“A bonus,” said Hope.
“Yes. We must make it sound as if we know all about the events of fifteen years ago and just want to tie up loose ends…”
“Ah,” said Kara-An. “You want creative journalism.”
“Lots,” he said.
“I know someone who specializes in it.”
“What are the chances for the front page?” he asked.
“That will depend on other news stories.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” said Kara-An.
A young woman in a white apron put her head round the door. “Some of the other guests have arrived, madam.”
“Thank you,” said Kara-An. She smiled at Zatopek van Heerden, a spectacular sight focused entirely on him. “We’ll talk again when everyone else has left.”
♦
He sat between the wife of the South African cultural attaché, a tall brown woman with very prominent front teeth and thick glasses who spoke very softly, and the businesswoman of the year, sharp-faced, thin, hyperactive, hands that were never still, mouth never shut.
“And what do you do?” asked the businesswoman of the year, before he could seat himself comfortably at the long table. And suddenly his memory threw up the world of senseless socializing of his University of South Africa era, out of nowhere, as if it had been lying in wait, ready to be recalled, the reply to “What do you do?” establishing your hierarchy in that status-conscious society. In those years he sometimes lied at cocktail parties and lunches and dinners for the sheer hell of it, saying he was an engine driver, or a security guard, then sitting back and watching the person who had asked the question struggle with a reaction. Sometimes he would come to the rescue with an “Only joking. I’m with the Department of Police Science. Lecturer,” his passport to the select company safe, his visa correctly stamped. Wendy had hated it when he did that, especially when he didn’t retract the lie: status was important to Wendy. That and the appearance of happiness and success. Seemingly for Kara-An as well. Earlier on she had introduced them to some of the people. “This is Hope Beneke, the attorney. And Van Heerden, her colleague.” The attorney. Not an attorney. The status of the article. And the deceit of the selective truth. “Her colleague.”
“I’m a policeman,” he said to the businesswoman and watched her eyes, but they gave away nothing. She immediately leaned over to Mrs. Cultural Attaché and introduced herself, then spoke to the man on her right, the doctor. He looked at the other faces around the table, Hope opposite him, Kara-An at the head, on his right twenty people who still had to conquer the stiffness of new acquaintance without the oil of alcohol. Some he had met during the predinner sherry period, the writer, the wine farmer, the dress designer, the dignified ex-actress, the millionaire businessman, the editor of a women’s magazine, the doctor ex-rugby player. And their partners. It was the partners who had looked him up and down. Stared at his clothes.
Fuck them.
And now he simply sat there, a halfhearted auditor of other people’s conversations, his mind trailing through memories of the period before Nagel, his Pretoria ascendancy, his relationship with Wendy. Mrs. Cultural Attaché didn’t say much. They formed an island of silence; she smiled sympathetically at him once or twice. He tasted the caterers’ orange butternut soup, perfect, the spiral of cream a nice decorative touch. Garnishing had been the last great challenge to his culinary skill, before his life fell apart and his mother became his only dinner guest.
“…Exchange rate is a blessing in disguise. I don’t want the rand to recover. But the government will have to do something about the trade agreement with the EU. The excise duties are killing us.”
Mrs. Millionaire Businessman sat opposite him. She was very pretty, without a wrinkle, her cheeks rosy. Her husband sat two chairs farther down, pale and tired and old. “…Move to the farm, I simply can’t cope with the crime any longer. One lives in constant fear, but Herman says he can’t run the group from Beaufort West,” she said to someone.
“And the police,” replied the doctor, his voice deep and self-satisfied, “steal as happily as everyone else.”
He felt the tension in his belly.
“It must be difficult to be a policeman today,” the colored woman next to him said, softly and honestly. He looked at her, the eyes large and scared behind the glasses, wondered whether she had heard the doctor’s remark.
“It is,” he said, and sipped the red wine slowly.
“Do you think it will change?”
Good question, he thought. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” she said.
He drew breath to explain and stopped. Remembered that it wouldn’t help.
That it had never helped. Even when he was still on the Force and had tried to give some perspective to the figures – too little money, too few hands, too big a gap between the haves and the have-nots, too much politics, too many liberal laws, too much bad publicity. Fuck, the publicity had frustrated him so much, the good work and successes on page seven, the mistakes and corruption on page one. Salaries that were a joke, that could never compensate for the working conditions, the long hours, the scorn. He had occasionally tried to explain, but people didn’t want to hear it. “It’s just the way it is,” he said.
The main dish was Malay mutton curry, steaming and flavorful and meltingly tender. He could taste the cook’s pleasure in the making, wished he could meet him or her, ask how you get the mutton so unbelievably tender. He had read somewhere that you left it to soak overnight in buttermilk, that it worked especially well with curries, made the taste even more subtle.
“It’s Van Heerden, not so?” The doctor leaned over the businesswoman’s plate toward him, mouth still filled with food.
He nodded.
“What’s your rank?”
“My what?”
“I heard you saying you were a policeman. What’s your rank?”
“I’m no longer in the Force.”
The doctor looked at him, nodded slowly, and turned to the cultural attaché. “Are you still a Western Province supporter, Achmat?”
“Yes, but it isn’t the same as in your day, Chris.”
The doctor forced hearty laughter. “You make me sound like ancient history, Achmat. Sometimes feel like taking the togs out again, old sport.”
Old sport. Even if he wasn’t a doctor, he would still be irritating.
Forget it, he thought. Leave it be. He concentrated on the food, placed rice and meat carefully on his fork, tasted the texture and the flavor, then a swallow of red wine, the waiters keeping the glasses filled, the decibels of the conversations around the table rising and rising, people laughing more heartily, more loudly, cheeks colored rosily by the wine. He watched Hope Beneke, her head at an angle as she listened to and nodded at the author, a middle-aged, bearded man wearing an earring. He wondered whether she was enjoying the party. It seemed like it. Was she another Wendy? An athlete on the social track? She was more serious than Wendy, but so earnest, so focused, so ready to do the right thing, so Norman Vincent Peale, so…idealistic. A practice for women. As if they were special victims.
Everyone was a fucking victim. Special or otherwise.
Between dessert and coffee, just before the bomb exploded, the businesswoman asked whether he had children. He said he wasn’t married. “I have two,” she said. “A son and a daughter. They live in Canada.” He said it must be very cold there, and the conversation died an uncomfortable death.