* * *
How tedious the clergymans day-to-day existence must be, because he was still sitting there with the same interest. He was still listening attentively to her story, his expression neutrally sympathetic, his arms relaxed on the desk. It was quiet in the house, outside as well, just the noise of insects. It was strange to her, accustomed as she was to the eternal sound of traffic, people on the move in a city. Always on the go.
Here there was nowhere to go to.
I had no more money. If you dont have money, you must have time, to stand in long queues with your child on your hip for vaccinations or cough medicine or something to stop diarrhea. If you have a child and you have to work, then you have to pay for daycare. If you are waitressing then you have to pay extra for someone to look after it at night. Then you have to walk back to your flat with your baby at one in the morning in winter, or you have to pay for a taxi. If you wont work at night, you miss the best shifts with the biggest tips. So you buy nothing for yourself, and this week you try this and next week you try that until you know you just cant win.
I couldnt cope anymorethere were just too many things. Every Monday I read the
Times Job Supplement
and handed in my CV for every possible job: secretarial, medical rep, clerk. Then, if you were lucky they would invite you for an interview. But it is always the same. No experience? Oh, you have a child. Are you divorced? Oh. Sorry, we want experience. We want someone with a car. We need someone with book-keeping.
Sorry, its an affirmative action position. I left the coffee shop because the tips were too small and it was still winter too and thats off-season. I worked at Trawlers, a seafood place that opened up on Kloof Street, and one night a guy said, Do you want to make real money? So I said, Yes. Then he asked me How much? and I didnt click and I said, As much as I can. Then he said, Three hundred rand, and I asked, Three hundred rand whatper day? Then he got this smile on his face and said, Per night, actually. He was just an average guy, about forty, with spectacles and a little paunch and I said, What must I do? and he said, You know, and I still didnt click. Then he said, Bring me a pen and I will write down my hotel room for you, and at last I clicked and I just stood staring at him. I wanted to scream at him, what did he think I was, and I stood there so angry, but what could I do, he was a customer. So I went to fetch his bill, and when I looked again he was gone. He had left a hundred-rand tip and a note with his hotel number and he had written Five hundred? For an hour. And I put it in my pocket, because I was afraid someone might see it.
Five hundred rand. When your rent is six hundred and eighty, then five hundred is a lot of money. If you have to pay four-fifty for daycare and extra on weekends, because thats where the tips are, five hundred fills a big gap. If you need three thousand to get through the month and you never know if you will make it and you have to save for a car, because when you have to pick up your child and its raining . . . then you take that bit of paper out of your pocket and you look at it again. But who understands that? What white person understands that?
Then you think, what difference does it make? You see it every day. A couple come in and he wines and dines her and for what? To get her into bed. What is the difference? Three hundred rand for dinner or five hundred for sex.
They hit on me in any case, the men. Even when I was pregnant, in the coffee shop, and afterwards, at Trawlers, even worse. The whole time. Some just give you these looks, some say things like nice rack or cute butt, sweetie; some ask you straight out what you are doing on Friday night, or are you attached, sweetness? The vain ones leave their cell phone numbers on the bill, as if they are Gods gift. Some chat you up with pretty little questions. Where are you from? How long have you been in Cape Town? What are you studying? But you know what they really want, because soon they ask you, Do you have your own place? or, Jissie, we are chatting so
lekker,
when do you finish work, so we can chat some more? At first you think you are very special, because some of them are cute and witty, but you hear them doing it with everyone, even the ugly waitresses. All the time, all of them, like those rabbits with the long-life batteries, never stopping; never mind if they are sixteen or sixty, married or single, they are on the lookout and it never stops.
Then you get back to your room and think about everything and you think of what you dont have and you think there really is no difference, you think five hundred rand and you lie and wonder what it would be like, how bad could it be to be with the guy for an hour?
A
ll day Griessel had been looking for a decoy, a middle-aged policewoman to push a trolley up and down Woolworths at the Waterfront on Friday night. Hopefully the bastard would choose her. Someone eventually suggested a Sergeant Marais at Claremont, late thirties, who might fit the bill. He phoned her and made an appointment to talk to her.
He took the M5, because it was faster, and turned off at Lansdowne in order to drive up to Main Road. At the off ramp, just left of the road, was an advertising board, very wide and high. Castle Lager. Beer. Fuck it, he hadnt drunk beer in years, but the advert depicted a glass with drops of moisture running down the sides, a head of white foam and contents the color of piss. He had to stop at the traffic lights and stare at that damn glass of beer. He could taste it. That dry, bitter taste. He could feel it sliding down his throat, but above all he could feel the warmth spreading through his body from the medicine in his belly.
When he came to his senses, someone was hooting behind him, a single, impatient toot. He jumped and drove away, realizing only then what had happened and scared by the intensity of the enchantment.
He thought: what the fuck am I going to do? How do you fight something like this, pills or no pills? Jissis, he hadnt drunk beer in years.
He realized he was squeezing the steering wheel and he tried to breathe, tried to get his breath back as he drove.
Before she even stood up from behind the desk, he knew the sergeant was perfect. She had that washed-out look, more lean miles on the clock than her year model indicated; her hair was dyed blonde. She said her name was André. Her smile showed a slightly skew front tooth. She looked as if she expected him to comment on her name.
He sat down opposite her and told her about the case and his suspicions. He said she would be ideal, but he could not force her to be part of the operation.
Im in, she said.
It could be dangerous. We would have to wait until he tried something.
Im in.
Talk to your husband tonight. Sleep on it. You can phone me tomorrow.
That wont be necessary. Ill do it.
He spoke to the station commander, to ask permission, although he did not have to. The big colored captain complained he didnt have people to spare, they were undermanned as it was and Marais was a key person: who would do her work when she wasnt there? Griessel said it was just Friday nights from five oclock and her overtime would not appear on the stations budget. The captain nodded. Okay, then.
He drove to Gardens late in the afternoon with the address to his flat on a slip of paper on the seat beside him.
Friend Street . . . what fucking kind of name was that? Mount Nelsons Mansions. Number one two eight.
He had never lived in this area. All his life he had been in the northern suburbs, since school a Parow Arrow, apart from the year in Pretoria at the Police College and three years in Durban as a constable. Jissis, he never wanted to go back there, to the heat and humidity and the stink. Curry and dagga and everything in English. In those days he had an accent you could cut with a cudgel and the
Souties
and Indians teased or taunted him, depending on whether they were colleagues or people he had arrested.
Fuckin rock spider. Fuckin hairyback pig. Fuckin dumb Dutchman policeman.
Mount Nelsons Mansions. There was a steel fence around it and a large security gate. He would have to park in the street at first and press a button on a sign that said Caretaker to get in and collect his keys and the remote control for the gate. A red brick building that had never been a mansion, maybe thirty or forty years old. Not beautiful, not ugly, it just stood there between two white-plastered apartment blocks.
The caretaker was an old Xhosa. You a policeman? he asked.
I am.
That is good. We need a policeman here.
He fetched his suitcases from the car and dragged them up one flight of stairs. One two eight. The door needed varnish. It had a peephole in the center and two locks. He found the right keys and pushed the door open. Brown parquet floor, fuck-all furniture, except for the breakfast counter with no stools, a few bleached melamine kitchen cupboards and an old Defy stove with three plates and an oven. A wooden staircase. He left the cases and climbed the stairs. There was a bed up there, a single bed, the one that had been stored in the garage, his garage. His former garage. Just the wooden bedstead and foam mattress with the faded blue floral pattern. The bedding lay in a pile on the foot of the bed. Pillow and slip, sheets, blankets. There was a built-in wardrobe. A door led to the small bathroom.
He went down to fetch his suitcases.
Not even a bloody chair. If he wanted to sit down, it would have to be on the bed.
Nothing to eat off or drink from or to boil water. He had fuck-all. He had less than when he went to police college.
Jissis.
* * *
In his hotel room, Thobela searched under P in the telephone directory. There was the name,
Colin Pretorius,
written just like that, and the address,
122 Chantelle Street, Parow.
He drove to the Sanlam Center in Voortrekker Road and bought a street guide to Cape Town in CNA.
As the sun disappeared behind Table Mountain, he drove down Hannes Louw Drive and left into Fairfield, right into Simone and, after a long curve, left into Chantelle. The even numbers were on the right. Number 122 was an inconspicuous house with burglar bars and a security gate. The neat garden had two ornamental cypress trees, a few shrubs and a green, mowed lawn, all enclosed by a concrete wall around the back and sides. No signs of life. On the garage wall above the door was a blue and silver sign:
Cobra Security. Armed Rapid Response.
He had a problem. He was a black man in a white suburb. He knew the fact that he was driving a pickup would help, keep him color-free and anonymous in the dusk. But not forever. If he hung around too long or drove past one time too many, someone would notice his skin color and begin to wonder.
He drove once around the block and past 122 again, this time observing the neighboring houses and the long strip of park that curved around with Simone Street. Then he had to leave, back to the shopping center. There were things he needed.
* * *
Griessel sat on the still unmade bed and stared at the wardrobe. His clothes could not fill a third of the space. It was the empty space that fascinated him.
At home his wardrobe was full of clothes he hadnt worn in yearsgarments too small or so badly out of fashion that Anna forbade him to wear them.
But here he could count on one hand each type of garment she had packed for him, excepting the underpantsthere were probably eight or nine, which he had piled in a heap in the middle rack.
Laundry. How would he manage? There were already two days worth of dirty clothes in a bundle at the bottom of the cupboard, beside the single pair of shoes. And ironinghell, it was years since he had picked up an iron. Cooking, washing dishes. Vacuuming! The bedroom did have a dirty brown wall-to-wall carpet.
Fuck, he said, rising to his feet.
He thought of the beer advertisement again.
God, no, that was the sort of thing that had got him into this situation. He must not. He would have to find something to do. There were the files in his briefcase. But where would he work? On the bed? He needed a stool for the breakfast bar. It was too late to look for one now. He wanted coffee. Maybe the Pick and Pay in Gardens was still open. He took his wallet, cell phone and the keys to his new flat and descended the stairs to the bare living room below.
* * *
Thobela bought a small pocket torch, batteries, binoculars and a set of screwdrivers and sat down in a restaurant to study the map.
His first problem would be to get into the suburb. He could not park near the house as the pickup was registered in his name. Someone might write down the number. Or remember it. He would have to park somewhere else and walk in, but it was still risky. Every second house had a private security companys sign on the wall. There would be patrol vehicles, there would be wary eyes ready to call an emergency number. Theres a black man in our street.
Chances were better by dayhe might be a gardener on his way to workbut at night the risks multiplied.
He studied the map. His finger traced Hannes Louw Drive where it crossed the N1. If he parked north of the freeway, using the narrow strip of veld and parkland . . . That was the long, slow option, but it could be done.
In the case in which Colin Pretorius stands accused of child molestation and rape, an eleven-year-old boy yesterday testified how the accused called him to his office three years ago and showed him material of a pornographic nature. The accused locked the door and later began to fondle himself and encouraged the boy to do the same.
His next problem would be getting into the house. The front was too visible, he would have to get in the back where the concrete wall hid him from the neighbors. There were the burglar bars. The security contract meant an alarm. And a panic button.
The woman, whose name may not be made public, testified that her five-year-old sons symptoms of stress, which included acute aggression, bedwetting and lack of concentration, obliged his parents to consult a child psychologist. In therapy the boy revealed the molestation over a period of three months by Pretorius, owner of a crčche.
There were two alternatives. Wait for Pretorius to come home. Or try to gain entry. The first option was too unpredictable, too hard to control. The second was difficult, but not impossible.
He paid for his cold drink. He was not hungry. He felt too much anticipation, a vague tension, a sharpening of his senses. He fetched his pickup from the parking area and left.
During his arrest, police seized Pretoriuss computer, CD-ROM material and videos. Inspector Dries Luyt of the Domestic Violence Unit told the court the quantity and nature of the child pornography found was the worst this unit has yet seen.
He flowed with the traffic.
He thought of being with Pakamile, the week before his death, in the mountain landscape of Mpumalanga beyond Amersfoort. On their motorbikes together with the six other students in the bright morning sun, between the pretty wooden houses, his sons eyes fixed on the instructor who spoke to them with such fervor.
The greatest enemy of the motorbike rider is target fixation. Its in our blood. The connection between eyes and brain unfortunately works this way: if you look at a pothole or a rock, you will ride into it. Make sure you never look directly at the obstruction. Fighter pilots are trained to look ninety degrees away from the target the moment they press the missile-firing buttons. Once you have spotted an obstacle in the road, you know its there. Search for the way around it; keep your eyes on the line to safety. You and your motorbike will follow automatically.
He had sat there thinking this was not just a lesson in motorbike ridinglife worked like that too. Even if you only realized it late or nearly too late. Sometimes you never did see the rocks. Like when he came back after the war. Battle ready, cocked, primed for the New South Africa. Ready to use his training, his skills and experience. An alumnus of the KGB university, graduate of the Stasi sniper school, veteran of seventeen eliminations in the cities of Europe.
Nobody wanted him.
Except for Orlando Arendse, that is. For six years he protected drug routes and collected drug debts, until he began to notice the rocks and potholes, until he needed to choose a safer line in order not to smash himself on the rocks.
And now?
He parked beside Hendrik Verwoerd Drive, high up against the bump of the Tygerberg, where you can see the Cape stretched out in front of you as far as Table Mountain, glittering in the night.
He sat for a moment, but did not see the view.
Perhaps the motorcycle instructor was wrong: avoiding the obstacles of life was not enough. How does a child choose a line through all the sickness, all the terrible traps? Maybe life needed someone to clear away the obstacles.