Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Then, as John had pointed out, there was the curious matter of the cigars. Why cigars if such a means was too shopworn to use?

  She sat up in bed and wrapped her arms about her knees, rocking back and forth in bewilderment and worry. The house was so empty, so lonely. Yet this was nothing new. It was always lonely, she admitted in sudden honesty, even when Dirk was home. Falling in love had been an exciting thing, a rapturous, hasty, reckless thing, an unhoped-for gift of all she had ever longed for. Or so she had believed at the time. But growing in love was something else and a marriage that involved no growth was empty of meaning. Love had to be lived before it was truly real. And where was the living together in this marriage even when they were in the same house?

  The pendulum swung once more through its confusing arc. What if it were not her father behind Mara? What if it had been Dirk? Dirk pushing her down on the path, thrusting that rough bag over her head, fleeing before he could be recognized. This was the thing she had been holding away, refusing to face. Had she the courage to face it now, to seek the answer deliberately, to know for sure? When she knew the answer—what then? What of life and marriage and love, if this thing were true?

  The telephone bell downstairs shattered the silence. Let it ring, Susan thought. There was no one she wanted to talk to. But she knew she could not ignore it. The ringing might bring Willi inside to see why she had not answered. Besides, to call at this hour, the person who phoned must have good reason.

  She went downstairs and took the receiver from the hook, spoke into it.

  “I miss you, darling,” Dirk’s voice said over the miles from Johannesburg.

  Something in her quivered and responded with heedless joy. She had loved him so long ago as a little girl. And she loved him now as a woman. The shimmering melancholy of loneliness that had seemed to hang in the air fell away and there was in her only a longing for Dirk’s arms and his love securely around her.

  “Are you coming home tomorrow?” she cried. “I hate it here without you!”

  He was reassuring and affectionate and regretful. The business her father had sent him on would take longer than he had expected. He might go on to Durban tomorrow and perhaps to Basutoland. So he would be gone for several days more.

  “Father is planning a trip around the Cape,” she told him wistfully, though she knew this was a child’s coaxing. “He wanted you to drive.”

  Dirk’s laughter had a dry sound. “At least I’ll be spared the trip this year. Go with him, darling, and keep him happy. Let him tell you about every landmark along the way and explain about the shipwrecks and the storms. But not for me. Not this year. If you like, we’ll do the trip again by ourselves later.”

  “I’d love that,” she said. “We don’t do enough things together.” It was easier to talk to him over the miles of mountain and veld than when he was in the room beside her and so quick to grow impatient.

  “I know,” he said more warmly. “And we must mend that. Let’s make a date right now, darling. You’ve wanted to go up the mountain—so I’ll take you up the very day I get home. That’s a promise.”

  Whether it was the mountain or something else, she did not care, just so she would be with Dirk.

  “I love you,” she said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  When he rang off she put the phone down and went upstairs, warm now and tingling. No, it was not Dirk! Whatever was happening it was not because of Dirk. She had been in a gloomy mood because she was lonely. Love, after all, was not a steady flame. It burned sometimes high, sometimes low, depending on those concerned. So long as it always leapt up high and warm again, there was nothing to fear.

  There was no reason to believe that anyone was behind Mara Bellman. Or, if anyone was, then it must be someone who had no connection with Protea Hill.

  She went to a window and flung open the draperies that Willi had closed. The mountain was there, waiting, and stars hung brightly above it. She had heard that the top was like some strange landscape of the moon, bleak and awesome and vast. Had she lived here when she was older she would have climbed it, as all Cape Town children climbed it sooner or later, by way of the easy trails, if not up the precipices. For her first trip, however, she would gladly settle for the fun of the cable car with Dirk. And tea at the top.

  “I’ll be seeing you soon,” she told the mountain and turned back to the room.

  When Dirk came home she would tell him about Mara’s coming here, searching this room. She would tell him about the stones she had found and entrusted to John Cornish’s care. The pendulum had swung full arc again and, clinging to its high point, she could believe that this was where it would stay, improbably arrested at the peak of its flight and against all laws of gravity.

  She slept well that night and there was no blue fire in her dreams.

  During the next few days there was an interlude of calm while she waited for Dirk’s return. An interlude during which she busied herself with small matters and thrust away whatever might disturb her or force her into thinking. It was not necessary to face these problems alone. When Dirk came home she would talk to him. He would help her. He would know what to do.

  Toward the end of the week the spring weather turned cool and misty again and clouds lay over the table and hid the Lion’s Head. A strong wind blew across Cape Town. At least it was not raining and Susan never minded misty weather. She put on her mackintosh and pulled its hood over her head. Then she set off for a walk downtown.

  Today she chose Long Street because she liked its ironwork balconies and its two unexpected palm trees, around which traffic had to swerve. After a few blocks she cut across to Adderley, stopping along the way in a boekwinkel to see if they had John Cornish’s book on Ghana. They had not, but took an order. Then she strolled beneath the arcades of Adderley and past van Riebeeck high on his pedestal surveying the town he had helped to create. Over in the Parade Ground hustlers picked up what change they could by making a great show of helping motorists to park.

  Susan turned back on Adderley to her father’s shop and stood looking into the always fascinating window. There was a display of beautifully carved animals: a rhinoceros with his great mouth gaping, a big-eared African elephant, a graceful springbok. She must ask Dirk to bring home some companions for the impala, she thought, walking on.

  Little things were important, only little things. When the minor matters of the day became too inconsequential to dwell on, it meant that one’s mind was troubled and depressed. Today she would not be depressed. She would remain in a state of pleasant suspension until Dirk came home.

  Now she followed Adderley back toward the mountain till she reached the alley that housed the flower market. Here she would purchase more chinks to cheer up the house. She would bank it with flowers against Dirk’s homecoming—which would be soon now, soon, though he had not yet told her when. But before she filled her arms with blooms she would take a few more pictures of the flower market to replace those on the film Willi had destroyed. Her mind flicked at the subject and winced quickly away. No, not today. This was the sort of thought she must guard against.

  She gave herself over to reveling in color and scent and texture. She smiled at the colored women who offered her their wares, moved on to the far end of the market and turned about.

  Niklaas van Pelt, leaning upon Thomas’s arm, his cane in one hand, was entering from the Adderley Street end. This was perfect, Susan thought. Now she could retake the pictures of him in the midst of these flower stalls. She uncased her light meter to determine the exposure. Thomas did not see her down the length of the market. He left Niklaas at his usual place, touched his cap, and went away without glancing about.

  Susan took a few steps down the long aisle of flowers, studying first the meter and then the subject. It was a gray day, lacking the shadows that gave a picture contrast and depth. But her film was fast and she would give it a try.

  The same plump woman reached up to free Niklaas of his cane and he bent toward the nearest basin of
flowers, absorbing their fragrance.

  Susan stood stock still, suddenly arrested. The greeting which had risen to her lips was stilled. In a flash of searing clarity she understood how the second step of the smuggling was managed, and how cleverly and innocently it was done. No crude cigars were being used this time. This way was far better. She felt sick with the shock of knowledge, shaken to the point of nausea. And she could not bear to speak to her father.

  Somehow she slipped past him, so close that she could have reached out and touched his arm. With the scent of the flowers all about, he would not catch her perfume today. No one noticed her except as a possible buyer of flowers, and in a moment she was on the street again, walking hurriedly toward the Avenue.

  The mist was wet upon her cheeks—or was she crying? Crying because she had nearly found her father, only to lose him again. For good this time. Now she knew who had given the order to have that film destroyed. Thomas had seen her taking the pictures when he had come for Niklaas that day. He would have reported the fact, of course. The picture taken of Thomas on the library steps had nothing to do with the matter. The order had been relayed by way of Thomas to Willi. And again the order to stop her had been given when something had been missing from the cigar box. By whom, she knew now, and to whom did not matter. It was her father who had given both these orders. Perhaps to Mara, more likely to Thomas. Perhaps even to Dirk, if Dirk was aware of these matters. Though she would not yet believe that Dirk would accept such an assignment. She would see him soon and would ask him for the truth.

  Along the red dirt path of the Avenue were little puddles and the young oak trees dripped moisture on either side. The handsome white towers of the Jewish temple rose against a misty backdrop of mountain, and all about her the doves burbled and cooed. Only a few moments before the peace of this place would have suited her mood. Now she scarcely noted where she walked as she climbed the hill toward home. When she turned through the gate at the Aerie, she found the light meter still in her hands.

  Willi heard her step on the walk and left her work to open the door.

  “Your father rang up about an hour ago, Mrs. Hohenfield,” Willi said. “He was disappointed not to catch you.”

  Susan scarcely heard her. There was nothing she wanted to say to her father, or to hear from him, at the moment.

  Willi took her coat and followed her into the living room. “Mr. van Pelt asked me to give you a message. He said the weather should clear tomorrow and be fine, so he is planning to motor around the Cape. Mr. Cornish has offered to drive. Mr. van Pelt will have a picnic lunch packed and if you are ready at nine in the morning he will pick you up. If this suits your convenience, he said you need not ring him back.”

  She could not go, Susan thought. She could not face her father until she had thought this thing through, decided upon some course of action. No action at all was now inconceivable.

  Willi was watching her, puzzled and a little anxious. Susan tried to smile.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I may call my father later.”

  But she did not call him. By evening she still had not called. She had nothing to say to him. She could not even bring herself to tell him that she could not accept his invitation for the trip around the Cape. If he asked for a reason, what was she to say?

  After Willi had retired to her room, Susan sat listening for a long while to the radio, trying to think against the quieting background of music. Someone was singing a program of songs in Afrikaans—old folk tunes of the sort that Dirk often loved to whistle.

  “Marching to Pretoria …”

  It occurred to her abruptly that there was something she could do if she went tomorrow. She could tell John Cornish what she had discovered. If she went on the trip, it was likely they might have a little time together while Niklaas rested. There was nothing else she could do, no one else to whom she could turn.

  The weather report for the Union of South Africa came on and fine weather was promised. There was not even the hope that a storm would develop out of today’s murk and enable her to do nothing, postpone all action, if that should be her wish.

  By morning she knew that the weather report would hold true. She dressed in dark-green slacks with twin brown sweaters and a green kerchief tied in a band about her hair. Her every move was listless and the heaviness of her spirit could not have been greater.

  When Willi came to say that Mr. Cornish was waiting downstairs for her, she picked up her camera, slung the heavy strap of her big leather bag indifferently over her shoulder, caught up a coat against the winds of the Cape, and went to face her father.

  20

  Niklaas van Pelt sat in the back seat of the car, his head turned in the direction of the house, as if he listened for his daughter’s step. When she said, “Good morning,” and started into the car beside him, he stopped her.

  “Why not sit up in front with John, my dear? I have the lunch back here. Mara was too busy to join us today, but she had something packed for us.”

  John had come to open the car door and Susan was aware of his look as she got in. She knew he had sensed that something was wrong, even more wrong than before. But he said nothing and turned the car toward the Kloof Nek where they could go through the pass and drop down the other side to run out along the Marine Drive. They drove in silence past Camp’s Bay, and Susan remembered walking across the sands with Dirk only a little while ago.

  How much did Dirk know of what occurred in the flower market? she wondered unhappily. Perhaps nothing. Surely he too had been fooled by the cleverness of Niklaas van Pelt. She must believe this, must hold to it until she saw him again and he could speak for himself.

  As they followed the drive she watched the sea on one hand and the changing peaks on the other. Once she turned in her seat to look back at her father. He sat with his cane clasped between his hands, his head turning first toward the Atlantic, feeling the sea breeze against his face, then turning toward the mountains, as if he could sense their weight and presence. There was no gentleness in his face today, no betraying of thoughts behind the guard he had learned to wear.

  How defenseless a blind person must feel, Susan thought. Those he could not see were free to study him as they pleased, intrude, perhaps, as a person with sight is never intruded upon. But Niklaas had learned to hide his secrets well behind the cold mask of his face, behind the dark glitter of his glasses. Only once had she surprised him without the mask—that time in the little garden for the blind. That day she had softened toward him as she could not soften now.

  Niklaas spoke aloud, almost as if to himself. “Drake said it was the fairest of all capes, and Diaz called it the Cape of Storms.”

  “While we,” John Cornish added, “call it, ironically, the Cape of Good Hope.”

  “Ironically?” Niklaas said.

  “What good hope is there for South Africa?”

  “That again? You must admit that our government has held down the disturbances,” Niklaas said mildly.

  “Toward what end result?” John was impatient. “You’d think we believed in the legend of the boy and the dike. If Hans stands long enough with his thumb in the crack the waters will recede. But any man of sense knows they won’t. The pressure is building and the dike is going to be smashed flat, with chaos resulting. Nevertheless, Hans stands there stubbornly, shouting that others are interfering and he can hold back the waters alone in his own way.”

  Susan glanced at her father and saw that he was smiling.

  “You think about these matters a great deal, don’t you?” he asked John.

  “How can I not?”

  “Since you can do nothing, why not let events take their course and leave action to those who better understand the problem?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean to do,” John said angrily. “Though I doubt that there’s much understanding on the part of those in power.”

  Quietly Niklaas changed the subject, and Susan, whose sympathies were entirely with John’s viewpoint, hardened
a little further against her father.

  “Where are we now?” Niklaas asked.

  “Chapman’s Peak is directly ahead,” John told him. “Look your longest, Susan; this is the finest scenery of the Cape.”

  On their left the mountains rose in grandeur, jagged and steep, their stony slopes partly wooded. And where there were woods there were arum lilies—great white carpets of them—and everywhere wildflowers growing among the rocks. On the sea side the embankment dropped away in steep cliffs, gull haunted, with South Atlantic breakers rolling in at their base, roaring above the purr of the car.

  “Here’s a point where we can stop,” John said and turned the car off the road beside a rocky lookout. He helped the old man from the car and led him gently to a place where he could stand with the sea wind in his face and the mountains massed behind him. Susan chose a spot a little away from the two. She did not want to be near her father or to touch him. The sickness of heart she had felt in the flower market yesterday had abated not at all.

  John stood at the parapet, watching the frothing sea below, and his expression was grave and a little sad. “One has a curious feeling sometimes in returning to a familiar place. Earth and rocks and sea and mountains have such permanence. There’s no change here, even though everything else in life may have changed.”

  Niklaas understood. “You came here last with Janet, didn’t you?”

  “Do you remember her?” John asked.

  “Very well. A quiet, serene young woman. A good balance for you, I always thought. You were often too intense, too involved in the things you wrote about.”

  “Once it seemed a good thing to be involved,” John said.

  “But now,” said Niklaas, “you are merely angry without being involved?”

  John made a movement of impatience and spoke to Susan. “How is the picture series coming along?”

  “It’s not,” she told him. “I’m still looking for scenes that will really tell the story.”

  “Perhaps I can help you,” he said. “There are places I can show you around Cape Town. The pondokkies on the Cape Flats, for instance, where squatters live in the most utter destitution.”