Absolution (19 page)

After you finished your coffee, you helped the men collapse and pack the tent and bedrolls, everything compact and well maintained. You thought of your apartment and its scarce effects, now abandoned, already ransacked. You knew your files were being read, a search undertaken, looking for stray telephone numbers, addresses, names, illicit books in brown paper wrappers, the few items you had dared accord sentimental value being knocked over, broken. Even these things, apart from the books, would not have been obviously valuable to anyone but you, and perhaps me. A blue glass carafe you used as a vase. A woven raffia textile with a geometric pattern. Two plants. A photograph of your father as a boy. An assortment of small shells collected on various beaches. The apartment came furnished, the chairs and tables were not yours. Even as a child you distrusted ownership. It was inevitable that the authorities would summon me to collect what remained of your possessions after they completed their task. It was inevitable, too, that they would find nothing to help them in their investigations. Banned books, yes, but no phone numbers, no names, no addresses, no dates paired with
locations. The landlady clucked over the unscrubbed oven, the dusty skirting boards, the cobwebs on the chandelier, the missing marquetry plaque in three kinds of wood in the design of a fish, the plastic bowl of potpourri, the rubber plant in a glazed pink pot – those things on the inventory you had hated and wilfully discarded. I forfeited the deposit, too busy and careless of money to clean the apartment myself. We lived ten minutes from each other and for so many years I never knew your address. I would have come every day if I’d known. Perhaps that is why you never told me.

‘Are you ready to go? Lamia?’ You did not respond.
Sie war in sich
. You were deep inside yourself. ‘Lamia? We’re ready, if you and Sam are ready.’

‘Yes. We should be going.’

The sun was already high as you pulled away from the campsite and into the full glare of the treeless mountains, volcanic red rocks flowing in undulating vertical waves. The remainder of the pass road was less harrowing than what you had negotiated the night before – fewer hairpin turns, less dramatic precipices. Now it was only a matter of not riding the clutch or the brakes. You feared how much a night’s sleep might have cost you.

Sam turned his attention to the two men, fixing them with the same uncompromising stare that had so moved and unsettled you. It was a relief not to be the focus of his attention. Sam did not just look, he studied, as if adults were an invasive species, alien to his experience of the world, creatures from fantasy. The men tried to bring him out of himself. Timothy had a length of rope and showed him how to tie different knots.

‘You can’t untie this one, can you?’ he said, smiling and gently elbowing the boy.

‘If I had a knife I could cut it,’ Sam said, grim and determined.

‘Ah, but there is a way, man. You don’t need a knife to cut this knot.’

‘A knife would be easier.’

‘But that isn’t the point, Sam. Try with your hands.’

You could not explain to them why Sam was so removed, so joyless. You scarcely understood it yourself, but wanted to shake him again, to say,
Be happy! I have freed you! You are free! I killed to free you!

Prince Albert spilled out from the mountains, a white and green pool bright against the hard brown interior. You stopped on the edge of town to refuel the truck and buy more food and water. Timothy and Lionel bought sandwiches for themselves, and paid for half the fuel. Sam brightened after eating a peach, smearing juice and flesh over his face and shirt. The men doted on him, wiping his face as if he belonged to them. He withstood their attention like a dog that has learned not to snap when fussed for fear of being beaten.

Driving through the grubby northern outskirts of town, inhabited by filthy children and curs that stopped traffic on the road to fight over a piece of carrion, you passed a police car. Your chest tightened and as you slowed down the cruiser pulled into the road behind the truck. It followed you for half a second before turning around, lights flashing and siren shrieking, to race after a car travelling in the opposite direction.

‘This is the real Wild West out here,’ you said.

The Wild West: cowboys and Indians, farmers and natives, lawmen and outlaws. Lawmen gone wrong in our case, at the time, and outlaws on the side of justice. To be outside the law, to place oneself beyond the rules because the rules are wrong, that’s what you had done. Apart from our books, hidden in their camouflaged cavities, and our circle of associates, my associates in particular, hidden in their own ways, your father and I were always so law-abiding. Where did you learn to be more than just a paper rebel? Not from me. I was no model for action. Even my work, my papery protest, it could hardly be called daring.

The rest of that day you passed few cars. A truck had overturned, scattering lengths of metal along the roadside. The driver stood next to the wreck, looking bewildered. He waved to you but you shook your head – an apology and a dismissal. Along the highway people trudged with loads on their backs, bundles of firewood balanced on their heads, children tied in sheaths of cotton cloth against erect adult bodies. A group of boys had found a trolley from a supermarket and were taking turns pushing each other in it, pretending they were motorized. They waved when you passed, throwing dust in their faces. Agave and yucca broke the monotony of the flatland, sending up flowering spikes and curving their forms into succulent arcs. On the horizon a bustard broke into a run.

Sam fell asleep and Timothy read a book. Lionel sometimes read over Timothy’s shoulder, and when he grew bored he stared at the road being endlessly consumed by the maw of the truck, or watched you driving, your face hard and scarred as the road itself.

I look at the last photographs I have of you, the last trace, together with your notebooks and the final letter. You are somewhere on a hill, perhaps in the Nuweveld, with long white acacia thorns behind you, and the skimmed-off surface of the Karoo in the distance, hazily exposed, Sam standing beside you. This photograph of you and the boy demonstrates your possession and affection for him – your hands are on his shoulders, he squints, you look at him with a caring smile. In another you look into the camera, hold him out in front of you, his hair brushed away from his face, your hair blowing away from yours, so there can be no mistaking the two identities. These were meant for me. They were evidence, the case you were presenting. Not of maternity, but of responsibility.
This child has been mine to look after
, your face says.
And now he is yours
.

Mine.

How I have failed you.

*

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

19
JUNE
1996, G
EORGE

VICTIM:
Jimmy Sukwini

VIOLATION:
Killed in ANC Bomb Attack

TESTIMONY FROM:
Ethel Sukwini (Wife)

On continuation
.

CHAIRPERSON:
And on the night of the explosion?

MRS SUKWINI:
I did not hear about it until sometime the next day. My husband worked the night shift and when someone phoned to say that the refinery had blown up I knew in my heart that he was dead. In my heart I knew already something was wrong before my friend phoned to say what the news was about the explosion.

CHAIRPERSON:
Can you tell us, Mrs Sukwini, how your life changed after your husband’s death?

MRS SUKWINI:
Mr Chairman, this is the worst thing that can happen. I don’t think I have to [
indistinct
] very hard for us after he died and we went to live with my parents. I was missing him all the time and my girls were missing their father. I still miss him. He was a good man. I understand why the comrades did what they did but I think maybe it should not have been like this. I don’t know. I was not a part of these things. I am only a teacher.

CHAIRPERSON:
Thank you, Mrs Sukwini. Is there anything else you would like to say?

MRS
S
UKWINI
: Only that I am still waiting for someone to come to me, to say to me that they are sorry, that they wish for me and for my daughters that my husband did not die. I am still waiting. Please, will you tell them to come find me?

1989

The blast and the flash woke the boy and when he looked back to the north he could see the mountains on fire and a moment later her face was at the window of the truck and she was pointing a gun at him. Then she recognized him and put down the gun and said
Open the door
. They had known each other for a long time. Except for his dead parents he didn’t know anyone better in the whole world than Laura.

What are you doing here?
she asked, looking at the boy’s face in the dark.
Where’s Bernard?

He turned on the headlights and pointed.

Laura turned off the lights and perched on the steps leading up to the cab with the door open.
Is he dead?

The boy nodded.
He was sleeping. The truck went into gear
.

We can’t leave him there
.

Laura climbed down and together they went around to the back of the truck and they had to lift their shirts to cover their noses. The clouds were clearing and there was enough light from the moon for her to see the bodies inside and the boy didn’t have to tell her who they were because Laura knew the kind of work Bernard did.
So let’s put him back here
, she said, and together they lifted him up and carried him to the back of the truck and pushed him inside, and Bernard rolled against another body with its left arm missing and its hair burned off and the lips were curling away from the teeth. They closed the doors, locked the back, and rubbed their palms against the ground.

The boy tried to work out how long it had been since they’d seen each other. It was definitely before his parents died, so maybe no more than seven months, but Laura had been away
and she looked different, her hair was short against her head and her face was like a carving and her eyes were darker. She hadn’t come to the funeral. At the service he’d sat alone with Mrs Gush, the woman who took care of him in the days after the accident. He had waited for Laura to arrive. He’d asked Mrs Gush,
Did you tell her?
and the woman said they had tried to contact Laura and left word,
but did not reach her directly
. There were people from the university who were his father’s fellow students and professors who came past and shook his hand. And then there was his father’s mentor Professor William Wald with his dark hair and grey beard, and he came very gently over to the boy and took his hand and whispered what good people his parents were and what an extraordinary woman his mother was, and how sorry and sad he was that they were gone. The boy knew that Professor Wald was also Laura’s father, and this made the boy trust him. The man had put his hands on the boy’s head and said if the boy needed anything at all he just had to ask, and if there was no one else to look after him then something could be done about that. Professor Wald gave Mrs Gush a funny look and she gave the Professor a funny look, and then Professor Wald went away with his tall wife and the boy never saw the Professor again because Bernard took over but now Bernard was dead.

There were no grandparents since all the boy’s grandparents were dead. His father had no siblings and his mother’s sister Ellen said she couldn’t come
Because it’s too far away and I can’t afford to come, sweetie, so you’ll have to forgive me and I’ll see you soon, okay?
After the funeral Mrs Gush told him that although Ellen had been asked to look after him, she had refused – it would be too great a burden. Bernard was the only other choice.

The memorial was at the university because the officials thought that was what he’d want although the boy knew that his parents would have preferred everyone to gather on the beach at Camps Bay to sing, and then lift them up to the air and let them float away, but in a way it didn’t matter because their bodies had
already gone into the air.
No remains recovered
, the report said on its funny paper. He could tell that the flowers were leftovers from some other function like a banquet. They looked too happy with their big scarlet pink faces, and instead of live music there was a tape recording of some low and crying organ and the sound wobbled and it was the kind of song his parents would have called
music to dig death by
. And throughout the music and the man at the podium talking and talking and talking and raising up his eyes to the ceiling the boy kept turning around to look for Laura who was the only person in the world at that moment he wanted to see. But she never came and he only saw her again that night at the truck when she pointed the gun at his face.

Sam

Clare sends me away for a week, claiming other responsibilities. Some days while Greg goes to work I stay at his house, lying by the pool and listening to the recordings of my interviews. Other days I go to his gallery on Loop Street, where I sit in one of the vacant offices and work on the materials I’ve gathered, or I explore the city over long lunch breaks while Greg deals with his artists. One day I go to buy a car, agreeing with Sarah over the phone that it makes no sense to carry on renting until she arrives in December. A car is a car, she says, one is as good as another, and she trusts my judgement.