Last Train to Retreat

by Gustav Preller

  As he watched Chantal getting smaller down the dusty street, Hannibal laughed. He had just got the idea of changing his angel wings to those of a bat – like human hands but with webbed fingers, in mat black that whispered of wings in the night. Bat man … yeah, it sure beat angel man.

  •

  The fourth time he saw Chantal, Hannibal could take it no longer. He threw down a burner, ran to the kitchen to wash his hands – he had to be clean for her – brushed his bristly hair with his fingers, and bolted from the house.

  When he was still many paces from her he shouted, ‘Chantie, Chantie, wait, it’s Hanno!’ She didn’t turn around like Lot’s wife had done but went rigid like a salt pillar. She was probably afraid of him. It pained him. ‘Chantie, stop, please, I just want to say hello!’ He had rehearsed so many conversations with her but he was like an actor who’d forgotten his script.

  She suddenly turned around as if realising she couldn’t escape him and gazed at him silently, unnerving him. He would have preferred her to show some of the anguish he was feeling; it would give him strength. But she stood like a Delilah in the dusty street and he like a Samson with his seven locks cut off. He cursed the Christian images he no longer had any need for and that still rose up in him unwanted, like vomit.

  ‘How long has it been, Chantie?’

  ‘I haven’t been counting the years, Hanno.’

  ‘Too long for me, I’ve missed you.’ Her face was thinner, her lines more defined. She was more beautiful.

  ‘I got to get home, Hanno, got things to do.’

  He felt his expectations slipping away. She didn’t want him, he thought desperately. ‘What you doing with yourself?’ he asked – anything to delay her.

  ‘I work in a factory, I’m a seamstress.’ Her manner was cool, and maddening. Her dull blue worker’s overall looked common. She probably had to wear a doek as well to stop her hair from getting caught in the machines. Rows of machines, his princess trapped in a soulless place like that! He had an instant fantasy – burning her worker’s clothes, making love to her passionately then dressing her up and taking her to larney places, no, taking her away from the Flats altogether.

  ‘Oh, and still at Darwin Court, are you?’ It was as if they were acquaintances meeting after a long time, with too few shared memories to keep the conversation going. How could it be, he asked himself, after they had shared such love? He felt shattered. But then what could he expect after what had happened?

  He didn’t wait for an answer. With venom suddenly welling up he said, ‘And your brother, is he still there? What’s he doing nowadays?’ For the first time he saw fear in her eyes. It gave him back some of his pride and confidence. ‘I tried my best with him, you know. It’s not what you think, Chantie.’ He forced a smile.

  ‘He’s moved on …’

  ‘I see, and where to?’

  She stared at Constantia Berg in the distance. ‘He’s on the other side of the track, Hanno, in Wynberg, with a nice job in the city. Let him be, he’s got a new life, a good one, and the past is the past for him.’

  She was making a point and he knew it. It was as if she’d prepared herself for years for this day. ‘He’s escaped you, to a better life, and you, Hanno, are still here,’ was what she was really saying. It cut into him, made him feel weak in the legs. All he could muster was, ‘And for you, Chantie, is the past the past for you too?’

  ‘Yes, like a bad dream I’ve woken up from and don’t want to go back to … please understand, Hanno!’ She seemed exasperated. But more than her words it was her look that destroyed him – like she’d tasted something bad or touched an object that made her shiver.

  •

  The next day, after a sleepless night, Hannibal waited for her on a route he knew she had to take to get home. It was about three blocks west of Darwin Court, close to Prince George Drive. She stopped abruptly when she saw him and he walked towards her fast, his heart thudding.

  ‘Chantie, I had to see you again. Please, can we go somewhere … have a meal? We have to talk this out, after all these years! Will you come … just this once, please?’

  She was dressed in her blue overall and looked wan. ‘Hanno, please leave me alone,’ she said and tried to walk past him. He suddenly grabbed her by the arm. ‘Does what we once had, mean nothing? We loved each other, for Christ’s sake! Can’t we try again? I’ll give up what I’m doing, for you I swear I will. I’ll do it for you. I’m not the good man you always wanted but I’ll take you away from here!’

  She started crying. He tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him away eyeing him wildly. ‘To think I let you sleep with me when your boys were gang-raping and killing just to prove they were men! You didn’t know I found out, did you? And you thought you were a general? Hah! What are you really, Hannibal?’

  •

  The bloodlust Hannibal felt each time after visiting the Gnome was now occurring more frequently. Angel man was truly dead. He was now bat man. All he had to do was to replace those spoilers on his car. Spoilers indeed! He loathed the sight of them. There was no such thing as an angel, no such place as heaven, only the Flats and it was hell. And if that was so, he was certain God had never been there.

  At night he would run the conversation with Chantal over and over like an actor would his lines, first silently then aloud with passion. When he did sleep it was fitful, and he’d wake up feeling as if he’d been in the cage all night except that the bruising was all inside him. And he’d think of his great loss and of coming back with a vengeance, not stopping even after the sound of the bell. He had always hated authority. As a child he stuck his fingers in his ears whenever his parents reprimanded him. At school he taunted teachers, flashed his cock at the girls, pulverised the boys into pitiful heaps in the far corners of the grounds. As leader of the Evangelicals he made his own rules and when the warrior God of John Eldredge proved to be a weakling Hannibal killed him, just as cats killed weak kittens to ensure the litter’s future. He tolerated the few rules of MMA fighting only because he needed to be champion but he often felt the urge to floor the referee as well. Then the Gnome came along, a saviour of sorts. It didn’t take long for Hannibal to get the measure of him – a genius at making a killing and somehow staying untouchable, letting everyone else do the dirty work, a bloodsucker.

  The thought crossed Hannibal’s brain like a scowl – I’m on my own, it’s me against the world, and if that’s so, how can there be any rules at all?

  •

  Sasman, Danny, and Hannibal were sitting on the deck at Sasman’s house. Nothing was new – it was Sunday, they sat in their usual seats, Lettie was inside listening out for orders, Terrance was cleaning the Benz, the Dobermans were silently patrolling the yard, and Sasman was holding the floor while stuffing ginger biscuits down his gullet in a nervous action.

  ‘Your time’s nearly up, Hannibal, and where are they? Hunting your men! First they kill Gatiep now they’re going for Curly. And you’re telling me a cop’s been around asking questions? Things are happening but I don’t get the big picture, Hannibal, only goddamn twitches. Who’s this gatta anyway?’

  ‘Philander, Detective Warrant Officer Quentin Philander.’

  ‘Christ, a detective! Even worse than I thought.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything to do with this … it’s to do with his wife who was hijacked and killed months ago and he’s still on it.’

  On this windless day the waves in Danny’s hair lay soft and still, not like his eyes that were flitting between Hannibal and Sasman and as hard as his jade ring. That a man could be blessed with such hair, Hannibal thought. Sasman said, ‘I’m not too sure, Hannibal.’ Then, ‘Lettie, more please, and some more coffee!’

  ‘Jerome, look, I got information and I’m gonna check it out. Leave it with me, okay?’ The scars on Hannibal’s face felt warm, or was it the sun? Hannibal’s chair always caught the sun when Sasman’s meetings dragged on. Fuck his meetings, fuck the sun.

  ‘Lik
e what, Hannibal?’ Danny demanded.

  ‘Like this,’ Hannibal said, ticking off the points on his fingers, ‘One, they’re both Coloured and I got descriptions, two, they got off at Wynberg, three, the man knows how to fight – stopping a big man like Curly, four, the girl’s now showed her hand, she’ll come again – Delron’s drinks are on me while he’s checking out the clubs – five, I got hunches …’

  Sasman feigned a yawn. ‘Most of it we know already, the rest is guessing. I want them, understand, and I want that gatta off our backs. I’m not who I am for nothing, Hannibal, I’m always ready for the worst, and in this case I’m thinking these things are part of a much bigger picture.’ Jerome Sasman puffed up his small body, and the hair on his arms and neck seemed to bristle in warning.

  •

  Hannibal got up just after six, ate a Vienna Gatsby leftover from the fridge, warmed himself with a cup of coffee and got into his Honda. He drove off, happy that he had tinted windows but uneasy about the angel wings on the back. He had Concert Boulevard mostly to himself. He drove north along Main Road through the suburbs for another seven kilometres until he reached Wynberg, parked off Maynard Avenue and walked down to the station, dark glasses on and hood up to hide his yellow hair. Already minibus taxis were thronging Station Road, vendors had their fruit and vegetables out, hair stylists and fast food joints were open. From behind one of the vendors Hannibal watched commuters converging on the station. He focused on the entrance to the platforms, not the ticket office queue – anyone working in the city would have a season ticket and walk straight through. Hannibal had written the train times on a scrap of paper: 6.55, 7.02, 7.11, 7.20, 7.26, 7.30, 7.40, and 7.45. There was a steady stream of people and Hannibal had to concentrate hard – how long had it been since he last saw Zane? Five years? It seemed both long ago and just the other day – memories sharpened by Chantal a few days earlier. Wynberg, she had said, that’s where he lived. Hannibal would put money on it that it wasn’t Upper Wynberg, just as he doubted that Zane had a car.

  An hour later Zane had not appeared. It occurred to Hannibal that perhaps he worked shifts. Hannibal bought three bananas and walked back to his car. It was going be a long day before the evening trains came through on their way to Simonstown. But he had a new focus point now that Chantal had rejected him once more. What was a little waiting after five years?

  Twenty-one

  It troubled Lena that she had Zane on her mind when it was Sarai she was looking for. Was she thinking of him because her train had stopped at Wynberg on its way to the city? Not long ago she would have preferred him dead. Now she realised how easy he had been to talk to, how comfortable she felt – more than with anyone else in the past ten years. She tried to analyse it – they’d been thrown together by fate, were accomplices in murder, had spent concentrated time together in his flat, and he was someone not posing a threat to her inner defences. None of these explained her feelings. She knew his name and that he lived in Wynberg, nothing else – not what he did or where he came from, what he liked and hated, what he dreamed about. All she knew was that she could talk to him.

  Lena sat in the train oblivious of everything around her – the stoic faces of commuters, the graffiti-covered coach walls, the vibration of the train beneath her feet, the clacking of the wheels. She remembered how, as a girl, she was the first to put up her hand in class, how she loved parties and music and being with friends. That had been before her father’s nightly visits, before she was told she’d burn in hell if she ever talked. She remembered the time her mother, Rowena, found out about it and banished Elton from their lives, and how she then swore Lena to secrecy, the fear of being shamed and shunned by her school and community more powerful than her daughter’s distress. Rowena was a teacher in what was then known as ‘home economics’ at Lena’s high school. The school couldn’t afford a library or a librarian so her mother added this function to her teaching. It meant utilising the back of one of the large classrooms as a library and operating it when she wasn’t teaching, using a crude, manual card system for lending and retrieving over two hundred books. In this double role Rowena’s standing at the school and within the community rose dramatically, almost to the level of the headmaster. The fact that her husband had slept with her and their daughter was knowledge too terrible for Rowena ever to talk about. It was as though the void left by Elton had sucked in all that was unsaid, creating from it some nameless thing that was boarding with them and driving them apart – at the dinner table, in front of the TV, in the quiet of their beds – wide-eyed and wet-mouthed like a large, over-excited animal. To Rowena the choice was between killing herself and muzzling the thing.

  After six years Rowena died as quietly as Elton had disappeared, slipping into a greater silence almost with relief, leaving Lena with a matric certificate and no money and no work. Rowena had always been thin and nervy but death had made her look emaciated. With the help of Adi Apollis, Lena applied for the SASSA position advertised at The Centre. It was one of the great ironies in Lena’s life that her mother’s high standing had been instrumental in her getting the job. There were other bitter ironies – Elton, man of God and moral compass to the community, sexually abusing his daughter; Rowena, teacher of life skills like cooking, sewing, nutrition, managing money and family relationships, choosing silence and denial in order to survive. Two people looked up to by the community, betraying themselves and their daughter – the ultimate betrayal to Lena.

  The Mowbray station sign brought Lena back to Sarai. Since the train incident and her suspicion that Gatiep and Curly were somehow connected to Cupido and others who had held Sarai captive, Lena had renewed her search for the Thai girl. She revisited Green Point where she first saw Sarai, the V&A Waterfront, Mouille Point, and Three Anchor Bay. She went back to the city skirting the Long Street massage parlour where Sarai had once worked – they had thrown Lena out on her first visit. Tonight she was doing the Bo-Kaap, including the Malay Quarter between Buitengracht and Signal Hill. The busy Sea Point area she’d leave until last. Lena was convinced that Sarai’s illegal immigrant status as well as her debt to her captors would make escape to Thailand all but impossible. But would it stop her from going to the police and telling them about Cupido’s death and where Lena lived? The girl had to be around and Lena had to find her.

  Lena thought of how she had tried to understand Rowena, allowing that perhaps it was the woman in her, not the mother, who had been humiliated – a woman sexually rejected for her daughter, age against youth. But in Lena’s presence, Elton and Rowena never touched each other or cast intimate glances. What happened in their bedroom was anybody’s guess but Lena doubted that anything ever did. Why else would her father have come to her? Such thoughts distressed Lena so much that she banished them from her mind and maintained her own inner silence on top of those imposed by her father and her mother – layers of silence built over many years. Then came Zane, thrust into her life by sudden death on a train to nowhere.

  •

  Lena had taken the 4.30 pm train to the city with the kind of hope diamond diggers felt at the start of every search. Now she was on the last train back to Retreat with nothing to show for it and despairing what the next day would bring. The stations flashed by like on the night Zane rescued her – a reluctant hero, she thought, but a hero nevertheless. In the flat she had seen his white karate suit and brown belt, and wondered why a man with his training acted as he had on the train – in fact, not acted until it was almost too late. It had puzzled her ever since. And not carrying out his threat to take her to hospital when the poison spread, and waiting before getting the antibiotics. It was as though he had been weighed down by other things.

  She got off at Wynberg, six stops short of Retreat, and walked to Zane’s flat hoping his girl wouldn’t be there. Lena nearly turned back when his block came into view but her train had been the last one. Taking a taxi home now seemed silly, she told herself as she rang the bell to his flat. And wasn’t there still the risk th
at he could go to the police?

  •

  Like two dogs vaguely acquainted, Lena thought – no growling but tails not wagging either, getting to know each other all over again, sniffing for any scent of threat. They were in Zane’s lounge. He had arrived minutes earlier from a training session and seemed surprised to see her, a little dismayed, she thought. She looked at him as he wheeled his bike to the bedroom – his lean body moving effortlessly, his head with its short, dense pelt like some creature of the water. He seemed to radiate energy. Was it nerves or the exercise?

  ‘You’re stressing, aren’t you?’ she said, ‘is it me?’