Last Train to Retreat (6 page)

‘Baby, come here,’ she called out.

His body shook with anticipation. He was glad he’d showered at the dojo. He ripped off his tracksuit and shoes, left the bike at a crazy angle against the wall, and went into the candle-lit bedroom. She lay naked in the flickering light twirling her kinky plaits. For a while his future would be suspended, as would all thoughts of Hannibal on the other side of the tracks.

A
few nights later Sarai tried again to make love to Lena. Lena, having showered first, was in bed dozing off after a hard day at The Centre. It was the girl’s turn in the shower. The sounds of cascading water interspersed with vigorous soaping were comforting to Lena – it felt as if the exotic girl-woman had been in Lena’s house for months.

Sarai came from the bathroom under cover of darkness and slipped into bed naked, pressing her fragrant body against Lena’s. Lena gave a startled little cry. This time the girl went further. She cupped one of Lena’s breasts, ran her tongue over the hardening nipple then took it in her mouth. A strange sensation swept through Lena. With broken breath she let Sarai suck and bite her. Caught in the dark, Lena had no time to think, only to feel, and what she was feeling was surprisingly good. It seemed all too brief – a matter of seconds to Lena – before it changed into something disturbing once more.

Lena pushed Sarai away, ‘I’m a woman … surely it’s a man that you want?’

‘I only do men for money, Lena, nothing else. So I can pay men like Cupido and go home. Hah, men in Cape Town not for loving! When I think of loving I think of women, beautiful women.’

‘You can’t mean
I’m
beautiful?’

‘More than you think, Lena, you just don’ look after yourself – no make-up, no perfume, no hip swing, no sweet look in eyes. And you good person, like some
farangs
I know back home. You kill for me … ah, you prefer men, is that why you don’ want me?’

‘God, no, Sarai, I hate them, how can I want them!’

‘But … but … I don’ understand, we both don’ want men. So why not …’

‘It’s a long story I’ve told no one …’

‘You don’ want me here anymore, Lena, I am too much trouble!’

‘No, you’re not. Listen to me, with no papers you’ll be arrested and sent to a terrible, terrible place, Sarai, and you may never see your home again. You have to stay here.’ Lena had visions of the girl out there on her own and cracking up, telling all out of fear and desperation. She kissed Sarai, and whispered, ‘I
want
you to stay, okay?’

But Sarai seemed inconsolable. She cried herself to sleep in Lena’s arms leaving Lena with an unsettling feeling that the girl was going to be more difficult to manage in the weeks ahead. On her own, cooped up in the house during the day, and not getting the kind of love she expected from Lena, Sarai could become dangerously discontented. Lena’s survival depended on retaining control of her and at this moment she had no idea how she was going to do it other than entering into a steamy relationship. But the brief, delicious sensation was nowhere near compelling enough for Lena to forget what had happened in her father’s house. No amount of scrubbing in the shower could remove the slime Elton Valentine had left on her. Whoever touched her thereafter would feel it, sooner or later, because
she
could feel it.

Could she ever let go and lose herself – with anyone? Lena doubted it – her rage was hotter than any passion.

•

Lena encouraged Sarai to go to the shops during the day if she felt like it – to get out, to buy groceries, milk, bread, and fruit – but not to engage in any conversation. ‘You never know who you could be talking to,’ she warned. ‘We don’t want the police coming here asking questions. Don’t forget, although
I
killed Cupido, we were
both
there and you did hate him, Sarai. What if the cops say you helped me? You’ll never get back to your island.’

The girl would nod gravely and take the money Lena gave her. She would be at home when Lena returned from work but Lena could see she was getting edgy. One day Lena found her on hands and knees cleaning the linoleum kitchen floor with a wet cloth. Although Lena had never seen her do it she thought nothing of it. It was only when Lena prepared dinner and saw Sarai cleaning the floor for the third time that Lena asked her to stop. Sarai became argumentative, insisting that the floors were ‘very, very dirty’ and that germs and cooking didn’t go together. She was bright and alert but aggressive, not letting Lena finish a sentence. Her final act of defiance was to remove her T-shirt and bra and start on the floor again, breasts swinging as she cleaned. They mesmerised Lena – they were like low-hanging, swaying mangoes. Lena and Sarai ended up having their first argument, with Sarai refusing to eat, and staying in her own bed the entire night.

In the morning Sarai said she needed more ‘house money’. Not once had she brought back any change and Lena had felt too guilty to ask for it. Lena went to work wishing she could stay at home with Sarai. At The Centre, Adi commented on a report in the paper to the effect that the police were leaving no stone unturned in their investigation of the stadium murder. ‘It’s the bad publicity … that’s why the
gattas
are running around,’ she said dismissively. ‘If there was no World Cup little would happen. They say the guy was a pimp from the city.’ Opinions flew thick and fast. Ronnie said, ‘I just
knew
something would go wrong because I tell you, this country is
befok.
’ Catherine said, ‘Sweet Jesus, all this noise about
one
murder! People are killed on the Flats all the time and no one hears about them except the gangs and the parents!’

Nobody felt anything for the pimp. Lena, afraid that her face and voice would let her down, said nothing. It was unlikely that anyone had witnessed the killing of Cupido but Lena imagined a day when police would arrive at The Centre and ask for her, or knock on the door of her house – it was a case of when, not whether, her wretched deed would catch up with her.

T
he day after the kitchen episode Lena arrived home to find Sarai furiously digging up the garden, insisting that it looked terrible. Next to her lay uprooted plants that weren’t from Lena’s patch, a few already stuffed at crazy angles into holes Sarai had made. Then the girl refused to have dinner saying that the plants
had
to be in and watered before the sun came up.

It became a daily occurrence – Sarai turning away food, not sleeping in Lena’s bed, turning conversations into arguments, acting weirdly. And all the while blue sacks were forming under her eyes.

One day when Lena got home she couldn’t find Sarai. She ran through the house in less than a minute calling her name. The girl’s clothes in the wardrobe briefly comforted her. She stepped outside, her eyes sweeping the fences, houses, and streets. Except for Sarai’s clothes it was as if the girl had never been there. Lena sat on her grey-brown couch not knowing what to do. Then she heard it – a sound from the ceiling. She looked up and saw only a white nothingness. An icy sensation crept over her. She jumped up as if stung by a bee, ran into Sarai’s room and started searching. Deep under the girl’s mattress she found a
lolly
, a glass pipe with a bulbous end. Deeper still were cigarette lighters, and white crystals in a bag. Lena was staring at a crystal meth kit. Drug counsellors kept samples of Mandrax, cocaine, dagga, and crystal meth at The Centre and Lena had often studied these with morbid curiosity.

She hurried to the kitchen and saw the squat little table on the counter. How could she have missed it! In the ceiling above it was a hole with a covering that her father had made in order to access the roof for repairs without a ladder.

•

Lena’s torch caught the girl huddling on a beam in the roof, her mouth twitching and skewed, her eyes darting around for a bolt hole. Lena helped her down, led her to her bedroom, and pointed at the meth kit. ‘I know what this is, Sarai, I want to know why,’ she said, controlling her voice.

‘It is my business.’

‘It’s my money and it’s my house.’

‘You don’ love me, Lena, that’s why … I do it one time only, Lena.’

‘That’s a lie, and you know it! You’re going to kill yourself. How the hell can I help if you do this, hey? We’re in enough trouble. You … we don’t need this, understand!’ No black-brown residue left in the pipe, Lena noticed, no broken glass lying about or in the rubbish bin, multiple lighters – signs that the girl wasn’t a rookie. Beginners often held the flame too close to the bulbous part, breaking the glass or burning the meth instead of vaporising it. Most of all, she hadn’t snorted it or drunk it mixed in water the way low intensity users did; she had
smoked
it. Making crystal meth was relatively easy but smoking it the first few times wasn’t.

Lena observed her – movements and speech sharp, eyes clear except they were moving ten times faster than normal. Suddenly Sarai bounced up and hurled herself at Lena, hitting out at her and screaming, ‘I hate you. I hate you!’ The girl rushed to the kitchen and came back clutching Elton’s carving knife that he used for Sunday lunches. Stunned by the ferocity of the attack Lena ran into the lounge with Sarai after her. After three laps around the couch the girl cleared it like a hurdler on steroids forcing Lena into the small entrance hall. ‘I kill you, I kill you dead!’ She came at Lena with a feral fury, green eyes on fire, and her wild hair making her look bigger than her actual size. Her knife arm rose. Cupido’s last moments flashed through Lena. With the front door behind Lena locked, bolted, and chained, she had no option – she charged in below Sarai’s knife arm catching the girl in the solar plexus with her shoulder. They fell backwards knocking over a side table shattering Rowena’s vases that hadn’t seen flowers in years. The knife fell from Sarai’s hand as she tried to break her fall but she managed to pick up a shard shaped like the tooth of a Great White. Sarai clutched it and it cut into her palm, infuriating her. Gone was the vulnerable beauty whose hooded eyes spoke of exotic places, gone was the mystery. In its place a
tik
-possessed, murderous demon that was pitiable at the same time. Lena cried out, ‘Sarai, Sarai! It’s me. I love you!
Do you hear me? I love you!
’ She stepped towards Sarai, slowly, reached out for the shard and took it from her. Then she took the girl’s bloodied hand and pressed it against her cheek, all the while murmuring, ‘I’ll look after you. I’ll get you better. Stay with me, Sarai.’ But a raw sob was all Lena got, ‘I want to go home, Lena! Please take me home.’ Her eyes rolled back and she slumped into a small heap in Lena’s arms, more girl than woman.

•

A few days later Sarai disappeared. Staying at home to watch over her would not have been possible for Lena, and going to the police or to The Centre for help would have been too risky. There was no way Lena could have stopped it.

A gaping hole opened up inside Lena. She was back to where she’d been just a couple of weeks ago – alone in the world.

That night Lena took off her clothes and looked at herself in the mirror. She was fuller today than the unformed girl her father had abused but still skinny. Lena remembered stripping down at thirteen and staring at her gangly body wondering how it could unleash such unspeakable urges in him. He killed the excitement she had felt when she first noticed changes in her body. She took to wearing too-tight brassieres, walked with shoulders slumped to hide her budding breasts, lived in jeans, refusing dresses and skirts unless compelled to wear them at school, bought glasses with fake lenses that made her look geeky and bookish. Now that she was a woman she was hardly an oil painting, she thought, staring into the mirror – mahogany fringe cut squarely across her forehead, brown eyes, and a nose almost too small for her full lips. She was nothing like Sarai with her almond eyes, silky skin, and real woman shape. Yet Sarai wanted her,
said she was beautiful
. And Lena had rejected her. Oh, why didn’t she go with the flow, with the deliciousness of the moment?

To her dismay Lena realised that she could have kept her lovely butterfly in her house, and the police away from the door.

•

In The Centre’s computer room where she had free internet access, Lena poured over websites on human trafficking. She read that it was the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world with an estimated value of 42.5 billion US dollars, reaching epidemic proportions in the past decade with millions being trafficked from 127 countries, and that Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Ukraine were the main source countries, and first-world countries the recipients. As a result
there were more slaves today than at any point in human history.
Powerful nations were working together to fight terrorism, spending massive amounts of money and sacrificing many lives, but when it came to human trafficking the world seemed to lack the will. A third of the planet’s countries had enacted laws against trafficking yet it was flourishing because there was no concerted effort across borders to combat it. The fact that she, Lena Valentine, had single-handedly rescued one of its victims was mind-blowing, and all the more galling for having lost her again. Lena couldn’t blame Sarai, she blamed the traffickers – in the short period since the girl’s abduction they had turned her into an addict. A long-time
tik
smoker would not have had Sarai’s beautiful white teeth. Crystal meth had been her way to cope with Cupido’s cruelty and her debt bondage.

On weekends Lena took to walking those streets where she would most likely find Sarai – Long Street and Bree Street in the city, Voortrekker Road stretching for miles from Maitland to Belville, and some parts of Sea Point. In Voortrekker Road the prostitutes were obvious because they stood in the street but in the city most worked indoors – in massage parlours, bars, and apartments. She even went during the week sometimes, riding the trains to and from the city after work. She was like a person compulsively patrolling the shoreline for a loved one who had been taken by the sea.