Читать книгу The book of happenstance - Ingrid Winterbach - Страница 4

In March, at the end of summer, I start working as Theo Verwey’s assistant. In October, in spring, he is found dead in his office. I am the one who discovers him at six-thirty in the evening. I close the door behind me and move forward cautiously, but there is a threshold I cannot cross.

Everybody is upset about his death, Sailor more so than anybody else. For days on end his eyes are red with weeping and he tells me: He was like a father to me.

Sailor sits in my office. One of his long legs dangles over the armrest of the chair. Under his arms are large patches of sweat. His hair is tousled. His face is red with emotion. Even in his state of collapse he still looks pretty good. Freddie stands in the door. Behind him stands the cleaning woman. (She looks like a cleaning woman, but she is in fact an expert on fossils, more specifically fossils from the Cambrian.)

Sailor says: “It’s that Indian dog.”

“Which Indian dog?” I ask.

“The margarine magnate,” says Freddie from the door.

“It’s his father,” Sailor says.

“Whose father?” I ask.

“The dog’s father,” Sailor says.

“The margarine magnate?”

“Yes, he made his money from margarine and cooking oil,” Freddie says from the doorway.

“Which one is the dog?” I ask.

“The cunt is his son,” says Sailor.

“Sailor thinks he blackmailed Verwey,” Freddie says, and grinds out his cigarette beneath his heel.

“Blackmailed,” wails Sailor.

“Bad,” says the woman.

“He’s stinking rich,” says Freddie.

“They have a TV screen as big as a wall in their house,” Sailor says, “with seats like in a bioscope.”

“How does he know that?” I ask Freddie, for Sailor is overwhelmed by a fresh flood of tears.

“How do you know that?” Freddie asks Sailor.

“I was there,” Sailor wails.

“Christ Almighty,” the woman says, also lighting a cigarette.

“Did the father or the son blackmail him?” I ask.

“The father,” Freddie says, shaking his head.

“No, the cunt himself,” Sailor says.

“And the cunt is the son,” I say.

“Yes,” Sailor says, “the fucking cunt with his hot Indian arsehole!”

Theo Verwey and I used to listen to music as we worked. Mahler, Schubert, Cimarosa, Gluck, Strauss, Schütz, Mozart. I helped Theo Verwey with his project. He recorded words that have fallen into complete disuse, as well as words not often used in Afrikaans any more.

A couple of days after his death Mrs Verwey arrives to collect her deceased husband’s possessions from his office. I help her pack the books into boxes.

“Are you willing to complete this task on his behalf?” she asks me. “The project was his lifelong dream and Theo had the greatest respect for your expertise.” With my back to her, bending over a box with a small pile of books in my hand, I tell her: “I’ll have to think about it; I don’t know how much longer I plan to remain here.”