Absolution (25 page)

‘But did they indoctrinate you, politically speaking?’

I remember Clare looking surprised at my implicit suggestion that she hadn’t answered the question. There is a long pause in the conversation as the noise of the mower continues. I can hear the blade catch on a tree root or a stone. I hear myself shift on the couch, move a folder against the recorder, and click my pencil to advance the lead.

‘I was about to say that obviously they had, given the relative unity of my and their political beliefs. But there is nothing obvious about that relationship. My sister was as un-indoctrinated by my parents as it was possible to be. She chose the opposite way. So it was not inevitable, it was not a natural relationship. It is a question I cannot entirely answer. I do not know, in the end, how much influence parents can have over the beliefs of their children, or how they choose to act on those beliefs. One can but sow the seed and provide the proper environment, and hope that the flower promised by the illustration on the packet is the one that will grow, trust that the hybrid will not revert to the
characteristics of some earlier generation, or be so transformed by unpredictable and wholly external factors – a drought, a storm, environmental pollution – that the seed mutates and something unrecognizable grows.’

‘And that is what you’re suggesting happened with your sister?’

‘A mutant, yes. Nora’s soil, the water she drank, the air she inhaled, it was all polluted. And while she and I grew up with the same conditions, more or less, I had higher tolerance, natural immunities against the environment that tried so hard to twist our growth to its own malign purpose. But not Nora. She was always susceptible. She was weak.’

‘And your daughter? Would you say that you indoctrinated her?’ I hear the tension in my voice, the way it suddenly sounds choked, afraid of the very words it says.

‘Sometimes a plant is more vigorous than its parent. But Laura – I do not wish to speak about her, as you well know.’

I stop in Beaufort West for lunch, buy a sandwich, and sit in the car down the street from Ellen’s old house. The town looks unchanged since I was last here, except for the new speed cameras and the sign warning that it’s a
WATER SCARCE AREA;
the dam is dangerously low and they have to truck in water from elsewhere. After years in the States I’m struck by how American the town seems – the American fast-food franchises, the strip motels, the scrap-metal yard and trailers. Only the occasional sign in Afrikaans or Xhosa reminds me where I am, and the residential architecture, the township, and the people themselves. Demographically, it’s like taking a small town in the Deep South and plopping it in the middle of a Nevada wasteland.

Ellen’s old house looks as unchanged as the town, and I realize I’m parked in the same place that Lionel and Timothy must have stopped twenty years ago.

‘Is that the house?’ Lionel asked. Of the two, he was always the more concerned about me.

‘Yes, it’s that one,’ I said, looking out the rear window. I had been there enough times to show them the way from the outskirts of town. Though I didn’t know the exact address, from the prison roundabout I could find the house without difficulty. At the time there was bougainvillea with orange flowers growing all along the roof and spilling down to enclose the front porch with heavy drapes of leaves and flowers. The porch is now bare – less cover for anyone to hide.

Lionel had handed me the bag that contained everything I owned.

‘You’ll call us if you need anything, if it doesn’t work out,’ he said. I nodded and said goodbye. I hadn’t known them long enough to feel anything at the parting, except a kind of hope that I wouldn’t need to call on them, that everything with my aunt would be perfect.

They sat in the car watching as I walked up the street and knocked on Ellen’s door. Before I went inside, I turned back to look. Lionel waved, Timothy turned over the engine and they drove off. I’ve never seen them again.

*

I rely on the satnav to direct me through the swirl of Gauteng roads, the N1 to the N12 and into central Johannesburg on the M1, then off and up leafy Jan Smuts Avenue, past the zoo, left at the Goodman Gallery and onto Chester Road, then right at 1st Avenue and a hundred metres further up on the left side. Despite the rush-hour traffic I’m in front of the house in dizzying time and find that when I finally let go of the steering wheel my hands are shaking and I’m out of breath.

From the street the house is invisible: the property appears to be nothing but a white wall concealing a forest of trees with a gate on the left side protecting a long brick-paved driveway. Halfway up the street there’s a small wooden shed, just large enough for one person, where a private security guard sits
on a black plastic conference chair twenty-four hours a day, monitoring the whole block, from Chester up to 7th Avenue.

I buzz the intercom at the entrance and Jason, Sarah’s colleague, lets me in; the last three Africa correspondents for the paper have occupied this ersatz Cape Dutch house. ‘It’s what Americans prefer,’ Jason says, handing over a ring with no less than thirty keys on it and showing me around. ‘Big, old, high ceilings, high walls, heavy security, nice area. You’ll be fine here.’ There’s a garden cottage at the back, once intended for a live-in maid, which Sarah will use as an office, and a shiny black SUV that comes with the job. Jason gives me the names and cell numbers for the domestic worker and the gardener, the utility and telecoms account numbers and passwords, the password and emergency number for the security company, a list of decent restaurants in the area, and a whole booklet of information pertaining to security – where it’s safe to go, where it isn’t. Nowhere, according to the pamphlet, is especially safe to walk alone, even in the daytime. Drive if at all possible, and tell someone where you’re going, when you expect to arrive, and when you’ll be back. This seems excessive to me, but then I’ve never lived in Johannesburg and can only go by the stories I’ve heard. Jason points out the panic buttons – at least one in every room, sometimes two or three – and gives me two mobile panic buttons on lariats that Sarah and I can wear around our necks.

‘You should wear these at all times,’ he says, ‘because you just never know when the woman who comes to the gate selling mealies might actually be a man in a fat suit with a gun. You don’t want to end up murdered in your bed. Change the passwords regularly. Rose has worked for me four of the last five years and I’d trust her with my life. Andile, the gardener, you have to watch like a hawk, but as long as he comes on a day that Rose is here she’ll do that for you and you won’t have to worry. But you’re a local, I hardly need to tell you all this.’

I offer to drive Jason to the airport, but he’s already arranged
a car service, and half an hour after arriving I’m left alone in this luxury bunker. Growing up I could never have imagined that I’d live like this, with staff (even if part-time), two cars, a swimming pool, and security as extensive and high-tech as anything Greg has in Cape Town.

I order a pizza – ‘Never let a delivery man in, always take the food through the slot in the gate,’ Jason warned me – and then phone Sarah before she leaves for the airport. We’ve adjusted to these separations, though in the past it’s always been her work that has taken her away from home instead of mine, and that’s only going to continue once she arrives. After the holidays she’ll be off to Angola for two weeks to cover the oil industry; Nigeria after that, Sierra Leone, and no telling where else. She’s braver than I am, so I know I don’t need to worry about how she’ll adjust to living here. Given the work, she’s unlikely to be in Johannesburg more than half the year.

With the TV news in the background, I get online to look at the profiles of my new colleagues at the university. Like the jobs I’ve had before, this is only a fixed-term position. Sarah’s is the job that matters, at least for now, and the one that determines where we live and for how long.

On a whim, I search the university site for anyone named Timothy or Lionel. Not knowing their surnames, I’ve been looking for likely Lionels and Timothys over the years, but there are countless people with the same first names in the archive of TRC testimony – the first place I thought to search – and none of them seems to match the little I know about either of the men or their activities.

There’s a hit in the Anthropology Department for a Professor Lionel Jameson. I click on the link for his staff profile. When his picture comes up, I know at once it’s the right man.

Sarah’s flight is delayed so I wait at the Woolworths in the concourse of shops between the International and Domestic
Terminals. I order a bran muffin and coffee and sit at the long white communal table, my back to the entrance.

After a few sips of the coffee, a hand reaches into my space, dropping a tattered rectangle of brown cardboard next to the saucer. I look up to see a giant scarecrow of a man who doesn’t make eye contact with me, but just stands there. In a scrawl of Afrikaans on one side and broken English on the other, the slip explains that he is deaf and needs money. I’m short on cash, so I give him a five-rand coin, dropping it into his hand, which stretches out the moment I reach for my wallet. A look of disappointment flashes across his face when he registers what the coin is, like he can’t believe I’d be giving him so little. He doesn’t thank me, still won’t even look at my face – does nothing to acknowledge the coin apart from appearing crestfallen. Without bothering anyone else, he walks out of the store, and as he goes I see that his jeans are completely sodden and stained. He’s doubly incontinent, and only then do I smell it, as he’s walking away, unharassed by the security guard. The jeans are frayed to above the ankles and his shoes are both missing the heel and quarter, the entire back part of the shoe, so they’re more like clogs, flapping and thwacking the floor with each step. I watch him leave and go back to eating my twenty-rand bran muffin, which tastes like the best muffin I’ve ever had and has been served with a ramekin of grated cheddar cheese and an individual pot of jam. I wonder in a surge of irritation why the guard, a plump uniformed woman who seems aware of nothing in particular except the romance novel she’s reading, failed to stop the man from coming in to bother paying customers. I’m outraged, and just as suddenly I can’t believe that I’m outraged, and then I become outraged at my own outrage. I worry that Sarah will regret moving here the minute she’s off the plane and we’re surrounded by men offering to help us, to show us the way, to carry our bags: a minefield of opportunists, the genuinely desperate and the criminal.

Sarah finally arrives and when I see her come through the doors from customs I feel a flood of relief to be with her again. I hate these separations because they always remind me of other separations. Men offering taxis and directions begin to swarm. I pull us out of the melee to a quieter corner. She kisses me and I try to feel calm, but I can’t help looking past her to be sure no one swipes the luggage.

She laughs at my vigilance. ‘Please, Sam, this place makes JFK look like a third-world country. Where’s the car? How are you? You’re so tanned.’ She studies me and at the same time takes in everything around her. I want to tell her to be careful, to remember where she is, that you can’t let down your guard for a moment. I have to remind myself she’s been here before, she knows how things work and knows better than I do how to look after herself.

In the car I ask her if she remembers what she said when we first got together.

‘That you need to relax?’ she laughs, her head swivelling around and staring past me to look at the skyline of the city centre.

‘You told me you admired my courage to come halfway across the world to a place where I didn’t know anyone. And you said you weren’t sure you could do the same.’

Sarah braces against the car door as I merge through the fluid lanes of rush-hour traffic. ‘I don’t remember saying that, honey, but that was more than a decade ago. My father was a good model. He threw himself into so many different places. I knew when this job opened up that I had to apply. You’ve lived in my country. Now it’s time for me to live in yours for a while.’

At the house we rearrange the furniture that Jason and other correspondents have left behind. We’ll need to buy chairs, a new couch, but will wait until the container arrives with our things. For now we can live with what’s here. Though she’s exhausted, Sarah feels compelled to check in with her editor in New York. There’s no gradual settling in with a job like this – she’ll be working on a story from first thing tomorrow, getting herself set up, ‘learning
the lay of the land,’ she says, with the kind of enthusiasm that made me fall for her in the first place. There’s a study in the main house where I can work when I’m at home. The garden cottage has always functioned as the resident correspondent’s office space, and we’ve agreed it should continue that way – a clear separation between work and home, even if they’re only a few metres apart. In any case, I’ll have an office at the university. Before going to bed, I send Clare a message, my first communication to her since our last meeting.

*

Dear Clare,

I write with greatest appreciation and gratitude for your patience over the last four months. I hope, as you say, that we’ll meet again. It seems likely that I’ll return to Cape Town at some point in the next year.

I have started to transcribe the interviews and will undoubtedly have further questions as I begin to map the shape of the book. In some cases I may send you the transcript if the recording is poor. In fact, I include a transcript here, from early on in the process, where the sound suddenly goes and your voice with it. I think there was a house alarm going off in the background. I’ve done my best but there are some unintelligible passages and I would be grateful if you felt able to reconstruct what they might have been (or to construct them anew or revise them or insist on their irrelevance).

I hope I do not overstep the mark in saying that the last four months have been transformative for me in so many ways. It is my fondest hope that we’ll meet again someday soon and continue our conversations. I also hope that you may be able to forgive me for my less honourable questions and revelations at our last meeting.