Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I know the reason,” Susan told him. “There was talk about diamonds that day. It haunted me. So it was only natural that diamonds should get into my dreams.”

  “But why did you see a blue fire? Why was the flashing in your dream always a blue light?”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Has anyone ever described the Kimberley to you? It was a blue-white stone with a trick of flashing an intense blue light.”

  No, she thought, startled, no one had told her that, and his words frightened her a little.

  “There’s no accounting for dreams,” she said quickly and turned from the subject. “Tell me what John Cornish meant when he said to ask about I.D.B.?”

  “Anyone in the Union could tell you that,” Dirk said. “The letters stand for Illicit Diamond Buying, the plague of the country. In other words, smuggling diamonds and selling them illicitly.”

  “But he surely couldn’t have meant that my mother might have engaged in smuggling,” Susan said.

  Dirk’s patience had clearly been exhausted. “Who knows what Cornish meant?” he said, and glanced at the watch on his wrist. “In any case, I’ve work to do at my desk tonight and I’d better be at it. You’ll excuse me, darling?”

  She sensed his disappointment in her and perhaps his exasperation. But at least he had not scolded her this time for speaking with John Cornish. He had been genuinely sorry that she had learned the truth of the situation in a sudden, shocking way. But still he had wanted more of her than she knew how to give.

  When he had gone into the small room Mara had set up for him as an office, she sat staring at the whip that hung like a black exclamation mark against the wall. The sjambok stood for something more than voortrekker history, she felt sure, and she wished she could know exactly why Dirk had placed it there. In a way it was a symbol of the impenetrable side of his nature which she did not understand, yet longed to understand because it was a part of him and must be accepted.

  The firelight no longer seemed cheery, and away from its immediate warmth the room was chill. She had no desire to sit here alone, so she went into the hall for her coat. Then she let herself quietly out the front door and walked about the quiet garden. The low sustaining wall again invited her, and she sat down on the stone.

  An aching loneliness was once more upon her, and the familiar soreness of missing her mother that the talk about Claire had revived. Perhaps she was even a little homesick for the life she had led for the past few years in Chicago. Though there had been loneliness there too, and a sense of waiting for something important to happen that would give her days some depth of meaning. Until Dirk’s coming she had felt shapeless and unformed. When he had put the pink diamond on her finger everything had begun to take shape, to make sense, and she had believed that she would never be lonely again.

  Her own long sigh was the only sound in the evening hush that lay over Cape Town. The bubbling of the doves had quieted, the lowered murmur of traffic was distant. On the air was a scent that spoke of pines and the sea. Nearby a tall blue gum rustled its leaves and fell silent, as if it too had sighed. A bright full moon was rising, touching the great mass of the mountain, brightening the hillside below the wall. Leaning so she might look down, Susan could see that a narrow pathway wound through the grass, dropping away toward the black shadows of the ravine where the thick stand of pines stood guard. Just this side of the pines several tall objects shone with a dark gleam in the moonlight and she wondered what they were. If they were rocks, they were huge ones standing upright in monolithic fashion.

  Outside the wall on which she sat the path ran uphill, appearing to end at the next street above. Sometime soon she must explore the downward plunge of the path and find out where it went.

  The quiet of the night began to possess her, and to ease and still her unquiet spirit. The soreness and confusion were easing, leaving her relaxed, yet with her mind clear and free for once of stubborn resistance. Now she could begin to think quietly as she had not done before. Now she could face the question she had been thrusting so persistently from her mind.

  Was it possible that some knowledge did lie hidden deep in her memory? A knowledge of something that had happened in her childhood and which she had long since forgotten? What if, instead of trying to resist Dirk’s suggestion, which after all was a reasonable one, she tried to open her mind, tried to go backward through the years?

  But how was she to do this? It would be necessary to retrace her steps, to recall incidents she had forgotten, to remember the days she had spent here in Cape Town. And this was not so easy. Happy memories came to mind readily but they were spotted here and there, without surrounding incident to give them continuity and complete a picture. All that was hurtful and unpleasant had been banished to some hiding place to which she had lost the key. That door would not open at will. Yet there must be a way to open it.

  The cool, bracing night air seemed to shake away her cobwebby confusion and bring her to a state of clarity. She pulled her coat collar about her ears and swung her feet onto the wall, drawing her knees up so that she could rest her head against them and close her eyes.

  Go back! she told herself intently. Try to remember what happened!

  She could see the house again clearly—her father’s house that she had visited a few days ago. But now for the first time since she had come here she could see it with a child’s eyes, looking bigger than it really was, and with her father’s study the focal point, the heart of the entire house. That was the room she had most liked—and most dreaded. It was connected in her mind with punishment and with lectures from her father, but such matters had not made her seriously unhappy for long. There was something more that brought the room into focus. Yet even as she struggled to remember a sense of dread began to possess her. It was subtly chilling and fearful, so that her impulse was to slam the door upon it and bring herself quickly back to the present. She managed to resist the impulse and let her memories come as they would in a bewildering rush.

  There were angry voices now, clattering through her mind. A flashing glimpse of her mother weeping hysterically, of her father’s face stern and cold as death. In the midst of all this crouched a child who sensed that something dreadful was happening, something no one would explain to her, something she could not understand. The adult Susan shrank as the child had done and the door closed swiftly upon all that was fearful, shutting it away from present consciousness.

  She did not give up at once. Though she was shivering from more than the evening wind, she attempted once more to force the picture to come clear. But the voices had faded and all that was frightening had vanished. Instead, she could remember the sound of waves against a ship’s side and long walks with Claire around and around a deck. Her mother’s voice came to her clearly: “Forget what happened, dearest. We’re going away from South Africa and we’re never coming back. We’re going to the place where I grew up and you’ll never have to be frightened again.”

  She could hear her own voice questioning. “Will Father be there too?” And her mother’s answer: “No, dear. We must forget about everything connected with South Africa. We must—” But then her mother had burst into tears and would say no more. Soon the small Susan had found that Claire would cry whenever Niklaas was mentioned, so she learned not to bring up his name.

  Even as they began to return, the pictures began to slip from her grasp. The power to go back faded like a mist as she reached out to hold it.

  Somewhere on the hillside the voice she had heard before was singing in Afrikaans. She knew the words: “My heart is so sore, my heart is so sore …”

  Swinging herself down from the wall, she turned back toward the house. She had met with defeat for the moment, but she had moved in the right direction. What better way was there both to please Dirk and prove to him that she had nothing important to remember than to recall all the details of that distant time?

  The mournful words of the song followed her upstairs and possesse
d her spirit with their sense of time slipping too quickly away.

  9

  In the days that followed, Susan was unable to push remembrance any further or to solve the problem she had accepted that evening in the garden. Most of the time the door remained firmly shut and when she tried to think herself back into her father’s house she could remember it only through adult eyes as she saw it now.

  There were, too, new distractions in her life. Susan van Pelt’s marriage to Dirk Hohenfield ceased to concern only themselves. The word had spread along the Cape Peninsula’s grapevine and reporters from the Cape Argus and the Cape Times came up to the Aerie to interview her. The old story of Niklaas van Pelt was revived and reviewed and much was made of the fact that his daughter had returned to South Africa married to his ward. The stories were not unsympathetic, but Dirk said Niklaas was upset by them and had refused to see reporters. He had stated through Mara that his personal concerns were of no interest or concern to anyone in South Africa these days. He wished only to be left alone.

  Once the word got about, a certain degree of social life reached out to include Dirk and Susan. People were socially minded here, though there was the clannishness too of old-established families. The Cape Peninsula boasted a genuine and gentle culture that was still unknown to that young and lusty upstart, Johannesburg.

  One Sunday afternoon they drove with another couple in Dirk’s car to the Kirstenbosch Gardens to see the breathtaking display of spring flowers that grew on the other side of Devil’s Peak. On the way back they went through the grounds of Cape Town University, spread out handsomely below the jagged brow of the peak.

  All this Susan enjoyed, yet she sensed that she and Dirk were somehow not a true part of Cape Town social life. They might be drawn to its perimeter, but they would never be deeply involved in its central activity. Perhaps because they did not wholly fit the pattern. Both, in their different ways, were outsiders—even Dirk. And there might be another reason. In spite of Cornish’s claim that Niklaas van Pelt had pretty much lived down the blight of his disgrace, she wondered if the old scandal did not still linger in people’s minds and reflect upon his ward and daughter.

  Her own work with her camera offered a respite from uneasy thoughts, and her interest was growing as she developed the story picture she wanted to do. Sometimes it was necessary to take dozens of shots in order to get a few that would convey the impact of a story and so far the pictures she had taken were distinctly one-sided.

  Her intention was to choose from many a few pictures that would show the peaceful everyday life of Cape Town, the easily visible surface life. Against these she would contrast a few penetrating shots of what lay beneath. But since the world of the dark people was not easily opened to her, this was hard to accomplish.

  She had wanted to visit Langa, the native location where there had been so much trouble, but Dirk would not consider taking her there. Indeed, he warned her that under present circumstances she was liable to get herself arrested if she attempted to take pictures in certain localities.

  Though blocked for the moment, she did not give up the idea. There would be a way. In the meantime she contented herself with shots of the SLEGS VIR BLANKES signs that managed to convey the indignity they represented. Segregation in Cape Town took odd turns, she discovered. Benches in the parks were for anyone. In the libraries men and women of different races sat elbow to elbow. Yet the greater liberality of the English community was not permitted to extend to theaters or sports stadia. Bus lines run by the Union government were segregated. Those municipally owned by Cape Town were open to all. She also found that the colored citizen sometimes set himself above the black African and could be as prejudiced as anyone else.

  It was Willi who told Susan about District Six. A half mile or so from the center of the business section, on a hill below Devil’s Peak, was an area where many respectable colored people lived. But crowding in upon them, almost engulfing them, were the dregs of the colored group. The crime incident was high, young teen-age toughs known as skollies preyed upon the more respectable and fought with each other. The smoking and selling of dagga—a form of marijuana—was flagrant. Poverty and depravity were the lot of many. District Six belonged mainly to the coloreds and only a few black Africans lived or worked there as watchmen or caretakers in the schools.

  This district, Susan decided, would be a place where she might get below the peaceful surface of white Cape Town. She had a strong suspicion that Dirk, if he knew, would forbid her to go there, so she kept her plans to herself. She had no reason to be afraid. After all, she had taken a good many pictures in Chicago’s slums and tougher sections, and she had only sympathy for the underprivileged.

  She chose a sunny early morning that would be good for picture taking, and before she left the house she told Willi where she was going. The girl looked both astonished and dismayed. Crimes were committed in District Six almost every day, Willi warned her with that flash of spirit that sometimes contradicted her usual gentleness of manner. Mr. Hohenfield would not approve of her going into that section alone.

  “I won’t tell him until after I have my pictures,” Susan said cheerfully. “Don’t worry. I’m not very reckless and I won’t stay too long.”

  She set off dressed much as she had been that day when Dirk had found her taking pictures of the train accident in Chicago, in a beret, an engulfing trench coat, and low-heeled shoes.

  A short distance from her goal she left the bus and set out on foot to penetrate the neighborhood she wanted to see. In many ways it was like the slums of Chicago’s South Side, probably like those of any city. There was a teeming humanity on every hand, living in homes that had once been the elegant residences of prosperous white people, long since moved away. Now the houses were crumbling to ruin, undoubtedly rat-infested, vermin-ridden. Probably there were white slum landlords here, as elsewhere, who fattened on the misery of those who lacked the power to ensure better living conditions. Children swarmed on the stoops, in the streets, tumbling over the sidewalks, some screaming and shouting like children anywhere, others sitting in vacant-eyed apathy. For the most part their elders paid her little attention. She was aware of sidelong looks from a few, of resentful glances from others, but most of those she passed took the safest course by pretending she did not exist.

  She was getting her pictures now, yet this sort of degradation existed in slums everywhere; it was not uniquely South African. It had probably existed before apartheid had come into being. Indeed, moving people out of such slums might give the government some justification for building new locations.

  Then, as she was crossing an alleyway that opened off what seemed to be one of the main streets of the area, she saw something that made her stop to watch. An Afrikaner policeman was standing before a sort of shed. Its doors and windows had long since vanished and it stood open to the alley. A colored woman with a sleeping child in her arms sat on a tipped-up box, talking to a man who was clearly a black African. As Susan watched, the officer stepped up to the man, speaking curtly in Afrikaans, demanding what he was doing, why he was not at work.

  Susan had recovered enough of the language she had known as a child so that she grasped most of the interchange. The policeman, not satisfied with the answer he was given, asked for the African’s pass. The colored people, so far, were not required to carry passes, but without a pass none of the native population could move anywhere in South Africa, and passes must be presented on demand at any time. Not to have one was to invite arrest.

  As she watched, Susan did not forget her camera. Unobtrusively, behind the policeman’s back, she caught the picture. The African was gesturing toward a jacket, hung on a nail a few feet away. His pass was there, he said. But the officer would not give him a chance to get it. He had broken the law in not having it on his person, and that was that. Before Susan’s eyes the unreasonable arrest was made, and her camera clicked through the entire incident, with pauses only for hurried film winding. What she had witnessed shocke
d her, and she was all the more eager to make a record that the outside world might see.

  On the heels of her final picture, the policeman turned, prodding his captive ahead of him, and came toward her. There was no time for escape on her part. His first surprised reaction was due perhaps to her white skin. Then he saw the camera in her hands.

  “Why are you in this place?” he asked in Afrikaans. “What are you doing with the camera?”

  “I’ve been taking pictures around Cape Town,” she told him in English. “There’s no reason why I should not, is there?” Her attempted calm was a bluff. It was hard not to show her anger over what had happened, hard not to rush foolishly to the aid of the African, whose position she would only worsen.

  The officer held his prisoner by one arm, ignoring the man’s further effort to explain that his pass was in the jacket hanging not six feet away. He gave his attention coldly to Susan.

  “You are English?” he asked, changing to that language.

  Susan’s position was not one she could quickly explain and he gave her no time. He looked as if he intended to arrest her too, and she had no idea what would have happened next if there had not been an interruption.

  Behind her a car door slammed and feet came running. In a moment Mara Bellman was at her side, smiling at the policeman, speaking to him rapidly in fluent Afrikaans. She was saying in effect that the young lady from America did not know any better, that she was of course sorry if she had offended. She herself had been looking for the lady, fearing she might be lost. The officer would understand, of course.

  What of the pictures the American had taken? the officer asked stolidly, not at all overwhelmed by Mara’s charm.

  The girl turned quickly to Susan. “Did you take any pictures? If you did, remove the film and give it to him.”

  Susan hesitated, not at all pleased by this rescue, even if it had saved her from temporary trouble. She was still indignant with the policeman. Indeed, with Mara here to help her out, she ought to speak her mind.