Last Train to Retreat (23 page)

‘
Hajime!
’ the examiner commanded, starting the bout. Zane and his opponent circled each other, the pressure on Zane because
he
was being graded not his opponent. Zane looked for an opening, and, seeing none, flicked out his arm in a feint. At that moment his opponent attacked, forcing Zane to parry and step back. An exchange of punches and kicks followed from both sides – flurries without substance. A fist glanced off Zane’s cheekbone and into his eye. He could feel the unwelcome build-up of tension in his shoulders that would slow him down. This wasn’t real fighting, he suddenly thought, it would tire him and he had two more fights to go in quick succession. He pulled back, caught his breath and found
maai –
the distance that kept an opponent away yet close enough, and waited. He no longer saw a nameless
karateka
sent to test him, but Hannibal, mouth curled into a sneer, hands casually at waist level, eyes mocking him. Zane feigned a front kick, bringing his knee up and then suddenly turning around and executing a back roundhouse with the same leg. His opponent never saw it coming. Zane struck him on the side of the neck but with superb control, not dropping him but making him flinch, probably more from the bloodcurdling
kiai
that accompanied it. As his foot came to ground Zane’s leg sweep took the man down so cleanly that his body seemed horizontal for a split second before crashing down. Zane’s follow-up punch, stopped only by the rule of
sun-dome
, could have killed his opponent in real life. Zane bounced up, once more in the ready position. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flicker of a smile on Sensei Simon’s face.

In the late afternoon when the results were announced, Zane was among those who were awarded their black belts. Sensei Simon found him, shook his hand and said, ‘Remember, this is only the first step, the challenge ahead is even greater.’ He added, ‘From white belt to tenth
dan
master could take a cool sixty years. You and I and most of the world will probably never reach those heights but that’s beside the point. The point is it’s there to climb, like Everest.’

As he lay exhausted that night with his eye bloodshot and sore, Zane knew why he wasn’t feeling elated. He had passed a test, an important one, but not
the
test. It reminded him of the story of the vaudeville artist, whose knives had outlined his wife’s body for years on a board, barely missing her. One day he found out that she had been unfaithful and he resolved to kill her during one of his acts, making it look like an accident. He tried for a week but couldn’t succeed – he had practised the art of just missing her for so long that he couldn’t kill her when he wanted to. Zane wondered if he was too much like the vaudeville artist – trained to hold back even when the intention was the opposite.

Zane was a black belt. But what did it mean? That he had finally met and mastered himself? That he could stand up against someone like Hannibal? Zane fell asleep knowing his black belt was indeed just the beginning. The only small problem, as Appleby would say, was that he didn’t
have
sixty years. With Hannibal reappearing so suddenly and confronting Chantal, Zane had months, maybe weeks.

•

‘Magnus wants to see you, Zane,’ Appleby said.

Zane looked up to see if Appleby’s face carried good or bad news. Zane had been amazed and disturbed by the amount of space given to spirit coolers by liquor stores. The shelves were crowded with different brands and flavours – a veritable explosion of colours and funky copy, all to get more people to drink more alcohol disguised as fruit over Christmas and the New Year. To him the whole scene sucked. He thought the unthinkable – that alcohol advertising should be banned like cigarette advertising. Magnus would eat him for breakfast leaving nothing on the plate if he knew. But Appleby was grinning. ‘What are you waiting for, old man? He’s in the office.’

Convinced that it wasn’t good news, Zane sighed as he got up. Magnus was behind his computer as Zane walked into his office. ‘Ah, Zane, sit down, sit down,’ he said without looking up. Bet he’s checking the bottom line and his headcount, Zane thought.

Magnus’s eyes popped out above his laptop as if on stalks. ‘Good heavens, now what have you done, Zane, your face I mean?’

Zane told Magnus how he got his blue eye. ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ Magnus said, ‘your clients would like that … it’s not as if you were drunk or had a street fight, right?’ He got to the point, ‘It’s this time of the year, Zane, and I’m pleased to tell you that the Board has decided to give everyone a bonus because of the healthy state of the company. Here is yours.’ Magnus held out an envelope. He could have been handing Zane a letter of dismissal or retrenchment, with Magnus it was all the same.

Zane took it. It was white and thin and felt as if there was hardly anything in it. ‘May I open it, Mr Theron?’

‘Go ahead.’

Zane opened it carefully. He had not had any kind of present for a long time. He stared at Magnus’s letter and the amount in numbers and in words – R20 000 (twenty thousand rand). Never had he been given so much money in a single go. He was a step nearer to bringing his family out from Lavender Hill but he badly needed a break, perhaps a few days on the West Coast just to chill, with or without Bernadette, or mountain biking in the Boland. Such luxuries were unthinkable before. He suppressed the flash of guilt he felt telling himself he could get Chantal to stay in his flat, out of Hannibal’s way.

Faraway places like England where Appleby lived could wait.

T
he question facing Hannibal as he sat in his lounge polishing his trophies was whether he should settle old scores first or last. Two were down, Curly and Sarai, with three to go – Zane, and the man and the girl on the train. Zane he already had in his sights but the jackpot was hearing from the Thai girl that Lena had killed Cupido and was living right under Hannibal’s nose.

Hannibal stared at his reflection in the polished silver. He needed to get the hairy spider that was the Gnome off his back. He put his trophies away carefully and called Sasman.

‘Jerome, it’s Hannibal, I got news, good news.’

‘Tuesday’s come and gone, Hannibal, it should’ve been before Tuesday, by my reckoning.’

Hannibal took a deep breath. One day, one day, there would be another reckoning. ‘We found the girl, yesterday, in a brothel in Sea Point. I spent time with her last night. She was zonked … tried to swim to Robben Island thinking it was her Thai island, ha, ha … maybe there’s something in the paper today, maybe tomorrow.’

Silence, then, ‘It’s a start, my friend, it’s only one …’

‘It gets
bigger,
Jerome. She told me who killed Cupido – someone called Lena who lives, can you believe it, in Lavender Hill! She’ll be easier to find than the Thai girl …’

‘The man, Hannibal, where’s the man who was with her on the train? All I need is for
kak
to happen when I’m not here!’

‘If we find her we’ll find him. I’ve got the manpower now. Listen, Jerome, I gotta go …’

‘Whaddaya mean
if
? You don’t
get
it, man, do you?’

Hannibal imagined the Gnome’s hairs standing up like the pile on a carpet rubbed the wrong way, his ridiculous body sucking in air to make it look bigger. It was amazing that the little shit thought he could control all men.

•

In the kitchen, eating a half Gatsby filled with Viennas and mustard and sliced tomatoes, and gulping milk between bites, Hannibal wondered who to kill first, Lena or Zane. It wasn’t straightforward at all. Lena belonged to the three of them – to him, Sasman, and Danny. Zane was his only. At this moment Lena was a mere description but it was enough to make Hannibal suspect that she and the girl on the train were one and the same person. The way Sarai had described Lena, and Curly’s memory of her on the train, was just too close – squarely cut fringe, full mouth, and slender physique. When the thought first came to Hannibal it had been like a shot of heroin into his veins – it meant Lena had killed Cupido
and
Gatiep. So why not kill her first? It would avenge the murder of two members of the syndicate as well as the abduction of Sarai. It would certainly be Sasman’s choice. But then Sasman had probably never truly loved or made himself vulnerable to love. He was a fucking spider, and spiders never made themselves vulnerable; they simply spun defensive layers.

Hannibal knew that killing Lena wouldn’t make him feel a thing. It was because he didn’t hate her. She had simply become a nuisance to be crushed like a mosquito or a fly. No, to really feel something he had to kill Zane. The unthinkable came to Hannibal then that killing Chantal could be the ultimate – a rush lasting days, weeks, years, because his hatred and his grief would be in his blood until he died.

Hannibal looked down at his Gatsby with surprise. The one end was turning soggy. Then he saw it was from his tears. Even the milk seemed to taste of it. It was an unfamiliar sensation – he couldn’t ever remember crying. He got up knowing that Zane had to come before Lena. With Chantal he’d have to think a lot more.

In the dead of night a thought gnawed at Hannibal. If he shot Zane, Chantal would know who it was and go to the police. Philander would come for him but Philander would find only Hannibal’s body because the Gnome always got in first. With Zane he had to create another accident. Had he, Hannibal the General, not become a master at accidents? He grinned and the hole where his four front teeth used to be opened up black in the dark.

•

Two days later Hannibal was parked in Sunninghill Road, his car’s angel wings facing away from Zane’s block. From where he was sitting he would not miss Zane coming up the hill.

Instead Zane suddenly emerged from his building wheeling his bike and wearing a sweat top, helmet, and rucksack. Simultaneously a girl came up Court Road. Instead of passing each other as strangers would they stopped and talked. Something about her made Hannibal’s skin tingle, nothing sexual, rather a feeling of unsavoury familiarity as in a relationship gone bad. The sun, almost over the mountain, tried to throw light on her but failed. Hannibal shook off the feeling. It was Zane he had come for.

Zane gave her something, she went into his building and he sped down the road. Hannibal gunned the car – turned right at the bottom, left into Wolfe. But Zane had vanished. Which side street had he taken, Jesus! Hannibal took the corner of Durban with squealing tyres, into a maze of smaller streets. It was only when Hannibal reached Wellington Avenue that he saw Zane speeding towards Plumstead. Ten minutes later Hannibal saw Zane chaining his bike to a pole next to a hall, greeting the car guard and walking inside. Hannibal followed him and stepped into what was unmistakably a dojo – places Hannibal scorned for their phoney fighting and empty manners. Spectators stood on the side waiting for something to happen. Five minutes later the initiation for new black belts started, supervised by a sensei with a black belt frayed almost white. Hannibal’s lip curled to reveal his latest bridge, the one he had made for Chantal – L-O-V-E. How could a few fights against other black belts in a dojo with a million rules prove
anything
? It was nothing but a sham.

Hannibal watched as Zane’s rubber-like legs found their opponent time and again to appreciative shouts from the crowd. But always the fighters remained standing. When would they learn that ‘kissing’ the target wasn’t real life? Not even the cage was real but at least there was blood. Real was where you found bodies, like on the Flats.

Hannibal felt a tugging in his brain, tentative at first as if not sure of itself, then more insistent. When it finally breached the force of it made him step back. Bruce Lee man, Curly had said. Hannibal was looking at the man who’d been on the train.

•

Zane made his way back to the flat feeling happy with the way he had handled his initiation. He’d given more than he’d taken and it made him feel good following the nerve-wracking grading the previous Saturday.

He found it strange that he didn’t miss Bernadette all that much – she had regularly made supper for them and slept with him. Now it was Lena preparing dinner and he’d never even kissed her. He’d held her in his arms but only to comfort her. He thought of the time he had to clean and dress her wound, how nice her legs were and how her rich brown eyes seemed to follow him everywhere. He had to watch his back then for the knife that could come at any moment. Now she needed him. It was a need without a hint of sex, intense yet distant. Dark eyes still followed him but words were held back. Were there any? Zane had come to accept that meeting occasionally was purely for self-preservation. Anything more would bring risk. From his side he wasn’t sure if he could sleep with a girl who reminded him of death.

Zane heard the car behind him but thought nothing of it. Wellington Avenue was in a quiet part of Wynberg – lying straight and clear with enough natural light left to stop street lights from coming on. He moved to the side of the road without slowing down giving the approaching vehicle plenty of space. The engine sound rose up a pitch higher. Zane processed the change as just another urban noise. It was when the engine started screaming that he turned around. A car with its lights on full was coming for him. It blinded him, transfixed him like a lamppost in the tarmac – a mass of steel on wheels with no visible driver, out to crush him. The car hit a speed hump, took flight briefly before it crash-landed setting off sparks like fireworks. It had struck the hump at an angle causing it to lose direction and it now spun as it skidded – all the way to the next hump where it came to a smoking halt. Zane couldn’t believe he was still in one piece. His impulse was to get away as fast as he could but what if the driver had had a heart attack or the accelerator pedal had got stuck? Malfunction had been known to kill drivers – brand suicide, Appleby called it.

Zane was still vacillating when the driver got out on the far side. A yellow-stubble head stared at Zane over the roof. It was Hannibal. Zane froze. Neither said anything, as if they understood that nothing needed to be explained. Hannibal pulled out a gun and Zane looked into the bulbous snout of a silencer. For a bizarre moment he thought it would sit nicely below Magnus’ protruding eyes. Then his reflexes kicked in and he took off, holding the bike by its handles and mounting it in one movement like an expert rider would a horse and aimed for the nearest side-street ten metres away.