Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  She sighed deeply and he looked at her with concern. She was breathing so slowly all of a sudden. Surely no one could breathe this slowly. He leaned forward in alarm.

  ‘Barry.’

  Her eyes were wide open and a tentative smile hovered at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ He placed his hand on her wrist. Her pulse was fluttering like the wings of a tired bird.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Do you hear it?’

  • • •

  THE ROAR of the ocean was immense. She was running down a beach of sparkling sand and the pale dunes seemed ghostly in the light of the moon. The darkness was velvet. She was running freely, feeling none of the aches and pains of old age. She looked down at her hands and the skin was smooth; a young woman’s skin. She laughed out loud and whispered a name into the wind.

  The animal was beside her now. She sensed his presence. She couldn’t see him, but his shadow was keeping pace. He was moving across the sand effortlessly and the strong loping gait was unmistakable. It was the powerful stride of a windwalker.

  The joy that swept through her was unlike anything she had ever known. Her mind soared, her heart ached with anticipation.

  Adam, Adam. Wait for me. I’m coming.

  The author visiting the ghost town of Kolmanskop, Namibia.

  Skeleton Coast wreck, used by strandwolves for breeding.

  Photo by Trygve Roberts

  www.MountainPassesSouthAfrica.co.za

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  WINDWALKER REQUIRED specialised knowledge of photography and deep-water cave diving. Several people gave freely of their time, and I am deeply grateful for their generous assistance. Remaining errors are, of course, my responsibility alone.

  Many thanks to professional photographer, John Wildgoose, who taught me to mind my f-stops and who even managed to make me understand the difference between ‘push’ and ‘pull’. Thank you to John Bevan, who not only critiqued my work but also placed his library of diving books at my disposal. I am hugely indebted to two terrific guys, Clive Gardener and Duncan Price. Their input with regard to the technical aspects of the underwater sequences was crucial, as was their willingness to discuss with me the risks and rewards of cave diving and the special breed of men and women who practise the sport. I was also privileged to receive assistance from Theo Schoemans, president of the Namibian Underwater Federation and veteran of more than 4,000 dives, who shared with me his formidable knowledge of Namibian geology.

  A special thank you goes to Gaynor Rupert, who read through the manuscript with a generous heart and an eagle eye. Thanks to fellow scribes Dianne Hofmeyr and Sonja Lewis for their friendship and feedback. Thanks to Catherine Gull, a good friend and talented reader.

  Sadly, like most writers, I lead a dispiritingly sedentary life. My gratitude goes to Carlos Andrade, gifted kickboxer and trainer. Even though he is usually shouting at me to stop punching like a muppet, he also manages to get me focused and back on track whenever I suffer from keyboard overload.

  A final word of thanks goes to my family. I firmly believe a special place in heaven is set aside for the spouses and close relatives of authors. They have to put up with our mood swings (unpredictable) and our insecurities (multitudinous). Nobody does it better than my husband, Frederick. His love gives me wings and cushions me when I fall. My mother, Hantie, is first reader, cheerleader and an amazing source of inspiration. My brothers, Stefan and Frans, can always be relied on for words of encouragement and bracing common sense. My mother-in-law, Joan, is endlessly supportive of my work.

  I have quoted from three poems in this novel: ‘Song’ by Sir John Suckling, ‘Love and Sleep’ by Algernon Charles Swinburne, and ‘On a Dark Night’ by the sixteenth-century Spanish poet St John of the Cross, translation by John Frederick Nims. The prose quotation is from Jack London’s Call of the Wild.

  NOVELS BY NATASHA MOSTERT

  THE MIDNIGHT SIDE

  THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE

  WINDWALKER

  SEASON OF THE WITCH

  THE KEEPER

  A Martial Arts Thriller

  (published in the US as Keeper of Light and Dust by Penguin Dutton)

  DARK PRAYER

  Turn to the next page to read the first two chapters

  DARK PRAYER

  by

  NATASHA MOSTERT

  PROLOGUE

  The little girl was not a sound sleeper. In the early morning hours, she would often open her eyes calmly and unafraid into the near darkness. After a moment of staring at the far ceiling above her, she’d dangle her feet out of bed, tuck Mr Cuddles under her arm and pad down the passage towards her mother’s room.

  She never stepped inside. For a few heartbeats she would wait at the door, watching the soft shape asleep inside the big princess-and-the-pea bed. If she listened carefully, she would hear her mother breathing. This would be enough to satisfy her and she’d yawn once, twice—and return to her own bed.

  Tonight is no different. There is the door to her mother’s room. There, hazy in the gloom, the first glimpse of the dressing table with her mother’s red scarf trailing from a post, its gypsy fire muted by the dark. The air is scented with the familiar fragrances leaking from the perfume bottles reflected in the mirror’s shadowed face. The little girl pauses at the threshold and turns her head in the direction of the snowy bed.

  The bed is empty.

  The little girl looks at the undisturbed sheets and the plumped up pillows. Her head droops to one shoulder as it does when she is puzzled or feeling shy.

  Hesitantly, she steps back into the passage.

  ‘Mama?’

  The word stops in the air; the thick carpet and velvet curtains keeping the sound from carrying.

  She starts walking towards the staircase, Mr Cuddles dragging at one hand. Her other hand clutches at her pyjama bottom, which is slipping.

  Down the staircase and past the fan-shaped window framing the glossy blackness outside. Through the living room, with its tall bookcases and its many books, which seem to glow even in the dark. Past the piano with its exposed keys and sheet music trailing on the floor.

  Against the wall the old-fashioned clock tings softly. The big numerals and filigreed arms glow coolly phosphorescent. The little girl is only five but she can tell the time. She stares at the clock face and holds up her left forefinger and thumb in a wobbly L.

  ‘Mama?’

  The kitchen door is closed but there is a yellow slit of light at the bottom. As she turns the handle and pushes the door open, she smells lemons.

  Black and white tiled floor, bright in the electric light. Water drip, dripping into the sink. The woman lying on her back, her right leg forming a startling triangle, her mouth smiling and her eyes hidden in a sticky nest of hair and blood. There is blood on the floor, and on the cricket bat clutched in the hand of the man who turns to stare at her.

  He holds out his other hand. ‘Come with me, little girl. I will make you forget.’

  ‘Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.’

  —Meister Eckhart

  CHAPTER ONE

  Memory was a funny old thing.

  Jack watched his father lean towards the interviewer, his face taking on a nicely self-deprecating expression. Jack could tell his father was about to launch into an anecdote about his past: an anecdote that would tell of bravery under fire and a young man’s courage tested. Each time his father told this story, the battle became a little fiercer, the danger a little greater, the bullets a little closer. His father sounded sincere; because he was sincere. He wasn’t consciously embellishing: each time he wheeled out this chestnut of a story he truly believed he was accurately recounting what had happened.

  His father modestly inclined his head as the interviewer gushed her admiration. Jack smiled. You had to hand it to the old guy; he knew how to milk the moment.

  As he flicked off the TV remote, he wondered idly at what point unreliable memories started aff
ecting one’s sense of self. If you remembered the earlier you as braver, stronger, more concerned for your fellow man than you actually were, would this souped-up recollection determine how you acted in the present? If you were born a lowly Ford Focus but started remembering yourself as a Shelby Mustang, would you become one? Maybe, after all these years of building a legend in his own mind, his father had indeed turned himself into the kind of man who would selflessly storm to the rescue: rushing into fiery buildings, swimming fast-flowing rivers, dragging limp survivors out of burning cars.

  ‘Finished?’

  Chloe Quindlen, his father’s personal assistant, stepped into the office. Chloe was attractive, smart and hopelessly in love with her boss. Smart and foolish were not mutually incompatible.

  ‘Yes. Thanks for showing it to me.’

  Chloe pressed her finger on the player’s eject button and removed the CD, her expression reverent. ‘Great interview, wasn’t it? Mr Simonetti is a wonderful man.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  His tone of voice was not to her satisfaction. She frowned. ‘I hear you’ve been naughty.’

  Naughty. He tried desperately to think of a response to this accusation, which would be even remotely appropriate.

  ‘Your father is rather disappointed, Jack.’

  ‘I know. Very sad.’

  ‘How can you laugh about it!’ She glared at him.

  Contrition was clearly called for. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m behaving badly. Will you forgive me?’

  She sniffed, slightly mollified. ‘He shouldn’t be long. Can I get you anything while you wait?’

  ‘No, I’m good. Thanks.’

  She walked out of the door trailing L’Air du Temps and left him to his own company and his father’s collection of contemporary art. Leon Simonetti had recently begun to see himself as New York City’s answer to Charles Saatchi and the vast walls of his office were covered with canvasses vibrating spiky angst.

  His father’s desk was exceptionally neat. Apart from a leather blotter and a telephone, the only other object on the slab of polished mahogany was a tripod-shaped piece of steel engraved with the words, aut vincere aut mori. ‘Either to conquer or to die.’ Very macho. The Latin wasn’t an affectation, though. His father had a genuine love for the classics and had insisted on his reluctant son acquiring a nodding acquaintance with both Latin and Greek. As a teenager, the value of studying a dead language had never made sense to Jack although he found it paying off in unexpected ways later on. Girls, he discovered, were surprisingly impressed with a guy who could drop a casual quote or two from the Ars Amatoria.

  The sound of voices in the outside office, and the next moment his father strode into the room, his shoulders belligerent and his eyes snapping behind the steel rims of his spectacles. He waved impatiently at Jack who was getting to his feet and slapped a newspaper onto the desk.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

  Jack looked at the grainy black and white picture and winced. The photographer had certainly captured the moment. It showed him with an unholy grin on his face holding a chair above his head, which he was clearly about to crash down on the head of the wild-eyed individual facing him. The caption read: ‘Tycoon’s son in brawl.’

  ‘I was helping a lady in distress.’

  ‘You were looking for a bar fight and you found it. The woman was just an excuse.’

  Jack sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  His father jabbed a vicious finger at the photograph. ‘And this is out there for everyone to see!’

  It probably wasn’t the time to tell his father that he had become quite the celebrity on YouTube as well. 2,300 hits since the previous night and counting.

  ‘I don’t understand you. You have a brain but you waste it. I’ve given you an education. I’ve given you all the tools you need to make something of yourself but you take nothing seriously. You are not a child any more. Is there anything you care about, Jack? Anything you truly want?’

  ‘A long cool woman in a black dress …’

  His father’s nostrils flared.

  ‘No, sorry. Of course not. World peace. That’s it, world peace.’

  A long silence.

  ‘Well, I’ve had enough.’ His father’s face was set.

  Jack looked at him warily. He had heard these words before but this time they sounded different. Something told him he wasn’t going to like what came next.

  His father opened the drawer of his desk and removed an envelope.

  ‘Here. An e-ticket to London. You have a seat booked on the late flight to Heathrow.’

  London. Well, that wasn’t so bad. If his father wanted to banish him from home and hearth, he could think of worse places to hang than London. Jack pushed his hand inside the envelope and removed the ticket. Economy class. Still …

  ‘An English friend of mine has a problem. He thinks you might be able to help. His name is Daniel Barone.’

  The name stirred a recollection. In his father’s study at home were dozens of tastefully framed photographs showing his father glad-handing the rich and famous. Pushed into the back row was a picture of three men and two women. They were a striking group: young, beautiful, confident. On the photograph his father still had a shock of black hair and a jaw as planed as Clark Kent’s. Next to him, a handsome man with dark blond hair was looking into the camera with hooded eyes. ‘Barone,’ his mother had told him years ago when he had asked her about the photograph. ‘He was a friend of your father’s when they were both at Oxford. He was a famous scientist. I met him once. Charming man.’

  ‘And the girls?’

  His mother frowned. ‘I don’t know. When your father moved to the States he said he lost touch with all of them except Daniel.’ His mother had frowned again, touching her hand thoughtfully to the glass pane, her fingers hovering over the young faces.

  Jack replaced the ticket in the envelope. ‘What kind of problem are we talking about?’

  ‘Daniel’s ward disappeared.’

  Ward. To Jack the word tasted old-fashioned. Like something from Jane Eyre.

  ‘Surely this is a matter for the police?’

  ‘You don’t understand. His ward disappeared but she has been found again. But there are … complications.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can help.’

  ‘This is not open for discussion, Jack. You will get on the plane tonight and when you arrive at the other side, you will place yourself at Daniel’s complete disposal. If you refuse —or if you make a mess of things over there—I will cut you off. No allowance. No apartment. No trendy little art gallery for your friend, Nicola. No more funding for your mountaineering expeditions or that ridiculous stock car racing. And this time, I mean it. You will come back to New York to nothing. And don’t go crying to your grandmother—I’ve discussed this with her and she finally agrees with me that the time has come for you to get on track.’

  Things were looking grim.

  ‘How long will I have to stay?’

  ‘You will stay until Daniel no longer has any need of you.’

  Leon Simonetti reached for the phone. Jack knew he was being dismissed but for a few moments he simply stared at his parent. People always remarked on the strong resemblance between father and son and he supposed it was true. He had inherited his father’s Roman profile and they had the same colouring: black hair, blue eyes. They shared the same long-limbed build as well, although his father’s body had a softness to it, which his own had yet to acquire. Maybe, thirty years from now, he too would have a fleshy roll around the middle and a crumpled jaw like a Caesar gone to seed. And who knows—maybe he had inherited other traits as well. Perhaps, with the passage of time, he too would become a destroyer of worlds.

  His father looked up and lifted his eyebrows—an impatient, ‘is-there-anything-else’ expression on his face. Jack shook his head and stood up from his chair. But as he reached the door, his father spoke again.

  ‘Life is what you mak
e of it, Jack.’

  He turned to look at his father across the wide expanse of the Aubusson rug separating them. Ordinarily, he would have shrugged off these words as just another platitude. But his father’s voice sounded strange: small, cold.

  ‘The choices you make, determine the life you lead. Remember that.’ Still that small, far-away voice. ‘You live with those choices … and die by them.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Natasha Mostert is a South African novelist and screenwriter. She grew up in Pretoria and Johannesburg but currently lives in London, United Kingdom.

  Educated in South Africa and at Columbia University, New York, Mostert majored in modern languages and holds graduate degrees in Lexicography and Applied Linguistics.

  She has worked as a teacher in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at WITS University, Johannesburg, and as project coordinator in the publishing department of public television station WNET/Channel Thirteen, New York. Her political opinion pieces have appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times, and in Newsweek, the Independent and The Times (London).

  Mostert’s fourth novel, Season of the Witch, won the 2009 World Book Day: Book to Talk About Award.

  She is an avid kickboxer. Please visit her website to find out more about her involvement with the CPAU Fight for Peace project, which teaches Afghan women how to box and feel empowered in their lives.

  Future goals include writing poetry, executing a perfect spinning crescent kick, and coming face to face with the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe.