A Dry White Season (41 page)

1

When he opened the door Captain Stolz was waiting on the stoep. For months on end he’d been waiting for them to come back, assuming that it was only a matter of time. Especially after the photograph had arrived in the mail. Still, his notes leave one in no doubt about the shock he received when it actually happened that afternoon: it was the third of April, a day before Melanie was due to return from Kenya. The officer was alone. That in itself must have meant something.

“Can we talk?”

Ben would have preferred to refuse him entry, but he was much too shaken to react. Mechanically he stood aside, allowing the lean man in the eternal sports jacket to enter. Perhaps it was also, in an irrational way, a relief at last to have an adversary of flesh and blood opposite him again, someone he could recognise and pin down, someone to talk to, even in blind hate.

Stolz was, at least to begin with, much more congenial than before, enquiring about Ben’s health, his wife, his work at school.

In the end, pulling him up short, Ben said tartly: “I’m sure you didn’t come here to ask about my family, Captain.”

A glint of amusement in Stolz’s dark eyes. “Why not?”

“I’ve never had the impression that you were very interested in my private affairs.”

“Mr Du Toit, I’ve come here today” – he crossed his long legs comfortably – “because I feel sure we can come to an understanding.”

“Really?”

“Don’t you think this business has gone on long enough?”

“That’s for you people to decide, isn’t it?”

“Now be honest: has all the evidence you’ve been collecting in connection with Gordon Ngubene brought you one step closer to the sort of truth you were looking for?”

“Yes, I think so.”

A brief pause. “I really hoped we could talk man to man.”

“I don’t think it’s still possible, Captain. If it ever was. Not between you and me.”

“Pity.” Stolz shifted on his chair. “It really is a great pity. Mind if I smoke?”

Ben made a gesture.

“Things don’t quite seem to be going your way, do they?” said Stolz after he’d lit his cigarette.

“That’s your opinion, not mine.”

“Let’s put it this way: certain things have happened that might cause you considerable embarrassment if they were to leak out.”

Ben felt tense, the skin tightening on his jaws. But without taking his eyes from Stolz he asked: “What makes you think so?”

“Now look,” said Stolz, “just between the two of us: we’re all made of flesh and blood, we’ve all got our little flaws. And if a man should get it into his head to – shall we say, sample the grass on the other side of the fence, well, that’s his own business. Provided it’s kept quiet, of course. Because it would be rather unpleasant if people found out about it, not so? I mean, especially if he is in the public eye. A teacher, for instance.”

In the seemingly interminable silence that followed they sat weighing each other.

“Why don’t you come out with it?” Ben asked at last. Although he hadn’t meant to, he took out his pipe to keep his hands occupied.

“Mr Du Toit, what I’m going to say to you now is in strict confidence—” He seemed to be waiting for reaction, but Ben only shrugged. “I suppose you know there are photographs in circulation which may cause you some discomfort,” said Stolz. “It so happened that I came across one of them myself.”

“It doesn’t surprise me, Captain. After all, they were taken on your instructions, weren’t they?”

Stolz laughed, not very pleasantly. “You’re not serious are you, Mr Du Toit? Really, as if we haven’t got enough to do as it is.”

“It surprised me too. To think of all the manpower, all the money, all the time you’re spending on someone like me. There must be many bigger and more serious problems to occupy you?”

“I’m glad you’re seeing it that way. That’s why I’m here today. On this friendly visit.” He emphasised the words slightly as he sat watching the thin line of smoke blown from his mouth. “You see, that stuff was brought to my attention, so I thought it was my duty to tell you about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like to see an ordinary decent man like you being victimised in such a sordid way.”

In spite of himself, Ben smiled stiffly. “What you really mean, I presume, is: if I’m willing to co-operate, if I stop being an embarrassment or a threat to you, the photographs will remain harmlessly filed away somewhere?”

“I wouldn’t exactly put it in those words. Let’s just say I may be able to use my influence to make sure that a private indiscretion isn’t used against you.”

“And in exchange I must keep my mouth shut?”

“Well, don’t you think it’s high time we allowed the dead to rest in peace? What possible sense could there be in continuing to waste time and energy the way you’ve been doing this past year?”

“Suppose I refuse?”

The smoke was blown out very slowly. “I’m not trying to influence you, Mr Du Toit. But think it over.”

Ben got up. “I won’t be blackmailed, Captain. Not even by you.”

Stolz didn’t move in his chair. “Now don’t rush things. I’m offering you a chance.”

“You mean my very last chance?”

“One never knows.”

“I still haven’t uncovered the full truth I’m looking for, Captain,” Ben said quietly. “But I have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to look like. And I won’t allow anyone or anything tocome between me and that truth.”

Slowly and deliberately Stolz stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Is that your final answer?”

“You didn’t really expect anything else, did you?”

“Perhaps I did.” Stolz looked him in the eyes. “Are you sure you realise what you’re exposing yourself to? Those people – whoever they may be – can make things very difficult for you indeed.”

“Then those people will have to live with their own conscience. I trust you will give them the message, Captain.”

A very slight hint of a blush moved across the officer’s face, causing the thin line of the scar to show up more sharply on his cheekbone.

“Well, that’s that then. Good-bye.”

Ignoring Stolz’s hand Ben went past him and opened the door of his study. Neither said another word.

What amazed Ben was the discovery that there was no anger against the man left in him. He almost, momentarily, felt sorry for him.
You ‘re a prisoner just like me. The only difference is that you don’t know it.

There was no sign of Melanie at the airport when Ben went there the next afternoon to meet her. The stewardess he approached for help pressed the buttons of a computer and confirmed that Melanie’s name was on the passengers’ list all right; but after she’d gone off to make further enquiries an official in uniform approached Ben to tell him that the stewardess had been mistaken. There had been no person by that name on the flight from Nairobi.

Prof Bruwer received the news with surprising equanimity when Ben visited him in hospital the same evening. Nothing to worry about, he said. Melanie often changed her mind at the last moment. Perhaps she’d found something new to investigate. Another day or two and she would be back. He found Ben’s anxiety amusing; nothing more.

The next day there was a cable from London: Safely here. Please don’t worry. Will phone. Love, Melanie.

It was nearly midnight when the call came through. A very bad line, her voice distant and almost unrecognisable.

Ben glanced over his shoulder to make sure Susan’s door was shut.

“What’s happened? Where are you, Melanie?”

“In London.”

“But how did you get there?”

“Were you waiting for me at the airport?”

“Of course. What happened to you?”

“They didn’t want to let me through.”

For a moment he was too shocked to speak. Then he asked: “You mean-you were there too?”

A distant laugh, smothered and unsettling. “Of course I was.”

It hit him forcibly. “The passport?”

“Yes. Undesirable immigrant. Promptly deported.”

“But you’re not an immigrant. You’re as South African as I am.”

“No longer. One forfeits one’s citizenship, didn’t you know?”

“I don’t believe it.” All his thoughts seemed to get stuck, idiotically, in the violent simplicity of the discovery that she would never come back.

“Will you please tell Dad? But break it gently. I don’t want to upset him in his condition.”

“Melanie, is there anything I—”

“Not for the moment.” A strange, weary matter-of-factness in her voice. As if she had already withdrawn herself. Perhaps she was scared to show emotion. Especially on the telephone. “Just look after Dad, Ben. Please.”

“Don’t worry.”

“We can make other arrangements later. Perhaps. I haven’t had time to think yet.”

“Where can I get in touch with you?”

“Through the newspaper. I’ll let you know. Perhaps we can think of something. At the moment it’s all messed up.”

“But, my God, Melanie—!”

“Please don’t talk now, Ben.” The immensity of the distance between us. Seas, continents. “It’ll be all right.” For a while the line became inaudible.

“Melanie, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Listen—”

“Tell me, for God’s sake—”

“I’m tired, Ben. I haven’t slept for thirty-six hours. I can’t think of anything right now.”

“Can I phone you somewhere tomorrow?”

“I’ll write.”

“Please!”

“Just look after yourself. And tell Dad.” Tersely, tensely, almost irritably. Or was it just the line?

“Melanie, are you quite sure—”

The telephone died in his hand.

Ten minutes later it rang again. This time there was silence on the other side. And then a man’s voice chuckling, before the receiver was put down again.

2

It felt as if her letter would never come. And the tension of waiting, the daily disappointment at the mailbox, sapped his nervous energy as much as anything else that had happened to him. Had the letter been intercepted? That possibility in itself brought home the futility of his anger to him in a more nauseating way than even the discovery of the photograph had done. However vicious the pressures he had been submitted to, they had all been related to his efforts in connection with Gordon. But now Melanie had been drawn into it, involving what was most private in his existence.

Interminable nights of lying awake. Groping back to that unbelievable night, so farfetched in his memories that he sometimes wondered whether it had been a hallucination. All he had to sustain him was the vividness of those memories. Theachingly vulnerable, barely noticeable swelling of her breasts. The long dark nipples and their golden aureoles. The taste of her hair in his mouth. Her quicksilver tongue. Her rising voice. The slickness of her sex opening under the soft mat of hair. But the acute physicality of those very memories was disturbing. It had been so much more than that, hadn’t it? Unless their love in itself had been an illusion, a fever-dream in a desert?

And on the other hand, the painful fantasies: that she’d deliberately decided not to write because she wanted to withdraw from him; that she’d grasped at the opportunity to escape from him because he’d become an embarrassment to her. Worst of all: that she herself had been planted by them, instructed from the very beginning to play cat-and-mouse with him in order to find out what he knew and who his collaborators were. Surely that was madness! And yet it had become such an effort merely to drag oneself from one day to the next that nothing really appeared more outrageous than anything else.

Perhaps everything had become part of one vast mirage. Perhaps he’d imagined the whole persecution. Perhaps there was an illness in his brain, a tumour, a cancerous growth, a malignant accumulation of cells causing him to lose touch with what was really happening. What was ‘real', what was pure paranoia? But if that were so, was it possible for a madman to be aware of his own madness?

If only it had been a real desert and he a real fugitive running from a real enemy in helicopters or jeeps or on foot. If only it had been a real desert in which one could die of thirst or exposure, where one could go blind of the intolerable white glare, where one could shrivel up and bleach out like a dried bone in the sun: for then, at least, one would know what was happening; it would be possible to foresee the end, to make your peace with God and with the world, to prepare yourself for what lay in store. But now – now there was nothing. Only this blind uncontrollable motion carrying him with it, not even sure whether it was actually moving; as imperceptible as the motion of the earth under his feet.