The next morning Benjy phones her half-an-hour before an important meeting with the director of another company that she has to audit. Can she please come to pick him up immediately? It’s actually like in urgent. (He doesn’t sound well. He sounds stressed, even short of breath.) Where? At Skilpadkraal, just outside town, on the Polkadraai road. It’s on the left, coming from town; she can’t miss it. Drive in, he says, take the first right, carry on past the dam on the left. He’ll be waiting for her by the first cottage immediately after the trees. Does this have to do with the threat against his life? she asks. He can’t talk now, he says, he’ll explain later. She wants to ask some more questions, but he’s rung off already.
Immediately she’s overtaken by a blind panic. She thought the threat couldn’t just disappear like that without further ado, she thought he was hiding something from her. What does this mean — will she have to take him somewhere to hide for an indeterminate period? Perhaps he wants to hide out temporarily with her. It would have been useful to have more information about his predicament.
This means that she has to drop everything just like that. Everything that she’d planned for the rest of her stay in town. The audits, the visit to her parents’ grave, the visit to her friend Jakobus on the city farm. The audits she can do later, her parents’ grave she can always visit another time, Jakobus as well at the city farm, but what a pity that the weekend with the lover must also come to naught.
It’s a close, cloudy day; it looks as if it might rain, the mountains are still not visible — clad in mist since early morning. Beautiful, the day, the mountains in the mist, the vineyards changing colour. She has a miserable, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach about Benjy, and a constricting anxiety in the region of her heart. Before leaving to fetch him, she tries once more to reach her ex-husband. He should know that his son’s life is in danger. But his cell phone is still switched off. What’s the use of time and again abusing him for never being available in a crisis.
She takes the Skilpadkraal turn-off. (Two painted tortoises on the stone wall, underneath the name. Apparently a self-catering resort.) Benjy is waiting for her outside the first cottage. He is looking terrible. It strikes her immediately. He is unkempt, unshaven, deathly pale, a bulky Yasser Arafat scarf around his neck. He has only a small rucksack with him. He greets her tersely, slides down deep into the seat and looks straight ahead of him. Just drive, Ma, he says. Where to? she asks. Doesn’t matter, he says. Anywhere. I suppose not back to Cape Town, she says (feebly). He shakes his head. She turns back in the direction of the town. Her hands on the steering wheel are sticky with sweat. Where to now? she asks as they enter the town. Carry on along Bird Street, and take the R304 out of town, he says.
Maria carries on with the R304, past the N1 turn-off to Cape Town, direction Malmesbury. Benjy doesn’t say a word, he just gazes ahead of him. His breath is slightly laboured. (She’d hoped he’d outgrown his asthma. Must be the stress. She hopes he has his asthma pump with him.) She thinks: She must give him time to recover his wits. But she finds it near-intolerable — the child clearly suffering some kind of life-threatening crisis and just sitting next to her in silence. The sky is vast and dim, but radiant on the horizon. On the left all trees are sharply delineated against the sky. On the right sunlight and shade alternate on the bare fields. Gradually the clouds disperse. In Malmesbury the sky is grey, as if the whole town is covered in shade. On a town square there are giant bluegums. People on the face of it idling there aimlessly — but no doubt one and all of them harbouring murderous intent and as depressed as hell.
Just outside Malmesbury Benjy suddenly starts crying. Without any warning — one moment he’s still gazing ahead of him in silence and the next moment be erupts in raw sobs. Maria gets such a fright that she almost loses control of the car. Benjy, she exclaims, what’s the matter, darling? But he cries so hard that he can’t utter a word. What is it, she asks, is it the people who want to wipe you out? He doesn’t react. He cries so that strings of slime and slobber stream out of his mouth and nose. There’s no place anywhere to pull off the road. The lovely, bare fields fly past — dark on one side of the road, lighter on the other, with the silver light slanting down on the wheat stubble. After a while he calms down somewhat. Wipes his nose on his sleeve. Gazes ahead of him.
‘Is it the people who are stalking you?’ she asks. He shakes his head. No.
‘Your life’s not in danger?’ she asks. He shakes his head, sniffs. After-sobs shake his body.
‘It was actually all just talk,’ he says, ‘stupid fucking pranks.’
‘Death threats,’ she says, ‘whose idea of a joke is that?!’
He shrugs. ‘Cretinous fuckers,’ he says. ‘They just wanted to like give me a fright.’
Why does it sound so familiar?! When last did she see him like this — her plucky, resourceful child? Systematically all his life overcoming stumbling blocks — alas, mainly stumbling blocks of his own making. Your life is not in danger? she asks again, just to be absolutely sure. He shakes his head. Well, thank God for that, she says. He utters a tiny, wry laugh. Sniffs. Half sobs. They speed past vineyards, past cleared and ploughed fields in various shades of brown: grey-brown, ochre-brown, green-brown, dark-brown with white; the brown broken by the silver sheen of the wheat stubble. They speed past the vast, flat, stretched-out landscape, the sky all before them — from endless horizon to endless horizon — equally wide and stretched-out. Is it the failed business venture? she asks. He shakes his head. She feels tears welling up in her eyes. What is it then? she asks. (From early childhood on he never allowed himself to be coddled or cosied over-much. Nor even comforted. Such a headstrong, independent, stubborn, heart-wrenching child. With the damn impossible father against whom he has to measure himself all his life. Not easy with a father like Andreas — extraordinarily talented, a fabulously successful artist — hard to meet him on his own ground.)
‘I wasn’t made for this,’ he declares abruptly.
‘For what, darling?’ she asks.
‘She dumped me,’ he says.
That is a possibility that’s never occurred to Maria! Love woes. A girl, she says. He nods. Sniffs. What happened? she asks. (At least it’s a crisis of human dimensions — death threats are so way beyond any comprehensible category.)
‘I’m like finished,’ he says stoically.
‘How come?’ she says. ‘Who’s the girl?”
‘I’ve sort of actually had it,’ he says. ‘She’s fucking wiped me out.’
Now she understands! No wonder his form has assumed more pronounced masculine proportions, although his lashes are still long and thick (like a girl’s), and moist at present.
‘Where are we going?’ she asks, as they approach Moorreesburg.
‘It’s okay.’ He said. ‘I just had to get out of the city. Otherwise I would have fucking like done myself some injury.’
(As bad as that? She’s almost forgotten how bad it can be.)
*
In Moorreesburg they stop to have tea at a combination coffee and craft shop. The place, crammed chock-a-block with gimcrack knick-knacks, fortunately has a fireplace. Maria is thankful for the fire. She is both relieved and disturbed. Relieved that it was only a romantic crisis, disturbed at its intensity.
The girl with whom he fell in love (for the time being anonymous; for now Maria refrains from angling for any further information) used to be the girlfriend of a friend of one of the guys he wanted to go into partnership with. When the friend of the prospective partner discovered what was like going on between Benjy and the girl, he weighed in with his threats. First he saw to it that the prospective partner withdrew from the business venture with Benjy, then he started like threatening Benjy himself. He and a lot of other guys said they were going to like wipe him out if he didn’t leave the girl alone. At first they carried on for a while, Benjy and the girl, he thought it would be okay, the guys would back off, but then they started as in threatening her too, and then she must have got a big fright, because next thing she was back with the guy.