But at the outset, every living thing had a chance.
—
A DAY’S ACQUAINTANCE did not improve Stacey’s opinion of Butterworth. Neither did the fact that she had been compelled to ask strangers, many strangers, if they had seen her husband. She knew it made her look like an abandoned wife. There were hours when she was able to feel certain Piet would come for her. But her enquiries revealed a worrying fact: Piet, always at the centre of things, a man people remembered, had made no impression on anyone here.
The exception was the owner of the general store, who knew exactly whom Stacey was talking about when she described Piet. But this gentleman obeyed an iron code of confidentiality—especially where wives were concerned. He had abandoned two himself, and seven children who now lived at Port St. Johns. He had no inclination to betray a fellow rake, so he told Stacey vaguely that he had many European customers, most of whom had dark hair. “I never look at the eye colour of any man,” he said.
Stacey asked about other nearby places, but her nerve failed her. If she went to King William’s Town in search of Piet, and he happened to visit the post office at Butterworth in her absence, she would miss him—perhaps forever. She made the clerk promise to send a boy to fetch her if anyone answering Piet’s description should come. Twice she was summoned, and the disappointments were shaming.
Stacey had left the United States at the invitation of a French aristocrat who had promised to marry her after an expert seduction. She had arrived in France to read in the newspapers that he had married a Belgian railway heiress. This experience began to poison her dreams and then her waking hours. She had been brought up in a respectable Chicago family. She thought of her parents, her brother Fred. Where were they now? Did they mourn her? Would anyone, if she died in this ghastly hole?
The answer to this question was bleak. When Ierephaan and Mohammed asked when the master would come for them, the knowledge that no one in the world knew where she and Arthur were began to press on her like a rock. On the afternoon of her second day, having rushed to the post office at the summons of the clerk, only to find an elderly Belgian in a cheap suit, she stepped out into the hot sun and had an attack of panic. Her heart began to beat much faster than usual. Her adrenaline levels skyrocketed. This induced a paralysis she had never felt before. She found she could not take a further step. She could barely reach the bench on the post office veranda. She could not unfurl her parasol, nor hold it to shield her complexion from the vicious sun. Arthur was at the Travellers’ Rest, in the care of its receptionist. Even the thought of him could not induce movement. She felt she could not move until she had told someone where they were—but past lies blocked every possibility.
Her Cape Town friends believed her to be in Europe. She had ceased corresponding with her own family almost a decade earlier. What could she say to them? The sun, passing the midpoint of the heavens, began to cast long shadows and the street emptied. Darkies who until now had averted their gaze stared at her frankly, for she sat still as a statue. She could not move until she had thought of one single friend, but the urgency of her need inhibited inspiration. At last the sun’s reflection on a polished weather vane hit her eyes directly. The sparkle of silver triggered the memory of a platinum stake, set with emeralds, and then the aquiline perfection of Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts-Longchamps’ profile. A friend of her husband’s youth. A rich woman. Someone who would help her.
The post office was closing. She forced herself to her feet and staggered in, holding her hand up. Holland was not at war. If something were to happen to her, if Piet never came…Perhaps this woman…
She took a slip of telegraph paper and examined her purse. It still held Louisa’s card. In pencil she wrote PIET MISSING STOP She hesitated. Then: PRESUMED DEAD STOP She was a proud woman and never asked directly for aid. But the lady on whose mercy she now threw herself was a world away, and desperation lessened the tingle of shame. FUNDS LOW STOP. PLEASE HELP STOP And she gave the address of the Travellers’ Rest, Butterworth.
The clerk was privy to all the town’s secrets. He could not wait to get home to tell his wife what had occurred. With indecent haste he tapped out the telegram and charged Stacey for it. She went back to the hotel, and slept until the sun was high in the sky the next day and her little boy had to cry to wake her.
—
THE NEXT DAY, at the height of the noon heat, Piet’s wagon nosed the crest of the hill and began its descent to Butterworth. He was hot and sticky and unshaven. The bathing facilities at his camp made shaving laborious, and he was looking forward to the attentions of a barber. At Idutywa he sponged his neck and armpits and changed his shirt, his only concession to European sensibilities. Then he pressed on to the town, hoping that his carvers had arrived.
Sitting on the veranda of the Travellers’ Rest, Arthur saw him. He began shrieking and waving his arms. But false alarms had hardened Stacey, and she rose unwillingly. All she saw was the back of a covered wagon.
“Daddy’s come for us!”
“He will come for us.” She sat down again and continued fanning herself. There were even more flies at the Travellers’ Rest than there were cockroaches, and the assault of insect life put her in a bad temper. She had spent the night before chasing mosquitoes around their room, maddened by their whine. It requires great alertness to kill a mosquito. By the time she had hunted them all, she was too wakeful for slumber. A little breeze rose up, and sleep beckoned her. “Do be quiet, darling.”
But Arthur Barol would not be quiet. He was a dutiful little boy, and scrupulous about holding hands while crossing streets. “Be quiet!” she said, and even this did not silence him.
“I know it was Daddy! I know it. I know itIknowitIknowitIknow—”
She opened her eyes. Sleep would be impossible. Again.
“If we miss him, how will we ever find him?”
This articulation of her innermost fear roused Stacey. She allowed herself to be led down the stairs to the street. The wagon had drawn up at the post office, and Arthur slipped his hand from hers and charged towards it. She had no intention of running—not in this heat, not when she was the object of such provincial curiosity. Besides, her shoes were high heeled and too tight. Her feet had swollen in the hot weather.
Standing at the post office counter, scribbling a telegram to his wife, Piet thought the sound of his son’s voice screaming “Daddddeeeeee!!” must be a symptom of sunstroke. A fury of blond curls, pummeling his thighs, showed him otherwise. There, in the flesh, jumping up and down, shouting at the top of his voice, was Arthur.
Their joy at being reunited moved the entire post office. The clerk, whose wife was sentimental, stored every detail to recount to her later. Piet hugged Arthur so tightly he feared he might bruise him. “Where’s Mummy?” he asked, his heart soaring.
“In the street! We came to find you!”
Stacey saw Arthur dash into the post office. Knowing he would be safe there, she slowed her pace. The post office’s walls were thick stone, and she heard nothing of the commotion within. It is often at the moment that hope is truly abandoned that a cherished wish is granted. So it was in Stacey’s case. As she gathered herself to face the ignominy of another unsuccessful interview with the post office clerk, a man bounded out, carrying Arthur on his shoulders.
Piet looked so different that for a moment she thought she was dreaming. His appearance had the contorted logic of a dream—he was himself, but not himself. He had three weeks of dark beard, and the sunburned face of a farmer. His hair was long and uncut, unbrushed. His smell—it was richer, deeper, more intense than it had ever been—the smell of a man used to arduous physical labour. The contrast between them was arresting. Everyone on the street watched as Piet put the little boy down and picked up the haughty woman in the embroidered gown, lifting her as lightly as if she were weightless, and swung her round and round on the pavement as she screamed.
They remembered themselves sufficiently not to kiss in public. But as soon as
they reached the Travellers’ Rest they had to have each other. Piet greeted Ierephaan and Mohammed, who were greatly relieved to see him, and gave Arthur half a crown to spend on sweets. This inducement had no effect at all. Arthur only wanted to be near his father, to touch his newly strange, bearded face, chattering at the top of his voice. For half an hour Piet listened, and Stacey, watching him, felt the knowledge of who he was return to her—a hundred times stronger than it had ever been. Finally, she said: “Your papa is terribly in need of a rest. When he’s had it, we will come for you.”
“Let me rest with him!”
“It’s a grown-up kind of rest,” said Piet, looking at his wife.
—
ROOM 312 of the Travellers’ Rest, Butterworth, had witnessed many exuberant couplings, though rarely between a husband and a wife. Nothing in their history prepared the velveteen drapes for what they witnessed, nor the mattress for the pounding it got. Stacey, impeccably correct in public, was no prude in the bedroom. Her husband’s new strangeness enthralled her. The squishy fat she had come to accept in Cape Town had gone. Everywhere she touched was muscle and sinew. His calloused hands sent ripples across her skin, his new strength augmenting his old gentleness.
They were not gentle for long.
Months apart from each other made them frantic, and Piet’s new smell aroused in Stacey a response that lay deep in the core of her being, aeons beneath the layers of civilization. As he entered her, she buried her nose in his armpit, and all the worry of weeks gone by was obliterated.
He came in her, and was instantly hard again. The banging of the headboard sent the cockroaches scuttling into dark recesses, from which they did not dare emerge. Six spiders watched them, and a mosquito clung tight as he sank his proboscis into Piet’s right shoulder. The surge of blood was too much for him, and he withdrew, gorged, and flew too close to a spiderweb. The spider saw her chance and feasted as she watched the merriment below.
“I like your beard,” said Stacey, when they were done.
“Then I shall keep it.” He turned on his side and looked at her. “What made you come? I hadn’t sent for you.”
“I wanted to see you.” She suppressed another, smaller voice that whispered: “I had begun to doubt you.”
“How has Bumble Jug been?”
“He has missed his papa terribly.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see him—and you, my darling.”
She put her arms round his neck and kissed him deeply, but as she felt him stiffen she pulled tantalizingly away. “I must share you with him now,” she said.
“He’s the only one you need ever share me with.”
9
Piet stayed in Butterworth that night, and put Arthur to bed with tales of the forest that was to be their home. In his descriptions of the trees, the animals, the fire they sat round every evening, he got carried away and made the boy afraid. He had forgotten his son was barely six years old.
Arthur, raised on European fairy tales, knew that witches live in forests, in gingerbread houses, and lure children to unspeakable fates. “Is it like the forest Hansel and Gretel were lost in?” he asked, his lower lip trembling.
“It is quite a different sort of forest altogether. And besides, I shall be with you always. No witches will touch you while I am there.”
The boy curled tightly against him. His trust brought a lump to Piet’s throat. All the discomforts he had endured, of which sucking up to Percy Shabrill was by far the worst, were more than repaid by Arthur’s confidence. What a splendid boyhood lay ahead of him! He would be a man who knew the wild, who could take care of himself beyond the drawing room. He sat quite still as Arthur’s breathing slowed, and his little body grew heavy. Piet looked up to see Stacey watching them. The tenderness in her face made the moment perfect.
“We have made a little angel,” he said.
“Looks can be deceiving.” She smiled and kissed his head. “He won’t wake till morning, unless he has a nightmare. Let’s have a bath.”
There was only one bath at the Travellers’ Rest, but it was long and deep. When Piet ordered the hot water for it with a series of strange clicks and fizzes, Stacey observed the impact an instruction in his own language made on their waiter, who had been sluggish for her, and felt the wisdom of her impulsive choice of husband. She had brought rose water from Cape Town. As the attendant emptied large canisters of water into the tin tub, she added some, and the room flooded with the scent of roses. When they were alone, she stepped out of her dress and undid the buttons of Piet’s shirt. “The profile of an aristocrat, the body of a farmhand. What an excellent combination.”
They got in, facing each other, their legs in a tangle. “About that,” said Piet.
“What?”
“The Vicomte de Barol. I’m rather sick of him.”
“Are you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Well, we can’t escape him now.”
“Here we can. No one knows us. Let’s just be ourselves.”
She sensed an implicit criticism, since it was she who had suggested the advantages of assuming an aristocratic title. He saw that he had irked her, and kissed her knee. “He did well for us in Cape Town. We can always return to him if we wish. But now we’re here, and the war’s on, we needn’t do anything we don’t want to.” He smiled. “Besides, I rather like the ring of Mr. and Mrs. Barol. And since Holland is not fighting, no one will think it strange that I’m not getting myself blown to bits in France.”
“That alone is an excellent reason to stop being French.”
He told her most of what had happened since his arrival at Gwadana.
“Wherever did you get the idea of the mermaid snake?”
“It’s rather jolly inventing a monster.”
He described his discovery of a sumptuous tree, his flight from the forest with the bust he had carved of his friend Ntsina.
“You mean Percy Shabrill’s garden boy?”
It was strange for Piet to consider Ntsina thus. “The very one. He is much more than a garden boy.”
“Clearly.”
Piet omitted certain unpleasant details: the rape of Ntsina’s bride on her wedding day; the look on Nosakhe’s face as she saw her grandson’s severed head. Already the incidents were finding the shape they would assume as anecdotes. Whoever won the war, he felt sure the Mount Nelson’s bar would remain unchanged.
“Have you made any furniture?”
“Not yet. I needed carvers and tools, and you’ve brought them. I came here to find the finest wood in the world, and get it cheap.” He brushed an intimate place on her body with his big toe, and she drew breath sharply. “I think I’ve done rather well, all things considered.”
His toe probed deeper and she sank into the water, pushing herself against him.
“Very well, darling.”
“Shall I get you a house in town?”
“This town? I don’t think so.”
“Will you follow me into my forest?”
“I’d follow you anywhere, Piet Barol.”
—
“YOU CANNOT WASTE your life here, my sister,” said Bela to Zandi. They were in the hut Ntsina had been born in, the one in which his mother’s body had been laid after the puff adder’s bite. Bela was standing on a table, furiously scrubbing the beam. It was black with the soot of ten thousand fires.
“I will never leave you,” said Zandi.
Bela stopped scrubbing. In the days when she had been the most popular girl in Gwadana, Zandi had been the recipient of all the nastiness Bela could not express elsewhere. Now it was her sweetness that had nowhere to go. She stopped scrubbing and got down from the chair. “I have been cruel to you, my sister. I am sorry.”
Zandi considered these words, which were true enough. She found that none of it mattered anymore. “I will never desert you,” she said.
“But you have a future.” Bela took her hand. “You will never find a husband while you live here. They w
ill think the evil spirit within me has possessed you too. If you do not marry, there are many joys you will never know. You and I will be the last of our father’s line. He and Mother will have no descendants to worship them.” She began to cry now, she who had always taken pride in her father’s pride.
The prospect of their parents’ spirits wandering, homeless, after their deaths, with no one to worship them, was enough to bring tears to Zandi’s eyes too.
“He will get me soon enough, whether you are here or not. The evil spirit has made me weak.”
“There is no evil spirit in you, Bela.”
Bela went to the shrine she had made at the opposite side of the hut. “I think Sukude put the demon within me the night my husband left.” She thought of the semen Sukude’s straining cock had flooded her with. “I do not know how to get it out.” She kissed the bust of Ntsina’s head, and began to sob. “He was a good man, my husband. He was gentle to me.”
“His spirit lives. Luvo told us so.”
Bela began to wail. The gulls had grown used to the wailing of this hairless ape woman and did not stir from the roof of the hut. When she stopped, she was angry. “They are cowards in this village. They have mounted no rescue party. That sangoma should lead us forth to battle. I believe he is afraid.”
Zandi embraced her. She had no words of comfort, for all Bela said was true.
“You must find a husband. For yourself,” said Bela. “For our parents. You must have a child. Your presence here does not lessen my disgrace, but with each day your reputation grows less. I cannot bear it.”
“And I cannot bear the thought of you alone.”
Who Killed Piet Barol? Page 23