Читать книгу When in Broad Daylight I Open My Eyes - Greg Lazarus - Страница 6

Four

It has been five days since Kristof spoke with Maria on the phone. Now he is behind the wheel, whistling in heavy traffic on the coastal road. At twenty kilometres an hour, he passes the stone mansions of St James on his right. To his left is the light-blue sea, as playful as a toddler.

The third car in front of him, a black Pajero, contains Maria and a man called Lionel Lightly. Interesting: Lightly, the feisty politician, expert at playing up his rural roots with funny, apparently straight-talking sound bites for journalists. He had been in the news only a few days before, responding to the opposition party’s criticism of affirmative action: “When we give the people opportunities, it’s unfair. When you shot them with rubber bullets and hit them with sjamboks, that was justice, as I recall. To me it sounds like you’ve got it the wrong way round. But I only got a coloured education, so maybe I’m being stupid, hey?”

Earlier this morning, after Lionel had parked outside Maria’s house and gone in, Kristof left his car – which was further up the street – and peeked into the Pajero. A red-bordered letter on the passenger seat indicated that Lionel owed nine thousand rand to the South African Revenue Service. Then Kristof returned to his car to keep watch. When Lionel and Maria emerged from the front gate, he opened the car door for her and stood aside with exaggerated courtesy. He had the intimate animosity of an ex-lover. One possibility: were they off for a Saturday morning reconciliation outing? Lionel’s Pajero pulled away just after nine, and Kristof followed it at a careful distance. After a while, he found himself driving along the coastal road towards Kalk Bay. It was a long time since he had gone this way.

At their destination, Maria and Lionel park near the pier and walk towards it. As long as they’re sauntering on that bare white concrete strip jutting into the sea, he can’t follow them without being noticed. Kristof sits in his car, parked some distance from the Pajero. He watches the pier for a while, observing the pair from behind; they are taking their time. Then he looks over to the main road, finds a particular shop and studies it. He closes his eyes, takes several slow breaths. The decision is not made easily. Finally he reaches into the cubbyhole, retrieves a pair of sunglasses, puts them on and looks at himself in the rear-view mirror. He opens the car door and heads over to the shop. Above the door is a sign, Bobbejaan Books, burned with a poker into a long plank. Kristof enters, and at first there is no one to be seen.

He browses among the shelves, observing the books through his dark glasses. There is a section on Politics, with memoirs by Boer War generals, men of the National Party and a host of ex-political prisoners, now in government. Beneath it is Classic Erotica, a collection arranged chronologically, from lewd Roman poets to a set of novels from the Weimar Republic bound in white calfskin. Kristof passes his finger along one of these shelves, lightly touching the books as he reads their spines.

“May I help?” asks a woman in a black sweater. She is standing behind a dark varnished desk containing a phone and a set of volumes. While he was examining the books she must have entered quietly from a back room. She has blonde hair, tied back in a ponytail, and is in her mid-fifties. Her sweater is snug on her slender body, and her manner is friendly.

“Just looking,” Kristof says. His voice has changed, not his usual pleasant baritone but a deeper register.

“Ask if you need anything,” she replies, and turns back to her volumes. Her fingers, their nails glinting with red polish, turn the pages efficiently.

Kristof moves through the shop. On a table display – Foreign Languages – is a water-stained volume with a helmeted soldier on the cover, looking into the distance with implacable resolve. It is a German illustrated work about the campaigns of the Wehrmacht, published in 1942. He turns the brown-spotted pages, observing pictures of men huddled together over their mess tins or marching up winding mountain paths, smiling at the camera: “Frankreich 1940”, “Griechenland 1941”. The album has an awful charm.

There are still no other customers in the shop. Kristof straightens up and watches the woman until she looks up from her desk at him, her primitive sense alerted to his stare. Then, with his gaze still fixed on her, he picks up the book and walks slowly to the exit with the volume in his hand. Finally he opens the door.

“Excuse me,” says the woman, coming out from behind her desk and taking a step towards him. “I think you’ve forgotten to pay for that book.”

Kristof turns towards her. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry,” she says. “The book – you’ve forgotten to pay.”

There are moments in which everyday interactions dissolve into something elemental, and one sees other people in their anxious and defiant nakedness. She feels it too, and stands her ground.

“I haven’t forgotten to pay,” Kristof says, still in his deep voice.

“What?” But surely, in her blood, she knows what he means.

“Let’s suppose,” he continues, “that I am stealing this book. I’m violating your ownership. But this is an abstract way to put it. I’m insulting you; I’m saying that what is yours, I will take. I’m not just flouting morality, but showing contempt for you. So I understand your anger, your humiliation.”

She opens her mouth, but says nothing.

“Think about this: what will happen if you make trouble for me now; if you scream for help, or call the police? What will happen?”

Still facing him, she moves slowly backwards towards the desk.

Kristof puts his hand to his heart. It is clear that she has no idea what he means: such a gesture rarely accompanies robbery. He looks at her a moment longer and slips out as she stands against her desk.

He sets off for the pier, walking quickly, the book held under his arm. Stopping behind a car, he sees Maria and Lionel walking beside the sea wall, nearly back at the parking lot. She has on a short pale-cream dress, just a few tints away from white. Her long legs are covered in skin-coloured stockings, and she is wearing soft brown leather shoes. Walking next to her, Lionel is like some prehistoric fish that has struggled its way out of the deep sea; seeing a beautiful creature of the land, the ancient fish squelches along beside her, desperate to make her its own, though it can only grunt and puff.

Suddenly Lionel does a peculiar thing. He turns Maria towards the sea, faces her towards it, as if to say: look, there is my element, and you could never survive those cold salty depths, and the predators, of which I am one.

Maria doesn’t like it. She turns back again, like a spring that has been forced down returning to its proper place. She raises her left hand to him (she is left-handed; so is Kristof) and then curls back her fingers to show only a thumb. Then she points an index finger, and finally the middle finger too. Lionel cannot endure those provocative fingers, and flashes out his wide, fleshy hand to grip hers. At that point Maria must be saying something especially defiant, because his right hand lets go of her left, speedily withdraws, and delivers a sudden push to her shoulder. She staggers backwards.

Lionel does not have a talent for physical violence. He is an amateur, but of course amateurs are dangerous; one cannot quite predict what they are going to do, since they follow no rational pattern. The scene turns operatic: Lionel feels remorse, and he supports Maria as she straightens up. Meanwhile, the fishermen on the pier have turned to see what is going on. Some are watching, amused, while others approach the pair. One of them says something to the couple, but is ignored. Lionel appears to be humiliated by the encounter, ashamed of what he has done. They spend some time in soothing talk, standing close together on the pier, and then walk back – Lionel, docile, alongside her.

From his position behind the car, Kristof moves around the vehicle to keep himself invisible as the couple pass some metres away. He watches them get into the Pajero and drive off; then he emerges.

A fisherman passes near him, coming off the pier with his rod, bag of catch and teenage son.

“What happened?” asks Kristof.

The fisherman looks at him. “Sorry?”

“There seemed to be a disturbance there.”

“Not my business. You have to ask those people,” says the man, and goes off with his boy.

Kristof walks to his car. As he reaches it, there is a commotion behind him. It is the woman in the black sweater – she has crossed the road from the bookshop – with a man. He is in his sixties, and the lines on his face are those of a mountain. He is tall, powerful. He too is wearing a sweater – thick, brown – and black boots.

“It’s him,” says the woman.

“You!” says the man.

“How may I help?” Kristof asks, using his deep voice.

“You stole that book from us.”

There’s no sense denying it; the position has changed. He takes the book out from under his arm. “Fine,” he says. “Here’s your thing.” The man receives the account of Germany’s glorious adventures. The woman is looking at Kristof. “Don’t I know you?” she asks.

“Now you do,” he says, fumbling with the door of the car.

“I don’t want to see you in our shop any more,” she says. But she cannot seem to tear herself away. Suddenly she points a finger at him. “Of course,” she says. “I know exactly who you are.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Kristof says. He gets into his car, and as he drives away they make no effort to stop him.