Sacrifices (25 page)

She shrugs again. “I have to do something.”

“I don’t know if you can do it, the killing. You got my blood in your veins, so maybe you can. But you got to understand what can happen to you.”

“Yes,” she says.

“The killing, the thing itself, that’s nothing. That’s easy. But what can come afterward, now that’s something else. Something you gotta be ready for, in here.” Tapping his head. “You get me?”

“Yes.”

He looks away from her, already at work on another pipe. She stands.

“Where you going?”
he asks.

“Home.”

“Now? With them out there running around like animals?”

“I have to.”

He shakes his head. “Go if you want to. Or you can stay here.”

She’s staring into those eyes, hearing Fazila Bruinders warning her, months ago.

He reads her mind and laughs. “You heard what they say about me? How I rape any girl, any time? Boys too?”

She nods. “Is it true?”

“Of course, yes. I done it and I liked it.” He laughs again. “And you think I’m gonna do it to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t. I can’t do it no more.”

“Why?”

“Few years back they get me, the 26s. Get me in a cell, the guards helping them, and they cut me here like I’m a pig.” He gestures at his groin, his hand a scything blade. “So now I can’t do nothing. You safe, girly.”

Still standing, she stares at him.

“You don’t believe me?”

She shrugs.

He takes hold of the tag of his zipper. “Wanna see?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

He laughs a wet laugh that becomes a cough as he finishes packing the pipe.

She sinks down to the floor, drawing up her knees and all at once she is exhausted, energy drained from her body and by the time he’s sucking and spluttering and coughing on his pipe she’s asleep, her head on her arms.

Louise wakes to a thin gray light showing through holes in the roof and under the door, and she hears the distant rumble of traffic and faraway shouts. Her bladder is painfully full and
when she gets to her feet her limbs are stiff.

She draws back the bolt on the door and opens it, staring at the cliff of garbage, the stink thick enough to cut.

Tepid light dribbles into the room and she sees Achmat curled up on the mattress, fully clothed, the meth paraphernalia littered around him. He snores.

Louise steps out and closes the door, ducks around the side of the shack, loosens her jeans and squats and pisses onto the sand, trying not to splash her shoes.

When she’s done she stands and pulls up her pants and sets off into the gloom, trying to find her way out. A woman and a small child in a school uniform emerge from one of the shacks and she follows them to the main road.

As she walks across to the taxis, already aswarm with commuters even though the sun is not yet up, she sees a man sitting on a bench in the forlorn playground. A lone child plays, listlessly dragging the broken seat of the swing.

She recognizes the boy and sees that the man is Cakes, one of Lyndall’s killers, guarding his child, his eyes darting at any sign of movement. His gaze flicks across her and then back onto his son.

“Dexter,” she hears him call and the child stops plaiting the chains of the swing, releasing them, letting the broken seat spin and clatter against the concrete as the chains unwind.

Cakes stands and holds out his hand and the boy takes it and they walk across to their small house, door locked and windows bolted. As Louise watches, the man unlocks the front door, lets the child in, checks the street, then steps in and shuts the door after him, the house a blank face.

Lane tapes a poster advertising a forthcoming literary festival to the inside of the bookstore door. Tracy, a bag of take-out lunch in her hand, appears on the sidewalk and wags a finger, indicating that he should raise one side of the poster. He does so, looking at her enquiringly and she nods and blows him a kiss as he fixes the Scotch tape to the glass.

Lane opens the door for her, allowing in the smell of samoosas, roti and vegetable curry from the Halal eatery down the block.

Tracy squints at the poster—Rothko-like geometric shapes in burned oranges, ochres and blacks, festooned with feathers and vaguely ethnic-looking beads.

“God,” she says, “that’s ugly.”

“Let’s just say they’re long on enthusiasm but short on taste.”

“Well, they have invited you to speak.”

“I rest my case.”

She laughs and walks through to the kitchen, finding plates and cutlery. He follows her.

“There’s a dead guy on the sidewalk, near Mumeenah’s,” she says, unwrapping the food.

“What happened?”

“They’re saying he was mugged. Stabbed. White guy in a suit, just lying there.”

“The cops show up?”

“Ja, scratching their backsides and flirting with the girls,” she says, sucking curry off a finger.

She takes the food through to Lane’s office, where they can watch the store through the hatch.

“Come with me,” he says, sitting opposite her at the desk.

“To that festival?”

“Uh huh, one night in the glamorous Little Karoo, all expenses paid.”

“They’re your friends, aren’t they, the organizers?”

“Yes, a very sweet gay couple who have dreams of transforming their town into a cultural oasis.”

“Friends of yours and your wife’s?”

“Hell, Tracy, they’re not going to take sides.”

She shakes her head. “I’d feel exposed. On show.”

“Well, then let me show you off,” Lane says and kisses her cheek, feeling her mandible at work as she takes a bite of curry wrapped in a roti.

“No,” she says, chewing, “maybe next year, when things are settled.”

“It would be much more fun if you came,” he says. “I don’t feel like being away from you.”

“It’s for one night, Mike,” she says. “You’ll enjoy it. Go and play with some people your own age.”

“Piss off,” he says, dribbling curry onto his shirt.

She reaches over with a napkin and dabs away the mess.

“Next year, I promise, okay? The three of us will go.”

He nods and they eat in silence,
Tracy staring through the hatch at the traffic and the pedestrians.

“Mike,” she says, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you ever
visit your son? Or talk about him even?” She sees his discomfort. “Is it because of me?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Don’t you miss him?”

“I’ve missed him for years.”

“Meaning?”

“He changed, Trace, when he got to eight or nine. His sweetness and innocence just seemed to disappear and he and Bev became a little gang of two. I haven’t been close to him for a very long time.”

“But now, with the amputation, doesn’t he need you?” He shrugs. “I mean, it seems a little, I dunno . . .”

“Unnatural?”

“Ja, it does.”

Lane stares at her across the chasm of lies and half-truths. “It happens,
Tracy.”

“You wouldn’t hide something from me would you? Not now?” she asks, her hand drawn to the bulge at her belly.

“No,” he says. “Never.”

Tracy
stands and takes the plates through to the kitchen and Lane hears the sound of running water as he sits and thinks about what he has wrought and wonders how long a man can hold his life together with lies and empty prayers.

10

Afternoon sun hot as melted butter falls across the bed when Louise wakes, sweating. Harpo stands with his paws on the comforter, squashed little face close to hers, grunting and whimpering, his dog food breath making her queasy.

She sits, still wearing the clothes from yesterday, full of grime from the sleepover in
Paradise Park.

“I know, Harpo, I know, I’ve been an inconsiderate bitch,” she says as she goes through to the bathroom, the
dog hugging her heels. “Relax, Harps, I’ll take you down now, okay?”

She pees, the old
pug staring at her accusingly from the doorway and she throws a toilet roll at him, gets his little butt sliding back out the door, nails clacking.

When she crosses to the
sink to rinse her hands she sees a mess staring back at her from the mirror: greasy hair standing out in spikes, dark rings under her eyes. She’s lost weight, skin stretched vellum-tight across her cheekbones. Achmat Bruinders’s daughter, okay.

Louise goes back out into the hall and Harpo stands by the front door, his leash in his mouth. She has to laugh as she searches for her shoes. Remembers they were caked with shit—suspiciously human—and she left them outside in the corridor when she got home this morning.

She opens the door, using her bare feet to keep Harpo from bolting, and looks outside. Her favorite Chuck Taylor’s are gone.

“Bastards,” she says and closes the door, deaf now to Harpo’s protests, as she digs another pair of sneakers out of the closet and laces them.

Louise kneels and attaches the dog’s leash and leads him out into the corridor. As she locks up he tugs loose and runs across to Mrs. Rosen’s door, whining and scratching at the wood.

She has to lift him and carry him to the elevator, whispering into his ear, “Hey, Harpo, I know, man. I know how it feels.”

The world Louise steps out into is the stuff of picture postcards, a universe away from the squalor of The Cape Flats. There is no wind and a rose-colored light washes the ocean and the apartment buildings, Signal Hill looming over Sea Point like a gingerbread cake. She crosses Beach Road and sets Harpo down on the grass, the Atlantic a flat blue expanse, no waves breaking the surface.

It’s the kind of weather that encourages Capetonians to shed their clothes and come out to play: joggers, speed walkers, elderly white women clacking along on their Zimmer frames, bored colored nurses dawdling after them. Sunbathers lie like basted meat on the strip of sand at
Rocklands Beach.

Loud yells draw Louise’s eyes to a mob of shirtless African exiles playing soccer, calling to one another in French, these waiters and car guards (engineers and teachers back home) executing deft passes, bicycle kicks and headers, young white skateboarders looking on enviously.

Harpo tugs at the leash and Louise frees him, allowing him to go truffling in clumps of grass, cocking a trembling hind leg and ejecting little squirts of piss. She stands on the paved walkway looking out over the ocean, a yacht with white sails silhouetted against the orange of the setting sun, the sea darkening on the horizon to the color of velvet.

A breath of wind washes in off the water, teasing at her clothes and she is lulled for a minute into a mindless stupor, her unfocused eyes on the gently rocking sail boat.

A throttled yelp has her turning and she sees that some kind of squat muscle dog has Harpo in its grip, pinning the old pug to the grass. Before she has time to think Louise grabs a paving brick from a pile being used for repairs to the walkway and rushes at the dog that’s shaking Harpo like a torn rag, cords of drool flying from its jaws.

Louise hits the dog on its furrowed cranium, but still it hangs on to Harpo. She hits it again and again and at last the dog lets out a high-pitched yelp and drops Harpo, staring up at Louise, panting, purple tongue lolling through nasty yellow teeth.

The dog growls at her and she swings the brick with all the force she can muster, collecting it in the snout and it sits down on its backside, shaking its head, whimpering.

“What the fuck!”

A heavy hand grabs her shoulder and spins her and she is confronted by a shirtless white man, tall and beefy, his face crimson with rage.

“How can you hit my fucken dog?”

“Fuck you,” she says. “Look what he’s done to mine! Keep him under control, or better still shoot the fucken thing.”

The man gives her a shove in the chest that sits her on her backside. The soccer game has been interrupted, the Africans standing watching.

Louise looks up at the man, sees his button eyes, his mean little blondish mustache, his beer gut hanging over the belt of his jeans. She can smell him: stale booze and cigarettes and general obnoxiousness.

She springs to her feet and only realizes she still grips the brick when she swings it
and collects the man in the nose hearing gristle and cartilage cracking. A rash of bloody drops hit the paving.

The man puts his hands to his face, blood seeping through his fingers. “You fucken brown bitch,” he says, his voice muffled.

Louise hits him again, on the side of the head, felling him, and she’s astride him hefting the brick to deliver another blow when hands grab and lift her, the block ripped from her fingers.