by Eben Venter
‘You know, Mattees, I just want to tell you what the snap made me remember again. That day of the funeral there wasn’t time. Look, Mister Bennie didn’t beat about the bush. Very honest. Sometimes hard. But ag, you know, he was the first white man that I learnt you could really detest and then you can also love him in your heart. The crease of his pants wasn’t pressed straight, oh my goodness, Mister Bennie calls me straight to his study. Thought he was going to bite my head off. The power of that man. Okay, I’m leaving, I’m giving notice. Goodness, Mattheüs, then he’s good to me again. I get a lawnmower for Christmas for our lawn here in front. I’m sitting in that very same study this side of the desk and Mister Bennie talks his loudest to tell me something of how things are now going wrong in his house. I can see he wants to share it with me, because I know that house from top to bottom. He can’t. I’m sorry for Mister Bennie. Mister Bennie speaks to me from his heart. That’s how he was with me. The first white man that I can say: I care about him. He’s a human being, I like him, warts and all. That’s all, Mattees. I’m wasting your money with all this talking. Now Mister Bennie’s also been put away. A path we’ll all have to walk one day.’
Long after he’s ended the call, Auntie Mary’s story stays with him, punctuated by sounds of spit-swallowing and breathing, the story that she’d kept to tell him in a special way. And the perfect timing that she can’t have guessed: he’s fired up now. When he walks past an internet café, he goes inside and googles the recipe for a Molotov cocktail.
He walks back to the sea, and goes and sits in the bar at La Perla restaurant opposite the Sea Point swimming pool. The place has a luxuriously high ceiling, full-length mirrors and soft black leather couches, and a TV soundlessly broadcasting Manchester United versus Barcelona FC; in the dining room next door, mussels are being carried out on top of mountains of linguine to tables laid with linen and which are now, at dusk, slowly filling. He crumples up the piece of paper with the Molotov cocktail recipe, orders a neat double brandy and a beer, and phones Jack again, twice, and one more time again, and then he sees that his battery’s flat.
He laughs to himself: the Merc cruising slowly up Main past Duiker’s, Jack driving, and right opposite his business he slides down his window and accurately lobs the cocktail into the oblong skylight above the steel door, which takes the burning IED right inside the takeaway. He orders another double. The waiter is an older Indian man in La Perla’s spotless black-and-white waiter outfit, a man he recognises after years of visiting the established Italian restaurant.
With the brandy on his tongue, he scans Bellville in his mind’s eye, searching for the colonel’s house, Uncle Wannie, who’s going to help him with the shit his business has temporarily – everything is temporary – landed in. Over the Tygerberg Hospital he floats, there, no, it was closer to the city, more to the north-east, across Voortrekker Road and further north to Boston, that old, leafy part of Bellville. What he clearly remembers about Uncle Wannie’s house was the budgie cage in his back yard, the grass-green and yellow and blue budgies twittering in their small prison covered with chicken wire that Uncle Wannie always painted exactly the same green as the green-feathered budgies. He’ll have to search for the exact street by driving up and down, but find it he will. Colonel Wannie will help him, he’ll fetch a pitilessly cunning plan from his strongroom (just like the old days): Emile, his dog, the whole pile of rubbish will crawl, they’ll beg.
Mattheüs sinks back into the sofa. As far as he’s concerned: even if it’s just a mustard seed of hope, he must keep believing he has it in him. And he has. Downstairs in the lobby near the toilets, still seventies-style with gilded mirrors and embossed wallpaper, there’s a pay phone where he’ll phone Jack in a minute. He’ll tell Jack the whole thing and tell him he’s got nothing to worry about, everything will be okay. And he wants to tell Jack he loves him, for once he also wants to say this to the poor, dear, sex-starved, handsome little fuck.
@ 9 Poinsettia Road, Jack facebooks. Matt, where are you? Looked everywhere, thought you were here. For old times’ sake came as Wolfie! Love you, as in heaps.
@ 9 Poinsettia Road. Charnie, where are you hanging out? Long time no talk. In deep shit again at school. Moenien’s ma, you remember, that’s the fucker who got pissed on at Misverstand Dam. Anyway, the thing’s still eating at her. Went to complain to Mister Richardson: Afrikaans teacher’s nails = dirty. Where’s the example now? That kind of shit. And Moenien apparently swears he can smell me in class. Can you fuckin’ believe the cheek? Stay well, darling.
Jack peers through the fleur-de-lis tips of the gate at the house. Only the study light is on. Learnt fast, the Mkhonzas; an electricity bill can get out of hand. Nothing’s moving, not inside or on the lawn or in any of the trees. Far to the right of the lawn, a blue heron stands with a raised claw, waiting for its frog dinner. An in-between time.
Jack turns his back on the house. Must take a photo of Wolfie. His wolf ears make a comical two-pointed silhouette in front of the fleur-de-lis tips of the gate. Looks like a Chinese paper cutting. Behind him the house is out of focus, the Cape-Dutch gables recognisable only to an insider’s eye. He immediately sends the photo to Matt.
What Jack facing backward does not or cannot see, is that the sash window to the right of the front door is being pushed open, so that the frame of the top window is level with that of the lower one. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the Duikers kept their sash windows well-oiled, actually Mattheüs’s father did, Jack might have heard the window sliding down. On the two parallel frames the barrel of a rifle now appears. The tip of the barrel moves slightly to the right, corrects to the left, and finds its target right between the wolf ears. Then a bit lower. The barrel drops a fraction lower so that the aim is not too high between the ears; it’s a mask after all. Now. The plan is in place. The trash around the house must be got rid of, once and for all.
Jack’s mobile phone flies from his grip. The black plastic cover comes apart and scatters on the side of the pavement.
Matt has a double espresso to temper his drunkenness, pays and walks down to the promenade. The waves are booming and crashing, their foam lips clearly visible in the evening light. It’ll be like this with him and Jack, he decides. He’ll work hard and transform his brain, and as far as Jack goes, he’ll position himself somewhere between desire and love. If it’s just desire, he won’t be able to be with Jack alone, that’s too much to ask of a man and far too much self-control to ask of him. And if it’s love only, what becomes of his God-given desire? He’ll drift along at some point between the two poles.
He sniffs at the seaweedy salty air that blows sharp and cold against him from the Atlantic Ocean. That’s the first thing he’ll do with Jack: he’ll hold that lovely bald head of his in both his hands and explain it all to him, and then he’ll let go of him, and from the expression that lingers in his eyes he’ll know whether Jack will be able to live with the self-styled position that he still has to teach himself.
Much more than that he can’t offer – not to Jack, not to anyone.
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