Snake (13 page)

“There’s nothing the matter with the Oedipus complex,” the Widow Fourie said crossly. “All it means is a boy gets jealous of his dad and this makes him feel afraid he’s having such thoughts. Piet isn’t the only kid who’s ever said to his mum that she’s the one girl he likes. And when he says that, he doesn’t say it the way you might do.”

“Have I ever?” he asked.

“True enough!” she replied, and could not help a twinkle “But the doctors didn’t say Piet had that anyway.”

“I should bloody hope not! You know what this book alleges? It alleges that is how psychopaths are made.”

The Widow Fourie set down her brandy. Her day had been a long one, too.

“Listen, before you start telling me everything, why don’t you take the trouble to read it up properly? Oedipus is only part of psychopathetics, and it’s to do with their consciences. They don’t feel guilty and they don’t feel sorry for others—why? Because they don’t have a mum’s care and attention when they are small—say, until so high. I’ve got the place right here—it’s in the beginning. Now listen. ‘If early rearing is unstable and transi—transient, then empathy fails to’—
hey!
”

Kramer, who already had one leg in the corridor, and a lot else still to do that night, said, “Just hang on a sec while I go and chuck him some bananas.”

The book just missed.

Mabatso had drunk very nearly a gallon of maize beer before being spirited away. He was now acutely uncomfortable and knew something would have to be done about it.

So he made his second move, less afraid now because of various ideas he had slowly assembled. But he crawled all the way to the window, and didn’t open his eyes until he was standing before it.

Then he saw the houses down below and the streetlights and the milk trolley’s lantern, and swayed. It was the first time he had ever been higher off the ground than the roof of his hut when it needed mending, and this took some adjustment. After a time, he stopped swaying.

And turned to explore the room with the hope of finding somewhere he could do it. He had learned in the colony what happened to men who relieved themselves on a white man’s floor.

But the only thing in the room which resembled an outlet was a flat plate, with three small holes in it, screwed so low on the wall he could not get near it.

So finally he was forced to take hold of the door handle and, with a shuddering breath, turn it. Nothing happened as he opened the door a little way … He opened his eyes again and breathed out. It was another empty room, only there were four doors opening off it, two of which stood ajar.

Mabatso scurried across into the nearest of these, saw it was for cooking and that there were taps. The sink was reached just in time.

Now he felt able to think properly.

He looked in through the other open doorway, recognized the shower—the colony had had several—and felt confident enough to try the other doors. One wouldn’t open, and one led into a third room, as large as the first, with glass right down to the floor on the far side.

“Ee-flat,” he said to himself, remembering the word used by a fellow convict who had worked in one. It was all making sense now. What a fool he had been. Excellent sense.

Up to a point.

And when Mabatso’s thoughts reached that point, the giddiness returned twice as violently as before, dropping him to his knees with a jolt. To crumple once again and lie there, curled up like a wood louse, smelling his own smells among so many sharp alien smells, and feeling more afraid than he had ever done.

Because when those colony gates had swung open, he’d not only known what sort of place it was, but also how he had reached it, why he was there, and what to expect while he remained behind its walls.

Whereas now he knew the answer to only the first of those questions, and the rest of them had begun to tease his mind apart.

Chainpuller Mabatso could not even cry out. As isolated as his life had been on that hillside, he fully realized that a black man always had to have a very good reason for being in a white people’s dwelling at night.

Which came to the same terrifying thing.

Ramchunder had a rude awakening. His bedding was stripped off him and a flashlight shone in his eyes.

“CID. On your feet,” said Marais.

The waiter staggered up.

“Are you awake, man?”

“I—yes, I am, sir.”

“Have you in your possession a cassette player recently bought?”

“Have merciful pity, sir! The gent I bought it from said he had come by it quite aboveboard.”

“You’re making allegations?”

“Sir, you misinterpret!”

“
Ach
, all right, Sammy—just as long as you’re the right Ramchunder,” said Marais, who had unearthed a good dozen of the buggers, all of them waiters.

Then he took a short statement which tallied in every particular with the one given to him by Bix Johnson, the crazy piano player. And had problems only when it came to Ramchunder’s reluctance to admit having been through the curtain.

“Do I go up for trespass?” Ramchunder asked gloomily as the ballpoint was put away.

“Not this time,” said Marais, and his good humor made him add, “That’s one of your boss’s laws, not mine!”

Kramer talked man-to-man with Piet until the little sod toppled sideways and fell fast asleep. Then he tucked a rug over the Widow Fourie, closed the padlock on the burglar guard at the front door, and drove back into Trekkersburg.

Dawn had just begun to snuffle its pink snout along the escarpment when he slipped past Mr. McKay’s flat and took the stairs. The lift at that hour sounded like Saturn 5.

By the fifth-floor landing, Kramer had decided there must be easier ways of making a wizard talk. But when he heard the rapid exchange in Zulu coming from behind the living room door of number 5C, he felt it may well have been worth all the extra trouble. And sat down where the coat stand had once been.

He tried to sleep a little. But there was something odd about Zondi’s tone that kept snagging on his veil of oblivion—something that made him sit upright and try to distinguish words.

Not long after that, the inner door opened and Kramer saw Zondi standing over him in shirtsleeves.

“Hope you slept well, you bugger,” Kramer said, getting up with a spring that sagged in the middle.

“Three, four hours, then this one started to knock for me.”

“Oh, ja? And?”

“The truth, I think.”

Kramer looked over Zondi’s shoulder. What he saw made him realize there was no need to dispute that—although he could also see Mabatso had not a mark on him, nor any reason to have one either.

“All right, but what did he say?”

“The man who asked Beebop for the ten rand was one Robert Zulu, who this prisoner knew in prison, and who work like an errand boy for him, buying him beer and all that. Finish of story.”

“Hey? Come on now!”

Zondi smiled in an ugly way and said, “Chainpuller doesn’t know any more about the robberies than we. He just got the idea of pretending he was behind them—he was riding the gangsters like a tick.”

“Him? This thing? Where did he get ideas like that from? And so quick?”

“Chainpuller does this all the time—for years, boss. You know that brother? He is an important man now, down in the Transkei, so he cuts himself free from this rubbish. But you know how it is when people think you have done a wrong, how they make sure this comes to your ears? Mabatso here was told many things about himself after the brother had gone, and so he—”

“You mean he never did anything to anyone? Just sat on his arse and let people throw their money at him?”

“That is the truth. It was the people’s own fears of darkness that made him so great—darkness only in their own minds.”

“What are you, Mickey Zondi?”

“I’m a superstitious kaffir,” said Zondi, breaking into a wide grin. “And you, boss, are wiser than the elephant.”

“
Ach
, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, hey? But I can tell you one thing: I don’t suffer the same way from the blind spots of my people. Not in my work anyway.”

That, too, was meant as a joke, something flippant to lighten the disappointment now weighing down hard on both of them. But somehow it seemed to misfire.

Zondi said, “The charge against this prisoner, Lieutenant? Demanding with menaces?”

“Ja, what you like.”

It was a great pity the new day had to begin like that, almost as an omen.

8

T
HE MUSEUM OPENED
to the public at ten. Strydom arrived at nine and went in through the side entrance. He had not only the overnights to see to at the mortuary, but also both police patients and corporal punishments to attend. In other words, this was his only hour free until evening.

“Oh, there you are,” said Bose. “Had the idea of getting everything ready for you before your arrival.”

“Sorry, man, but I checked with the magistrate and that didn’t take as long as I thought. He says we can go ahead and do what we like. How is he?”

“It’s a beauty,” Bose declared without pride, as he continued to remove sections of the mold.

The plaster had taken every detail of the scales and Strydom clasped his hands in delight. Bose had coiled the creature in a most realistic manner, and even a layman could see how well this was going to reproduce.

“Might manage a lick of paint,” Bose murmured. “We haven’t a new case going in for some months yet.”

Strydom had already been captivated by the clockless back rooms of the museum, and very nearly asked if they ever employed skilled pensioners on bird stuffing or the like. Then wonder returned his thoughts to the immediate.

“Lovely and shiny,” he said.

“Vaseline; prevents it sticking to the p.o.p. The fact the colors fade so rapidly is one of the main reasons we’ve gone over onto casts. Now,
Python regius
, consent has been given, so it’s time for your little operation.”

Strydom, who could have kicked himself for not going through the proper channels in the first place, and so saving himself much anxiety, said idly, “King python, is it?”

“Royal. Must have been imported from up north and have cost a pretty penny, too. Although, with proper care, their life span makes it a goodish investment. Very gentle nature; an excellent pet.”

“No, thanks!”

“Any animal,” Bose reminded him pointedly, with a mischievous smile, “is apt to behave in a strongly defensive manner if it believes itself to be threatened. Usually, our friend the royal makes himself into an almost perfect ball, with his head tucked away on the inside—you can literally roll him about with your foot. Quite a trick.”

“Wonder if it was in her act.”

“Shouldn’t think so; once they’re tame, they stop doing it. Excuse me a moment.”

The dead reptile was now lying stretched out on its back along the zinc-topped table. Strydom put down his bag and went over to examine the two horny claws just in front of its vent.

“Vestigial hind limbs,” Bose explained, unrolling a canvas holder lined with dissecting instruments. “The family
Boidae
have a quite recognizable pelvic girdle, which I’ll show you. Males use the claws to stroke the female during courtship— while
they
seem to have no use for them at all.”

“Hell, I never thought of them as lovers.” Strydom chuckled. In fact, as he realized then, he had lived all his life surrounded by snakes without giving them any thought at all—except, momentarily, while dispatching them with his golf club.

“Nor had I,” said Bose, selecting a large scalpel.

But Strydom’s curiosity had been aroused. “So how come they lost them? I thought legs were a step up the scale, if you get my meaning!”

“Ah, not much good for burrowing. It’s believed that snakes evolved about one and a quarter million years ago from some lizards that took to burrowing, lost the use of their legs, and returned limbless to the surface. There are several other indications of this as well.”

Bose was plainly flattered by an attentive pupil, so Strydom decided this would be a good moment to put a question that might have seemed impertinent before.

“I’ve been wondering, man, why you keep shoving the blame on the girl when how can we be sure that the python didn’t attack her in the first place?”

“Aha, the Tarzan fallacy! Come up this end and take a look at the teeth. Notice how big they are and how they point backward—and now contrast them with the two fangs of this viper here.”

Strydom did that.

“Neither, you have noted, are designed for chewing. Snakes do not chew their food, but swallow it whole. The nearest thing to mastication is found in the eggeater, known hereabouts as
Dasypeltis scaber
, which has a special downward-pointing projection from its spine that breaks the shell of an engorged meal, allowing it to spit out the bits. But come now—why does the royal have them, do you think?”

There was obviously a catch to this, so Strydom’s reply was grudgingly given. “To bite with?”

“Good.”

“But I’d already thought of that. She must have just been quicker.”

“Quicker than this chap? Contrary to Lord Greystoke’s simian beliefs, constrictors begin like any other snake by striking, not by wrapping themselves around you. The teeth are for holding on, for
getting to grips
with their prey. Having secured a hold, then they coil themselves around and try, if they can, to keep their tails anchored to a fixed object in order—”

“I know,” said Strydom, “but how hard exactly is the squeeze?”

“Sufficient to cause suffocation by immobilizing the respiratory apparatus. Strangulation may, or may not, come into it, too, but they are certainly not given to crushing anything to a bloody pulp. As pulp fiction would have it!”

Strydom only half heard this afterthought and neglected to smile; he was already anticipating questions from the floor of the conference hall.

“The degree of pressure always interests us,” he said. “There have been cases when in orgasm the human male has inadvertently caused the death of the female with his hands. Can you be more specific?”

“Certainly. If you had a small boa in a figure eight around your wrists, it would seem virtually impossible to disengage yourself and your hands would rapidly swell. And I’m speaking in terms of an averagely powerful man. Living handcuffs.”