Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  Piet inhaled deeply.

  “We’re more than a match for these two,” she said.

  3

  Standing on the terrace of her gaudy new house, which still smelt of paint and wallpaper glue, Dorothy Shabrill found that her hands were shaking as she watched the Vicomtesse de Barol advance across the porcelain tiles. She looked at Percy, who was making nice to the Chairman of the Stock Exchange. The thought of failing him made her mouth dry. She looked up. In heels, Stacey Barol was four inches taller than she was.

  “Vicomtesse, how splendid you look,” Dorothy said.

  “Do call me Stacey. And let me call you Dotty. I feel we are to be great friends.”

  Luvo Yako, standing at the door and watching for half-full glasses, wondered how much the guest of honour’s jewellery was worth and prayed for grace. Stacey was wearing paste diamonds so large no one could disbelieve them. Luvo moved to refill Percy’s champagne glass in time to hear him say: “The government is well on the way to settling the native question once and for all.”

  At this point, the only white member of staff, the butler, announced that dinner was served.

  The thirty grandees whom Percy had invited to meet the Barols took dinner in a mock-Elizabethan dining room, the only room in which Stacey was able to see any trace of furniture.

  “I expect you miss France,” said Dorothy Shabrill to Piet as he drew out her chair.

  “One misses the food, of course.”

  This remark ignited Dorothy’s simmering unease about the menu. Mrs. Mafuduka was a superb cook when entrusted with simple, wholesome recipes. Phyllo pastry stuffed with artichokes and foie gras now seemed to be asking too much of her. She felt a cavern of shyness open before her.

  Percy Shabrill’s own opinion that he “rubbed along with anyone” had been confirmed by his election to the Rand Club, in whose smoking room the adjective “sound” was often used of his political views. He had come to South Africa with nothing but an ingenious system for cooling air and had begun by installing Cool Rooms in large houses and country clubs, taking care to get on drinking terms with their owners. Percy had no ear for a snub, which was a powerful advantage. He also had a plummy English voice that got plummier and plummier each season. Though he sang “God Save the King” whenever he could, Percy was glad to be out of England. He had not excelled at his minor public school. He had loitered outside the gates to advancement in his own country and found that his sort of man was rarely at the front of the line. In South Africa all this changed. Every white man with some pluck could take for himself a share of the spoils.

  It had taken Percy two years, and the provision of many chilled pink gins, to break into the torrent of money flowing from the gold mines. Cooling their managers’ offices had made him rich enough to take a seat at the Rand Club’s Long Bar within hailing distance of the alcove where Barney Barnato sat. He rather thought he might make it to Parliament, and was cultivating contacts he could rely on when the moment came.

  The prospect of one day telling his pompous older brother Cyril that he was a Member of Parliament was very pleasing to Percy Shabrill. He was a believer in Capital, Empire, and the need for the white races of the Union to settle their differences after the unpleasantness of the Anglo-Boer War. Englishmen and Afrikaners alike were welcome at his table, and he was gratified to have prime specimens of both to exhibit before Piet Barol tonight.

  “D’you know,” he said, as his guests took their seats, “I should like to begin with a toast. To friendship and this marvellous country.”

  “To friendship and this marvellous country!”

  The cry was lustily taken up by the younger men, who were anxious to win Percy’s favour. Their wives were full of compliments and wearing new dresses.

  “Your daughter is heaven,” said Stacey, on Percy’s right.

  “A perfect terror, her nanny tells me, but I’m afraid I agree with you. Perhaps she’ll marry your Arthur one day.” Percy drained his glass of white Burgundy and motioned to Luvo to refill it. He felt superb. “If he can afford her.”

  “My mother-in-law will insist on a duchess for him, I’m afraid. So old-fashioned!”

  Percy did a good line in patriotic plain-speaking and was proud of the way he was conducting himself. He had almost forgotten that he had ever been afraid of beautiful women. “A British subject is worth any number of foreign duchesses,” he said roguishly. “I can say that to you, of course, as a fellow Anglo-Saxon.”

  Luvo counted the diamonds on Stacey’s neck. Before every meal at school the boys had recited the Ten Commandments in English, isiXhosa and German. He heard them now and resolved once again to obey them, though it seemed to his methodical mind that Moses had not considered every situation when applying his blanket ban on theft. He moved up the line of guests, pouring white Burgundy, and as he reached his employer, Percy said: “Mr. Keyter, you have done an excellent job in difficult circumstances. My thanks and admiration.”

  Mr. Keyter, the National Party’s member for Ficksburg, who was used to being the object of toasts at official banquets, favoured Percy with the humble smile he reserved for such occasions. “It is a white man’s country now,” he said, “and the statute books must reflect that. For the good of all members of our society, whatever their God-given hue.”

  “Capital!” cried Percy, who had recently bought a share in a gold mine. Although he had promised himself to delay the introduction of this fact, he could not honour his vow a moment longer. He turned to Stacey and said: “I’ve just bought a mine,” rather exaggerating the scale of his purchase. “I can’t tell you the trouble we have with labour. That’s why this Natives Land Act Keyter’s lot have brought in is so precisely what the country needs. These Kaffirs don’t want to work. They don’t value money. If left to themselves, they’d do nothing but beat their women and raise cattle and make war.”

  “How tiresome for their women.”

  “Indeed. Better separate the men from them entirely. This is the clever thing Keyter’s done.”

  Stacey nodded, an expression of great interest on her face. In truth, she did not care for political talk. On her right was a portly English gentleman named Merriman, who now spoke.

  “My dear Shabrill. That’s not quite fair. You forget who laid the railways and dug the mines. Indeed, many natives have a greater trade value than a lazy white, and yet we do not make poor Afrikaners homeless. Nor”—with a jovial bow in the direction of Mr. Keyter—“would we dream of doing such a thing.”

  Mr. Keyter was too tactful to point out that Englishmen like Mr. Merriman had done exactly this barely twelve years before, when, in a bid to win the Anglo-Boer War, they had burned thousands of Afrikaner homesteads and herded their occupants into concentration camps. His own uncle and aunt had been among the unfortunates, six of his cousins had died and in his youth he had sworn never to break bread with a bloody Englishman. This vow long overturned, his only response was the beatific smile that had won him a reputation for wisdom.

  Luvo filled Percy’s glass and stepped back. He trained his eye on an imperfection in the paneling. Had anyone looked at him, they would have seen that his carotid artery was throbbing.

  “This legislation is not sensible,” said Merriman. “The natives are exceptionally docile when well governed and fairly treated. In my opinion, it is dangerous to throw them off their land and leave them to roam the countryside.”

  “Our land, Mr. Merriman!” said one of the young wives.

  “Hear hear!” roared Percy. Dorothy glanced at him and he lowered his voice. “I don’t deny that natives, backed by European capital, have accomplished much that is useful. But we must look to the future. A man will not work in a mine long if he has the least desirable alternative. This Land Act is timely and admirable. In a short period of, admittedly, some little suffering, the native will relinquish his claims to equality and accept his condition.”

  “But surely, Mr. Shabrill,” said a young woman with pale skin and a sunburned no
se, “the black races are the original occupants of South Africa. It cannot be just to prohibit them from owning land in their own country. Nor to deprive them of land they already occupy in these so-called ‘white’ areas.”

  The volume of talk and laughter dipped noticeably. The young woman had recently arrived from England and spoke louder than necessary. She was not three weeks married to a lieutenant of Percy’s, whose chances of advancement shriveled then and there. Percy’s father, when challenged, had specialized in freezing stares. Percy essayed one now, but he was on his third glass of white Burgundy and his gaze lacked focus. All his employees fell silent.

  “But enough about politics!” exclaimed Dorothy. She rang the bell for the next course to disguise her confusion. She had never enjoyed being the object of attention. When a young man began to talk about racehorses, she felt obliged to say something to her neighbour. To her dismay, she found herself introducing the topic she least wanted to speak about. “I’m so glad the house is finished at last,” she told Piet. “It has been a monumental effort. So much choosing!”

  Piet steeled himself. The moment to know had come.

  “Have you furnished it?” he asked.

  “We’ve a few sofas in the drawing room. Everything else is on the boat from England.” Dorothy fiddled with the rope of medium-sized pearls round her neck. “We rather went in for mauve. Our decorator is a Russian. He tells me it is the Empress Alexandra’s favourite colour.”

  The obliteration of Piet’s hopes made the room swim. He heard laughter and talk, but it made no sense. Watching him, Stacey felt fiercely protective. “Of course Pierre’s ancestors,” she murmured, “who date to Charlemagne, think the Romanovs rather common.”

  —

  THE IDEA THAT the Russian imperial family might be common so disturbed Dorothy Shabrill’s confidence in the order of things that she barely registered relief when the phyllo pastry Mrs. Mafuduka served was perfect. As she discussed the African heat with Piet, and how pleasant a European autumn would be, her mind enumerated the many instances of mauve to which the Barols would be exposed as they toured the house. She began to harbor violent thoughts about Mr. Naryshkin—and then about herself.

  Percy, intending to reprimand the sunburned young woman severely, dismissed the servants. Luvo left the dining room and walked down the long passage to the kitchen. He was a person who preferred his own company, or his sister’s, to that of most people. The battle of voices coming through the kitchen door was a powerful repellent. He found the overcrowding of the servants’ quarters unendurable. On certain nights, when the others were asleep, he crept out of the yard and went to the glade of oaks that Mr. Shabrill had bought. He was a devout believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thought of the barbarities the Israelites had endured and been saved from. Surely God would not abandon His Bantu in South Africa.

  He thought of his sister’s baby, and frowned. The child had died on the mountainside in the days after their eviction from their warm thatched hut. He kept to the side of the house. He felt his chest might explode from the turbulence of his thoughts. Leaning against the fountain made of imported Italian marble, looking up at the clouds, was Ntsina.

  “Good evening,” said Luvo.

  “Greetings, my brother.”

  They stood in silence. Ntsina, feeling awkward, broke it with a question. “Where is your home?”

  “I have no home.” Luvo did not cry, mindful of what was proper for a man. “I was too late to save my father’s house, or my sister’s child.” He told Ntsina how he had taken his family to Cradock, to his German teachers, who had offered them employment and the permission it conferred for a black person to reside in a white area. “The government says natives must work for whites or go to the native locations. But the locations are so crowded there is no land to farm, and no employment to pay the hut tax. It is simply a ruse to force us to work in the mines, as you have done.” As he spoke, the moon came out and the house reappeared and Luvo remembered that he should be on duty, handing round the coffee and cognac. It appalled him. “We must act!” He kicked the fountain, impotently. “Waiting in those stinking rooms will avail us nothing. We must protest.”

  “But to who?” asked Ntsina.

  “To the King of England. We are British subjects, just as much as the whites. The British let the blacks of the Cape Colony vote. Some of them, at least. It is because we are voteless now that we have no one to speak on our behalf in the Parliament.” He glanced at the house. “Some of our brothers and sisters have formed a congress. It is named the Native National Congress, though I think African National Congress would be better. We are Africans, after all. They want to raise funds to send a delegation to England.”

  Ntsina was stirred by what he had heard. “Let me go into the house and steal a treasure,” he said. “These Strange Ones have stolen so much, there is honour in stealing from them. I will do it while they are eating.”

  “That would make us as bad as they are. Believe me, I have considered it. But Moses tells us ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ”

  “Who is Moses?”

  “A prophet of the Jews.”

  “But we are not Jews. And our needs are pressing.”

  —

  IN THEIR BEDROOM at the Carlton Hotel, Piet took off his tailcoat and groaned. “God, I hate this thing.” His shoulders had broadened in his late twenties and it no longer fitted as it had once done. He feared Stacey would be angry with him, but instead she was thinking how handsome he was, and remembering how divine his hair smelled when she woke in the morning, curled against his chest.

  She went to him and nuzzled his neck. “We must make them hate what they have bought. That is all.” She tried to put her hands through the waistband of his trousers, but they were too tight to admit access. She moved to stand in front of him, and forced the clasps. “I love you, Piet Barol. Do as I say and all will be well.”

  —

  LYING UNDER THE BLANKET with Luvo, who seemed to be sleeping, Ntsina was seized by an itch worse than he had ever known. An autocratic itch. A curse sent by Atamaraka, the Queen of Evil. He lay in the dark, oblivious to the snores of his neighbours; wondering how he could lie still all night with such an itch as this. Eventually he could bear it no longer. He slipped his right hand through the uncomfortable mlungu underwear Mrs. Mafuduka had given him, and scratched so hard he made the skin bleed.

  Luvo, who was not asleep, attempted to decode the significance of his blanket-partner’s furtive movements. At his boarding school, he had been introduced to masturbation by several of the boys, and had grown used to falling asleep to the gentle rasp of blankets on skin. But he was a fastidious person. He had never been drawn to touch anyone, and when touched himself he had not liked it. He did not at all like the idea that the man with whom he would be sharing a blanket for the foreseeable future might be masturbating beside him.

  “What ails you, brother?” he asked at last, in exasperation.

  The answer was silence and an abrupt cessation of movement under the other half of the blanket. Luvo turned over and closed his eyes, relieved that no vulgar expansion was required. He was afraid of his dreams, but Mr. Shabrill was quick to spot a dozing servant and he needed his sleep. Ntsina waited tensely until Luvo’s breathing regularized, then scratched again. Each touch was at once relieving and intensifying. He tried to sleep and dreamed of fire flaming in his crotch. Escaping it, he kicked Luvo so violently that Luvo sat up on his elbows and said: “What is the matter?!”

  “I am not well,” said Ntsina. And he told Luvo of the fire in his crotch.

  “What you describe sounds like lice,” said Luvo. “We had two outbreaks at school while I was there. I have never known such itching.”

  “What did you do to stop it?”

  “Come. I will show you.”

  Mrs. Mafuduka was a sound sleeper, and Luvo extracted the key to the kitchen door from the pocket of her apron without much trouble. He let Ntsina into the cavernous room and lit a paraffi
n lamp. Ntsina’s smooth, voluptuous buttocks were perfectly lit as he took down his shorts. Luvo did his best not to look. Instead he mixed a concoction of vinegar, carbolic soap, sunflower oil and a few pinches of rosemary, taken from the newly laid vegetable garden. “You must leave this on for an hour but no longer,” he said. “And neither of us can sleep in that blanket again until it has been washed with boiling water.”

  “Thank you,” said Ntsina. And he added two words that men did not use lightly in Gwadana: mhlobo wam. They meant: my friend.

  Luvo looked down and left the room.

  —

  IN THE CARLTON HOTEL’S dining room, where she and Stacey were lunching the next day, Dorothy Shabrill was reminded of the occasion in her youth when she had been invited to sit on the library steps with the girls who ruled the roost at St. Agatha’s Convent School. Barbara Harris had recently had a profound encounter with the Holy Spirit, who had remonstrated with her for her many unkind actions. She had reformed, briefly, and inspired a fashion for piety. This had elevated the social stock of Dorothy Prince, though she could not grasp why. The chance to escape obscurity had been thrilling, but its scale inhibiting. As the head waiter led them to her table, she trailed behind Stacey’s skirts, remembering how she had failed to impress the popular girls.

  At this moment, Mr. Naryshkin emerged from the Bar, wearing a suit of radiant whiteness. Dorothy supposed it was gratifying to encounter acquaintances in public—but she wished that the acquaintance was not Mr. Naryshkin.

  The Russian kissed Dorothy’s hand, and when she said “May I present the Vicomtesse de Barol,” Stacey saw a leap in his bright green eyes that made it plain he scented a potential client. She knew exactly who he was, having done her research the night before with Monsieur Etellin, the Carlton’s manager, who had told her that Naryshkin always lunched with them on Tuesdays. She was very gracious to him, but as soon as he had gone she said: “Who is that odious little man?”