And then he was quiet for a moment, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. We drove at 160 kilometers per hour on the N1, weaving through the traffic while he carried on his tirade and I thought he wanted to write us both off, but when he was suddenly silent, when he hesitated on the dreadful brink of direct accusation, I had a momentary insight into the pain I was responsible for.
Willem Nagel knew it was his own fault that he had lost Nonnie. He knew that it was what he had done that had driven her away, made her vulnerable. That was what stopped him from shooting me or hitting me or confronting me. His own culpability.
But he didn’t want to give her to me.
Perhaps he had hated me from the start. Perhaps what I had accepted as friendly teasing had been a far more serious game for him. Perhaps the yoke of inferiority about his background, his growing years in Parow, his infertility – all of it was too heavy a burden for him to realize that I was no threat. Perhaps.
He had hidden the evidence of the carpet fibers and tire treads and registration details from me like a jealous, selfish child who didn’t want to share his toys. This was the first I had heard of it and it made me realize how much all of it must have meant to him. To prove his superiority.
If he couldn’t keep Nonnie…
I said nothing. I didn’t open the dossier. I simply stared ahead.
It was only when we had passed the Green Point Stadium that he spoke again, in the same tone of voice, as though there had been no interruption. “Tonight we’ll see what kind of a policeman you are. Tonight it’s only you and me and George Charles Hamlyn, the owner of a Volkswagen Kombi camper and a fucking long piece of red ribbon. We’ll see, we’ll see…”
In Sea Point he parked near the ocean, took out his Z88, and let the magazine drop into his hand, then shoved it back and took off the safety catch and walked in the direction of Main Road with me following, sheepishly checking my weapon as well. Suddenly he walked into the foyer of a block of flats, pressed the button for the lift, not looking at me. The door opened and we walked in and we rose in silence and the only thought I had was that this wasn’t the way policemen went to fetch a suspect. He got out on a floor somewhere, high up – you could see the mountain, Signal Hill, and the lights against Table Mountain – and he went ahead and stopped at a door and said, “Knock, Van Heerden, then you fetch him. Show me you’re a fucking policeman,” and I knocked loudly and urgently, my pistol in my right hand, my left hand against the door.
I knocked again.
No reaction.
We didn’t hear the lift doors opening or closing. We merely sensed the movement and looked back and saw him in the long passage and his eyes widened and he spun round and ran, with Nagel after him and me behind Nagel, down the fire escape, five, six steps at a time.
I fell, somewhere on the way down, lost my footing and fell, banging my head. My pistol went off, a single shot, and Nagel laughed without looking round, a scornful laugh as he descended the stairs faster and faster. I got up, there was no time to think about the pain, down, down, down, ground level at last. He was up the street, we followed him, three men in a life-or-death race, and he ran up an alleyway and Nagel rushed round the corner and came to a sudden halt and then I stopped, too, almost bumping into Nagel, and when I looked up, George Charles Hamlyn stood there with a gun in his hand, aiming at us, and Nagel squeezed the trigger of his Z88 and there was nothing, only silence. He squeezed again, swore, a nanosecond that stretched into eternity. I aimed my pistol at Hamlyn and saw him aiming at Nagel and my head said, Let him shoot, let him shoot Nagel, wait, just wait one small second, just wait. My head, dear God, it came out of my head, and then he fired and Nagel fell, two shots as fast as light, and then the barrel of Hamlyn’s gun swung toward me and I shot and I couldn’t stop shooting, but it was too late, it was so fucking completely too late.
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
57
He was aware that he was alive long before he regained consciousness, floating between dream and hallucination. His father, lunch box in his hand, walking with him through Stilfontein, long conversations, his father’s voice low and sympathetic, his father’s smile indescribably happy. Hand in hand with his father until he drifted away again to a blackness without awareness, and out on the other side only to experience the blood and the death of Nagel and Brits and Steven Mzimkhulu and Tiny Mpayipheli and Hope Beneke, the shock and the horror, every time he hurled himself into the hail of bullets, every time it passed through him, every time he screamed uselessly, his cries disappearing into the mists. And then Wendy was there, Wendy and her two children and her husband – “Oh, Zet, you’re missing so much” – and his mother, he knew his mother was there, around him, with him. He heard her voice, heard her singing, it was like being in the womb again, and then he was awake and the sun shone and it was late afternoon and his mother was with him. She held his hand and the tears ran down his cheeks.
“Ma,” he said, but he could barely hear his own voice.
“I knew you were there somewhere,” she said.
And then he was gone again, to dark, peaceful depths. His mother was there, his mother was there, and then he came back slowly, up, up, up, a nurse bending over him, shifting the hanging drip. He smelled her faint perfume, saw the roundness of her breasts under the white uniform, and then he was there, awake, his chest hurting, his body heavy.
“Hallo,” said the nurse.
He made a noise that didn’t quite work.
“Welcome back. Your mother went to have breakfast. She’ll be back in a moment.”
He just looked at her, at the pretty lines of her hands, the fine blond hairs on her supple arms. He was alive, looking at the sunlight through the window.
“We were worried about you,” the nurse said. “But now you’re going to be okay.”
Be okay.
“Do you have any pain?”
He nodded slightly, his head heavy.
“I’ll get you something for it,” she said, and he closed his eyes and opened them and his mother was there again.
“My child,” she said, and he saw tears in her eyes. “Rest, everything is fine. All you have to do is rest.” And then he slept again.
♦
Wilna van As stood next to his mother. “I just want to say thank you. The doctor said I’m only allowed a few minutes – I only want to say thank you very much.” He could see she was uncomfortable, self-conscious. He tried to smile at her, hoped his face was cooperating, and then she repeated, “Thank you,” turned, took a step, turned back, came to the bed, and kissed him on the cheek and walked out quickly and there were uncontrollable tears in his eyes.
“I bought this for you,” his mother said softly. She had a portable CD player in her hands. “I know you’ll need it.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
He had to stop crying. Hell, what was it with all the crying?
“Never mind,” his mother said, “never mind.”
He wanted to raise his hand to wipe away the tears, but it was anchored somewhere under drip needles and blankets.