The water shocked his groin. He swam swiftly away from shore. Looking behind him, he could not be sure where land was. Panicking, treading water, he thought, What the fuck have I done? He listened for the sound of waves breaking, swam in their direction, and rode one onto the beach. He located the towel. He was much farther down the beach tha
n he had reckoned. He buffed himself dry. He put on the sweatshirt and, feeling vigorous, ran in the direction of the dawn until the sun rose over the eastern horizon.
PETRA HEARD Gat enter the bathroom to get a towel. She breathed heavily, hoping he would think her asleep. When she heard him leave, she listened to be sure he was gone, then scrambled out of the tub and returned to bed. She napped, rose, showered, dressed, and went alone to a breakfast of fruit and rolls. Wanting to reclaim the safety of childhood, she drank milk. Afterward she walked along the road before the hotel, trying to sort out her options. With the sun warming her and fortified by food, she was less certain that Gat had brought her to the brink of depravity. Still, she must keep him at arm’s length. And do something about contacting her family.
When she returned to the room, Gat had just finished dressing. “Have you eaten?” he asked. She nodded that she had. He scrutinized her. She avoided his eyes. “Breakfast is included,” Gat said. “So I better have some. Come talk to me?”
“Will you tell me why you’re having nightmares?”
“My nightmares were about your leaving my bed for a bathtub.”
“Don’t patronize me.” She gave him a challenging and hostile look.
“It’s too nice a day to discuss nightmares.” She shook her head; he could breakfast alone. Gat kissed her forehead as if she were a child and left the room.
It infuriated her that he was treating her the way Kobus and her father did. Then she thought, Well, what else could he do? He had started off on the trip with a woman who had turned into a child, sleeping in a bathtub. Suddenly it infuriated her that she was infantilizing herself.
She stared across the room at the telephone. It was out of the question to call her parents. She decided on Hazel. Just to chat. The call must seem motivated simply by a desire for girl talk. It had only been about thirty-six hours since they were together at the San Francisco Coffeehouse. Hazel answered on the second ring. “You still in bed?” Petra asked. She heard Hazel’s radio playing in the background.
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