by Deon Meyer
Since I had become a Spotter, my relationship with Domingo was one of commander and soldier. It had taken me months to grow accustomed to it. Now I didn’t want it any other way.
‘Thank you, Captain.’
‘You must be there by half past seven, Storm. Get a move on.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘You have the day off. Make sure you’re back by six o’clock tonight.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘You’re not eating my breakfast this morning.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
Domingo left the room, and my SpOT comrades sang a dirge-like ‘Happy Birthday’ to me from their beds, in the exaggerated, morose fashion of funeral-goers, the way we young men celebrated the birthdays of all SpOT members.
I was still the youngest Spotter, but no one remembered that. I was the best shot in the unit. I ran the thirty kilometres between our base and Luckhoff in the second-fastest time now. Aram the Namibian still beat me, but every week I closed the gap by a minute or two. It was only a question of time.
I got up, washed and dressed. My fellow soldiers teased me. ‘Shame, Storm is going home to Daddy. It’s the only place he gets love. Say hi to Sofia. And then goodbye to Sofia.’ That sort of supportive talk. They found it excruciatingly funny. I laughed with them. What else can you do with family?
I walked the three kilometres to town.
I reported at the main gate, where the old bus gate used to be. It was a sturdy structure of brick and concrete now. The guards were alert, disciplined and armed. They greeted me by name. They didn’t know it was my birthday. They opened the first gate for me, then the second. They made quips about Sofia. Everyone knew I was in love with her. Except Sofia herself.
I walked briskly through the wide U of the tarmac road up the slope, my hands shoved into my pockets in an attempt to keep them warm in the icy cold of late winter. Two tractors with trailers were driving out of town. Both trailers were packed with people, wrapped up in warm clothes and blankets. They were on the way to the fields and fruit orchards. It was almost the end of pruning time for the peaches, pears and plum trees, and the table grapes that we had fetched with an expedition from Kanoneiland. The people greeted me loudly, smiled and waved. They all knew who I was. I smiled too, because it was good to hear their joie de vivre, and I waved back.
I passed the place where Okkie and I had lain when I shot the KTM, and they shot me. My leg had completely recovered now, only an ugly scar remained. Past the stables where the children worked as grooms during their out-of-school week. The system was still operating, some of them were leading horses out of the stables. The animals snorted and neighed, their breaths small volcanoes of steam in the cold morning air. The grooms greeted me. I greeted them in return.
I thought about Bloemfontein, I thought about a thousand people or more who were sleeping in an old shopping centre there. In my imagination I pictured everyone side by side on the floor, perhaps on battered mattresses. All the humidity of so many bodies, the shared toilets and washbasins, showers and baths, having to listen to the men snoring and the children crying at night. I thought of broken-down armoured cars guarding the the Mall entrance, of a despot in power, and I looked at the peace and space of Amanzi ahead of me, the security, the happiness and I was proud of what we had achieved. Proud of everything that this town and this community represented.
I knew why Domingo had woken me and sent me to Amanzi. Pa and Okkie wanted to celebrate my birthday with me. Pa had tentatively probed whether I would be okay with something like that. He wasn’t a man who was comfortable with secrets or white lies, even when it was socially acceptable.
I turned into Madeliefie Street, the Orphanage was at the end of it. My heart beat faster. Sofia Bergman lived here, in the second-last Groendakkie on the right.
I carried a letter in my pocket. I had spent weeks writing it, one version after the other. In secret, in barracks. It wasn’t an easy task, everyone wanted to know what you were doing, especially if you were doing something out of the ordinary.
It was a very, very difficult thing to write, a letter to your future wife. Think for a moment, what should the very first word be?
‘Darling?’
No, no, it was too . . . loving.
‘Dear?’
That was too I-like-you-as-a-friend. Or worse, we-could-have-been-brother-and-sister.
‘Hi’ was not even an option. ‘Hello’ wasn’t much better.
Complicated. If you’re seventeen.
Every Sunday I wanted to give it to her. Or push it under her front door. But my courage deserted me. What if she read the letter out loud in front of everyone, in the same voice she said things like ‘Hi, yourself’.
I stopped in front of her house. The letter was in my pocket.
I had written it over thirty-four times.
Sofia
I don’t know what I did to make you so angry. Whatever it was, I am sorry. I really want to talk to you. I really wish you would go horse-riding with me into the reserve just once. There is a spot that looks out over a valley and the dam. It’s one of my favourite places. I would love to show you how beautiful it is.
Will you let me know when you’re not angry with me any more?
Regards
Nico Storm
In an earlier version I had the postscript: P.S. I am going to marry you anyway. I decided it was better to leave that out.
I took the letter out of my pocket. I stared at her front door.
No. I shoved it back into my inside pocket and walked on to the Orphanage.
Okkie was six. He was worse at keeping secrets than my father. Okkie sat with me and Pa at the breakfast table and he couldn’t keep his eyes off the kitchen door. Every now and then he would cover his mouth with his hand, like someone stopping themselves from saying something. I knew what had happened. Okkie had seen the cake and candles in there. He had asked whose it was. And they said it’s your brother Nico’s. It’s a surprise, you mustn’t tell, or you won’t get a slice. Now Okkie couldn’t wait for them to bring it out, and the knowledge of the cake was wound up like a jack-in-the-box inside him.
The door behind me opened.
‘Look, Nico, look!’ The jack-in-the-box jumped out with a bounce and a scream; Okkie pointed his finger.
I turned round to look.
‘Wow!’ I pretended to be amazed and overjoyed.
Okkie was in seventh heaven. ‘It’s your cake, Nico!’ His voice was shrill with excitement. ‘I didn’t tell, I didn’t tell, it’s your cake and your candles, you’re seventeen, that’s very old. I didn’t say anything, Pappa, I didn’t tell, I’m not a tattle-tale, can I have a piece?’
We remember the moments of fear, loss and humiliation best. But sometimes, also the moments of intense, pure joy. Like when you look at your father and see the lines on his face are a bit deeper, the grey temples a lighter shade of silver. You knew the burden of responsibility of the community, the recent murder, and his son’s rejection have all contributed to this. But now you see the happiness reflected in his eyes, the way he looks at his adopted son and his flesh-and-blood son, from one to the other, happy. And proud. Of us, I hoped. Perhaps of everything that he had achieved here, everything that I had noted that morning. And Pa laughed because his planned surprise had worked, because he had both of us here with him, because he had set the whole day aside for just his two sons, and it stretched out lazy and sweet ahead of us.
I have to confess, there was also humiliation in that moment. I felt shame again for what I had said to him, more than a year ago. I felt ashamed because he – the one whom I had wounded – was using the occasion of my birthday to try to build a bridge, to stretch out a forgiving and reconciliatory hand.
But mostly I felt joy, because I was being offered a chance to make it right.
I hid my feelings by laughing at Okkie, by grabbing my blood brother and pummelling him. It camouflaged the tears in my eyes when the cake was put on the table, and
the people gathered round, and of course Okkie, the loudest and shrillest of all, sang to me, and then told me to blow out all seventeen candles.
When they had finished, Pa put out his hand to me and said, ‘Happy birthday, Nico. I hope it’ll be a good year. I hope you continue to make a difference in people’s lives.’
Pa had planned the day well. He took us fishing. He had earthworms and curried porridge for bait, birthday cake and ginger beer, a basket with fresh-baked bread and yellow salted butter, apricot jam and cheddar cheese, biltong and dried sausage. Everything had been made by Amanzi’s people.
He had prepared a small boat for us, that we rowed out to the middle of the dam. We baited our hooks, tossed the lines in the water. We chatted, laughed at Okkie, and we didn’t get a single bite. We ate and drank. It was like the old times, just him and me. And Okkie to break the ice. It was a good day.
Sofia Bergman
It was that morning that I first started to think of Nico Storm differently.
I was on the way to school. I came out of the door of the house and saw Nico and his father and little brother coming down the street from the Orphanage. I really didn’t want him to see me, so I stepped backwards and stood inside the door, waiting for them to pass.
I studied them. Now you must understand, Nico didn’t know I was watching him. So I was sure that what he did, he did from the heart. That’s the important thing. I saw how he talked to his little brother. Okkie. I knew the story of Okkie, everyone knew it. But the story didn’t say how Nico and Okkie felt about each other.
So I stood and watched, and I saw Nico look at Okkie with so much love. He said something to him, I couldn’t hear it, but it was obviously something really nice. Nico laughed with Okkie, and with his father. And then he bent down, and picked Okkie up, and hugged him tight to his chest. And then he hoisted him up on his shoulders. And I looked at Okkie, and I saw how completely besotted he was with Nico.
And Willem . . .
There was something about that scene. Something that said they were . . . special people. And that Nico wasn’t just a braggart. Even though he walked and talked and acted like a show-off when he was with his friends, in that moment Nico Storm was a very good person.
And I thought, okay, if he talks to me again, I’ll try to remember that. I would give him a chance.
Chapter 75
We were in the rowing boat, lines in the water, the fish not one bit interested.
A soft breeze came up. In August, in this part of the Karoo, the wind blows south-westerly. It pushed the little boat nearer to the far shore, away from Amanzi.
We were aware of it, but not concerned. We could easily row back. And even if the wind picked up later, as it often did in that month, we could always go ashore and hike the kilometre or two to the concrete dam wall, and from there back to Amanzi.
Pa described the trading network they were planning, now that the roads were safe. Our food surplus was large enough for that, and our biodiesel stocks too. In October they wanted to send out the first scouts to Johannesburg, to see whether we could begin bartering with other communities. He wanted my opinion, as if it really mattered to him.
Okkie kept a close eye on his fishing rod and the water; he was constantly imagining he had a bite, and would hook the ‘fish’ with a dramatic jerk of his rod and scream, ‘I’ve got him, I’ve got him!’ Only to see there was nothing on the hook. Then we had to pull the line in, attach bait and throw it back in.
It was the best day I’d had in years.
Somewhere in those few hours on the water I came to understand certain things. Not necessarily with crystal clarity and blazing insight, but I came considerably closer to certain truths. The first was that Pa was just waiting for me to reach out to him. He bore no resentment, nor was he angry with me. If I was prepared to give the relationship a chance, he would easily be able to forget the pain I had caused him. Today I know that’s how a father feels about his children. Always. But for a (very new) seventeen-year-old it was a big step closer to understanding and wisdom.
The second was that my father was a brave man. Gentle but brave.
I knew that when I looked at Amanzi from the dam. There were the walls – already at window level – of the first eight houses on the southern bank on the eastern side of the town. Built with our bricks and our cement. The first of more than six hundred that were planned. The roads were made, the water, sewerage and electricity services were supplied. I thought of everything I saw and experienced this morning on the way to the Orphanage. My father had done this. Despite the dogs and the Jeep men, despite his inability to shoot people and snakes, or to stand up to the pastor or Domingo. Despite the winters and opposition and division. He had paid a price, you could see it in the lines on his face, the grey hair, his son who had so deeply insulted and hurt him. But it was his vision, he had accomplished this. In four years. He was a brave man, in his own way.
In that moment I felt an overwhelming compassion and love for my father. I decided I would do everything in my power to restore our relationship.
And I thought if I was in any way as brave as my father, I would push the letter under Sofia Bergman’s door today.
We drifted closer and closer to the northern bank.
Suddenly Pa stopped talking. He had spotted something. I followed his gaze. Fifty metres away, against the opposite bank, was the mouth of a dry stream. It was densely overgrown, with branches overhanging the water and deep shadows underneath. A chance angle of sun, water and the position of our boat on the dam caused an unnatural reflection, a flash in the shadows. It came and went as the wind moved the dense foliage.
‘What could that be?’ Pa said.
‘Let’s go take a look,’ I said and picked up the oars.
At first I thought we were mistaken, as it disappeared in the shadows between bushes and the water. I had to row right up to the overhanging branches, and Pa had to lift them up and push them away before we saw it.
‘It’s a little ship,’ said Okkie.
It was a black rubber dinghy. The inflatable bow was punctured with holes, but only the boat’s stern was underwater. The bow seemed to have snagged on a thick, dry branch.
‘It doesn’t look like one of ours,’ said Pa.
Pa and I pushed and pulled the branches so we could go closer. The holes in the boat’s bow were all of uniform size, it looked like it had been stabbed with the same knife. On the bottom of the boat lay a long, dark object. I leaned over to see. It was a metal pole – an iron standard like those used in wire fences. It was rusty, one end just in the water. The rest was dry. Near the other end it was darker, and the texture was different.
We knew dry blood when we saw it. Because we hunted and butchered animals, and I had shot people.
‘Nico . . .’ said Pa, concerned. He was thinking what I was thinking.
I stretched as far as I could to see the pole closer up.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Pa.
I was certain it was blood.
‘What is it, Nico?’ asked Okkie, a bit scared, more curious.
I looked at Pa and nodded. ‘I think we should go and tell Sarge.’
For a while that day I reverted to being the practically invisible shadow of my father, the chairman.
I rowed us back. We dodged Okkie’s questions about why we couldn’t fish any more and what was in the rubber dinghy and what it was we had to go and tell Sarge X.
Pa called Sarge on the radio. He came to fetch us in his pick-up and we dropped Okkie off at school, much to his disgust. Pa, Sarge and I drove around the dam, back to the dinghy. The three of us dragged the vessel out of the bushes. It was difficult, and took more than twenty minutes. Sarge said, ‘Not one of our boats, I know all our boats.’
He carefully removed the bloodied standard using his handkerchief and carried it to the pick-up. It was blood, now black, that stuck to it. And hair, and bits of bone and brain. He said, ‘I wish we had forensics.’
Pa said,
‘This boat was left by someone who came from outside, Sarge.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it does seem that way.’
‘I want us to keep this quiet.’
Sarge X nodded. He agreed.
‘But we’ll have to tell Domingo.’
We drove from there to the SpOT base. Alpha and Bravo were busy with lorry manoeuvres on the parade ground, jumping out of the Volvo and ERF’s trailers. Domingo stood watching, hands on hips.
Sarge stopped beside Domingo, and we got out and walked to my commander. Pa told him about the metal standard and the boat.
Domingo listened carefully. Then he looked at me. ‘Birthday party over, Storm?’
‘Yes, Captain.’ I badly wanted to hear the conversation between Pa, Sarge and Domingo, but I was not as much of a knucklehead as I had been. The path of least resistance was the only one that worked with Domingo.
He pointed at my comrades beside the Volvo. ‘Off you go.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ I said and began jogging reluctantly back to Team Bravo.
All thought of the letter to Sofia was driven from my mind.
It was only two days later, on 24 August, that Domingo ordered us to fall in on the parade ground. We stood at attention as he said, ‘What I am about to tell you is most confidential. If I ever hear that this information has reached a civilian, I will make it my sole mission in life to find out which one of you maggots snitched, and I will rip your tongue out with my bare hands, and I will consign you to shovelling horse shit for the rest of your days. Do you read me?’
‘Sir, yes sir.’
He glared at us suspiciously, as if he didn’t believe us.
‘I kid thee not. If you breathe a word about this matter, then you are no longer a part of my Special Ops Team. That is a promise. Is that very, very clear?’
‘Sir, yes sir.’
He stalked up and down, up and down, like a compressed spring. He said, ‘Our enemy managed to launch a rigid inflatable craft into our dam. Our enemy managed to cross that dam, and they managed to murder a very good and gentle citizen of our beloved Amanzi. Why would our enemy do this? Why would they go to the considerable trouble of bringing a rigid inflatable craft all the way to our dam? Under cover of night. Why would they run the considerable risk of being confronted, and captured? Or killed? Why?’