Reconciliation for the Dead

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘I was sure that we were being watched,’ she said, putting her empty mug on the floor and crossing her legs. ‘Joseph wheeled the gurney into the morgue, but we kept you in the ambulance. The chap who runs the morgue is a colleague. He took delivery of a couple of pillows.’ Again she tried a smile.

  They’d returned to the hospital, parked the ambulance in the big garage, and, leaving Clay with Joseph, she’d left through the main doors and walked to her car. The main parking area was quiet but she was frightened, aware that her life had just changed forever. She drove out of the main gates as usual, as if she was driving home. After a while she doubled back. Keeping to the side streets, she approached the hospital by the rear service entrance. Joseph was still waiting with Clay. Together they got him to her car and she’d driven him here.

  ‘Joseph and I carried you to the bed.’ She rubbed her shoulders. ‘Dragged more like. How much do you weigh, anyway?’

  ‘Not as much as I did three weeks ago,’ he said.

  She flicked a smile, a real one this time, but there was sadness there, too. ‘I just hope no one was watching,’ she said. ‘It was dark, and I parked as close to the back doors as I could, but still…’ She trailed off into silence.

  ‘You said before, when I first met you, that you thought BOSS was watching you.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve never seen anything specific. It’s more a feeling. Random things. A person I’ve never seen before passing me in the corridor in the hospital, a click on the phone just after I pick up. I don’t know, Clay. Maybe I’m being paranoid.’ She untied her pony tail and shook her hair free. ‘They’re cracking down on us, all over the country.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Not now,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean, not now?’

  She looked around the room, towards the open windows. ‘Not now.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Clay. ‘Not now.’ He pushed himself up and swung his feet to the floor. Pain grabbed his side, twisted hard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘You must be careful. There was a lot of damage. If you move quickly like that, you could rupture something.’ She made to lie him back down but he resisted.

  ‘You’ve all put yourselves in danger because of me,’ he said. ‘I have to leave.’ He pushed himself to his feet, wobbled, straightened. He was naked except for a pair of loose-fitting, hospital-issue boxer shorts and the swath of white bandage across his midriff.

  She was standing now, too, hands on her hips. ‘Lie down, Corporal.’ It was not a request. ‘You’re in no shape to stand, let alone walk out of here.’

  ‘I can’t ask you to do this,’ he said. ‘Any of you.’

  She shook her head. ‘Stupid boy.’

  Clay reached for the Beretta, trying to hide the effect of the pain shooting through him. He stood, wincing involuntarily, the gun in his hand.

  ‘Don’t bend at the waist,’ she said. She was much smaller than him, the top of her head barely reaching his collar bone. ‘You have to keep your core as still as possible, for a few more days at least.’

  Clay started towards the closet, opened it and started rummaging through the drawers.

  ‘His clothes are on the right side,’ she said.

  Clay opened one of the drawers. Underwear and socks, neatly pressed and twinned. He grabbed a t-shirt from the second drawer, a pair of trousers from the third. They looked about his size. He put the handgun on a shelf and started threading on the trousers.

  ‘Do you really think that you are the only one?’ she said, still standing by the bed. ‘There are thousands of us, across the country.’

  Clay faced her. ‘Us?’

  ‘People who want change. Whites.’

  Clay zipped up the trousers, put the Beretta into the waistband at the small of his back. ‘Traitors, you mean.’ He wasn’t even sure if he meant it, but the words came anyway. ‘We’ve heard about you, supporting the communists while we risk our lives defending the nation.’ It was what Crowbar would have said, what they all talked about, out there on the front lines. The slackers and traitors. By the time he’d finished saying it, he’d regretted every word.

  She frowned, holding his gaze a long time.

  Clay hung his head. He could feel the power of this woman, her conviction. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  She didn’t answer, just stood there boring through him with those river-bed eyes. A Shona melody danced in through the open windows, a woman’s voice, a song of loss and hope.

  They listened. Listened right through. And then it was over.

  ‘My neighbour’s cook,’ she said.

  ‘Our housemaid used to sing.’

  She was walking towards him now. ‘If you’re going to go, you’ll need some shoes,’ she said, stepping past him and reaching into the closet. ‘And a decent shirt.’ She handed him a pair of tan desert boots and a khaki-coloured button shirt. ‘These should fit.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She stood close. ‘Do you really think that you’re protecting us by leaving? The minute they identify you, they’ll know we were involved. Joseph and I signed the death certificate. My friend who runs the morgue has already confirmed cremation and shipped the remains to your next of kin. You might as well just turn us in yourself.’

  Clay rocked back. Of course, she was right. He couldn’t go back to his unit. He couldn’t go home; soon his uncle and Sara would receive the news of his death – died of wounds received in combat. Botha had wanted him dead. And now he was. Whoever Botha was working for, he was clearly able to move through the system at will – into Angola, onto military bases and into hospitals. Who had that kind of reach? Suddenly Clay felt very, very alone. Crowbar’s words replayed themselves in his head: I’d get out if I were you.

  Vivian reached for his hand. He let her take it.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I know you’re frightened. I am, too. But we need to work together. There is something more than the two of us at stake, Clay. And you know it. You’ve seen it.’

  ‘Is that why you sent me the letter?’ he said, after a while.

  She nodded. ‘After what you told me the first time we met, I knew that you were seeing first-hand what we suspected was going on out there. And I knew it troubled you. That you had a conscience. We need your help, Clay.’

  ‘Who is “we”, Vivian? Tell me.’

  She looked up at him. Her lips were close to his chest. He could feel her breath gentle on his skin as she spoke. ‘Torch Commando. It’s a groundswell, Clay. A loose network inside the services. No one knows its full extent. We limit contact to a few points so that if one part is exposed, the damage can be contained.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Clay. ‘We’d heard the rumours, but I never really believed them. I thought Torch died out in the fifties.’

  ‘It’s the regime that’s dying, Clay. You may not be able to see it yet, from where you are, but it’s happening.’

  ‘How far does this thing go? I mean, is it the army, too?’

  ‘It’s everywhere.’

  He glanced at her husband’s uniform. ‘The air force?’

  She nodded.

  Clay thought back to his conversation with Wade, that day in the Land Rover with Eben; Crowbar’s assertion that Wade had been killed by one of their own. ‘I need to sit down,’ he said.

  She led him back to the bed.

  He sat, stared at the veins in his hands, the scar on his forearm. After a while, he said: ‘So what do we do now?’

  She picked up the empty mugs, stood by the bed. ‘You get better, stay hidden. Stay dead. I go to work, as usual. And we try to figure out what the hell is going on.’

  Clay pointed to the photograph on the dresser. ‘Is that your husband?’

  She breathed in slowly through pursed lips. ‘Was,’ she said. ‘He was shot down and killed thirteen months ago.’

  South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Transcripts.

  Johannesburg, 15th September
1996

  Commissioner Lacy: And you never fought again. Is that correct, Mister Straker?

  Witness: I never went back to my unit, that’s correct, ma’am.

  Commissioner Lacy: And your friend, Mister Barstow?

  Witness: He never came out of that coma, ma’am. Thirteen years he was like that. Thirteen _____ years.

  Commissioner Barbour: Please, Mister Straker.

  Commissioner Ksole: So, he didn’t testify.

  Witness: No, he didn’t. But Eben wouldn’t have lied, I can tell you that. He would have told the truth.

  Commissioner Barbour: Are you saying, Mister Straker, that the regime attempted to assassinate you, while you were still on active duty?

  Witness: Yes, sir. Me and Eben.

  Commissioner Barbour: Are you absolutely sure, Mister Straker. You said yourself that you were heavily sedated, that you were having dreams; having, ah, hallucinations.

  Witness: All those times in the hospital I saw him looking down at me, I thought they were dreams. I was so drugged up. But it was him. Botha. He was there in the hospital, making sure I was going to die. When he found out that I was going to make it, he tried to kill me.

  Commissioner Rotzenburg: This person that you call Botha – the man you claim tried to kill you – do you know who he was, who he was working for?

  Witness: I’m pretty sure he—

  Commissioner Rotzenburg: No, Mister Straker. Not conjecture, please. Did you ever see any identification?

  Witness: A friend of mine did.

  Commissioner Rotzenburg: Second-hand information and conjecture have no place here, Mister Straker. Did you see any identification yourself?

  Witness: No, I didn’t.

  Commissioner Rotzenburg: You suggest this person was working for the government. Could he not just as easily have been working for private interests, or even for one of South Africa’s enemies?

  Witness: I suppose so, yes.

  Commissioner Rotzenburg: The truth is, you have no idea who he was, who he might have been working for or with, or if he was even real. Is that not the case, Mister Straker?

  Witness: I have no proof. But he was real.

  Commissioner Barbour: And why do you think he – whoever he might have been – wanted you dead, son?

  Witness: Botha was there with Colonel Mbdele at the bunker in Angola. He must have known that we were on that C-130 over the Atlantic, too, that we’d bailed out with Zulaika’s son. All of that. He knew we were close to revealing the truth. But I don’t think he wanted to kill us to keep us quiet, sir.

  Commissioner Barbour: Then why, son?

  Witness: He wasn’t afraid of being brought to justice. It wasn’t a cover-up. He was the system. He was justice. We were enemies of the state. He said it himself. We were traitors to our nation and to our race. Eben, me, Vivian. All of us. We had to be eliminated. Truth is for the dead. The living can’t afford it.

  24

  Animals

  Days passed.

  Days in which he limped between denial and acceptance and back again, a journey through sun-scorched plains and starless nights, where the only sounds were the rush of blood in his head and the dirges of a dying continent. Vivian would come and go, he only half aware of her wax and wane, of her regular ministrations – the morphine injections, the changes of dressing. And in all of this she was gentle as summer wind, as welcome as a cool katabatic from the Draakensburg. She spoke to him sometimes when she thought he was asleep, and he could hear her voice as if over hills and across deep-cut valleys, words disconnected and lost.

  In the middle of the day he would wake with the warm air caressing his face through the open windows and he would lie there a long time thinking about Eben and Crowbar and the war, and wonder what was to become of them all. And in some way he could not quite grasp, none of it seemed real. It was as if it had all happened so fast that he had never had the time to properly register any of it: leaving his parents’ house; jump school; the missions into Angola. All of it now seemed to blur one into continuum: the deaths faked; the bodies floating down towards the ocean in some half-forgotten nightmare; the hospital a film set; this haunted house from something he’d read in school.

  But the pain was real. The throbbing ache in his torso that seemed to spread up through his shoulders and neck and to his head, and that deeper dolour that could only be described as a hole, an emptiness, a growing absence.

  He’d push himself up from the bed, throw on Vivian’s husband’s trousers, a shirt, fix some breakfast, wander the house, out onto the back patio with a cup of steaming coffee. He would stand in the sun a while, feeling the stitches in his side, each day twisting his torso through a few more degrees, getting stronger, bit by bit, cell by cell. By late afternoon she’d return from the hospital, shower and change into a dress, fix supper for the two of them. They’d talk for a while, play cards as the sun set and the room darkened. She was intelligent and serious, just old enough to be his mother. After, she’d lead him to the bedroom, check his dressing, give him morphine, and then disappear.

  He’d been there for a week when he finally summoned the courage to ask her where she had been sleeping.

  ‘In the spare bedroom,’ she answered, her tone curt.

  He hadn’t seen a spare bedroom on his wanderings. But before he could enquire further she’d gone, closed the door behind her. He lay in the darkness and thought about her, imagined her here with him, naked and warm.

  Later that night he’d risen and gone to find her. She wasn’t on the settee in the main room, or in the front parlour. He searched the house, even the half-moon-filtered back garden. She’d disappeared.

  He turned and started back to the bedroom. He was halfway across the main room when he heard it: muffled sobs coming from the corridor. He followed the sound to the door that had always been locked. He put his ear to the frame. Nothing. He waited. And then some time later more sobs. He tried the knob, but the door was locked.

  ‘Vivian,’ he whispered.

  The sobs stopped.

  ‘Vivian, it’s me. Are you alright?’

  No reply. He stood there in the darkness for a long time, but no answer came. After a while, he went back to bed. His watch showed gone two in the morning.

  Nine days after being declared dead, Clay stood naked in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. It was mid-afternoon, a couple of hours yet until Vivian was due back from the hospital. The house had warmed. He pulled the dressing from his torso and dropped the stained bandages onto the tile floor. The scar ran from just above his hip to his lowest rib and then dog-legged towards his solar plexus. He traced the line with the tip of his finger, felt the stitches furrowing the swell of knitting flesh. There were the other scars, too, the one in his cheek glowing with the same deep bruising, the forearm showing what these new violations might become over time.

  He thought about Eben, still back there in 1-Mil. Some things heal. Some never will.

  He turned on the shower and let the water warm. He stepped under the stream, a hot shower still such a luxury after so many months on the line. All of them would be back there now, Crowbar and the boys, back in Angola, perhaps. And even though he now knew, somewhere deep inside himself, that the war was fundamentally wrong, that something incredibly sinister was happening in his country, something that had been hidden to him all the years of his childhood, hidden in plain sight every day, he wished with all of himself he was back there with them. And in this desire, he recognised that there was something fundamentally warped inside him, and whether it had come because of all that had happened, or if he had been born like this, he could not tell.

  He turned off the water and reached a towel down from the curtain rail. He was drying his hair when the shower curtain slid open. He jerked his head back, almost slipping on the wet surface of the tub.

  It was Vivian. She was standing before him, staring at him from dark sockets haloed in thick, black makeup. She wore a black high-necked evening gown and had pulle
d her hair back tight across her scalp. Her lips were black, as if she’d used the eye makeup on her mouth. Her bare arms were thin and pale, her feet bare on the wet tile.

  ‘Get out of my tub,’ she said. Her voice was like hard-trampled ground.

  Clay stepped onto the floor mat, wrapped the towel around his waist. ‘What’s wrong, Vivian?’

  ‘Give me my towel,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me,’ she slurred.

  Clay could smell alcohol.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was just…’ He started towards her, towards the door. ‘My clothes are just outside,’ he said.

  ‘Stay there,’ she said. ‘Don’t move. Give me my towel.’

  Clay stared back at her. He could see the guttering in her makeup, the angry red veins gripping the whites of her eyes. ‘Are you alright, Vivian?’ The same words he’d whispered through the locked door three nights ago.

  She closed her eyes a long while, didn’t answer. When she opened them again she took a step towards him and held out her hand.

  Clay unwrapped the towel and stood naked before her. She took the towel and dropped it on the floor behind her. He made to move to the door but she shook her head. ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered, hoarse.

  His heart was racing. ‘Vivian, please. What’s happened?’

  ‘Move your hands away so I can see,’ she said.

  He stayed as he was, covering himself.

  ‘Do it,’ she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes.

  He pulled away his hands.

  She stood watching as the tumour between his legs grew, unbidden.

  Clay stared into her face, watched the flip of her eyes as she scanned from her handiwork to his face and back down towards his groin. He made to speak but she raised her finger to her lips. He was aching now, weeks of frustration and anger and raw fear bursting inside him, straining for release.

  He took a step towards her, opened his arms.