“Thank you,” said Nadine. “I’ll fax my home phone along with the story.”
“Talk to you very soon, Nadine,” said Ian.
“Okay.” Nadine hung up and squeezed her eyes shut, murmuring, Yes.
Below her South African Airways plane, Nadine saw elegant suburban homes with swimming pools and the gaping mouths of forgotten gold mines. She ate an apple yogurt and savored her success, leaning back in her seat and smiling.
She planned how she would tell Maxim, the details she would use to bring the night to him: the boy’s thin fingers on her car window, the sleeping baby she had glimpsed through a hole in the sheet. The way the father’s reverent tone as he talked about Nelson Mandela, his jailed hope, changed to bitter whispers as he described recognizing Winnie’s face in the car. The boy taken in the Kombi had played tennis in the street, said the man, using a broken racket and a flat rubber ball.
Maxim would likely be laid up for a while, so in her imagination Nadine spent her new money on him, buying picnic ingredients, the red wine he loved, a wheel of Camembert. The plane descended, and the ocean shimmered, welcoming.
Nadine took a taxi from the airport to Groote Schuur. The hospital was busy. Orderlies wheeled stretchers and white men in lab coats bustled by, carrying clipboards. With her shoulder, Nadine pushed open the heavy door leading to the stairwell, and ran upstairs to Maxim, envisioning his excitement as he listened to her news. They would share breakfast and trade information like nuggets of gold. She would take him home, kissing him in the elevator, lifting his cotton gown. She flushed, and turned the corner to Maxim’s room.
At the end of a long, wet hallway, Nadine saw someone slumped in a chair: George. His ponytail was loose, his eyes closed, mouth partway open. The floor had just been mopped; there was a pine cleanser stench.
George heard Nadine’s approach, and sat up, lifted his head. His hair hung crazily around his face. As soon as Nadine saw his expression, she knew.
“Maxim?” she said. She reached the doorway, and saw the empty bed.
“No,” said George.
Thirty-two
George stared intently at the road. The headlights swept across empty land until a sign came into view. It said, ANDRE V. HEERDEN. POST CHALMERS. HOLIDAY FARM.
“Maxim woke up, just once,” said George. “It was the middle of the night. I thought I was dreaming. But I wasn’t dreaming.”
“What did he say?” Nadine felt as if she were suffocating.
“He said, ‘Get Nadine. Where is Nadine?’”
She closed her eyes. “What did you tell him?”
George did not seem to hear her. “We’re here,” he said. His voice was low.
Barbed wire surrounded the property. George turned in and stopped the car. In the twin lights, a white building painted with red letters was illuminated: POST CHALMERS HOLIDAY FARM.
“It’s closed,” said Nadine. George rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. The air was warm and fragrant with sage. The rippling sound of cicadas rose from the trees and surrounded them.
“I thought you wanted to know what happened to Thola.”
“I do.” Nadine knew it was another story that would haunt her, but she listened.
“I had been trying to convince her to leave South Africa, for a while, anyway. You know that.”
“Yes.” Nadine clasped her hands, tried to appreciate this last moment, when any future for Thola was still possible in her mind: an apartment in San Francisco, a job with the London Ballet. Nadine had seen Thola dance only once, when she had waked in the middle of the night and walked by George’s room on her way to the kitchen. George’s door was open, and Thola was dancing in the soft light from the street lamps. Her movements were fluid and euphoric. It was the only time Nadine had seen Thola without her guard up. George was asleep and Thola danced for pure pleasure.
“Well, she wouldn’t leave this fucking country. You know Thola, she wanted to fight, she was all fight and no…love. I don’t know. Sometimes, I felt like the cause was more important to her than anything. More important…than me.”
Nadine was silent.
“One night,” said George. He paused, as if steeling himself, and went on. “One night—this was about a year after you’d left—she came over to the Waterfront, had a beer, but then told me she had to go. Her friend Botha was home. He had been away. I knew what away meant. I asked if I could come along. Of course, she said no.”
Nadine couldn’t seem to breathe deeply enough to fill her lungs.
George continued, “A white American was nobody’s idea of an impressive boyfriend, especially a Freedom Fighter. God knows…I would have been shot if I had gone to one of her meetings. Anyway, I can still see her, standing outside the bar. She was wearing a pink dress, it matched her shoes. She was all spiffed up, and I was jealous.” George took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t kiss her good-bye.”
He stared out the windshield. “In the morning,” he said harshly, “my new housemate—he was a journalist, too, called Trey—he told me there had been an explosion in Sunshine.”
“Oh, no,” said Nadine.
“Yes. And Maxim’s cameras were still lying around, so I had started taking pictures. I mean, how can you write a novel when right outside your door…well, anyway, I took a camera. I wanted to take pictures of the explosion. I guess I never figured anything would have happened to Thola. She was…I don’t know how to say it.”
“She was invincible,” said Nadine.
“As it turns out,” said George, “she wasn’t.”
Nadine struggled for air. “Just tell me,” she said.
“I went to Thola’s house, and Fikile answered the door.”
“So Fikile was all right. Thola’s house was all right.”
“Yes. If only Thola had been home, with me…”
“George, don’t.”
He swallowed. “I stood there, in that room. All the pictures of Thola on the wall in her leotards…” He stopped.
“Where was she?” said Nadine.
“Fikile’s sister September was there. She speaks English, remember? She told me Botha had been MK, which was no big shock. He’d gotten some package from Zambia: a Walkman. Lots of them had been exiled, so I guess he thought it was a message from comrades or something. When he put the headphones on and pushed PLAY, his head exploded.”
“And Thola was there?”
“She was still alive when the police came. They took her, neighbors saw them take her. Did I tell you she was wearing a pink dress? And those ballet flats, with the little bows. Did I say that already? She loved those fucking shoes.”
“George,” said Nadine.
“Fikile, she went to a witch doctor. She spent all this money, and the guy tells her Thola’s a zombie, not dead. I’m standing there in Thola’s living room, and Fikile’s asking me for more money to go back to the sangoma.”
Nadine shook her head.
“I gave her all the money in my wallet. And then—I don’t know—I asked to take her picture. Fikile. She let me. She stood there, not crying, not anything, blank. So I took her picture, and then I left. In the street, I…”
“What?”
George spoke evenly. “I found one of Thola’s shoes. I took a picture. A shoe in the yard of a burned-out house.” His eyes were fixed, as if the sight were still before him. “Thola never came back,” he said, finally. “I went wherever there was blood. Jerusalem, Croatia, Sudan.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s been a long time,” he said.
“I’ve seen them. Your photos. George, you’re gifted.”
“Ernest called me when Thola’s killer applied for amnesty. Hendricks. He’ll go before the TRC in Cradock next month.”
Nadine could not see George; the darkness was complete. She leaned toward the open window, trying to taste something clean. “So what are we doing here?”
George didn’t answer. “Can you sleep?” he said finally.
Nadine was curled
in her seat, a velvet oblivion within reach. “Yes,” Nadine said.
“Sleep,” said George, and she did.
Thirty-three
Nadine woke early, the sun hot on her face. George was sitting on the hood of the car, staring at the dilapidated farm. It looked bucolic, peaceful. Nadine climbed out of the car and sat beside him.
“Post Chalmers,” she said.
“Yes.”
“This is where they took her.”
“That’s what Hendricks said in his application for amnesty. Yes.”
This was the place, this small farm in the middle of nowhere, this place that smelled sweetly of grass. The disappeared were brought here, then tortured by people like Gandersvoot. No prisoners left the Post Chalmers Holiday Farm alive.
“I try to get my mind around it,” said George. “But I just can’t…”
“We don’t have to,” Nadine said.
“Ah, America,” said George. He put a cigarette to his lips.
“Are you going in?” Nadine said.
“What, to see where they beat her to death?” said George. “To see the animal pen where they lit her on fire, or put the wet bag on her head and suffocated her?”
“Yes.”
His face was red. “To see where they put a condom on a metal pipe…,” he said. “Where they took electrical wires…” His voice broke. He turned to Nadine. “She could have spent the night at our house. In my bed.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Nadine.
“I can’t do it,” said George. “I can’t go in.”
“So don’t.”
“But this needs…,” said George. “Someone needs to take pictures of this. To prove it happened. Nadine, I need you. I can’t do it.”
“No,” said Nadine.
She looked at George. In the harsh sunlight, he looked a hundred years old. “You flew to Jo-burg,” said George. “And I stayed with Maxim.”
“What are you saying?”
George removed his camera from the case. He held it to the light. “I stayed with him,” said George, “and you went to the airport.”
Nadine closed her eyes. She opened them, and nodded. She took the camera.
Something happened to Nadine in the farmhouse. It wasn’t just good-bye to Thola; she had said that long ago. It was good-bye to all of it. She walked through the dim rooms, saw the rusty instruments of torture, the walls painted in blood. Even the camera didn’t protect her. There was a crack; she was broken. The echoing horror seeped inside her skin, inside her blood, inside her womb. She couldn’t do it anymore. Good-bye.
In the patchy field behind the farmhouse, Nadine vomited into the grass.
They were silent on the drive back to Cape Town. Nadine drove, and George looked out the window. The placid landscape rolled by. Like Nadine, it said nothing of what it had seen.
At Jeffreys Bay, they stopped for gas. George took the wheel and drove to a beautiful beach, isolated at the end of a dirt road. “A swim,” he said. They climbed from the car and dove in the water. George swam naked, and Nadine wore her underwear. Cooled, they lay on the sand with their heads next to each other. “Now it’s your turn,” said George, taking a strand of Nadine’s hair and holding it in front of his eyes.
“I’m pregnant,” said Nadine.
“You’re not.”
“Right,” said Nadine, “I’m not.”
“Nadine,” said George, looking into her eyes.
“I’m not,” said Nadine. “It was a joke.”
George leaned over, his lips inches from Nadine’s. “You’re not the mothering type,” he said. He laughed. “I’ve never even seen you look at a baby,” he said.
“Right.” Nadine’s eyes filled with tears. She was suddenly jealous of Lily, who held her new baby with such easy authority.
George’s lips touched her neck. “Marry me,” he said, in her ear. “We’re the same. No children. No settling. A more important kind of life.”
“George,” said Nadine. She felt a physical longing, but did not turn toward him. She thought of Hank, of sitting on his couch in front of the fire, the fragrance of garlic mixing with butter in the kitchen. She thought of waking to bright sun and new snow, Hank’s dark hair on the pillow, his lips. The padded footsteps of a child in pajamas walking toward them.
“You don’t have to answer. Not yet,” said George.
As they drove, Nadine pictured Thola, the woman who should have been George’s wife. Nadine had seen Thola for the last time after Maxim’s funeral. Thola had not attended the funeral, of course: Maxim’s parents would have been horrified at the thought of an urban black woman graveside, and Thola herself decided to stay in the city. “I can mourn him in my own way,” she said. “I have no need to cause a spectacular.” Nadine almost corrected her English, but then acknowledged that perhaps Thola’s word choice was more apt than spectacle anyway.
Nadine and George had taken the Tercel from Cape Town to Maxim’s parents’ farm. Maxim’s belongings, save for a few things they had kept—two cameras, a shirt that held his scent—were piled in boxes in the backseat. It was a long drive to Johannesburg and then through the countryside. They had to stop once and wait for a herd of goats to cross in front of them.
A long, rutted road led past the workers’ quarters to the farm, a low-slung stucco home and several outbuildings. The death of Mrs. Robertson had not gone unheeded; Maxim’s father had erected an enormous fence around the property, topped with circles of barbed wire.
Maxim’s parents were polite but distant, gathering tightly around a blonde girl Maxim had dated in high school, before he had gone to Cape Town. The girl sobbed loudly though the prayers, which were in Afrikaans. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, Nadine’s eyes—covered by enormous sunglasses on loan from Thola—were dry.
After the burial, they gathered in a high-ceilinged family room. A huge wooden table was surrounded by ornate furniture, and the floor was lined with tile. A chandelier hung over a roast leg of lamb. Mounted heads of animals watched them from the walls. It was hard to imagine Maxim in this place.
Nadine drank two cups of sherry and turned to a young cousin. “What are those?” she asked.
He pointed to each, saying, “Kudu, nyala, warthog of course, duiker, steenbock…”
“Lion,” said Nadine, gazing at the snarling mouth. “Where do you even get such a thing?”
“Ja, you shoot it,” said the boy. His cream-colored hair reminded Nadine of Maxim’s. “You want to see the cool room?” asked the boy.
“What?”
“Where we keep the animal, skin it, you know.”
“Oh no,” said Nadine. “Thanks.”
“Did you have sex with Maxim?” asked the boy.
Nadine blinked. “Yes,” she said. She stood and added, “It was great.”
“I knew it,” said the boy.
Nadine walked outside with George and sat down on a step, staring at the rough grass leading to the fence. She balanced her plate of deviled eggs on her knees. “I’m moving,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m moving to Mexico City. The AP has an opening in the bureau office there.”
Outside the fence, three small girls played with a puppy. George sipped his sherry and lit a cigarette. An older woman approached the girls and hustled them down a path to a listing shack. The sun was setting, binding the sky in ribbons of purple and red.
“Well,” said George, “good luck to you.”
The next morning, Nadine was packing in her Nutthall Road bedroom when Thola burst in. “What’s this?” said Thola, gesturing to Nadine’s suitcases.
“I’m leaving. I got a job with the AP, in Mexico City.”
“You’re not finished here,” said Thola. “Sit down and listen to me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Nadine. “I can’t stay here…in this house.”
“Get another place.”
Nadine looked at Thola. “No,” she said. She was suddenly very tired, and
sat down on the bed. “I have to go where the job is,” she said lamely. “That’s what I do.”
“Is that right?” said Thola.
“Yes,” said Nadine.
Thola was silent. Finally she spoke, her voice bitter. “You cared so much about my sister, eh?” she said. “You promised my mother you would change things for Evelina. You were one with the struggle, right, Nadine? But now you don’t need my sister anymore.”
“That’s not how it is,” said Nadine.
“I know how it is,” said Thola, rising and putting her shoulders back. She threw a newspaper on the bed, the Boston Tribune. Before she walked away, Thola said, “I know how it is to be punched by a Boer. It is nothing new to me.”
Nadine picked up the paper, wondering where Thola would have gotten ahold of it, and saw the small story, tucked away in section three. The headline: EVELINA MALEFANE: MURDERER OR MARTYR? It was hardly the front-page exoneration Nadine had promised. She had hoped Thola would never see it. Nadine wanted to say something, to defend herself, but she didn’t know how.
“Please,” she said. “Thola, wait!”
Thola slammed the front door. From her bedroom window, Nadine watched Thola’s graceful carriage as she walked down their front path, the lift of her chin. “Please!” Nadine said to the windowpane. “Wait…talk to me!”
Thola looked both ways and crossed the street.
As they drove from Post Chalmers, George turned on the radio, which was playing a transcript of the TRC hearing of Winnie Mandela. “Did you know they called her ‘Mommy’? The kids she kept at the mansion?” said George, his hand on the steering wheel.
“Yes,” said Nadine.
“She refused to apply for amnesty. Claims she’s completely innocent.”
Nadine snorted. Her article, while the first proof of Winnie’s involvement in the Mandela United Football Club, had not been the last. As more boys disappeared, parents had begun to come forward. In 1991, Winnie had been found guilty of kidnapping four youths, and sent to jail.
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