by Caryl Ferey
“Did she pay you?”
“I’m not a charity.”
“So you do this to supplement your income?”
“It’s vulgar to talk about money, Mr. Neuman, and vulgarity doesn’t suit you.”
“Did Nicole tell you who she was planning to share her precious flasks with?”
“We didn’t talk much, to tell the truth.”
“Not even pillow talk?”
“We girls don’t need words.”
“The silence must have been deafening.” He took his hand from his pocket. “Stan Ramphele. Mean anything to you?”
Zina peered at the photograph he showed her—a black, about twenty, quite good-looking.
“No,” she said.
“Nicole and Stan were both high when they died, on a highly toxic tik-based substance that modifies behavior.”
“I only use natural ingredients, my friend. Iboga has a subtler effect. Want to try it?”
“Maybe in another life.”
“You’re making a mistake,” she assured him. “My secrets are quite harmless.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“I’m a dancer,” she said, looking him straight in the face, “not a serial killer.”
He noticed the little scar just above her lips. “Who said anything about other killings?”
“I can see it in your eyes. Or am I wrong?” She was looking at him as if she knew him well.
Neuman changed tack. “Why haven’t you cooperated with the police?”
“I’m getting pissed off with your questions.”
“I’m getting pissed off with your answers.”
Zina’s face, close to his now, grew sharper. An abrupt change of direction. “Listen to what I’m going to tell you, Ali Neuman, and listen carefully. I saw policemen stamp on my mother’s stomach when she was pregnant, I can still hear her screaming, and my father saying nothing. Yes, I can still hear him saying nothing! Because that was the only thing those poor niggers were entitled to do! The child she was expecting didn’t live, and that killed my mother. And when my father tried to report it, they laughed in his face—my father, the induna! One day, the police came and told him he’d been stripped of his position, because of insubordination to the Bantu authorities. Then more police came and threw us out and bulldozed our house. And it was the police who fired into the unarmed crowd during the Soweto uprising, killing hundreds of us. So just because times have changed and you can fuck a white girl without getting a kaffirpack 26 doesn’t mean I’m going to throw myself into your arms.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you to do.”
“Oh, but it is,” she hissed. “The reason I haven’t cooperated with the police is because I don’t trust them. None of them. Nothing personal, as you may have noticed, unless you’re as blind as you’re stubborn. Now I’d like to be alone, so I can take a shower. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel sick about what happened to Nicole. And stop looking at me with those snake eyes of yours, I have the impression you think of me as a fucking guinea pig!”
She was nothing like Tembo’s rats. But there was murder in her eyes.
“You were a member of Inkatha,” he said.
“A long time ago.”
“To fight the whites?”
“No,” she said, angrily. “To fight apartheid.”
“There were less violent ways.”
“Did you come here to talk about my past or about Nicole’s killer?”
“Have I touched a raw nerve?”
“It killed my mother. Don’t you think that’s reason enough?” Her aristocratic manner returned, but he sensed that he had hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, more gently. “I’m not very used to pestering women.”
“You must feel alone.”
“Like a dead man.”
Zina smiled, her face covered in powder. “My Zulu name is Zaziwe,” she said.
It meant “hope.”
But her eyes were as black as night.
*
Ukuphanda: the word meant, literally, scratching the ground for food, like chickens in a farmyard.
In the context of the townships, phanding—the English word that derived from it—meant, if you were a woman, looking for a boyfriend for the purpose of obtaining money, food or accommodation. It wasn’t just a question of getting material security in exchange for sex. It was also a matter of finding someone to look after you, someone who’d make it possible for you to escape the brutality of everyday life. A quest embarked on by many young women, which led in most cases to their being exposed to violence or contaminated by AIDS.
Maia had been no exception to the rule. She had been competed over by men who considered her, at best, as their property. Her last boyfriend, believing the gossip a drunken neighbor had fed him, had taken Maia to the river bank, stripped her, smeared her with dish soap, and ordered her to wash in the brackish water, to teach her not to whore with other men. After which, he had taken a leather strap and beaten her for hours, six, eight, ten, Maia couldn’t remember. Then he had raped her.
She had been found by the riverside early in the morning, almost dead.
It was while visiting his mother at the dispensary that Neuman had seen her for the first time, lying in bed, surrounded by other patients. Her eyes were so swollen from the beating that she could barely blink. Was it the terrible marks on her body that had reminded him of his father’s agony, her smile when he had squeezed her hand, her beautiful, helpless brown eyes that had drunk him in like a false elixir? That day, he had promised her that no one would ever hurt her again.
He had installed her in the largely colored township of Manenberg, in a small permanent house with real windows and a solid door, a door he’d knock at from time to time.
At first, Maia had wondered if this big cop with eyes like stone wasn’t another one of those crazy men who were both fascinated and horrified by women’s bodies—he could caress her for hours, and his hand on her body was like an ointment or a blade—but she had known a lot worse. Her new boyfriend could fondle her as much he liked, he could ask her to lift her ass like a lighthouse in order to rub ice cubes over it (code number three), or explore her anus with his fingertip (code number five), he could stuff her with whatever he wanted and she sometimes didn’t want, Maia was not very particular. She survived in Manenberg as best she could—bartering, doing odd jobs, painting, occasionally sleeping with guys. Two years had passed since the beginning of their relationship, two years during which everything had changed. Today Maia waited for his footsteps, his knock at the door, his face, his hands on her body, as if she was his pet. Over time, it had stopped being a chore for her and become the sweetest of tortures. She had never been caressed like that before.
She had never been caressed at all.
It was after midnight when Ali knocked at the door that night. Maia woke with a start—he hadn’t told her he was coming. She put on the short nightdress he had bought her the previous month, fought with sleep as far as the front door, lifted the latch, and saw him standing there, looking haggard.
Ali had a bandage over his ear, and in the moonlight his eyes looked sad. Something had happened, she knew that immediately. She lifted her hand to his cheek to comfort him, but he stopped her.
“I have to talk to you,” he said.
“Of course. Come in.”
She didn’t know what to say, how to behave. They had never talked about love. Love had never come into the equation. It was enough of a miracle that he condescended to touch her. Deep down, Maia felt impure, soiled, dishonored, he came from an educated family, probably an important clan. Maia imagined all kinds of things—Ali didn’t make love to her because he was afraid of lowering himself, compromising himself with a girl from the country, a colored girl who’d had lots of men and who he’d found in the gutter. She didn’t know anything about his feelings, or understand his strange pleasures, but, in spite of everything, she still hoped, because that was her nature.
/> The man she loved didn’t even bother to sit down. The look he gave her made her retreat to the couch.
“I won’t be coming again,” he said abruptly.
“What?”
“We had an agreement. I’m releasing you from it.”
His voice wasn’t the same. It came from the darkness, from a place where Maia had never set foot, a place she would never go.
“But. Ali. I don’t want to be released. I want to stay with you.”
He said nothing. He was looking at the paintings proudly displayed on the living room wall, naive paintings scrawled on pieces of board, colorful images depicting scenes of township life—so brave, so pathetic, so bad.
“I’ll still help you out,” he said, “if that’s what’s worrying you.”
Sitting on the couch to which he had driven her, Maia gritted her teeth. It wasn’t about money anymore, he knew that perfectly well. Anger was welling up inside her. Even a good man like him was casting her out as if she was unclean. She really was nothing but a pet to him.
“You mean you don’t want me anymore?”
“That’s right.”
His harshness hurt her. Something had happened since last week. He couldn’t just abandon her like this, without a word of explanation.
“Have you found another girl? Is that it? Have you found another poor tramp who thinks you’re going to save her? Or do you have a few?” She was angry now. “A harem, that’s what they call it, right?”
There was a sound in the distance, in the night, a gunshot, or a door being slammed.
“Shut up,” he said in a low voice.
“Do you fuck her?”
“Shut up!”
“Tell me!” she cried, with venom. “Do you fuck her?”
Ali raised his hand, and she instinctively shielded her face. The blow was so rapid that Maia felt the breath of it on her disheveled hair. His fist grazed her temple and crashed into the wall, which cracked under the impact. Maia let out a cry of astonishment. Ali kept raining down blows, with all his strength, destroying her paintings one by one, shattering the plywood wall with his bare hands. Wood flew across the room, splinters falling on her hair. She screamed for him to stop, but the blows kept coming endlessly. He was going to smash everything to pieces, her, the house, their life, with his fists.
The storm stopped suddenly.
Maia was huddled on the couch, moaning softly, not daring to move. She risked a glance through her terrified fingers. Ali was standing over her, his fist clenched, full of scratches and splinters, his eyes sparkling with anger.
A growl rose from deep within him, a sound that froze her blood.
“Shut up.”
5.
A red dress crossed his field of vision. With one hand, the woman was holding down the straw hat that was threatening to blow away to the ends of the earth, with the other she balanced gracefully on the immaculate beach. Brian Epkeen was just passing the apparition when a gust of wind blew sand in his face.
He had walked past the colored wooden huts along the promenade, the first-aid post, the scattered beach umbrellas, and the few toothless men selling trinkets from the nearby township. The farther he walked along the ocean, the more deserted Muizenberg beach became. Dust and sand stirred by the wind rose and vanished in the shimmer of noon. He turned, but the girl was now just a red spot in the heat haze. The resort was almost out of sight. He continued walking, struggling in the soft sand, spitting up cigarettes and alcohol.
Last night, Brian had gone to the bar on Long Street where Tracy worked. He had wanted to have a serious talk with her, but she kept going into raptures over her young colleague juggling three cocktail shakers behind the bar. If something like that got her so excited, then they might as well call it a day, O.K.? Tracy was taken aback. Brian’s words had hit home, but she hadn’t really grasped what he was trying to say. He was no good at breaking up. He didn’t know how to go about it. His heart wasn’t in it. Dan’s death had made him lazy. Disappointment, bitterness, sadness—they had parted without hope of a relapse.
Brian saw the site of the straw hut, then the barbecue in the hollow of the dunes, the worm-eaten hut. There were still traces of burned sand, a few spilled lumps of charcoal. A shiver went down his spine. When the colored girl had come on to him, wiggled her hips at him, she was already planning to kill him. She and the guy he had slashed would have done to him what they had done to Dan. They might have cut him in pieces and grilled him. He licked his lips, tasted the salt of the nearby ocean, and dismissed the fear that was preventing him from thinking.
The beach stretched all the way to Pelikan Park. The house he was looking for couldn’t be far. He adjusted his dark glasses, climbed to the top of a dune, swayed in the wind. Hovering in the sky, the seagulls stared at him with their mad eyes. He saw the railroad line in the distance, then the start of a wire fence running behind bushes that bent in the sea wind. The M3 was barely a mile away, along a bumpy track. Brian went down the slope to the main gate, which had a big padlock on it. A sign on the fence, half eroded by salt, said that this was private property and that there was no entry—hardly a threat to anyone except the butterflies. He clambered over the fence, cursed as he scratched his wrist on the wire, and fell to the sandy front yard. Seagulls rose, squawking. It was then that he saw a woman trotting along the path toward him on horseback.
He was still by the fence when the woman hailed him. She was riding a black Friesian glistening with sweat.
“Hello!”
She was a brunette, about thirty-five, a tall woman with incredible laughing blue eyes. “Lost something?” she asked.
“Let’s say, looking for something.”
“Oh, yes?” she said, feigning surprise. “What exactly?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
She tugged at the horse’s bridle. The horse was clearly desperate to gallop straight to the ocean.
“Do you often ride this way?” he asked.
“Sometimes. I keep my horse stabled at the riding club next to the park.”
Pelikan Park, the nature reserve situated a few hundred yards away. Brian forgot the ocean glittering like pearls on the other side of the fence and turned toward the house. “Do you know who lives here?”
The woman shook her head, imitated—curiously—by her horse. “No.”
“Ever seen anyone around?”
She shook her head again.
“Any vehicles?” he insisted.
The Friesian pulled on the bridle. She made him do an elegant little pas de deux, then her face slowly lit up, as if the memories were coming back to her in flashes of blue sky.
“Yes, I saw a four-by-four here once, very early in the morning, going through the gate. I sometimes cut across the dunes, but usually I follow the beach. Why do you ask?”
“What kind of four-by-four?”
The woman leaned forward in the saddle to relax her posterior. “Let’s see, it was big, dark, a recent model, the kind that’d really tear up the dunes. To be honest, I barely saw it. Not like you. You did notice this is private property?”
“You said early in the morning. About what time?”
“Six o’clock. I like to ride in the morning, when the beach is deserted.”
Right then and there, so did he. He’d just have to find a depressive horse that liked to drink.
“When was this?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders beneath her tight-fitting T-shirt. “About ten days ago.”
“Anyone since then?”
“Only you.” Her blue eyes went through him like he was antimatter.
“If you were shown a list of similar vehicles, do you think you’d be able to identify the four-by-four?”
“Are you a policeman?”
“Sometimes.”
The Friesian was chewing at his bit and stamping his hooves. The woman turned him right around to face the other way.
“Do you work at the riding club?”
Brian asked, when the maneuver was over.
“No, I just ride. He’s three years old,” she said, patting the horse’s neck, “and still mettlesome. Do you like horses?”
“I prefer ponies,” he said.
She burst out laughing, which made the animal even more nervous. “I told myself you didn’t look like someone with a feel for horses.”
“Really?”
“You’re looking at me—he can sense that you’re afraid of him. Someone with a feel for horses would have done the opposite.”
“Can I at least have your cell-phone number?”
She nodded. He took out his notebook, and she gave him her number. The Friesian was still stamping irritably, his big eyes turned toward the sea.
“My name is Tara,” she said, and held out her hand over the fence. “Can I give you a ride?”
“Another time, maybe. We could go somewhere.”
She gave a devilish smile. “Never mind!”
She turned the animal’s bridle and, with her heel, set his trapped energy free. They soon vanished, swallowed by the sky and the sea spray. Brian stood there by the fence, looking after them skeptically, before coming back to reality.
The wind blew through the front yard. The sun was high and overpowering, the seagulls like lookouts. Brian turned toward the building, which stood isolated among the pines.
With its closed shutters and rusted antenna, the house Janet Helms had discovered looked like a disused weather station. He walked up to the reinforced door, checked the front of the building. No upper floor, no security protection, just a sloping roof and a barred basement window covered with cardboard. Everything seemed padlocked, abandoned. But the woman’s sighting of a four-by-four was strange. He went around to the other side.
Brian didn’t have a warrant. What he did have was a small crowbar in his revolver pocket. He was expecting to have to force open the back door of the house, but it wasn’t closed. A squat? He grabbed his .38 and pressed himself against the wall. He loaded his gun, gently opened the door, and peered inside. Air rushed in through the open door, disturbing the flies. He aimed his gun into the semi-darkness. There was a musty smell in the house, and something else, something strange, stirred by the wind from outside. He went into the next room, which was empty. He found the meter—the electricity was working—and a third room that looked out on the front yard, with boarded-up windows and a concrete floor. There was a paint-smeared wooden table, brushes with hardened hairs, bits of wallpaper torn from the wall, and flies zigzagging madly around him. That unpleasant smell was still hovering.