And the evening after my first graduation ceremony, I quietly drank a toast to him. Because he had given me two gifts: Direction. And self-respect. I know it sounds dramatic but one must draw the comparison accurately, rather like those kitsch slimming ads that use the “Before” and “After” pictures (often touched up) to convince. After two years in Sunnyside I was firmly on the road to nowhere, frustrated, unstimulated, professionally at sea, unwilling to admit that I had made a mistake in my career choice. The police, more than any other occupation, has a way of blunting one’s sensibilities, both by the endless routine and by the nature of the work – the constant exposure to the dregs, the scum, the aberrant, the socially and economically deprived, and, sometimes, the purely evil.
Thomas van Vuuren had opened a door in this maze.
As I advanced academically, the stimulation and focus would systematically act as the deus ex machina to haul me out of the professional quicksand. I started liking myself.
Oh, the psychology of positive feedback.
“Your essays show singular writing and dialectic skills. It is a pleasure to receive them.”
“Your insight into this subject is impressive and considerably above the level of what is expected from an undergraduate. Congratulations.”
What the lecturers didn’t realize and I, on a subconscious level, did, was that the course was a lifeline. I studied at every possible moment, read more than necessary, analyzed. I chose police science, criminology, and psychology as my main subjects, unwilling to give up any of the three. I achieved (not without self-satisfaction) distinctions in all three, every year. I was promoted, even though the promotion was due to my passing the sergeants’ examination, and transferred to the Pretoria station. The three stripes meant very little to me. I had far higher ideals.
My mother was overjoyed with her son’s newfound focus, with the fact that I was acquiring an “education.”
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
DAY 4
SUNDAY, JULY 9
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
23
She knocked on his door at seven in the morning and when he opened it, his hair tousled and his eyes sleep-filled, she walked in out of the dark, the red mark on her cheek bright from lack of sleep and the anger in her, the powerlessness because she couldn’t understand him.
She stood with her back against the gray wall while he remained at the open front door. “Shut the door,” she said. “It’s cold.”
He sighed, closed the door, walked to a chair, sat down.
“You’re my employer, Hope. You can fire me. It’s your right.”
“Why did you hit him, Van Heerden?”
“Because I wanted to.”
She dropped her chin onto her chest. Slowly shook her head from side to side, silent.
The silence spread through the room.
“Do you want coffee?” he asked without any tone of hospitality.
Her head was still moving from side to side. She looked at the running shoes on her feet, looking for words. “No, I don’t want coffee. I want answers.”
He said nothing.
“I’m trying to understand, Van Heerden. Since you left me there last night with a bleeding man lying next to the table and simply walked out and drove off, I’ve been trying to understand how your mind works. You were – ”
“Is that why you’re angry? Because I left you there?”
She lifted her eyes to his, silenced him with a look. When she spoke again, her voice was even softer. “You were a servant of justice, Van Heerden. According to all reports a good one. In the past few days I’ve had enough experience of you to come to the conclusion that you’re an intelligent man. Someone who understands causality. Someone who has the capacity to realize that action and consequence cannot be separated, cannot be restricted to those immediately involved. That’s what the whole legal system is about, Van Heerden. To protect the community against the wider implications. Because there are always wider implications.”
“Have you come to fire me, Hope?”
She didn’t hesitate for a moment, would not be driven off course.
“What I can’t understand, Van Heerden, is that you give yourself the right to hit someone, to wreak your own infantile rage on a defenseless person without giving a thought to the other nineteen people there.”
“Defenseless? He wasn’t defenseless. He was a provincial rugby player. And he was a cunt.”
“Do you think it makes you more of a man if you swear, Van Heerden? Do you think it makes you strong?”
“Fuck you, Hope. I never asked you to like me. I am what I am. I don’t owe anyone anything. You have no right to come into my house, to tell me how bad I am. I hit the cunt because he deserved it. He spent the entire evening looking for it. With his fucking superiority.”
“I don’t have the right? Are you the one with all the rights? To go to someone else’s house as a guest, as someone who needs Kara-An’s help for your work, and then attack one of her friends like a barbarian because you didn’t like his attitude? Your fists told him how bad he was. That was your right. But when I do it to you in a reasonably civilized manner, you’re suddenly touchy. Where’s your sense of fairness, Van Heerden?”
He sank back in his chair. “I told you. I’m bad.”
And then the mark flamed bloodred, a glow that spread over her entire face. She leaned forward, away from the wall, her hands gesticulating as she spoke. “Ah, the great excuse, the answer to everything: ‘I’m bad.’ Extrapolate that, you coward. Just think for a moment about a community in which we all do as we please as long as we admit we’re bad. We can murder and rape and deceive and assault, because we’re bad. It explains everything, it justifies everything, it excuses everything.”
He rested his chin on his hand, his fingers almost covering his mouth. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t understand. That’s the whole point. But I’m here because I want to understand. If I have insight into what you are, I can at least try to understand. To comprehend. But you don’t want to tell me anything. You live behind the barrier of your senseless excuses, your rationalization based on pathetic arguments. Speak to me, Van Heerden. Tell me why you’re like this. Then I’ll be able to understand. Or at least have some sympathy.”
“Why do you want to know, Hope? What’s with you? What does it matter? Next week, when this Van As affair is over, you’ll be rid of me. Then you can carry on your practice for women, the sad victims of society, and you need never think of me again. So, what does it matter?”
“Last night your behavior involved me and nineteen other people. You tainted my memory with an experience I didn’t ask for. You upset me. You humiliated me because the others assumed you were there with me. I was involved by association. I’m now part of your behavior. That is why, if you don’t have the courage to ask yourself questions, I’ll do it for you. Because I’ve been given the right to know, to try and understand.”
He snorted, wrinkled his nose. “Your reputation as the great female attorney has been dented because you were there with me. And you don’t like that.”
“You want to believe that, Van Heerden. That everyone is as selfish as you are.”
She walked across to him, her feet soundless in the running shoes, sat on the coffee table in front of him, her face almost touching his, her voice urgent, her words boiling up, tumbling out of her.