He was thinking of the moment when the door had opened, thinking of his self-control, his victory of reason over instinct, suppressing the almost irresistible impulse, and he was filled with satisfaction. He felt like telling Miriam. Sometime he would phone her and tell her he was okay. She would be worried. But what tales he would have to tell Pakamile in the evenings. Koos Kok the Gri-qua. Dont you know about Adam Kok, Xhosa? He went to live with you guys. And he heard the short version of that history.
The brandy had made him drowsy, and as they turned toward Loxton on the tar road between Rosedene and Slangfontein, the soft rocking of the Chevy lulled him to sleep. His last thoughts were of a river god. Otto Müller had told of the theory of two British scientists that animals deliberately behave unpredictably in order to survive, the way the hare flees from the dog.
Does it run in a straight line? Of course not. If it runs in a straight line, it will be caught. So it zigzags. But not predictably. Now zigging, then zagging, the dog always guessing, never knowing. The British scientists called it protean behavior.
After the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will from a stone to a tree, from a tree to an animal, in order to confound his enemies.
The big, bad Xhosa biker had become the big, bad Xhosa passenger. Müller would have approved of the change of form to avoid the opponent.
His last conscious thought as he slipped into a deep, restful, satisfying sleep was of his friend Zatopek van Heerden, who would not believe that he had become the Proteus of his inherent nature.
* * *
Allison Healy had knocked, walked around the house, knocked again, but there was no life there. She leaned against her car in the driveway and waited. Perhaps Monica Kleintjes had gone out for a while. The photographer had come and left again, saying he could not wait, he had to get to the airport Bobby Skinstad was arriving after the losing rugby tour to Europe. He took some pictures of the house, just in case. It was not an unusually large house, pretty garden, big trees, tranquilly unaware of the drama that surrounded the occupants.
She lit a cigarette. She was comfortable with her habit, ten a day, sometimes less. Nowadays there were few places where one could smoke. It was her appetite suppressant, her consolation prize, an escape to small oases through the day.
She had learned it from Nic.
Nic had seduced her while he was still married.
Nic said he had the hots for her from day one when she had walked into the SAPS office to introduce herself. He said he couldnt help it.
The affair had lasted sixteen months. An uncomplicated, chainsmoking man, a good man, basically, if you left his unfaithfulness to his wife out of the equation. Emotionally needy, not very attractive, an unexceptional lover. But then she was no great judge of that. Five men, since that first time at university.
She and Nic in her flat once or twice a week. Why had she let it happen?
Because she was lonely.
A thousand acquaintances and not one bosom friend. This was the lot of the fat girl in a world of skinny standards. Or was that just her excuse?
The truth was that she could not find her place. She was a round peg in a world of square holes. She could not find a group where she felt at home among friends.
Not even with Nic.
It felt better after he left, lying naked alone on the bed, sexually sated, with music and a cigarette, than it did in the moment of passion, the peak of orgasm.
She did not love him. Just liked him a lot. She did still, but after the divorce and the guilt he carried around like a ball and chain, she had ended the relationship.
He still asked every now and then. Could we start again? Just one more time? She considered it. Sometimes seriously because of the desire to be held, to be caressed
He had liked her body. You are sexy, Allison. Your breasts
Maybe that was the thing, he had accepted her body. Because she could not change it, the curves were genetic, passed on from grandmother to mother to daughter in an unbroken succession, stout people, plump women, regardless of the best efforts of diets and exercise programs.
She crushed the cigarette into the grass with the tip of her shoe. The butt lay there like a reproach. She picked it up and threw it behind a shrub in a bed of daisies.
Where was Monica Kleintjes?
Her cell phone rang.
Its the boss, Allison. Where are you?
Newlands.
You had better get back. The minister is doing a press conference in fifteen minutes.
Which one?
Intelligence.
Im on my way.
* * *
During the design and equipping of the interview/interrogation room of the Presidential Intelligence Unit, Janina Mentz has asked why a table was necessary. Nobody could give her an answer. That is why there wasnt one. She had asked why the chairs should be hard and uncomfortable. Why the walls must be bare except for the one with the one-way mirror. She asked whether a stripped, unpleasant, chilly room yielded better results than a comfortable one. Nobody could answer that. We are not running a police station was her argument. So there were three easy chairs of the sort that Lewis Stores or Star Furnishers sold in the hundreds for peoples sitting rooms. They were upholstered in practical brown and treated with stain-resistant chemicals. The only difference was that these chairs could not be moved, so no one could prevent or delay entry to the room by pushing the chairs under the door handle. The chairs were bolted down in an intimate triangle. The floor was covered in wall-to-wall carpet, uniform
beige,
not khaki, not pumpkin, but exactly to Janinas specification:
beige.
The microphone was concealed behind the fluorescent light in the ceiling, and the closed-circuit television was in the adjoining observation room, pointing its cyclopean eye through the one-way glass.
Janina stood by the camera and looked at the woman in one of the chairs. Interesting that everyone brought in chose the chair half turned away from the window. As if they could sense it.
Was this the result of too many television serials?
She was Miriam Nzululwazi, common-law wife of Thobela Mpayipheli.
What had Umzingeli seen in her?
She did not seem a cheerful type. She looked like someone who was chronically unhappy, the permanent lines of unhappi-ness around her mouth. No laugh lines.
She predicted that the woman would not cooperate. She expected her to be tense and hostile. Janina sighed. It had to be done.
* * *
Allisons phone rang as she climbed the stairs.
Its Nic.
Any news?
We dont have your Mrs. Nzululwazi.
Well, who has?
I dont know.
Can the intelligence services detain people? Without trial?
There are laws that are supposed to regulate them, but the intelligence people do as they please, because it is in the interest of the state and the people they work with are not the sort who run to the courts over irregular treatment.
And the drug angle?
I talked to Richter. He says Mpayipheli is well known. He worked for Orlando Arendse when he was Prince of the Cape Flats. No arrests, no record, but they were aware of him.
And Orlando Arendse was a dealer?
An importer and distributor. A wholesaler. Mpayipheli was a deterrent for dealers who would not pay. Or who did not reach their targets. Its another kind of business, that.
Where do I get hold of Arendse?
Allison, these are dangerous people.
Nic
Ill find out.
Thanks, Nic.
Theres something else.
Not now, Nic.
Its not about us.
What is it?
Memo from the minister. Strong steps if they catch anyone leaking information on the Mpayipheli affair to the media. Full cooperation with our intelligence colleagues, big mobilization in the Northern Cape.
You were not supposed to tell me that.
No.
I appreciate it.
I want to see you, Allison.
Good-bye, Nic.
Please. In a little-boy voice.
Nic
Please, just once.
And she weakened in the face of
everything.
Maybe.
Tonight?
No.
When then?
The weekend, Nic. Coffee somewhere.
Thanks. And he sounded so sincere that she felt guilty.
* * *
It had been fifteen years since Miriam Nzululwazis terrible night in the Caledon Square cells, but the fear she felt then made the jump to the present, here to the interrogation room. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair, but her eyes were blind to the wall they faced. She remembered one woman in the cell kept screaming, screaming, a sound that penetrated marrow and bone, a never-ending lament. The red-faced policeman, who opened the cell door and cleared a way through the perspiring bodies to the screaming one with his truncheon, raised the blunt object high above his head.
She was seventeen, on her way home to the thrown-together wooden hut on an overpopulated dune at Khayalitsha, her weeks wages clasped in her handbag, on the way to the buses at the Parade when the mass of demonstrators blocked the road. A seething mass like a noisy pregnant python curling past the town hall, banners waving, whistling, chanting, toyi-toyiing, shouting, a swinging carnival of protest over pay in the clothing industry or something. She had joined in, as they were flowing in her direction, laughing at the young men cavorting like monkeys, and suddenly the police were there, the tear gas, the charge, the water cannon the python had borne chaos.
They pushed her into the back of a big yellow lorry, pulled her out at the cells with the rest of the horde, shoved them into a cell, too full, nobody could sit and the screaming woman, wailing something about a child, she must go to her sick child, the red-faced white man threatening with the truncheon above his head, shouting, voice lost in the din, the arm dropping, again and again, and terror had overwhelmed Miriam she needed to escape, she pushed against the others, through the screaming women till she reached the bars, put her hands through them, and there were more policemen shouting, too, faces wild, till someone pulled her back, the lamenting voice suddenly quiet.
She felt the same fear now, in this closed space, the locked door, the locking up without reason, without guilt. She jumped as the door opened. A white woman entered, went to sit opposite her.
How can I convince you that we want to help Thobela? Ja-nina Mentz used his first name deliberately.
You cant keep me here. Miriam heard the fear in her own voice.
Maam, these people are misusing him. They are putting him in unnecessary danger. They have lied and misled him. They are not good people.
I dont believe you. He was Thobelas friend.
He was. Years ago. But he has gone bad. He wants to sell us out. Our country. He wants to hurt us and he is using Thobela.
She could see uncertainty in Miriams face; she would capitalize on it. We know Thobela is a good man. We know he was a hero of the Struggle. We know he wouldnt have got involved if he knew the whole story. We can sort this out and bring him home safely but we need your help.
My help?
You talked to the media
.
She also wanted to help. She was also on Thobelas side.
They are manipulating you, maam.
And you?
How will the media be able to bring Thobela home? We can. With your help.
There is nothing I can do.
Do you expect Thobela to phone?
Why do you want to know?
If we could just give him a message.
Miriam glanced sharply at Janina, at her eyes, her mouth, her hands.
I dont trust you.
Janina sighed. Because I am white?
Yes. Because you are white.
* * *
Captain Tiger Mazibuko could not get to sleep. He rolled about on the army bed. It was muggy in Kimberley not too hot, still overcast, but the humidity was high and the room poorly ventilated.
What was this hate that he felt for Mpayipheli?
The man was in the Struggle. This man had not sold out his comrades.
Where did this hate come from? It consumed him, it influenced his behavior; he had not treated Little Joe well. He had always had the anger, but it had never before affected his leadership.
