The Truth Commissioner (2 page)

Henry Stanfield

Even now, if she were to ask him personally and stand so close that he could drink from the brown depths of her eyes, he might just say yes. But she is already in her diving suit, standing stiffly with the others on the far side of the boat like an Antony Gormley figure cast in black metal. Even in a profession that continues to cling quaintly to the dress of a bygone era, these young men and women look curiously separated from any recognisable reflection of themselves and although he stares at her, the dark brown eyes he savours so much are blanched by the light that falls on her ridiculously enormous goggles. A taste of sickness lingers in his mouth and as each moment goes by Henry Stanfield feels a little more of his dignity being slowly shredded. Hopefully he had found a shielded spot to empty the contents of his stomach as the boat entered a particularly choppy channel just after they had made their way across False Bay. Somehow he had expected the Indian Ocean to be glass smooth and appropriately perfumed with mystery, but this far out, the incredible blue of the water is relentlessly chopped by sizzling, spitting, ridged frets of white and to add to his ever-increasing sense of the expedition's inherent ludicrousness, and indeed vulgarity, comes the unwelcome affliction of splayed feet and drunken lurching. To move anywhere takes on the challenge of a steeplechase as he tries to step over the boat's detritus that layers the deck in a mess of buckets, ropes, bits of indeterminate machinery and clothing.

At the end of a three-week fact-finding trip to South Africa, to see what lessons could be gleaned from their experience of a Truth and Reconciliation process, this is not the perfect climax he had envisaged. He had eagerly anticipated, had even started to arrange, an end-of-trip dinner in one of Cape Town's most celebrated east-coast restaurants where they would sit on the edge of what he previously assumed to be an inordinately elegant ocean, eat exotic seafood and he could deliver humorous stories about the workings of the law. Presiding at a long table, cigar and glass of wine in hand, entertaining his newly formed secretariat with a final night of the best of his old favourites, his tried and true repertoire guaranteed to generate laughter. Holding court – that was what he had imagined, not holding on to the side of a rickety old boat captained by someone who looks as if he has modelled himself on Robert Shaw's Quint. The old salt has already rolled up a trouser leg to reveal a white-seamed, sickle-shaped scar that he claims was inflicted by a shark. More likely to have been a drunken late-night tumble from a motor bike or a dockside tangle with fishing gear but amazingly when he invited them to touch it, to trace the supposed teeth marks, Laura had been the first to take up the offer, like some doubting disciple nervously reaching out her hand to feel the stigmata. Then one by one they had all followed suit as this Captain Ahab bristled with pride and the bravado that inflates every one of his barked commands and his barrel-chested rollicking gait as he scuttles from one end of the boat to the other like some scabbed and crusted crab.

The one pleasure he has found in the whole sorry business was momentarily wiping the smug grin off the old sea dog's face when he had presented them with his indemnity forms that supposedly absolved him of any responsibility if anyone was eaten by a shark.

‘Thank you, Captain,' he had announced, ‘but I think it only fair to inform you that this crew you propose to take out on the high seas is in fact a collection of lawyers, of the finest legal minds. So if you could just give us a chance to peruse this document for a second?' He enjoyed the muffled sniggers of his team, the sudden look of discomfort on Ahab's face, and felt particular pleasure in the laughter he saw crinkling her eyes. ‘So the organisers accept no liability for personal injury, loss to property or limbs, accidental bodily damage accruing from intimate contact with any predatory sea creature and in particular a shark.' Then they had read the long list of waivers in a parody of studious legal expertise, each one finding a line to expose to communal laughter until they had milked it dry and agreed that when they got back home they would have one of the documents framed and hung in their offices.

However, the fun of that moment now seemed poor compensation for the realities of the experience unfolding before him. They had always decided that the trip would end in Cape Town where the final three days were to be personal time and in truth it was a suggestion that originated with him. After three weeks of the suffocating, endless meetings with the smugly condescending ANC and their carefully chosen supporters; detailed study of legal documentation and lengthy reports; long pointless journeys on dusty roads to the townships to talk to those who had participated in the Truth and Reconciliation process and the interminable lectures on the need for
ubantu,
the African philosophy of humanism – it had seemed a pleasant prospect to finish with the cooler air of the coast and some well-earned relaxation. Days when he thought there might be opportunities, possibilities of development and even, in his most optimistic and private imaginings, consummation. But things had gone wrong from almost the first day when, as white-bellied and bloated clouds blotched the deep blue of the sky and vanquished the top of the mountain, he found himself no longer leading a team of previously industrious and sober members but a group of high-spirited youngsters let loose on the first day of the summer holidays and suddenly and bitterly he had been confronted with the realities of their age difference and his hopelessly out-of-touch concept of what constituted a good time.

It had begun good-humouredly enough with a competition in the sea-front shops to buy the tackiest shark souvenir and even he had participated, purchasing a bottle opener shaped like open jaws, and close to the beach they had bunkered up at a little bar with a veranda under a makeshift canopy of tarpaulin to compare their purchases. It was a no contest in the end when Simon produced a little plastic toilet from which a shark's head appeared as it was flushed. They had drunk beer from bottles and he felt comfortable enough, still able to enjoy the prospect of shaping the rest of the time available. He had started to imagine that there might be dancing after the meal, started to consider how she might feel in his arms, but the intense pleasure of that was broken when they were approached by a couple of white kids distributing fliers and selling the prospect of cage-diving. If they had been pushing the finest cocaine, or free sex, Stanfield could not have imagined it inducing a more excited reaction and despite his attempted dismissal of the idea, with what he seemingly alone considered a series of witty ripostes about having met enough sharks in court over the years, within a few moments the whole group was entirely sold on the excursion. And then all at once the tables were turned and for the first time he found himself on the receiving end of their collective kickback. So as he listened intently, his smile growing a little thinner by the minute, he heard them tell him that it would be ‘the experience of a lifetime', that it was ‘the very latest and very best thing', that it was totally safe and there was ‘nothing to be frightened of. This imputation of fear sees the final trace of his smile fade and forces him into some heavy-handed and embarrassingly pathetic references to his responsibility for collective safety, and a series of rhetorical questions about how it would look if he were to lose one of the working party to a shark. As his words tumble inelegantly out he knows he sounds like a parent of unruly children, or a teacher admonishing his wayward charges, and in desperation he tries to save the day by conjuring facetious newspaper headlines that announce something about a shark eating a shark, but he can't quite
find the killer one he's looking for and so in full retreat he holds his hands in the air and surrenders.

There are times like this when the sad reality that he is of a different generation impinges sharply on his consciousness,
reminding him that he is in fact more than old enough to be the father of most of them. It's not just in their clothes and
in particular their predisposition to wear multi-pocketed trousers with more zips and buttons than a mechanic's boiler suit;
their incessant texting on mobile phones that are also constantly brandished in the air like badges of honour to take some
photograph; it's not even their laptops and iPods and their curiously innocent embrace of technology like children who have
found Hornby train sets under the Christmas tree. It's in their use of language that he feels it most, the way when they are
excited they revert to a minimalist vocabulary that spins on a few self-consciously faux and wearisomely trite examples of
adjectival slang, the way they never speak in complete sentences but use a kind of shorthand that appears to serve them admirably
in the delivery of both facts and emotions. Every utterance seems to take a short cut, to be bereft of pleasure or style,
and he supposes that is why they prefer to get in a steel-framed cage and be lowered in the ocean to get a close-up view of
a shark than engage in the more civilised and demanding art of conversation over a meal. He feels a sense of superior sympathy
for them as he considers their insatiable need for thrill, thrills of the most base and vulgar types that speak only of an
absence of human intelligence and appreciation of life. It's the generation of the bungee jump, bouncing feverishly up and
down on an ever-diminishing return, the generation of ecstasy tablets, of the binge. If he were truly their teacher he would
gather them round and try to explain that all his days he has known what it is to be thrilled, show them how to find pleasure
in the warmth of that sun-ripened grape that stirs the wine into life – the slow sweet burst of the cluster on the tongue;
the aria, the requiem that takes you to the very edge of your own mortality; and above all, far beyond everything else, the
thrill of a woman's body you touch for the first time. Nothing is better than that first moment and so it fills him with regret
that in relation to Laura this pleasure is, even superficially, the prerogative of someone else. She wears his engagement
ring on her finger and every time it sparkles in the light it sends a shard to his heart that she has given herself to a rugby-playing
buffoon in property development who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing, someone who splashes his money
on fripperies, each more vulgar than the next, and who seems to spend so much of his life on a sports field or golf course
that he wonders what time is left him to give his adoration to the woman of whom he is clearly unworthy. Stanfield wonders
if he has ever seen the beauty of her eyes with the same clarity of vision that transfigures him every time he meets their
gaze.

There is still time to change his mind and clamber into one of the suits, ignoring the fact that it will parade his paunch,
that he will feel reduced to a common level, but if she were to make her way towards him and lead him by the hand he would
undoubtedly follow. However, he knows that it's already too late – he isn't sure if it's to save face or lose it – because
she stands with her back to him, one of the group of tar babies who melt seamlessly into each other and whose excited preoccupation
acts as a barrier to any interloper. The boat's engines are cut and the vessel rocks gently in the shifting cradle of the
waves but sometimes, as it at the receiving end of a more forceful hand, it dips deeper before rising again. He assumes that
they are anchored in the preposterously named Shark Alley and that soon it will be time for the charade to commence. Two of
Ahab's crew carry a sawn-off oil drum and tip its contents over the side. His stomach churns again as he watches a crimson
mix of gore and blood stream into the sea, its stain steaming through the water. Without knowing why he thinks of Macbeth's
bloody hands and his words about turning the ocean incarnadine. He feels that there is something intensely primitive about
what he's watching, something redolent of the amphitheatre and barbarous games. At least the modern hunt wraps itself in some
aesthetically pleasing rituals and Stanfield feels a surge of resentment against her for her participation, for a second wills
her to have too close an encounter, be confronted by the vulgar recklessness of it all. Let her be shaken. Let her need something
solid to lean against. Let her have the humility to acknowledge that he was right and then lift her tear-stained eyes towards
him for the comfort he will know how to give.

But his reverie is shattered by the high cries of excitement as they catch the first sighting. They're pointing, squealing,
cameras held aloft like silver-headed flowers seeding light, and despite himself he crosses to where they've seen it, rubbing
the back of his hand across his mouth in an attempt to erase the sourness. There are two: a kind of galvanised blue-grey colour,
smooth stretched skin like wet plastic, bigger than he had anticipated and sleek in the water as if moving in the slipstream
of their own silent arrogance. One comes close, a sudden disdainful shadow, perhaps a metre under the surface and then for
a second brindled and striped by parabolas of light. The other has gore in its mouth as with a quiver of its tail it shakes
blood through the water like exploding dye, its jaws shaking the find the way a terrier might shake a rat. He feels his own
heart beat a little faster and directs scorn at himself before shouting a quip to the spectators, but it gets lost in the
breaking wave of hysteria and then as cylinders are strapped to backs and the steel cage is hoisted into place, he finds himself
in the way and so he makes his unsteady path to a new vantage point.

Afterwards he is struck most by how their paucity of language leaves them unable to communicate what they have seen. The words
tumble out in broken, incoherent fragments until eventually they are reduced to single words and the air quivers like a single
plucked string with shouts of ‘unbelievable', ‘wow', ‘cool' and, perhaps the most popular, ‘wicked'. There is a great deal
of hugging and high-fiving to which he is not party and when Laura has changed and rushes up to tell him what it was like
he avoids looking into her eyes and listens with as much indifference as her excitement will fail to register. When she has
finished he nods and smiles, asks her if she likes dancing, but in all the rush of noise she doesn't hear his question and
turns her head away before he can repeat it. Then she pats him on the arm and once again he has to endure the skirmish of
light in the rosette of her ring. He watches her return to the backslapping crew of her colleagues whose friendship, now strengthened
by shared experience, constructs an exclusion zone round them and feeling his new isolation more keenly than ever he takes
himself to the stern of the boat and hunkers down on an upturned crate. The rising spray-ladened wind moistens his face and,
as the engine starts up, he watches the sea churn and choke itself on funnels of white foam. He wonders how the sharks feel
having had a close experience with the human representatives of the law, of truth and reconciliation. Do they now share their
excitement and describe it as ‘wicked' or ‘cool'? Do they even possess the curse of memory at all? He tries to contain his
spreading anger by telling himself that with a little creativity it will shape itself into a good story, that he will be able
to mine a rich vein of laughter. Already he constructs a comic portrait of Captain Ahab, searches for a punchline that will
send the story spinning into folklore. Of course he will have to reinvent his own role, airbrush the inconvenient parts that
go against the flow, but it's what artists do and above all he is an artist. The screeches and laughter of his team rise up
unabated: he cringes as he thinks how often he will have to endure a full-bodied reprise of it all on the homeward journey
but then as the boat veers slowly to shore, he comforts himself with the warming thought that he might be able to work the
return flight so that she sits beside him. Then the salted bitterness of the air is rendered a little sweeter by the conjured
image of her resting her head on his shoulder and as she slips into sleep he imagines the warmth of her breath on his cheek,
the way her mouth will be opened slightly and raised towards him like a child's.