There was silence in the room, only the wind through the trees and the sound of Kara-An’s car driving off. Another BMW, he guessed. The younger woman’s universal cure for penis envy. The Mercedes would come later, at about fifty-five, when she no longer wanted to look young, just dignified. He looked at Hope Beneke. She had drawn up her legs and was hugging them, her face almost hidden. As if she knew it was all over.
It was.
Because if Kara-An Rousseau thought she could blackmail him, she was out of her mind.
The silence between them expanded. Eventually Hope got up. “Just do me one favor,” she said quietly.
He looked at her.
“Don’t bring the advance back again. Keep it.”
She walked to the door, opened it, and walked out without closing it behind her.
He felt his temper rising. Her whole attitude insinuated that the fuckup was his fault. As if Kara-An’s absurd demands were reasonable. The “curing” of the doctor had nothing to do with the Wilna van As issue. It was Kara-An who wanted to connect the two, who wanted to make the consequences of one dependent on the other. Which was so unreasonable that one didn’t need a law degree to work it out. It was like…
He felt the cold wind against his back, got up to close the door, saw Hope’s BMW moving down the gravel road, his mother riding up, reining in next to the car. Horse riding in this weather – it was going to rain in a minute, the clouds a blackish gray, the wind sharp. They were too far away; he couldn’t even hear their voices. What did they have to say to each other? The rear lights of the BMW went on, and Hope turned the car and followed his mother to the big house.
He slammed the door.
She must leave his mother alone. She mustn’t interfere.
What did they have to say to each other?
Fuck it. He had laundry to do.
♦
He was hanging up wet clothes in the bathroom when he heard the door open. He knew it was his mother.
“Where are you, Zet?”
“Here.”
She came in, still in her riding clothes, her nose and ears red with cold.
“You mustn’t ride in this weather, Ma.”
“You can’t hang up a shirt like that. Wait, let me do it.” She lifted the shirt off the shower rail. “Bring me a hanger.”
Obediently he walked to the bedroom to fetch a hanger.
“No wonder your clothes are in such a state. You must learn to look after them.”
“Ma, I’m thirty-eight…”
“One wouldn’t say so if one had been a doctor last night. Shift that basket nearer. I’m going to put this stuff in the tumble dryer.”
“Ma…”
“Zet, you’re a man. That’s why I overlook many things, but sooner or later you’ll have to buy decent stuff. You can’t do your laundry by hand for the rest of your life.”
He dragged the laundry basket toward her. She took the wet laundry from the bath, put it in the basket.
“But I’m not going to iron it.”
“No, Ma.”
“What did you do last night?”
“It sounds as if you already know.”
She didn’t reply, merely filled the basket with laundry.
“Pick up the basket and bring it home. I want to talk to you.” She turned and walked out. He knew that straight-backed walk. He hadn’t seen it for a long time.
He didn’t want to talk to her about these things.
“Fuck,” he said quietly, and picked up the basket.
A fine rain was falling. The wind suddenly dropped as he walked to the big house. The house his mother had built. After she had had the original one demolished because she didn’t want to live in such a monstrosity, a Spanish villa, South African-style. She watched the bulldozers do their work and later told him it had been one of her most pleasurable experiences in the past decade.
She could have bought a smallholding next to the Berg River somewhere between Paarl and Stellenbosch – she had the money – but she had chosen this one, on the flat stretch behind Blouberg, in the scrubland between the sea and the N7 “so that I can go to the mountains when I need them,” whatever that might mean. And had her house built, simple white lines, large windows, spacious rooms.
And the stables.
He had been surprised by the horses.
“I’ve always wanted to,” she said.
He lived there in one of the original buildings, perhaps an old tenant farmer’s house, that he had halfheartedly restored at her insistence when he didn’t go back to work.
He carried the basket into the kitchen, where she was waiting impatiently. He saw the tray next to the sink, empty coffee mugs, two of them, and rusks in a bowl. His mother and Hope Beneke.
Intimate.
She opened the door of the tumble dryer, loaded the machine.
“You know I’ve never said anything, Zatopek.”
“Ma?” The use of his full name wasn’t a good sign.
“For five years I’ve said nothing.” She straightened, stretched, her hands on her hips, pressed the buttons of the machine, pulled a chair away from the large stinkwood table, and sat down.
“Sit down, Zatopek.”
He gave a deep sigh and sat down at the table. The tumble dryer increased its speed and sang its monotonous tune in the room.
“I said nothing out of respect for you. As an adult. And because I don’t know everything. I don’t know what happened that evening with Nagel…”
“Ma.”
She held up her hand, eyes closed.
Memories flooded him, his mother in her role as disciplining parent. He knew the mannerisms so well, but it had been so many years. He saw her as she had been in Stilfontein, saw the erosion of age, and compassion filled him: she had suddenly grown so old.
“I must do something, Zatopek. I must say something. You’re my child. Your age cannot change that. But I don’t know what to say. It’s been five years. And…you can’t get over it.”
“I’m over it, Ma.”
“You’re not.”
He said nothing.
“My mother believed in emotional blackmail, Zatopek. She would’ve sat here now and asked, Do you know you’re breaking a mother’s heart? Don’t you care about my feelings? I’ll never do that to you. How everything makes me feel has nothing to do with the issue. And to give you a sermon won’t help, either, because you’re an intelligent man. You know that the sense one makes of life, the amount you grow as a human being, is in your own hands. You know you have choices.”
“Yes, Ma.”
“And one of the choices is to see a psychologist, Zatopek.”
He looked at his hands.
“As I have it from Hope, there is another choice you have to exercise today.”
“I’m not going to be involved in that stupid blackmail, Ma.”
“Do the right thing, Zet. That’s all I ask.”
“The right thing?”
“Yes, my child, the right thing.” She looked at him, her gaze, her eyes, intense. He looked away.
She got up. “I’m going to have a bath. You have a great deal to think about.”
♦
You can’t get over it.
He lay stretched out on his bed, his hands behind his head, briefly aware that this bed, this position, represented 40 to 50 percent of his time in the past few years. His mother’s words in his head – she had unleashed the hounds again. She didn’t even know what “it” was. She thought (as his colleagues and friends had thought then, when they still cared) that “it” meant exaggerated self-blame about the death of Nagel. Because he had missed his target in that life-changing moment, and the suspect, the murderer of seventeen prostitutes, the Red Ribbon Executioner, had hit Nagel once, twice. Nagel, who dropped without a sound, blood and tissue against the wall, a moment caught in his memory forever. And then he hit the target, from fear, not revenge, from fear of dying, and he hit the target, over and over and over and over, suddenly the top marksman for the first time in his life. Saw the Executioner staggering back, drop, fired until his Z88 was empty, crept to Nagel, faceless Nagel, cradled the shattered head in his hands. Nagel, who still breathed, each halting breath spraying blood over his white shirt. He saw life leaking out of Nagel and screamed to the heavens, a deep animal sound, because in that moment he knew with absolute, overwhelming certainty that nothing would ever be the same again, the sound erupting from the center of his body, from his very essence, as he roared to the sky.