by Ian Martin
The moment passed and gloom set in once more. They sat in silence, waiting. It occurred to Matt, not suddenly but slowly, that they expected him to make a move. They had brought him here and now he must do what was required.
“Alright,” he said, “are we going to take a walk?”
Rose said nothing. Gilbert sighed and opened his door. The afternoon sun was weak and a cold breeze was coming up. They got their windbreakers out of the boot and put them on, then made their way up to the road and started for the bridge.
Matt’s knee was paining and he limped heavily. At the halfway point they stopped and looked over. The entire gorge was filled with cold shadow. Very far below them lay the river and the rocks. When they leaned out they could see the bungee operators on the supporting arch structure beneath the road. They seemed to be packing up.
They crossed the road and Matt hoisted himself up onto the concrete parapet and sat with his legs dangling. Gilbert’s face was drained of colour, his body was rigid and his hands were clenched into fists.
Matt looked down into the 300 metre depths and felt unafraid. Not even dizzy. What would it feel like falling all that way? Seven or eight seconds would be a long time to think about his life. Maybe he’d even think something original.
He edged his thighs and buttocks forward. Now all he had to do was give a little push and away he’d go, falling and falling. Out of this lousy, fucked-up world.
Lousy world? He thought of the woman who had brought him into this fucked-up world. And her fat consort. Fuck it, man. Why should he do this? Why had he decided to go quietly? With a surge of nauseating terror he realised how close he was to falling off the Bloukranz Bridge and plummeting hundreds of metres through the frigid air to crash at 200 kilometres an hour into the river bed. A bloody pulp smeared on the rocks. In alarm he moved the weight of his body back from the edge.
“What the hell are you doing?” demanded Gilbert, also alarmed. “Jump, man, jump!”
“No thanks,” said Matt, turning sideways and getting his good leg onto the wall. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“Like fuck!” snarled Gilbert, and Matt was grasped by two steel pincers, one at his knee, the other his shoulder. “You can’t go back now. Listen, you stupid bastard, your life’s finished. There’s nothing left for you – you’re a total fuckup. They’ve certified you, and if you go back you’ll spend the rest of your days locked in an asylum.”
“Gilbert, let me go, you fucking cunt!”
Matt was struggling to break free and roll off the wall and onto the road. With a mighty wrenching shove Gilbert pushed his leg off and forced the rest of him to follow. As Matt felt himself going over he desperately rolled onto his stomach and threw out his arms.
His hands scrabbled at the concrete, slowing his fall. His toes scraped and bounced against the vertical side surface of the structure. Then with a jarring blow his feet thumped into a horizontal surface and he frantically hugged the wall he was facing, his hands clutching the edge of the parapet above his head.
Gilbert leaned over to watch the suicide tumble to his death. But God damn and fuck it! He wasn’t tumbling at all. Instead, he was standing on a ledge about a foot deep, holding on to the top of the wall.
“Let go! Let go!” shouted Gilbert as he hammered on Matt’s fingers with his fists. Then he began to prise the fingers off.
Now, the top of this concrete wall formed a lip that protruded about ten centimetres. And strung under the outside lip was a black cable: one of those heavy, armour-plated electrical cables. Matt let go with his right hand and got his fingers round this cable just as his left hand was levered into space.
Again Gilbert peered over, hoping to see a bungee jumper flying without ropes. But no, Matt was still there, holding onto the cable with a grip that nothing would break. Well, not nothing – a panga would do the trick. But he didn’t have a fucking panga. All he had was a fucking dinky little Swiss Army pocketknife.
If only he hadn’t left his gun in the car.
Funny enough, as this thought crossed Gilbert’s mind, a related one entered Matt’s. He could feel the heavy hardness of his Glock 17 pressed between him and the wall. It was in the right hand pocket of his windbreaker.
Just as Gilbert climbed up onto the wall, open penknife at the ready, Matt let go with his right hand and fumbled with the Velcro flap. Gilbert was kneeling above him.
Matt straightened his left arm and let his body hang out at an angle, his feet firmly on the ledge. As his assailant, his life-long buddy, his childhood bum chum prepared to start hacking at his hand, he slowly brought the pistol up and took aim.
The gun was steady and the moment was frozen. Gilbert had paused and was looking straight down the barrel. He looked surprised. But he was also never more certain about the immediate future than at that instant.
When the hole appeared in the middle of Gilbert’s forehead Matt felt a certain aesthetic thrill. It was the cheap aesthetics of a Hollywood movie. It looked just right and it had been so easy.
Gilbert slowly toppled forward and then, with gathering speed, fell sideways and entered free space and commenced his descent to Bloukranz Zero.
*
When Matt opened the driver’s door and got in behind the wheel, Rose looked up, startled. She had been lost in some sort of narcotic dwaal. Then her charcoal eyes went big as ping-pong balls and the shock robbed her of oxygen and her throat went constricted like a fish’s anus.
“Where’s Gilbert?” she finally managed to say, her voice rising so steeply it nearly fell back on itself.
Matt said nothing. He started the engine, selected DRIVE, and pulled away hard. He didn’t need to say anything. She could see his hands, couldn’t she? And the torn clothing. And the splotches of blood.
As he left the car park she began to scream. She screamed to the bridge and all the way across it. Only on the other side did she stop screaming and slump sideways against the door, face in hands, her body convulsing. Each terrible sob was drawn out of her on the barb of a long strand of razor wire.
*
They reached the last bridge of the day as the sun began to drop behind the vulgar villas of Plettenberg Bay. This was the bridge over the Keurbooms River and it was low and entirely unsuitable for suicide. Unless you were a pseudo suicide: the type who hangs himself with thin string; or carefully slits her wrists just before the visitors are due, and mentions her blood group in the suicide note. That type of bridge.
On the other side Matt turned off the highway and followed a road heading upstream along the west bank. There was a big sign and several flagpoles. FOREVER RESORTS PLETTENBERG BAY. Self-catering chalets, caravan and camping sites, boating. Lawns flowed down to the river, edges were neatly clipped, and the signage was freshly painted.
The office was in a wooden building overhung by tall yellow woods and festooned with bougainvillaea. He parked and went in, taking the keys with him.
“Is there anywhere to buy take-aways around here?” he asked, after booking into a chalet.
“Plenty in Plettenberg Bay,” said one of the women behind the desk.
“You could try in the camp site,” the other one said. “Sometimes they sell boerekos at the kiosk.”
He showed his newly-acquired pass at the pole and plank entrance structure and the security guards raised the boom and let the car through.
He ignored the sign pointing into the trees where the chalets nestled, and kept on straight. The car moved forward at little more than a walking pace, and they passed a slipway and saw the laager up ahead.
Beneath the Keurboom trees a long tapering terrace was divided into some 100 or more sites and most of them were occupied. Dense forest rose steeply to the left, brooding over the campsite. Two hundred metres across the river, the opposite side of the gorge rose almost shear and then angled back into the mountains. In the grey light the river itself looked black and glossy.
Perverse yellow flames waved and flashed from dozens of fireplaces, and woods
moke hung in the trees. The engine purring, they moved almost silently between the rows of tents and caravans and campers.
“Jesus,” said Matt. “This is a fucking time warp. This is AWB country. This is the Boeremag.”
And indeed it was a flashback to the old South Africa. These people cooking their suppers on open fires, trying to hold on to a time when things were better, far better. Times when you could treat a kaffir like a kaffir and everyone knew where they stood. Not like now, when white people are being murdered and raped all over the republic, systematically, like it was ANC strategy.
But he had to admit that these people camped in style. Every conceivable convenience. He even caught sight of an ironing board, for God’s sake!
They passed an old man sitting in a deckchair in front of his caravan tent staring out at the river and the deepening shadows. Matt looked into his face and saw the brutal features and in the eyes a look of hatred mingled with bitter disappointment.
This old man was thinking of the times when they had come here long ago and felt safe and light-hearted. When they’d been able to bring servants. And when the Vrou had been acting snaaks and was lying down with menstrual cramp, he’d been able to go out the back where the maid was busy with the skottelgoed, and he’d been able to lift her skirt, right there, with her black hands in the white suds, and he’d been able to get rid of his frustration. Just like that, no questions asked. Those were the days.
Spaza shop coming up. Shit, he’d better not mention that word in the presence of these guys. Kiosk or winkeltjie, if he didn’t want one of them to pull out a geweer and blast his rooinek kneecaps to pieces.
A man wearing a hunting hat with a leopard skin headband was standing before a portable braai turning sausages on the grid. Fat hissed and spat on the coals and the smell made Matt feel weak with hunger. He bought four boerewors rolls and then some potjiekos at the kiosk. Sheep’s knuckles with potatoes, carrots and turnips. It was in a litre plastic ice-cream container and still felt hot.
There were some screw-top bottles on display. They contained a clear liquid and the handmade labels said OOM DOLF SE DINAMIET, and there was a skull and crossbones.
“Is that witblits?” Matt asked the hugely obese woman behind the counter.
She didn’t reply for a moment. Her expression was hostile, probably because she was reluctant to converse in English. But a sale’s a sale.
“Ja, witblits,” she said. “It can send you blind, and mal ook. You drink it on your own risiko.”
He took a bottle.
Back in the car he offered Rose one of the hotdogs, but she wasn’t talking to him – or even looking at him. Well, that wasn’t going to stop him getting some food into his stomach.
The timber chalets, about 20 of them, were situated in the mouth of a kloof lying at right angles to the river. High forest crowded the narrow clearing and the place had a sombre, isolated feel to it. It seemed cut off not only from the rest of the resort, but from the rest of the world.
Their cabin, no. 2, was at the top end of the kloof where the ground began to rise. None of the other chalets was occupied, and the workers had knocked off and gone home. The place was deserted – except for the monkeys.
19
As they drew into the parking bay alongside the chalet, a number of monkeys scattered upward and outward, and were soon swinging in the high branches of the forest. Then they disappeared into the deepening gloom.
He got out and unlocked the door. An open living area with kitchen and the usual mod cons. Two bunk beds against the wall, a door leading to the bathroom. To his right, the bedroom. He put his head in and saw the double bed.
“Come on in,” he said to her. It was an order.
Slowly she got out of the car and came inside. She glanced into the bedroom and then stood in the middle of the living room with her arms folded. After a while she went to the bathroom and closed the door.
He fetched their luggage from the car. Hers, he put in the bedroom. His, he dumped on the bunk bed. Before closing the boot he stood for a moment looking down at the remaining bag, and he was back at the bridge. It had been self-defence. They’d been trying to kill him.
Not five metres from the chalet was the indigenous forest, just the other side of a drainage ditch. The two dustbins had been overturned and their contents spewed on the ground. The monkeys had rifled through the stuff and spread it around. Typical middle class rubbish. Garbage. ‘Waste’ was a good word. Wine bottles, breakfast cereal box, orange peel, a used condom, chop bones, bits of cotton wool, egg box, banana skin, medicine bottle, torn bacon packet, shampoo bottle, egg shells, soiled paper napkins, a 15-volt battery.
He went inside and turned on the electric kettle. Rose should drink something hot and sweet. She emerged from the bathroom and he went in after her. As he stood before the toilet relieving himself it occurred to him that she could be fleeing. She could have jumped in the car and driven off; or run down the road screaming for help; or hidden in the forest.
When he opened the door she was standing before the big window looking out.
“The monkeys are in the car,” she said.
Damn! Why didn’t she…? He wanted to shout at her angrily, the way his mother had taught him. Over the years he had picked up the tendency to blame others for his own shortcomings. But this was clearly his fault – the driver’s door stood wide open. And he was well aware of the damage these vervet monkeys could wreak on the interior of a car. Fuck the little bastards!
He rushed forward and promptly tripped on the sill of the doorframe and sprawled forward. Christ the pain! He had landed on all fours, but as luck would have it, it was his bad knee that struck the ground first.
Cursing and groaning in agony he tried to get to his feet. Then he let out a horrible shout of rage that was directed at the whole world, including himself but above all at the verminous creatures in the vehicle. Two of them leapt out and bolted for the greenery. As the third member of the trio tried to follow suit Matt lunged forward. The heavy door slammed shut on the monkey’s tail and it screamed.
Rose also screamed from behind the glass.
“Matt, a baby! She’s got a baby!”
And so she did. The little thing was desperately trying to stay on its mother’s back, its arms about her neck. Matt grabbed its tail and yanked it off, and it instinctively sank its needle teeth into his thumb. More pain and damage to his person!
He punched its head away with his left fist and hurled the little devil against the cabin wall. Again he had it by the tail, swung it up high overhead and brought it down like cracking a whip, head first onto the concrete step. POP-SPLAT!
Now for the adult, which was still trying to break from the metal jaws clamped shut on its tail. He hobbled over to the outdoor furniture, picked up a plastic chair and began to club the monkey with it. This wasn’t nearly as effective as a garden spade and he had to hit the animal at least twenty times before he could pronounce it quite dead.
Man, he was unfit! A little bit of exercise and the air was rasping in his throat and burning in his lungs. And his heart was pounding furiously. There was no sign of Rose.
He opened the car door and released the broken tail. Then he dragged both monkeys round the back of the building, righted one of the dustbins, and dumped the bodies in it. The mother’s tail hung over the side.
In the chalet the bathroom door was closed and he could hear the sound of retching. It was almost dark. He turned on the lights and drew the curtain and locked the door. As he pocketed the key it occurred to him to remove the bedroom door’s key as well. You never know.
He found his medicine bag and took two Voltaren and two Syndol. The pain in his knee was excruciating, and his punctured thumb was beginning to throb – probably bitten to the bone. In half an hour he should start to feel some relief. As he washed his hands at the sink he felt a twinge of anxiety at the thought of his thumb going septic. He might even get tetanus or rabies. Then he remembered that it didn’t matte
r. How could he have forgotten?
Now for a dop. He poured a good shot of Oom Dolf’s dynamite into a tall glass and sipped. Sho! This was pure spirit. He topped up with a Smirnoff Twist and took a gulp. That’s better.
The toilet flushed; there was running water; and then the door opened and Rose came into the room and sat down in an easy chair. Of course she’d been crying – that’s what women do when they get distressed. Matt took another trek, struggled to his feet, and turned the kettle on again. As it began to boil he prepared a mug with coffee, sugar and creamer.
“Here, drink this,” he said, putting it on the coffee table before her.
He resumed his seat. The anti-inflammatories, the analgesics and the alcohol were beginning to take effect. Now he was getting hungry.
“Rose,” he said, “drink that fucking coffee, alright? I didn’t get up and make you a cup of coffee for it to stand there and get cold. Alright?”
She sat forward and took the mug and cupped its warmth in her hands and took a sip. She wouldn’t meet his eyes but he could see the change in her. This was something new.
“Rose?”
She glanced up. Ah! There it was. Her charcoal eyes were filled with fear. Would you believe it? Rose was quivering with terror, not knowing what he, Matt Arsehole Dreyer, was going to do next.
“Are you going to have something to eat?”
“No,” she said immediately. “Really, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to keep anything down.”
He put the potjiekos in the microwave and while it heated he had one of the remaining boerewors rolls. This was what he needed to soak up the booze and to give him energy.
The sheep’s knuckle stew was excellent. The meat was so tender it fell off the bone, and the vegetables were firm yet succulent, having cooked slowly in the pot’s juices. And there was at least another serving left over.