Last Train to Retreat (18 page)

•

The next afternoon Hannibal saw her again. She was going home, the evening sun still high enough to catch the auburn fall of her hair. He couldn’t see her face but he knew the way she moved, how well he knew it! His own body reacted the way it had always done – slight shaking, face warm, tongue feeling stuck. It was as though the intervening years had never happened. It was the third time he’d seen her from the
tik
house and every time it caused a torrent of emotion to run through him: a longing to hold her, regret at how he had lost her, hatred of her brother, a resolve to get her back. Hannibal experienced many emotions. Some seemed to have lodged themselves in his brain permanently. Fear was not amongst them, except the fear of being rejected. Nothing and no one frightened Hannibal the General, only rejection did. It was okay when
he
cast aside the meek God of the New Testament, the warrior-God of John Eldredge, the many women in his life, Curly, and others. But when it happened to him, with Chantal, it was like a cut that never healed. The irony of it had been eating away at him like corroding rust – it was
because
of his rejection of God that Chantal stopped regarding him as a good force. Without God, Hannibal’s argument that the end justified the vigilantism of the Evangelicals evaporated. When Hannibal pronounced God dead he also killed the good in the gang – in Chantal’s mind. And how her brother had helped her in this, a traitor! Hannibal was convinced that Zane had been responsible for him losing Chantal, the one person he could talk to and share things with. All Hannibal could do now was to reflect on the world, allowing his pain and hatred to build up for the next cage fight when he would attack his opponents with brutal glee that was both sanctioned and legal. But of late even this was unsatisfying, like the angel wings on his Honda. He needed more blood.

As he watched Chantal getting smaller down the dusty street, Hannibal laughed. He had just got the idea of changing his angel wings to those of a bat – like human hands but with webbed fingers, in mat black that whispered of wings in the night. Bat man … yeah, it sure beat angel man.

•

The fourth time he saw Chantal, Hannibal could take it no longer. He threw down a burner, ran to the kitchen to wash his hands – he had to be clean for her – brushed his bristly hair with his fingers, and bolted from the house.

When he was still many paces from her he shouted, ‘Chantie, Chantie, wait, it’s Hanno!’ She didn’t turn around like Lot’s wife had done but went rigid like a salt pillar. She was probably afraid of him. It pained him. ‘Chantie, stop, please, I just want to say hello!’ He had rehearsed so many conversations with her but he was like an actor who’d forgotten his script.

She suddenly turned around as if realising she couldn’t escape him and gazed at him silently, unnerving him. He would have preferred her to show some of the anguish he was feeling; it would give him strength. But she stood like a Delilah in the dusty street and he like a Samson with his seven locks cut off. He cursed the Christian images he no longer had any need for and that still rose up in him unwanted, like vomit.

‘How long has it been, Chantie?’

‘I haven’t been counting the years, Hanno.’

‘Too long for me, I’ve missed you.’ Her face was thinner, her lines more defined. She was more beautiful.

‘I got to get home, Hanno, got things to do.’

He felt his expectations slipping away. She didn’t want him, he thought desperately. ‘What you doing with yourself?’ he asked – anything to delay her.

‘I work in a factory, I’m a seamstress.’ Her manner was cool, and maddening. Her dull blue worker’s overall looked common. She probably had to wear a
doek
as well to stop her hair from getting caught in the machines. Rows of machines, his princess trapped in a soulless place like that! He had an instant fantasy – burning her worker’s clothes, making love to her passionately then dressing her up and taking her to
larney
places, no, taking her away from the Flats altogether.

‘Oh, and still at Darwin Court, are you?’ It was as if they were acquaintances meeting after a long time, with too few shared memories to keep the conversation going. How could it be, he asked himself, after they had shared such love? He felt shattered. But then what could he expect after what had happened?

He didn’t wait for an answer. With venom suddenly welling up he said, ‘And your brother, is he still there? What’s he doing nowadays?’ For the first time he saw fear in her eyes. It gave him back some of his pride and confidence. ‘I tried my best with him, you know. It’s not what you think, Chantie.’ He forced a smile.

‘He’s moved on …’

‘I see, and where to?’

She stared at Constantia Berg in the distance. ‘He’s on the other side of the track, Hanno, in Wynberg, with a nice job in the city. Let him be, he’s got a new life, a good one, and the past is the past for him.’

She was making a point and he knew it. It was as if she’d prepared herself for years for this day. ‘
He’s escaped you, to a better life, and you, Hanno, are still here,’
was what she was really saying. It cut into him, made him feel weak in the legs. All he could muster was, ‘And for you, Chantie, is the past the past for you too?’

‘Yes, like a bad dream I’ve woken up from and don’t want to go back to … please understand, Hanno!’ She seemed exasperated. But more than her words it was her look that destroyed him – like she’d tasted something bad or touched an object that made her shiver.

•

The next day, after a sleepless night, Hannibal waited for her on a route he knew she had to take to get home. It was about three blocks west of Darwin Court, close to Prince George Drive. She stopped abruptly when she saw him and he walked towards her fast, his heart thudding.

‘Chantie, I
had
to see you again. Please, can we go somewhere … have a meal? We have to talk this out, after all these years! Will you come … just this once, please?’

She was dressed in her blue overall and looked wan. ‘Hanno, please leave me alone,’ she said and tried to walk past him. He suddenly grabbed her by the arm. ‘Does what we once had, mean nothing? We
loved
each other, for Christ’s sake! Can’t we try again? I’ll give up what I’m doing, for you I swear I will. I’ll do it for you. I’m not the good man you always wanted but I’ll take you away from here!’

She started crying. He tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him away eyeing him wildly. ‘To think I let you sleep with me when your boys were gang-raping and killing just to prove they were men! You didn’t know I found out, did you? And you thought you were a general? Hah! What are you really, Hannibal?’

•

The bloodlust Hannibal felt each time after visiting the Gnome was now occurring more frequently. Angel man was truly dead. He was now bat man. All he had to do was to replace those spoilers on his car. Spoilers indeed! He loathed the sight of them. There was no such thing as an angel, no such place as heaven, only the Flats and it was hell. And if that was so, he was certain God had never been there.

At night he would run the conversation with Chantal over and over like an actor would his lines, first silently then aloud with passion. When he did sleep it was fitful, and he’d wake up feeling as if he’d been in the cage all night except that the bruising was all inside him. And he’d think of his great loss and of coming back with a vengeance, not stopping even after the sound of the bell. He had always hated authority. As a child he stuck his fingers in his ears whenever his parents reprimanded him. At school he taunted teachers, flashed his cock at the girls, pulverised the boys into pitiful heaps in the far corners of the grounds. As leader of the Evangelicals he made his own rules and when the warrior God of John Eldredge proved to be a weakling Hannibal killed him, just as cats killed weak kittens to ensure the litter’s future. He tolerated the few rules of MMA fighting only because he needed to be champion but he often felt the urge to floor the referee as well. Then the Gnome came along, a saviour of sorts. It didn’t take long for Hannibal to get the measure of him – a genius at making a killing and somehow staying untouchable, letting everyone else do the dirty work, a bloodsucker.

The thought crossed Hannibal’s brain like a scowl –
I’m on my own, it’s me against the world, and if that’s so, how can there be any rules at all?

•

Sasman, Danny, and Hannibal were sitting on the deck at Sasman’s house. Nothing was new – it was Sunday, they sat in their usual seats, Lettie was inside listening out for orders, Terrance was cleaning the Benz, the Dobermans were silently patrolling the yard, and Sasman was holding the floor while stuffing ginger biscuits down his gullet in a nervous action.

‘Your time’s nearly up, Hannibal, and where are they? Hunting
your
men! First they kill Gatiep now they’re going for Curly. And you’re telling me a cop’s been around asking questions? Things are happening but I don’t get the big picture, Hannibal, only goddamn twitches. Who’s this
gatta
anyway?’

‘Philander, Detective Warrant Officer Quentin Philander.’

‘Christ, a
detective!
Even worse than I thought.’

‘I don’t think it’s anything to do with this … it’s to do with his wife who was hijacked and killed months ago and he’s still on it.’

On this windless day the waves in Danny’s hair lay soft and still, not like his eyes that were flitting between Hannibal and Sasman and as hard as his jade ring. That a man could be blessed with such hair, Hannibal thought. Sasman said, ‘I’m not too sure, Hannibal.’ Then, ‘Lettie, more please, and some more coffee!’

‘Jerome, look, I got information and I’m gonna check it out. Leave it with me, okay?’ The scars on Hannibal’s face felt warm, or was it the sun? Hannibal’s chair always caught the sun when Sasman’s meetings dragged on. Fuck his meetings, fuck the sun.

‘Like what, Hannibal?’ Danny demanded.

‘Like this,’ Hannibal said, ticking off the points on his fingers, ‘
One
, they’re both Coloured and I got descriptions,
two,
they got off at Wynberg,
three,
the man knows how to fight – stopping a big man like Curly,
four,
the girl’s now showed her hand, she’ll come again – Delron’s drinks are on me while he’s checking out the clubs –
five,
I got hunches …’

Sasman feigned a yawn. ‘Most of it we know already, the rest is guessing. I want them, understand, and I want that
gatta
off our backs. I’m not who I am for nothing, Hannibal, I’m always ready for the worst, and in this case I’m thinking these things are part of a much bigger picture.’ Jerome Sasman puffed up his small body, and the hair on his arms and neck seemed to bristle in warning.

•

Hannibal got up just after six, ate a Vienna Gatsby leftover from the fridge, warmed himself with a cup of coffee and got into his Honda. He drove off, happy that he had tinted windows but uneasy about the angel wings on the back. He had Concert Boulevard mostly to himself. He drove north along Main Road through the suburbs for another seven kilometres until he reached Wynberg, parked off Maynard Avenue and walked down to the station, dark glasses on and hood up to hide his yellow hair. Already minibus taxis were thronging Station Road, vendors had their fruit and vegetables out, hair stylists and fast food joints were open. From behind one of the vendors Hannibal watched commuters converging on the station. He focused on the entrance to the platforms, not the ticket office queue – anyone working in the city would have a season ticket and walk straight through. Hannibal had written the train times on a scrap of paper: 6.55, 7.02, 7.11, 7.20, 7.26, 7.30, 7.40, and 7.45. There was a steady stream of people and Hannibal had to concentrate hard – how long had it been since he last saw Zane? Five years? It seemed both long ago and just the other day – memories sharpened by Chantal a few days earlier. Wynberg, she had said, that’s where he lived. Hannibal would put money on it that it wasn’t Upper Wynberg, just as he doubted that Zane had a car.

An hour later Zane had not appeared. It occurred to Hannibal that perhaps he worked shifts. Hannibal bought three bananas and walked back to his car. It was going be a long day before the evening trains came through on their way to Simonstown. But he had a new focus point now that Chantal had rejected him once more. What was a little waiting after five years?

I
t troubled Lena that she had Zane on her mind when it was Sarai she was looking for. Was she thinking of him because her train had stopped at Wynberg on its way to the city? Not long ago she would have preferred him dead. Now she realised how easy he had been to talk to, how comfortable she felt – more than with anyone else in the past ten years. She tried to analyse it – they’d been thrown together by fate, were accomplices in murder, had spent concentrated time together in his flat, and he was someone not posing a threat to her inner defences. None of these explained her feelings. She knew his name and that he lived in Wynberg, nothing else – not what he did or where he came from, what he liked and hated, what he dreamed about. All she knew was that she could talk to him.

Lena sat in the train oblivious of everything around her – the stoic faces of commuters, the graffiti-covered coach walls, the vibration of the train beneath her feet, the clacking of the wheels. She remembered how, as a girl, she was the first to put up her hand in class, how she loved parties and music and being with friends. That had been before her father’s nightly visits, before she was told she’d burn in hell if she ever talked. She remembered the time her mother, Rowena, found out about it and banished Elton from their lives, and how
she
then swore Lena to secrecy, the fear of being shamed and shunned by her school and community more powerful than her daughter’s distress. Rowena was a teacher in what was then known as ‘home economics’ at Lena’s high school. The school couldn’t afford a library or a librarian so her mother added this function to her teaching. It meant utilising the back of one of the large classrooms as a library and operating it when she wasn’t teaching, using a crude, manual card system for lending and retrieving over two hundred books. In this double role Rowena’s standing at the school and within the community rose dramatically, almost to the level of the headmaster. The fact that her husband had slept with her and their daughter was knowledge too terrible for Rowena ever to talk about. It was as though the void left by Elton had sucked in all that was unsaid, creating from it some nameless thing that was boarding with them and driving them apart – at the dinner table, in front of the TV, in the quiet of their beds – wide-eyed and wet-mouthed like a large, over-excited animal. To Rowena the choice was between killing herself and muzzling the thing.