“And the CDs.” She had a handful. “I just grabbed some from your cupboard. I didn’t know what you’d want to listen to.”
“Agnus Dei,” he said.
She looked through the CDs, found the right one, slid it in, put the small earphones in his ears, and pressed the PLAY button. The music filled his ears, his head, his soul. He looked at his mother. “Thank you,” he mouthed, saw her reply, “It’s a pleasure,” and then she kissed his forehead and sat down and stared out of the window and he closed his eyes and drank in the music, every note, every single blessed note.
♦
In the late afternoon he woke again.
“There’s someone to see you,” his mother said.
He nodded. She walked to the door, spoke to someone there, then came in followed by Tiny Mpayipheli. A bandage round his head covered one entire ear and he walked somewhat stiffly in his dressing gown and hospital pajamas. Relief flowed through him when he saw that the big man was alive, but the bandage around his head, which looked like a turban set awry, as if he was doing an Arab parody, made him want to laugh. There was something about Tiny – an awareness that he looked absurd, a self-consciousness that deepened the humor – and the laughter welled up. He shook, the pain of his wounds sharp and urgent, but he couldn’t stop himself or the sounds emerging from his mouth. Mpayipheli stood there grinning in a sheepish way and then he laughed as well, holding his ribs where they hurt. They looked at each other, wounded and pathetic, and Joan van Heerden, standing at the door, was laughing, too.
“You don’t look so great yourself,” Tiny said.
The laughter stopped. “I dreamed you were dead.”
The black man sat down on a chair next to the bed, slowly, like an old man. “It was pretty close.”
“What happened yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Yesterday you slept as you did on each of the previous six days. And I lay and felt sorry for myself and moaned at the nurses about the fact that this hospital’s affirmative action is so far behind schedule that there are only thin white nurses on duty with unpinchably flat bottoms.”
“Six days?”
“Today’s Thursday. You’ve been here a week.”
Amazement.
“What happened?”
“Bester Brits is alive – can you believe it? They say it’s a miracle. The bullet missed his brain stem and exited from the back of the neck, almost exactly like the bullet of twenty years ago. What do you think the chances are of that happening? And he’s going to make it. Only just, like you – evidently you whiteys are too soft.”
“And Hope?”
His mother replied: “She comes every day, twice, three times. She’ll probably come again a bit later.”
“She’s not…”
“She was very shocked. She spent a night here for observation.”
He digested the information.
“Vergottini?”
“In custody,” Tiny said. “And when Speckle Venter’s fractured skull and various other bits of bone have healed, he’ll be behind bars, too.”
He looked at Tiny, at the eyebrow ridges that were still swollen, at the lopsided bandage, at the unnaturally thick bundle under his arm. “And you?”
“Ear almost torn off, seven broken ribs, concussion,” Tiny said.
Van Heerden could only stare.
“He’s strong, that one. Strongest I’ve ever fought against. It was hell, I’ve got to hand it to him. Merciless, an animal, he has more hate than I have, he’s got murder in him. I was scared, I tell you. He had my head in a vise and he banged it against the wall and when I felt his strength and saw those crazy eyes I thought, This is how I’m going to die, but he’s slow, too many muscles, too many steroids, too little wind, but fuck, he’s strong,” and he touched the bandage round his head and looked round guiltily. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“You two talk,” she said smiling. “I’m going outside.” She closed the door softly behind her.
Mpayipheli looked at the door.
“And then?”
Tiny turned back, shifted something under the dressing gown, his mouth pursing with pain. “Strong. Held my head with one hand and with the other took hold of my ear and tore. God, Van Heerden, what kind of a human are you to want to tear off another’s ear? I kicked, because of the terrible fucking pain, I kicked him with my knee, with everything I had, and got loose somehow and knew that the only way to walk away alive was to stay clear of him. At some stage we went over the table and I grabbed one of the legs and I hit him against the head, hard enough to break the wood, and he bled like a pig and shook his whole body like a wet dog, and, when he came at me for more, I tell you, I was frightened because no one can keep standing after such a blow, but he wanted more, his hatred is so enormous, and then I had to dodge and hit and dodge and hit. I’ve never been so tired, Van Heerden, I tell you, he kept coming, his whole face a bloody mess. I hit him with everything I had and he would spit, teeth and red gob, and he would come…”
Mpayipheli got up slowly. “Need some of your water first.” He shuffled to the jug and the glass on the table, poured the liquid into the glass, ice cubes falling, water splashing on the table.
“Ah,” he said. “Fortunately they’ll think you’re the messy one.” He emptied the glass in one gulp, refilled it, and walked back to the chair.
“Want some?”
Van Heerden nodded. Tiny held the glass for him, helped him drink.
“I hope you’re allowed to drink. Might leak out of a hole somewhere.”
He swallowed the ice-cold water. It tasted sweet, fresh, delicious.
“He hit me a few more times, swinging blows that you could see coming a mile off, but I was too tired to duck. I know now what a tree feels like when you hit it with an axe: it goes right through you, you feel it here.” He put a fingertip on his forehead.
“He fell eventually, forward, like a blind man who doesn’t know where the floor is. I can’t tell you how pleased I was because I was finished, completely finished. I collapsed on my knees. I wanted to come and help you, but nothing wanted to work, it was like swimming in treacle, head not thinking, so I rested.”
He took a sip of water.
“I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just walk through that door and say, Okay, boys, the boss is over and out and we’re taking charge. And then I thought, It can’t be that door. What about the other one, outside, the big one? and I went out to the car, slowly. Odd, my ear wasn’t so bad then. It was the ribs that were screaming, big black spots in front of my eyes. I don’t know how long it took me to the Benz, and then I knew there was no time and I took another firearm out of the back and I drove and I looked for the door and I couldn’t find it because everything was so confusing. So I made my own.”
Mpayipheli swallowed the last of the ice water, got up to fetch some more, and sat down again.
“And then you shot the lot. There was only one left for me and it was just as well because the first shots went completely wide.”
The door opened and the blond nurse came in.
“He must rest,” she said.
“And I must do all the talking,” said Tiny. “Nothing will ever change in this country.”
♦
Late afternoon. He was alone in the room. A thick brown envelope with his name on it lay next to the bed. Slowly he wriggled his left hand out from under the blankets. He saw that his forearm was red and swollen just below the puncture where the drip entered. He moved his right hand over slowly, touching the wounds in the chest and shoulder, a burning, sharp as fire, but he managed to reach the envelope. He lay back, let the pain subside slightly, and tore the envelope open with difficulty.
A note on top. “You owe me a honeymoon. And a huge favor for the document. Pleased that you’re recovering. Destroy when read. Please.”