Absolution (15 page)

(But how can we say that? You say in your last notebook,
He is mine for now, I his, it has been silently agreed
. We have not asked him. How can we presume to know his thoughts, to assume his consent?)

At the top, where the mountains levelled off, you relaxed for a moment, exhaled the breaths you had been holding, knew you would have to stop, realizing it would be suicide to navigate the hairpin turns winding across and out of those mountains at night. A stand of pines in the landscape of low shrubs and
grasses reared up, darker against the sky, concealing a campsite with rudimentary facilities. You half-remembered it from our family holiday, when the four of us drove the passes in a state of anxious wonder.

A campfire was visible amongst the trees and you decided to take the risk. Keeping to yourselves, you would sleep in the truck. There were chemical toilets at the edge of the site, a hundred metres from the campfire, against which you could see a figure hunching. Waiting by the outhouse, you scanned the darkness for noises and movement, listening to Sam urinating and vomiting and the boom of an eagle owl,
hoot HOOT, hoot HOOT, hoot HOOT
. You called to Sam through the unit’s blue plastic wall.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ his voice was wet and choked.

‘Do you need help?’ you asked, turning your back on the campfire.

‘No.’

It had the suddenness of an attack, the man appearing out of the night, silent, standing beside you, his head shaved, glistening, eyes pale and metallic in the dark. ‘Howzit?’ he said, casually offering his hand.

‘Hello.’

‘Are you okay?’ the man asked.

‘We’re fine. The boy’s sick.’

‘Shame. I have some medicine if you need it.’

‘That’s very kind.’

‘I’ll go get it. Wait here.’

You did not know whether to trust him, and were deciding to leave when a second man appeared, as tawny and fair as the other was hard and dark. A jackal and a lion. The first man returned with a bottle of tablets. ‘Do you have water? Good. He should take only one now, and then another in the morning if he’s not better. I’ll give you four,’ he said, handing over half what he had.
‘You can get others tomorrow if you need. You’re driving through the pass tonight?’

‘I have to get to Prince Albert,’ you lied.

‘This road isn’t safe after dark. Quite apart from the road itself, and the size of your truck, there have been hijackings. You’re welcome to stay here with my friend and me. I’m Timothy. He’s called Lionel. You and your boy can have our tent. We’ll sleep outside. It won’t rain up here tonight. You don’t need to be afraid of us’ – an easy assurance, one you would have been foolish to accept at face value, but Timothy’s voice and his accent (if not his eyes) reassured you, as did the tablets with a brand name you recognized, triggering an unbidden memory of an advertisement, an animated graphic of a simplified digestive system, angry red, turning reassuringly blue.

‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’ You caught yourself again, doing what you did not intend. Had you lost the capacity to say no, or did you sense some kind of salvation in those men who presented themselves like angels, and believe in their beneficence?

*

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION
4
JUNE
1996,
CAPE TOWN

VICTIM:
Louis Louw

VIOLATION:
Injured in ANC Bomb Attack

TESTIMONY FROM:
Louis Louw

CHAIRPERSON:
Thank you for your patience Mr Louw. I believe the microphone is working now. Please would you just lean forward and be good enough to speak into it clearly.

M
R LOUW:
What do you want me to [
indistinct
] or what?

CHAIRPERSON:
That’s fine, Mr Louw, the microphone is working now and I [
pause … indistinct
] begin again. No, there is still a problem. The translators are having difficulty. A moment while they make an adjustment. There it is? Okay? Is everything in order now? Good. We may continue. My apologies, Mr Louw. You may take your time, there is no hurry. Now, are you comfortable as you are?

MR LOUW:
As comfortable as I will be.

CHAIRPERSON:
Very well. You will tell us please if you need anything, or if you want to take a break. We all appreciate how difficult this can be. Have you been following the other hearings, and the testimony of those who appeared earlier today?

MR LOUW:
Yes.

CHAIRPERSON:
So you know the kinds of questions we might ask and the kinds of things we will want to hear from you, or that you might tell us about yourself, to give us a, a better sense of this, of the terrible impact of this event on your person and on your life
and on the lives of your loved ones, your family, I mean, and those close to you.

MR
LOUW
: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON:
Could you tell us something about yourself, about who you were, and where you had come from, so to speak, at the time of the bombing?

MR
LOUW
: You see, I was just an ordinary man. I had grown up here, gone to the schools here, member of this very church. I was baptized in this church, and so were my brothers and sisters. My people have always been here, you see, for hundreds of years.

CHAIRPERSON:
Please, can we have quiet in the room. Please. Mr Louw must be allowed to speak. If there are any further interruptions I will have to clear the room. Please continue, Mr Louw.

MR
LOUW
: I was just a clerk at the time of the attack. I pushed paper back and forth, you see. I was just only a clerk at the time. I had never raised a hand in anger at anyone in my life.

CHAIRPERSON:
Did you not fulfil the national service requirement?

MR
LOUW
: Yes, but that was orders. I’m talking about in everyday life you must understand. This attack happened in everyday life, me just minding my own business, and in everyday life we always got along with everyone, our family. We were always good to the people. I married just before I got the job as clerk and at the time of the attack we had a boy aged three and a baby girl, just turned one. We had a little house over on Weymouth Road and everything was good. My parents were proud of me because I had a good government job. I had been not such a good student at school and I think they were worried that I might not do so well in my life, that perhaps maybe I was on the wrong path when I was a youth but I decided to turn my life around after my national service and I was committed. I was a very hard worker at the time
then. So you see what it was I lost in the terrible thing that they did to me and others. I had my family, my livelihood, a good job. So what I want to know is, what is this committee going to do to make up for what I lost? What are you going to give me? Because I did nothing to deserve this.

CHAIRPERSON:
Can you tell us, Mr Louw, about the day of the attack and what exactly happened on that day?

MR LOUW:
Ja, it was a long time ago now, almost a decade, and because of the medicine I take the doctors say I have places that I black out, my memory has holes in it and so I cannot say that it is that I remember everything clearly you understand from that day itself. If you don’t believe me you can ask my doctor here what the names of the medicines are and he will tell you they keep me from making bad memories of that day. It’s very special medicine this stuff. You can ask if you don’t believe.

CHAIRPERSON:
That won’t be necessary, Mr Louw. We believe what you’re saying.

MR LOUW:
It is all a little too confusing in my memory for me to know that I remember it as it happened so you will forgive me if there are gaps in my story but I am trying my best to help and to cooperate with this here today because I hope that maybe the government is going to be able to do something to give me back what I lost on that day.

CHAIRPERSON:
We understand, Mr Louw. You have been diagnosed with PTSD, treatment for which is ongoing.

MR LOUW:
I’m getting treatment, yes, but I don’t think I’ll ever be cured you see, and as I say the medicine they give me might be affecting my memory and other things also.

CHAIRPERSON:
That is all understood. Perhaps you could begin with what you remember from that day.

MR
LOUW
: I remember getting up and already my wife had breakfast ready. And I remember standing at the sink in our kitchen and my two children there at breakfast looking happy and that was a wonderful thing that day, a wonderful feeling that started that day, and I thought things are good, the family will go on, continue. You may think that is funny some of you, but it was important to me that I maintain the family line if you like, and it was good to look at my two healthy children who looked like me and my parents and my wife and her family there that morning. That is a good memory and the doctors say I should try to focus on that, so I remember the orange housedress my wife was wearing and that I had eggs and bacon for breakfast because it was the end of the week and it was a treat. But it is also a sad memory too because it was the last time we were like that, the four of us. After breakfast I had a shower and put on my uniform that my wife had ironed and I drove to work. It was a slow morning and a very hot morning, I think, it must have been at least thirty-five degrees that day. If you don’t believe me you can check with the weather records and they will show you that it was hot and you know what it is like when the weather is that hot, you have difficulty thinking quickly, clearly, that’s the way it was that day. Your brain does not work so well on hot days. I think perhaps there were forms to fill out or a memo to write at the office, an end-of-the-week report or an internal memo of some kind but that’s something I don’t remember clearly any more you see, what exactly I had to do on that day. You understand you are asking me to remember what the doctors have tried to help me to forget and I am trying [
indistinct
] I am trying very hard to help you with this because I want people to know what happened to people like me.

CHAIRPERSON:
Would you like to take a break to compose yourself, Mr Louw?

MR LOUW:
No, I’m fine. Rather let’s just get it done. So after the morning I had my lunch, and it was just after lunch that it happened. You understand, it was because it was a government office, that was the reason we were targeted. They did not care, those people, who they went after, what lives they might be destroying in the process. It happened so quickly I don’t think any of us understood what it was. The post had arrived and I had the box on my lap and didn’t think twice about it because it looked like all the file boxes I would receive every Friday through the internal mail. I just assumed it was the ordinary batch of files for me to process and the next thing I knew I was on my back on the floor and there was water falling down into my face and there were fires burning all around me and people screaming and crying, and there [
indistinct
] explosions, because none of us knew that they had
[END OF TAPE
4,
SIDE B.]
and if not then I say we should have been told. I couldn’t move and had to wait to be rescued and I just lay there wondering if anyone was going to come for me and then finally one of the cleaners, I can’t remember her name, God save her, she saw me and she lifted up what was left of me and she carried me outside into the street and the ambulance took me away. I slept a long time after that and when I woke up finally it was only then that I realized I had lost everything, my legs almost to the hip, my right arm to the shoulder, and my left arm to the elbow, sight in one eye, my right eye, and the doctors said I was lucky it wasn’t worse.

CHAIRPERSON:
And how did your family react?

MR LOUW:
To them I was a hero just because I survived but I said no, you must rather not call me a hero because I was the one who set off the first bomb that day. I was the one that opened that box. I should have been more careful with the package. Maybe I don’t know there was some clue on the box if I’d looked carefully that would have told me it was rigged. They trained us for that kind of thing but you get careless, you get a little lazy I guess maybe.
My wife was good at first, she looked after me, and there was the pension, but then she couldn’t take it any longer. I could not blame her, if I’m being honest, because you know I simply was not a man any more and imagine what I looked like then, you see what I’m like now when the wounds have long healed. I could do nothing for her. And with the two kids it was too much for her to do on her own, so she went away and took the kids to live with her parents up north and I sold the house and moved back in with my own parents because I could not look after myself at the time then. I am getting better now and the government has looked after me somewhat, even the new one. I have to give them credit for that at least. My wife is remarried now and I don’t get to see my children so often because I can’t afford to visit and she can’t afford to send them to see me. It’s not the way it should be you see, and I blame that on the attack that day, not on her, I know it’s not her fault. What else can I do? I ask you, members of the committee, what else am I supposed to do? What are you going to do to help me?

CHAIRPERSON:
Would you like to say anything, Mr Louw, to those who have accepted responsibility for the attack?

MR LOUW
: What can I say? I guess it was war. But they were fighting us, and we were just defending ourselves. That’s all. And me I was just a clerk.

CHAIRPERSON:
Quiet please. That really is the last warning. If there is another outburst I will have to clear the room.

Sam

Despite her initial insistence that she wouldn’t do so, Clare begins to let me see business correspondence with her agents and publishers. When I arrive now for further interviews, there is a file waiting for me on the coffee table in her study. We talk in the morning, eat lunch together, and then I’m allowed to examine the papers in another room, make notes, photograph them if I want, and ask her questions, although there’s still an edge of ice beneath the surface. She is reserved and distant and acts scornful about the project. Biography is the work of the second rate, she says. Biography is cannibalism and vampirism. I have not heard her say
darling
again, and suspect I won’t. It was an uncharacteristic moment of weakness.