Absolution (36 page)

‘So you must remember the particulars of the house invasion,’ Clare said, pushing aside her plate. ‘The incompetence of the police, the failure to locate any viable suspects or follow any of the evidentiary leads, the fact that a great many things of obvious
value – electronics and silver and the like – were ignored in preference for an object of no obvious value except perhaps to a collector of legal paraphernalia.’

‘Grandpa’s wig.’

‘Quite.’

‘And the police never solved the case.’

‘It was a travesty of investigation and legal process. They accused me of being something like a criminal for living in so vulnerable a position, as though Rondebosch were Langa, and they made insinuations about my long-term safety, even my right to remain in this country as a white woman, never mind the validity of my birthright to call myself a citizen of the republic. They suggested I was a foreigner, or if not an actual foreigner, then in essence no different to one.’

‘If it were a matter of all the white women leaving the country, I’ve begun to think that one would find a great many supporters for such a solution.’

It was not something Clare herself would have said – indeed, she thought it far from accurate, and began to see that her son’s politics were not as progressive as she had once believed.

‘In any case,’ she continued, ‘what is important about the recent events is that the wig was returned – at least, it has come back to me, and, I think, was intended to do so all along. Though it was left up to me to find it, it was hiding in plain sight, and not even hiding, but broadcasting its location in a most symbolic way.’

‘I don’t follow. The police solved the case after all?’

‘Some months after the invasion and theft, on a particularly pleasant day, Marie suggested we go for a drive to Stellenbosch, and on the way back visit Nora and Stephan’s graves in Paarl. In the cemetery, just adjacent to the eternal flame that Stephan’s family had insisted on, as though he were some kind of national hero, as though, through its ongoing illumination, his ideas were worth commemorating, there was my father’s wig in its box with his name stencilled on the lid in gold.’

Clare watched Mark take in the information and then, seeing that some part of him did not believe her story, she left the dining room and returned a moment later with the battered black tin box in her hands. Mark opened it, removed the wig, mounted it on the head of his left hand, and turned the hairpiece round to examine it.

‘It’s certainly the one,’ he said. ‘I was obsessed with this wig as a child.’

‘Apart from photographs and books and his collection of pens it was the only thing of my father’s that I truly cared about when he died. I had no idea it meant anything to you.’ She shook her head back into focus. ‘So: the wig is stolen, it disappears for a period, the police can find no leads, the police baulk at being asked even to investigate the theft of an item so obviously without significant value, and when next I think to visit the grave of my assassinated sister and brother-in-law I find it there, as if awaiting me, as if left as a message and reminder. Not, in fact,
as if
, but very intentionally, I believe, the wig was taken from me and removed to that symbolic place as a way for my tormentors to speak to me.’

‘What on earth do you mean, Mother?’

Clare tried to remain composed, but how infuriating her son could be!

‘You’re saying that the thieves
knew
who you were and that Nora was your sister. So all it means is that you were
deliberately
targeted rather than being the victim of a random crime. Beyond that, I really don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

Clare sighed dramatically and motioned to Mark to give her the wig. She tucked a stray hair back into place, returned it to its tin box, closed and fastened the lid. ‘Correct. There was nothing random about the invasion, nor were the intruders ordinary criminals – or if they were, they were acting on behalf of people who are not ordinary criminals. Who can say whether my tormentors, for that is how I think of them, are the ones who actually did the dirty work, or were nothing more than the
puppets of those who wished to tell me what they knew about me in the most personally intrusive and intimidating if ultimately quite petty way. It’s the kind of stunt that might be masterminded by a bureaucrat, an administrator who takes perverse delight in the meaning and value of a staple or paperclip or a tape-dispenser.’

‘I still don’t follow. What are you suggesting these tormentors, as you call them, actually knew about you?’

Clare took a deep breath and spread her hands. ‘Here we come to the long tail of the root, clinging to its earth of history. This is information that will change how you think of your mother – information that will, I fear, batter our relationship into something lesser, a thing scarred and defeated and spooked by the revelation.’

‘You make it sound as though you were the criminal instead of the people who broke in.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, her voice growing hoarse, her chin quivering despite herself, ‘that is the very thing I am, a criminal, and not in the way the police suggested, not because I allowed myself to become a victim through my own failures of security, such as they were, but a true criminal.’

She let the confession settle between them, waiting for Mark’s response. He furrowed his brow and looked as though he did not believe her.

‘Or, perhaps I should put it this way. Even if the crime is not a crime as such, I do and can only regard myself as guilty of something like criminal negligence, or if not negligence, then recklessness – recklessness with the lives of others, recklessness with information that endangered those lives. During the whole circus of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission I thought of doing something symbolic and audacious – that is, applying for amnesty as a political criminal. Ultimately, however, I lacked the courage, and did not want to trivialize the much more serious crimes committed by those guilty at less than one remove, as I ostensibly am. Nonetheless, a part of me still feels that an amnesty hearing is what I most need – a judicial process, a hearing of the
truth in a formal way, and a judge to pass sentence, to tell me that the thing I did was done not just out of personal spite, but for political reasons.’

Mark sat up straighter in his chair. If he did not understand the nature of his mother’s crime, she hoped he might appreciate the urgency of her need. ‘But the proceedings of the Amnesty Committee are finished now, and have been for some time,’ he said, looking perplexed.

‘I quite understand that. I know there is no real hope of actual political amnesty.’

‘So what – are you thinking of turning yourself over to the police for whatever crime you imagine you’ve committed?’

‘I have bad relations with the police as it is. They would think I was mocking them after the whole wig imbroglio. I am certain they would not take my confession seriously – they might even charge me with wasting police time. No, this is no longer a matter for the authorities.’

Clare looked at her son, his expression fixed, all good humour and affection suppressed.

‘You see, the root of the tail begins with you,’ she said. Mark’s left eyebrow flared at its outer tip but the rest of his face remained fixed, jaws working his food. ‘You were the first grandchild in the family, though Nora had been married a decade longer than I and had produced no issue. As a result, you caused considerable bad feeling between my sister and me. My pregnancy and your successful birth, your extreme, translucent beauty as a baby, these were streams of oil poured on the fire that had separated Nora from me since my own birth. Some first-born children adapt. They take well to those who follow. They are instinctive nurturers and protectors and guides, as you were with Laura – at least in your better moments. My sister had none of that nurturing sense, or if she did, it was so eclipsed by her rage at my usurping her position as the sole focus of our parents’ attention that the only way she could respond to me was with resentment and hatred – resenting
my coming, and hating my being. I will spare you the catalogue of her offences against me as a child: the burnings and beatings, the trickery and abuse, the destruction of my most treasured books, her attempt to undermine my happy relations with our parents. It was only on this last point that she failed, and in failing was fully exposed to them for the terrorist she had been. Not just a terrorist, but my jailer and torturer, my own nursery sadist.’

As she spoke, Clare observed Mark’s face crease in disbelief.

‘I know you think I exaggerate – in this, in all things – but please hear me out. It was during the winter holidays and we were spending a week with Uncle Richard and Aunt Frances on the farm to coincide with Dorothy’s twelfth birthday. I had only just turned eleven myself. Frances had planned a party for the family and some of Dorothy’s friends from her school in Grahamstown. With the help of my mother, who as you must remember was an excellent cook, Frances had produced a stunningly beautiful cake for the occasion. At the hour of its presentation, with all the family and friends and neighbours and even the household staff and their children assembled to watch Dorothy blow out the candles, Aunt Frances went to fetch the cake from the pantry. As we were waiting, we heard her cry out, then reappear looking pale and shocked. In her hands she held the platter on which the cake had been decorated, and on top of the cake was a large pile of dog shit, a great brown splotch. Dorothy burst into tears as Frances looked for explanation. The assembled children, and not a few of their parents, erupted with laughter. As if this weren’t shocking enough, Nora stepped forward and pointed at me. In her most self-righteous voice she announced that she had seen me earlier in the back garden, collecting the dog shit with a trowel. But before I could even protest – I’d done nothing of the kind, but had been playing hide-and-seek with Dorothy and some of her friends all morning, so had no alibi for the entire period – one of the servants’ children screamed that Nora was a liar, and that he had watched
her
collecting the dog shit and had watched
her
carrying it into the pantry and sneaking out again before anyone else could see. The child shouted this with such conviction that no one, I think, could have doubted the truth of what he said.

‘Had it been left at that, it would have been forgotten, because to punish Nora on the word of that child would have been unthinkable, even to our egalitarian-minded parents. While the adults might have believed the boy, a part of them would have elected to disbelieve him because of his colour, and that disbelief would have won the day. But Nora could not leave the accusation alone, and at the same time was too young to know how to handle her accuser in a way that would have made her look like the innocent, wronged party – the role that I, in fact, inhabited. Having been wrongly accused, I stood through the entire drama as the truly innocent so often will: shocked and silent with my mouth agape. Nora, however, rushed at her accuser and pulled at his shirt and slapped him across the face two or three times before my father and Uncle Richard could pull her away from the boy, who was half her age and less than half her size.

‘After that day, I marked a change in the way my parents handled Nora. She was no longer trusted to look after me or any other child. She was given no responsibilities at home. My parents were still warm with her, but in a more distant way, as though she had done something so outrageous that they could never see her again as they had before. The crime of putting dog shit on our cousin’s twelfth-birthday cake would have been forgivable, even understandable. It was chiefly about jealousy – if not of Dorothy, then perhaps, indirectly, of me. But Nora compounded that crime first by accusing me of what
she
had done – thereby trying to undermine our parents’ affection for me – and second by assaulting the only witness to the actual crime.’

‘So,’ Mark said, the furrows of his brow deepening, ‘you’re saying that the real problem, as far as your parents were concerned, was that Nora had committed a premeditated crime designed to destroy their good impression of you, the favoured child.’

‘How do you conclude that I was the favoured child?’

‘You must have been, or Nora must have believed you were, if she felt pushed to do what she did – if she felt so marginalized already that she could only do something to make you look bad.’

Clare observed a shift in Mark’s attitude, as though his mind required a legal problem to master and direct his attention, and to make this encounter with his mother less difficult to bear.

‘I had never quite considered it in that way. The greatest crime was the assault on the truth-teller – the powerless one who has nothing to lose by speaking the truth, or who has everything to lose but doesn’t know what he has to lose, and therefore
must
be telling the truth.’

‘What happened to the child?’

‘As far as I remember, he was taken inside the house and had cold compresses applied to his face and was given sweet tea and a piece of the reserve cake Aunt Frances had made in case there was not enough of the first. That other cake had been hidden, safe in the airing cupboard. There was plenty of the reserve, and we all rallied our spirits for Dorothy’s sake. Nora, however, disappeared with my father. I cannot say whether she was beaten. I suspect she was not. My parents never punished me physically, and I have no memory that they ever did so to Nora. Rather, I suspect she was subjected to one of my father’s philosophical interrogations, which were often as painful as a beating might have been for the way in which he could make one feel totally exposed, unable to hide, and diminished to something less than the ideal child one was expected to be – less than that, but not less than human. My father knew how to tread that line, to make us see our faults without destroying our sense of our own humanity. After I was married, and more particularly after you were born, things became much worse between Nora and me. The question is, did I ultimately do what I did because of all the terrors Nora inflicted on me, or because of my own sense of investment in a moral and political and democratic struggle? The political or the personal?’