The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  Yes, she said. She could see it. She did not like it.

  It is gone, he said.

  Janet struggled. In her mind’s eye, she saw the knife. It was red, blood-red, and within its heart of warm colour, there lurked silver blades, corkscrews, prongs, strange files, scissory things. She could see it so clearly now; she could almost feel the decisive metal, dangerous with manly purpose, shiny and sharp. She did not like it about the house. She knew it belonged in her husband’s pocket or deep in Die Bybel. Yes, she could see it and feel it, but he had just said it was gone. Janet could not make it go. She tried, but the image would not go pop, like some of Pieter’s silly comics. There was no Aaargh sound, or a Pop!!! with three exclamation marks, to make it vanish. It is gone, he said, but it was still in her head. Janet raised a hand to her forehead. Did it look like she was saluting the thought of the knife.

  Gone, she said, unconvinced. The thought would not go.

  Poof, said Hektor-Jan demonstrating the vexing disappearance with his hands. Then his eyes switched from her, to look up at Alice-Lettie.

  Jy het nie my mes gesien nie, he asked. The Afrikaans, with its emphatic double negative, seemed to insist that Alice-Lettie had not seen his knife, no. The soapy sounds stopped and her maid’s soft voice said, Nee, my Baas. Ek is jammer. I am sorry.

  The children would not mess with it, Hektor-Jan said significantly. Not after the last time.

  Janet saw little Pieter’s bottom now. The redness of the knife became thick red stripes on her son’s bottom. Pieter would not touch his father’s special knife again. Of that she was certain. But then the scene softened to an evening image of her son standing at her husband’s side of the bed looking as forlorn as sin. Her son, sin. Janet did not know what to do. She thought of the mirror in the hallway staring blankly at the world, but cunningly reflecting all that passed before it: the furniture, which did not move, the light and the shadows and the dust and the people who did. She tried to offer Hektor-Jan more than a reflection of his concern. She tried to think, tried to feel. She should not just mirror his words. She should think for herself. But there were songs too. Not simply difficult images of knives – or red bottoms and shrieks of loud pain. What would bonnie Jean do. What would her Frank say.

  I need to find that knife, Hektor-Jan said. It is my –

  Special knife – Janet murmured.

  That my mother –

  Your mother gave to you, on her –

  Deathbed – said Hektor-Jan.

  With her dying breath – said Janet.

  Maybe not –

  Her death, her breath, her knife. She died with a knife on her lips – her lips were a knife, said Janet.

  Janet, said Hektor-Jan. Janet.

  Janet looked up, but her husband had disappeared. He had gone and Janet could hear the Poof sound, just like a comic book when someone vanished, disappeared off the edge of a cliff. Janet leaned past her big belly and looked at the kitchen floor beneath the table.

  There was no husband beneath the table. And no knife either.

  When she resurfaced, Alice-Lettie was looking at her, her arms sunk in the sink, as though half-swallowed by the mouth of the sink.

  These men, Janet managed to say. Then her cheeks were warm and stupidly wet.

  Hau, said Alice-Lettie, My Madam, she said. And she pulled her hands free from the dishes and bowls, knives and forks, and brought her soap-sudded arms to her little Janet. Janet felt their warmth, almost heard the tiny bubbles pop so crisply in the dry air. Beneath Alice-Lettie’s warm touch, Janet let herself cry.

  She brushed away her tears fiercely as the children came to kiss her goodbye. Pappie was taking them to school – special treat. Wasn’t that nice. Sylvia skipped off, Pieter let go of her reluctantly and Shelley stood there for a while. She was not fooled. Mommy was not suddenly coming down with a cold. Her older daughter went to the kitchen door and whistled. New-Jock bounded into sight and burst into the room.

  There you go, said Shelley. You look after Mommy whilst we are gone.

  Janet squeezed her arm and Alice-Lettie patted Janet on the shoulders, patted the damp spots where all the bubbles had died.

  Hektor-Jan rumbled something, and then they were gone.

  Some tea, my Madam, said Alice-Lettie and Janet nodded.

  New-Jock’s ears were soft. He liked to be scratched just behind his ears.

  Then she took her tea and her dog, and left her Alice-Lettie in the kitchen. She did not have much time. She pulled her dressing gown about her bump and breathed in the cold air in the back garden.

  The willow tree was a nervous tangle of thin, skittish branches. They would rattle in the wind, send clattering signals across the garden. But there was no wind. The air was hard and cold, but still. Janet breathed sharply. The edges of the cold morning smelled burnt, tasted charred. No doubt there were veld-fires. There were always veld-fires at this time of year. Dry grass, like tinder. Just waiting for a cigarette flicked from a car, then all that yellow crackled in an instant and became black and burnt. Somewhere there were fires – had been fires.

  Janet stood on the bleached lawn, her mug steamed and her breath came in misty trails. New Jock snorted beside her, then trotted off behind the pampas grass. Janet did not want to look where he went; she did not want to see the pool with its bump, its own gravid mask of stretched tarpaulin.

  She wandered over to the wall on her left. The rhododendrons fringed the concrete wall, still green. They gleamed in the thin sunlight against the strained blue sky. She stood by the wall. Her tea steamed.

  Where was her odd neighbour. Had he gone into sudden hibernation. How strange that he did not –

  No. There was a scampering sound. That was Nesbitt, surely. A little bark, then a snuffle. Janet looked up and sure enough, there came the head of Douglas van Deventer.

  Ja, he said, looking down at her.

  She looked up at him.

  You called, he said.

  Her tea breathed calmly in her hand, a warm and reassuring presence.

  I don’t think I did, Janet said. I did no such thing.

  Desperate Doug smiled and shifted his position on the ladder.

  We have got a new maid, he said. Finally.

  I know, said Janet. Very young.

  Just right, said Desperate Doug. We can train her. She is not set in her ways. We can teach her what to do.

  Like Emily, said Janet. Then she looked down at her tea. Emily would have a bouncing baby right now. Why did babies bounce. She had not come to the wall to talk about Desperate Doug and Noreen’s new maid, or to wonder about the offspring of their previous maid after her miraculous pregnancy, how she came to be with child, but without gentleman callers.

  Pieter, she said. The rest of the sentence lodged in her throat. The air was dry. She did not like naming her son to this man, who never seemed to work, who just fiddled about in his garden, fossicking amongst his plants. She took a sip of tea and tried again.

  My son, she said. What have you been saying to my son.

  Pieter, said Desperate Doug with unpleasant enthusiasm. Klein Pietertjie.

  My son, Janet said again.

  What a little character, said Desperate Doug. What –

  Have you asked him about a knife, Janet said. A penknife. Hektor-Jan’s penknife.

  Desperate Doug did not flinch. The man was brazen. Quite bold and brazen.

  He is so – Desperate Doug paused for the right word. He consulted Janet’s garden. He seemed to read the sky. His mouth moved again. Enthusiastic, he said. We were chatting, he continued after throwing a stick for Nesbitt, whose scampering feet came to Janet from the other side of the wall. It did seem strangely as though the scuttling sound came from Desperate Doug when he next opened his mouth. Janet tried to follow what Desperate Doug was saying, but the words scuttled and growled and he kept throwing the stick. He was hardly paying attention.

  So, there you have it, Desperate Doug smiled and waved the stick, which was chewed
at both ends.

  Janet tried to rescue words from her memory. Had he said, Show him, Show off to him, Show it off to him. Janet cleared her throat. Why would Pieter suddenly want to show off his father’s knife.

  Why would Pieter suddenly want to show you his father’s knife, said Janet. Her mug was heavy in her hand. Her voice made it up to the top of the wall. Desperate Doug reached out and took her words, one by one, seemed to fold them neatly and file them in the pocket of his long-sleeved shirt. Perhaps he would pop them in his ears a little later, and then reply.

  He winked at her.

  He leaned over the wall and tapped her lightly on the shoulder with Nesbitt’s ragged stick.

  I don’t think you should be asking me these questions, he said. I think there is someone else who knows the answer. And I do not mean your son.

  Janet tried to look into his eyes. She tried to ignore the tap of the stick that was touching her shoulder, stroking her shoulder. Desperate Doug seemed to fill the sky, and Janet felt her arms become weak, as though the stick were tapping into her life, draining her. Now it was touching her chest.

  For a moment, Janet thought that her waters had broken. There was a warm trickle below her – no, beside her. Then she realised that she was spilling her tea. It pooled at her feet, a rusting stain on the yellow grass.

  I think, said Desperate Doug again, with his slow, deliberate words propped up by his stroking stick. I think that there is someone else you should ask. When does our garden boy have his tea. Is it ten o’clock for you, like it is for us.

  Janet shrugged off the stick. She was not good with time. It was sticky. It made her hands sticky and she got stuck. The hands of the clock in the kitchen were difficult to read. They barely moved. They seemed mired in long minutes, glued to the face of the clock, and they were so thin that they might have just been a pair of linked cracks spreading over its blank countenance. No, she was not good with time.

  I tell you what, said Desperate Doug. His stick now waved. He seemed to use it to parse his sentence, to make it easier to understand. When your girl takes him his tea – you know, Solomon – then you follow her and ask him. You ask him about that knife. It’s a red knife, hey.

  The redness of Pieter’s little buttocks tore loose to become the special penknife. The silvery gadgets stuck out at angles, like sharp hands pointing to a time when things were different.

  Janet nodded. The knife was red. She was getting closer. She would ask Solomon – when Alice-Lettie took him his tea. She would wait. She did not want to disturb him, whatever he was doing behind the pampas grass.

  Her tea was cold and Desperate Doug had disappeared.

  It would be a little wait, before the time that he had mentioned. She would bathe. She felt that she needed to clean herself after speaking to Desperate Doug. Not only had the tea splashed her legs, but she felt grubby again beneath his stick. At least he had not mentioned Hektor-Jan and Alice-Lettie. Janet did not know what she would have done had he spoken slyly about her husband and the maid.

  Janet felt the mug, hard in her hand. She raised it to her lips and drank the last of the cold, gritty tea.

  He closed the car door silently. Often, when problems were unresolved, when the scales could tip either way, he found that silence was helpful. It opened up a space – allowed things to happen. He did not want to have to push too hard. Like a squat Samson amongst the Philistines, he knew that hair grew in silence and that strength could come simply by watching and waiting. Despite his muscles, despite his powerful body, he was very good at waiting.

  Also, his father-in-law’s house seemed very watchful that morning. And he had no particular desire to encounter his neighbour. Each to his own, and he had just spent a delightful twenty minutes with his children, taking them to school. Listening to their chatter, telling them about Oupa’s glass eye, which came out if the old man coughed or sneezed. Hektor-Jan wanted to be distracted from the cares of work. From the reports, the official concerns, the growing unease. He wanted to hug his children, cherish their perfect bodies, send them whole and happy into school. He needed to remind himself that there could be such wholeness and health, such innocence, such schools.

  He wished to lock the car, and head straight into the shower, and then to bed. He did not want to see his wife, or listen to his neighbour. As the key turned in the stubborn lock, Doug’s voice sounded in his ear. He turned.

  Psst, came the urgent hiss from near his neighbour’s cypress trees. He looked hard. Was it in the cypresses. About ten foot up the closest tree, a branch slowly parted. Doug was right above him. He could spit on the top of his head if he wanted to. If he really cleared his throat, like his brothers used to, with unerring accuracy. Hektor-Jan stepped back, further down the length of the car. He stood there, then he leaned against the Ford Cortina, looking up at the portion of Doug’s face released by the rough green strands.

  Doug was shaking his head. Uh-uh, he said. Don’t look at me Higher. Look down, look away.

  Hektor-Jan looked down. He leaned against the car and looked away, across the low wall, maybe too low these days, and over the broad pavement and road, to the grassy verge, ash-blond, and to the fence of the Bunny Park, seven-foot high and fringed with barbed wire.

  Ja, he said. He tried not to be impatient. But his voice was impatient.

  There was a reproachful silence. Hektor-Jan almost turned back to look up at his arboreal neighbour. A small, wiry Tarzan.

  Today, came Doug’s voice in the morning air. Your knife. Your wife. The garden boy. I am sorry, my friend. But if you want my help, this is what we must do.

  Hektor-Jan stared for a long time at the distant jungle gym, the hanging swings and the stiff roundabout. He could make out parts of them through the trees, and beyond the mesh of the strong wire fence. His children played on those swings. He and Janet pushed them to and fro, to and fro. First Shelley, then Pieter, and then Sylvia. He had cranked the tiny roundabout so that it lurched around, nearly throwing the children from its metal rails. They had squealed, and when he had suddenly stopped it, they had reeled about as drunk as little lords. One of them had been sick. Was it Pieter. He felt sick. He felt his little world revolving around Doug’s cypress tree, around the centre of his voice. And there came again and again the sickening images of his knife, his wife and Solomon. Not a wise king who offered to cut babies in two, but a dark, supple shadow that divided his heart, ripped it apart.

  What must we do, Hektor-Jan said. And he turned to look up directly at Doug.

  And so it came to pass.

  Hektor-Jan told Alice to inform the Madam, who was in the bath, that he was going for a walk, a long walk, to clear his mind. He would be back for lunch. And he put on his boots, the old ones from his army days. And, out of habit, for he was not dressed without it, he tightened his shoulder holster, and checked that the magazine of the gun was loaded. The clip slotted perfectly into place with the reassuring click. Then he was gone. Through the front gates, looking like he was stepping out.

  But in ten seconds he was next door, being ushered quickly past Noreen’s bedroom window.

  The dog, he whispered.

  Inside, said Doug.

  And then they crouched on Doug’s side of their wall, behind the furious tangle of the large rhododendrons. A few of the leaves had wilted after the recent black frosts. Hektor-Jan looked at the ladder that leaned against the foliage. He noticed the worn paths at the base of the big shrubs and the way his neighbour rubbed his hands and tried not to look anxious. Gleeful.

  Again, Hektor-Jan could feel his hands wanting to leap at the man’s throat, make him prove that he was telling the truth, make him stop telling the truth.

  There was a small bucket. It was filled with mud. Do you mind, said Doug. And put his hands in the bucket and drew them out, dripping, dark and soiled. Then he stepped close to Hektor-Jan and raised his hands. His fingers were cold and rough as he wiped criss-cross patterns of mud across his face. He moved back. Good, he said
. His face was grim.

  Hektor-Jan plunged his own hands into the bucket and brought them hard against the sharp little features of his neighbour. Anyone watching them would wonder at the game. Two grown men in the back garden. Smearing the camouflage. Like some pact, some manly compact, hiding their features to become masked and distorted so that teeth leapt out and the whites of eyes shone strangely. So it had been in the South African Defence Force. Every white South African male got to go into the army. Now they looked at each other. No longer white men. Men of indeterminate hue. Men made brown. Men of the earth, the dark blood and salt of the earth, with strange white patches that peered through the cracks in their camouflage.

  Doug checked his watch. There was plenty of time. But they should get into position, get completely ready. Before Hektor-Jan could open his mouth, his neighbour placed a heavy hand onto his shoulder and looked into his eyes. They did not exchange a word. They did not need to.

  Then they were perched in the huge rhododendron bushes, veiled by leaves. Hektor-Jan’s greater weight was supported by the ladder; Doug nested further down, in the branches.

  His garden lay stretched out, familiar yet strange from this perspective. The weeping willow, a scarecrow on the other side of the vast lawn. The bordering shrubs were hunched. They led down to the pool, dark and mute beneath its odd cover. What on earth was Janet playing at with that cover. Then the pampas grass, closer to them, and finally the wall, the back of Alice’s kaya and the garage. It all looked like home and yet seemed not to be home. Just as the earth-stained Hektor-Jan was and was not Hektor-Jan. The skin on his face began to pull. The familiar hardening of the mud. If he moved a muscle, it would crack and split. It would get itchy. He knew that it would get very itchy.

  It’s ten o’clock, murmured Doug’s voice through the leaves. Hektor-Jan’s breath quickened. It was shallow and fast. He felt a little dizzy. He had been up for a long time.

  Solomon appeared from behind the pampas grass with the young Rottweiler. Hektor-Jan stiffened. Would it smell them, sniff them out. But the garden boy and the dog were not coming their way. Instead, they moved across to the swimming pool, and stood there, looking down at the stupid cover. There was silence in the back garden. Hektor-Jan tried not to shift position. Doug was silent. He was good at this. A dove began to coo. Still, the boy and the dog peered down at the pool. There was no sign of Janet.