Absolution (4 page)

I dream that someday you may read this and tell me where I’ve gone wrong, so we might enjoy the irony of the imagined and the real grating against each other. In the absence of your own version, I know there must be another, a competing one, which I may yet choose to summon. I speak, of course, of the boy. I know that his is not my story to tell. There are gaps in my knowledge of your final days, but in the story of the boy I have no source upon which to rely other than your own partial account. The boy, perhaps, will tell his own story, in a way that I cannot.

There are days when I think I should have filed whatever it was that one was supposed to file at the time – a statement, a ‘Victim’s Statement’, ‘Human Rights Violations Statement’, whatever the Truth and Reconciliation Commission requested – but I could not come to think of myself as a ‘Victim’ in the way that others were victims. You were a victim, but I knew you were not a ‘Victim’. Anyway, I do not like this word,
victim
, with all of its Latinate baggage. We were not sacrificial, and there was nothing about what happened to us that had anything to do with the supernatural. What would I have achieved by making my statement, apart from hoping that some shady and predictable character from the old government might admit what had
happened to you? I did not, I still do not, need the meagre money the government would have settled on me in an official capacity. Let them spend it on those who have genuine need, and so much more besides. I did not need to see my or your name on that list of Official Victims. Your brother did not push for it – neither did your father – so what good would it have done? What is good for us anyway? I need to find something good. I need at least to imagine what might have happened, to begin to chart a way through the little I know.

So I bring you back to the crossroads, where the journey must have begun, more than a dozen other people standing in hazy sanctuaries of flickering orange light around you, shifting at your arrival. Perhaps you nodded to the woman nearest you, and the woman smiled once but then turned away in embarrassment or fear for what you might represent – the threat you might pose simply by being there among them, standing alone in the dark. A white woman like you would not be waiting at the crossroads on the old forest road, not in the middle of the night, at the height of summer, on foot, rubber-soled shoes on the sweating asphalt, two sticky chemical substances that merge into each other if you stand still long enough. Even the children knew instinctively to beware. Women like you did not go on foot after dark, not in those days, not even today – especially not today. How mad you must have appeared, come rolling down the mountain in your backpacker’s disguise. (Should I have tried to stop you? If you had said,
Mother, I won’t do it for your sake
, would I have said
Don’t do it, my darling
or would I have said,
No, you
must
do it, for the sake of us all
? Can I speak of the greater good in the same breath as I summon the nature of your act?)

You would have had supplies because you were always so well prepared: water in a thermos, and Safari Dates, your favourite snack as a child. I can see you sip and chew, alternate between water and fruit, pausing to take steady breaths, to calm yourself as I calm myself, counting heartbeats and willing them to strike a
less persistent time. These were old movements, ones you learned from me, which I learned from my mother and she learned from hers. And if there had been only men about at the crossroads, you would not have stopped. You would have kept yourself going for safety, not out of panic but out of caution, always seeing what might come next.

It would have been deepest night, past two, but your plan would have been clear, the car would be coming, you would recognize it, knowing by the dip and rise of its lights that it was meant for you. The plan would have been to spirit you back, somewhere you could not be found, hiding until they stopped looking so intently and then over the border to Botswana or Lesotho, and then more remote exile. But perhaps the traffic was too sparse, or something happened and your associate, the driver, was apprehended – one of the ones rounded up and detained until they ceased to exist.

The time appointed for the rendezvous passed. You checked your watch, knew enough not to wait until dawn would expose you, and began looking for the right kind of alternative. Drivers knew stories of hijackings and ambushes. Only the impecunious travelled without fear. With nothing there was nothing to lose but life.

After ten minutes a truck approached, and you edged out on to the pavement, thumb erect, hair vivid in the dark. The truck dipped its lights and slowed to an idle next to you, its gears clunking. The driver was a man, and beside him sat a dog and a young boy.

This man, I imagine him always eating – the kind of brute whose appetite for food reflects his appetite for consumption in general, for consuming everything it might be possible to put into his mouth, an appetite out of all control, that regards moderation not just as a foreign idea, but as an enemy concept: to moderate is to limit his experience of the world. So when the truck pulls over to meet you, Laura, I imagine this man covered in the detritus of a meal, food staining his clothes, while the boy is left to starve.

I see you at the truck, trying to play the role of whore to get a lift, knowing you would be capable of anything to get where you needed to go. It was a game you sometimes played with your brother: the little flirt, the sexually precocious younger child, teasing him, poking fun at his small adolescent prick in the pool, your premature development intimidating. You were before your time in all things.
Don’t get stroppy with me, Laura!
I would bark, watching as you waited until the last moment to pack, to shower for school, and then sulk when I pushed you. (How can I call you wilful, whom I miss most?) I can see you there now, at night, amongst those people, hiking up your skirt – no, not a skirt – opening the top button on your shirt or knotting it at the waist to expose your midriff, an ivory sash in the darkness, talking your way into that truck.

‘Where you heading?’ the man asked, leaning out through an opened window. He had leathery skin and wiry hair; his upper arms sagged where they emerged from his sleeveless shirt, and at the armholes his pale chest flashed.

Perhaps you shook your head or came up with a plausible story. Or perhaps you simply told the truth.

‘To Ladybrand.’

‘I’m going to Port Elizabeth. I’ll take you that far. Hop in.’

Climbing up into the cab, you flinched at the smell of urine and dog. The boy scooted closer to the dog and the driver, making room for you.

‘I’m Bernard,’ the man said, ‘and this is Sam.’

In your last letter to me, and in the last of the notebooks you bequeathed me, you recount your time with Bernard and the boy, the boy called Sam. Would you have given your real name? I don’t think so. You would have given a name to suit the moment, a name under which to travel, to draw attention or not – to draw attention away, perhaps, from what really mattered.

‘I’m Lamia,’ you said.

‘Funny name for a girl,’ said Bernard. ‘This is Tiger.’

‘Funny name for a dog.’

‘He bites like a tiger.’ Bernard put the truck back into gear, accelerating through the intersection. ‘I’m driving through the night. Tomorrow morning I’ll stop at a picnic place, sleep all day, then get going again. That suit you?’

‘I might want to carry on.’

‘You sleep now if you want.’

‘Thank you for stopping.’

‘Pleasure. When I saw you standing alone back there, I said to Sam,
Christ man, that girly looks like she needs a lift
.’

You were no girl, not by then, but that’s what a man like him would have seen, a girl alone and stranded, even a girl playing the whore.

‘Hell of a place to be hitchhiking. All kinds of men out this time of night,’ he said.

All kinds of men, and some in trucks. You were not the kind to take rides with men, but perhaps the child, the boy, reassured you, because he was a child.
Men with children are less likely to do things that might shame them in the eyes of a child
. I wrote that once, naively. But no, the concern would have been secondary; you were prepared for anything, ready to meet any threat, to go out fighting.

1989

The boy woke before Bernard that morning because the phone was ringing but this was nothing new because he was always awake before Bernard who was still passed out from the night before, next to the sink. Sometimes Bernard slept there by the sink and sometimes on the floor of the lounge by the couch, keeping the boy awake with talk in his sleep. One morning the boy found him with his head resting on the toilet, vomit sheeting the bathroom. He’d had chicken for dinner, and peas, and then something sweet. The boy could count the peas: thirty-seven whole ones and parts of others.

He answered the phone. It was the man with the funny voice again.

Listen kid is Bernard there?

He’s asleep
.

Fuck wake him up man
.

The boy jabbed at Bernard’s ribs with his bare foot.
Bernard. Bernard. There’s a phone call
. But the man didn’t move.

He won’t wake up
.

Fuck throw some water on him man this is important business
.

He’ll hit me
.

He’ll kill you if he hears he missed this call
.

So the boy poured some water in a glass and splashed it in Bernard’s flushed grey face, but the first glass didn’t do anything and the boy had to do it again, but this didn’t do anything either so he got a beer from the refrigerator, popped the lid, and poured it in Bernard’s eyes and then the man snapped upright and wrapped one of those hard hands around the boy’s throat and the other around the hand the boy was holding the beer can with and
he looked like he would snap the boy’s head off and eat it. But the boy put out his other hand, the one holding the phone, and said,
He told me to wake you up
. Bernard kept holding on to the boy’s neck and his chest was going up and down but he took the phone and the boy dropped the beer can on the floor and the two of them were looking at each other for a long time.

No man. Give me half an hour rather. I’m in no fit state for public consumption. Can’t be that urgent. They’re already dead, hey?

Bernard hung up the phone and shook his head and stared again at the boy for a long time and had a funny look in his eyes.
Don’t ever do that again or I’ll open you up from your mouth to your arsehole
.

He jumped from the floor like he’d been awake all morning and picked the boy up in the air in his thin arms and shook the child.
Don’t ever do that again!
Then he put the boy down and punched him in the nose so there was blood all over the lino floor, and the blood went in with the beer and water and Bernard shook his head and said,
You clean that up we don’t have time for your bullshit this morning
.

So the boy cleaned up the floor with some kitchen towel and it took a long time because the blood kept coming in gobs from his nose.

And then Bernard showered. And then he said the boy should shower and the boy showered and then got dressed in khaki pants because he liked them best and the blue checked shirt because his father had given him that for his last birthday so he liked that shirt best and the red shoes because they were the only shoes he had anyway.

The boy was hungry but they didn’t eat.
I’m too rough for eating this morning rather make me some strong coffee, quickly hey
. So the boy put on the coffee maker and they both drank a cup but it tasted like cigarettes and Bernard spat his out on the floor and said for him to clean it up and the boy reached for the kitchen towel and as he was bending over the blood started to come again.

He ate an old banana that had been sitting in the kitchen for a week. He hadn’t been living with his uncle, his mother’s half-brother, for very long, a few months only, since the winter, and there was never enough for more than one person to eat.

They drove in Bernard’s truck to a police station downtown and Bernard stopped at the entrance to the forecourt and said something to the guard, and the man opened the gate and let them pass and inside it smelled thick like toilets, and there was a black plastic mound. Bernard got out of the truck and looked at the mound and shook his head and lifted a corner of the black plastic, and then the boy could see what was underneath and didn’t even look away because he had seen that sort of thing before but each time he forgot and looking didn’t make much difference any more. Bernard and the man from the phone pulled the plastic all the way back and looked and laughed like they’d never seen anything so funny.

So Bernard drove them home and swapped the pickup for the big truck and then drove all the way back across town to the police station. He had to back the truck into the forecourt and it scraped against the top of the gateway. The boy thought maybe Bernard would just let him stay in the truck while he loaded but he said,
Come on man you gotta earn your keep
and he dragged the boy out of the front seat. The man from the phone with the funny voice said,
Isn’t the boy too young for this?
and Bernard said,
You know what I was doing at his age?
, laughing and pulling at his nephew’s shirt. They put on plastic jumpsuits and rubber gloves and masks and there were two policemen who were already wearing the same outfits and they started loading the bodies into the back of the truck but the man from the phone didn’t help because he was too important and he went into his office that had a window looking down on the forecourt and watched from there. Once he brought them tea for a break but the boy didn’t want to put his hands near his face and Bernard said,
Suit yourself man, you take what you can get
.

The boy took the arms and his uncle took the feet and they would swing them and throw them into the truck and when it got overloaded at the back Bernard climbed in and moved the bodies around and then the boy had to prop the bodies left outside up against the truck and with one of the other policemen Bernard would drag them by their hands into the back. The boy didn’t get the chance to see his mother and father dead. The police said there was nothing left of them.