Читать книгу It Might Get Loud - Ingrid Winterbach - Страница 3

ONE FINE MORNING KARL HOFMEYR is called on his cell phone. Your brother is causing havoc, says the caller, you must come and get him. Who am I talking to? asks Karl. Josias Brandt, the man says, your brother is staying with us on the farm. (Karl hasn’t spoken to Iggy for a long time. His cell phone’s been beeping engaged.) Can I talk to Ignatius myself? Karl says. He doesn’t have a phone any more, says Josias, he’s chucked away his phone. (How would the man know that?) He’s giving us grief here, says Josias. What kind of grief? Karl asks (not that he really wants to know). He disappears and then when he comes back, he’s all over the place. He’s aggressive, he accuses me of all kinds of nonsense. They’re going to nail him, says Josias, I can no longer assume responsibility for his safety when he disappears like that. It’s a liability I no longer want to shoulder. (Liability. Nothing wrong with the guy’s command of language.) I’ll sort something out, Karl says. You’d better sort something out quickly, says Josias.

*

That evening Karl visits his friend Hendrik. They’re firm friends, have known each other for a long time, ever since school. They’re partners in a small software business in town. Hendrik is also into music, as he is. He plays the guitar in a small rock band. He writes poetry as well. Karl doesn’t read much poetry, but what he’s read of Hendrik’s strikes him as good. Hendrik is always laughing. He is sturdy and hairy, with a broad, flat face. Everything is broad and flat about Hendrik. He looks like an amiable mariner. He is of a solid disposition and a reliable friend – the most reliable of Karl’s friends. He has long, curly hair and a beard. His hair is somewhere between brown and red. Hendrik is an optimist. Nothing ever gets him down. Late into the night they listen to Accept’s new album, Blood of the Nations. Kick-ass cover: against a red backdrop a fist, dipped in blood, with two fingers raised in the V-sign, with the group’s name in metallic letters over it. They’ve been looking forward to this album – Accept’s first in more than ten years. They listen to the LP, Hendrik ordered it recently; neither of them listens to CDs any more.

He and Hendrik attended the Deep Purple concert in the ICC a while ago. The crowd went berserk when Ian Gillan sang ‘Smoke on the Water’. Every single soul in the audience’s hair stood on end. The man was unstoppable. He blasted a hole in the dome with his voice. Steve Morse, his guitarist, had hair like seaweed, Karl thought, like seaweed in the sea, billowing to and fro. With that flailing guitar accompanying him. Introducing him, Gillan said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you: Steve Morse – freshly manicured and slightly scared.’ The event was a highlight. One of the few highlights in Karl’s life the last few months. His voice was hoarse for days afterwards, from shouting and cheering that evening.

Only after they’ve had quite a few beers does Karl get up the courage to tell Hendrik about the phone call that morning. Yes, says Hendrik, doesn’t sound good. Sounds shit, says Karl. What are you going to do? asks Hendrik. I suppose I’ll have to go, says Karl. When? asks Hendrik. I don’t know, says Karl, I’m half-hoping that if I wait long enough, the situation will sort itself out.

They have another beer and listen to Delirious Nomad, Armored Saint’s second album. Pure Los Angeles power metal, says Hendrik. Totally underrated, says Karl. Jeez, says Hendrik, to think that old Dave Pritchard’s dead. Devastating, says Karl. Best news ever that Duncan and Sandoval got back into the act, says Hendrik. Can’t wait for their new album, says Karl.

They have a last beer and listen to La Raza. No holds barred delivery, says Hendrik. Relentless riffing, says Karl. But try as he may, tonight the music just doesn’t grab him as totally as usual.

John Bush shouldn’t have gone over to Anthrax, says Hendrik. Probably a career move, says Karl. Bush should be in Saint, Hendrik says, that’s where he belongs. Anthrax opened for Pantera in San José the other day, says Karl. Would give my left testicle to have been there. (Would give my left testicle to be anyplace but here right now, Karl thinks, what with Iggy causing shit again somewhere. Just as he thinks now Iggy’s okay, now he’s settled, now things are going well, then something else happens. And every time he, Karl, has to pitch in to save the show.)

*

Maria Volschenk’s good friend, Jakobus Coetzee, writes by email to tell her that he’s taken up residence on a city farm. A foster farm, freak farm, pig farm, he calls it, where the sleep of reason brings forth monsters (harpies). People there don’t opt for the simple life. What can you expect from a city farm, he asks – a farm in the city with a view of the mountain; a haven for have-nots? For those of reduced means and straitened circumstances.

Lording it over all this is the director of operations, says Jakobus: Josias B, with unbridled id – a latter-day Lear in leather sandals. A fabulous director of operations, a sensational extrovert. Come drop in when next you’re in this neck of the Cape, come cast an eye on roaring pig and fascist goose.

*

The next day there’s no word from the Josias Brandt fellow. He’s almost tempted to take heart. Perhaps Iggy has come to his senses. Perhaps the situation has sorted itself out. With Iggy you never can tell. Iggy is unpredictable, if nothing else. Iggy is bloody gifted, he’s way out, but he is a loyal brother. He’d do anything for Karl. Iggy is a good person, it’s just that he does odd things at times.

But that evening Josias Brandt calls again. ‘When are you coming?’ he asks.

Karl hesitates.

‘Listen,’ says the man, ‘I’ve put up with Ignatius for quite awhile now. I’ve been patient for a long time. At first he was okay. But then he started with his nonsense.’

‘What kind of nonsense exactly?’ Karl asks.

‘I told you yesterday. He’s aggressive. He could get violent. And sometimes he wears women’s clothes. He’s carrying on like a fucking whore, man.’

‘He’s been okay this last while,’ says Karl. (Women’s clothes; Iggy whorish? Fuck. Not as far as he knows.)

‘That he no longer is. He’s a liability. I can no longer assume responsibility for his emotional or physical well-being. If he does something rash and comes unstuck, I don’t want it on my conscience. So sort something out and come and get your brother.’

Later that evening he drops in on Hendrik again. I don’t know what to do, he says. I don’t know what Iggy’s up to. He had a paranoid episode a few years ago. These last few months things seemed to be going well. I haven’t spoken to him for a long time. I have no idea how serious it is. He’s not answering his cell phone. The Brandt fellow says he’s chucked it away. Iggy’s not the aggressive type. He’s not violent. Quite the opposite. It’s not like him to chuck away cell phones. I don’t know what’s happening. Women’s clothes. He’s never done that before.

‘Where does he get the stuff?’ asks Hendrik.

‘I was wondering that myself,’ says Karl. ‘If only I knew what he was up to. I’ve got a premonition. I had a terrible dream about him last night.’

‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’ says Hendrik. ‘Go see a psychic.’

‘What should I see a psychic for?’ Karl asks. ‘You know I don’t do psychics. I don’t do oil and I don’t do psychics. I don’t do mediums or paranormal events or séances or contact with the dead or any of that kind of stuff. I have no desire to see the face of my dead mother or grandmother or great-grandmother or whoever. I don’t want anyone to see any face over my shoulder or above my head – not a face, or an apparition, or a significant cloud or whatever.’

‘Calm down,’ says Hendrik. ‘Somebody at work went when he lost some important files. The woman helped him to get them back.’

‘I want to know what’s up with Iggy, and if the woman can help me with that, fine,’ says Karl. ‘But no monkey’s paws or baboon pelts or animal skulls, please, and no dear departeds that the woman thinks she sees floating behind me. And especially no amorphous spheres of gibbering ectoplasm.’

Hendrik laughs. Hendrik is a calming influence on him. Hendrik is game for anything, few things rattle him. If Hendrik advises a psychic, however crazy it sounds, Karl is prepared to risk it. On nobody else’s advice would he do it.

‘Don’t break your head about it,’ Hendrik says. ‘Either the woman can help you or she can’t. It’s a chance you take. What have you got to lose in any case?’

‘Nothing,’ says Karl. ‘I’ve got fucking nothing to lose.’

*

Maria Volschenk wakes up from a dream of bitter conflict with her sister, Sofie. She doesn’t know what time it is; it seems to be getting light already. She feels a headache coming on. In the distance she hears the rumbling of the traffic on the main road, louder than usual. The dream dissipates rapidly, but the conflict was bitterly, bitterly intense. To love only one person, she says to Sofie, is to love no-one at all. Sofie says nothing, she looks down, in front of her, smiles faintly. She’ll adopt a different strategy, Maria decided in the dream. When Sofie returns (from where?), she’ll be all conciliatory. Sofie returns, with the woman. (The woman?) How was the beach? Maria asks her sister. You have to breast the waves one at a time, says Sofie.

Maria opens the curtains. Behind the clear outline of the trees the early-morning light is bright; it glows. She feels an inner resistance to starting the day.

Below her she hears Joy Park, her tenant, unlocking her security gate. She has a first ciggie in the garden before taking her child to school. A few hadedas fly skirling over the roof.

No, thinks Maria. No to the day, to the shrieking birds, to the city’s roar, to the smell of Joy Park’s cigarette smoke. Is something welling up in her – a feeling as of a vehement resistance?

In the nine months since Sofie’s death, Maria has seldom dreamed of her sister. Now all of a sudden. From what level of Maria’s psyche does this sudden acknowledgement of Sofie’s death arise? And why in the shape of intense conflict? Is that how long it’s taken her to overcome her shock and horror at her sister’s death? Damn you, Sofie, she thinks this morning, you dealt us all a low blow.

She must phone the man, she thinks, she’s put it off for long enough.

And much later in the day Maria recalls that there were also insects in the dream – a spider, she thinks, and perhaps a locust.

*

Joy Park lives in a garden flat on the ground floor of Maria Volschenk’s house. Joy wears the smallest pair of jeans Maria has ever seen on an adult woman’s body, from the back she looks like a twelve-year-old. She’s more or less Maria’s age, early fifties, thin, red hair, freckled complexion, thin legs, big breasts, been round the block a couple of times, but spunky (full of spirit). A woman of reduced means. Everybody of straitened circumstances earns Maria’s compassion, though Joy not that much, because she can look after herself (she’s streetwise), and she doesn’t always pay her rent on time.

Joy Park wears heels with her jeans. She chain-smokes and enjoys a tipple. Joy Park is outspoken, she seldom guards her tongue, and when she’s had a few beers she gets heated, even out of control. Friggin this and friggin that, she says at such times. Joy is a bookkeeper for a small computer business and in the afternoons she does treatments to supplement her income. Her clients are exclusively male. Maria has never seen a woman coming down the garden steps to avail herself of Joy’s services. Joy would also seem not to have any woman friends. She refers from time to time to someone she meets for a beer or two.

At the end of the month she hands over her rent in a yellow envelope. Over weekends she vacuums. Energetically she sweeps the path in front of her garden flat. In one corner of the open-plan living area, behind a bamboo screen separating it from the kitchen area, is the bed on which she does her treatments. In the other leg of the L-shaped room are two sofas, facing each other. A television set and a fish tank, containing a single fish. A Buddha effigy (in truth a Chinese domestic deity) on a mounted plank on the wall, and several small framed reproductions. The sound of bubbling water in the fish tank. On one of the sofas lies a black-and-white lapdog, barely lifting its head when someone enters the room – must be used to the comings and goings of clients.

She sees a psychic regularly, she tells Maria. Joy sometimes chats while Maria is watering the garden downstairs. Last time the psychic told her she’s lonely, says Joy Park. She’s allowed her family to disperse. She should try to bring them together again. The woman saw two faces behind her. The one was the face of her late mother, with a pleading expression. The other face was that of a shit-stirrer. A large, broad face. She knows it belonged to her son-in-law. He’s scheming to alienate her eldest daughter from her. She came home and cut out her grandmother’s photo from a snapshot. She cut out her mother’s face. She arranged the two cut-outs in a small semi-circle on the little semi-circular table underneath the mirror. The one in the entrance hall. Next to it she placed a pink rock crystal she’d bought at the Essenwood market. She lit a candle. She summoned the spirits of her mother and grandmother. They had to stand by her in her hour of loneliness. She’s been independent for years, used to fighting her own battles. At age thirteen she ran away from home, because her mother didn’t give a damn what she did. She can fend for herself. She can look after her own interests. But there are times when things just get her down, she says. Her son-in-law on his own is enough to burn her friggin ass.

She always screens her clients before she sees them, she says. She doesn’t waste her time with chancers. All above board. Character and good breeding are the ticket for Joy Park. There are lots of chancers – men with ignoble intentions, but she’s not interested. She provides a half, a three-quarter and a full body massage. She uses quality oils that she buys wholesale from an Indian in the city. Afterwards the client showers if he wants to rinse off the oil. Her prices are competitive, she says. She’s not a pushover, she has to make a living. She plays music, if the client prefers, to enhance the ambience as much as possible. She has her regulars, and, as she’s said, she always screens all prospective clients thoroughly, she has no time for anything that’s not strictly kosher. For that they have to go and knock at some other door. She has her standards, she has the young child to support. With a girl you can’t be too careful. If she’d gone the other route she could have afforded her own place long ago and driven a Merc.

What does she do if the client wants to go the other route? Maria Volschenk asks her. She tells them in no uncertain terms where they can go, she says. And what do they ask for if they want to go the other route? Maria asks. They ask if the session has a happy ending. Maria laughs.

*

Karl doesn’t readily go into the homes of strangers if he doesn’t know more or less what he’s going to come across there. He’s always wary of strange smells and surfaces. Strange, unidentifiable substances – especially in bathrooms and kitchens. If at all possible, he avoids strange toilets. He’s easily put off. He doesn’t do oil. He doesn’t do pets – nothing that defecates in public places. Also not mice or rats or guinea pigs or parrots or whatever freaky creatures people keep in cages. He doesn’t do small dog breeds either. He doesn’t like the expression in their eyes. At most a fish in a tank, but it shouldn’t be overdone with moss and seaweed and snails slithering slowly up the walls of the tank.

Whatever his phobias, the psychic is fortunately to be found in a suburban house in a suburban sitting room, and at first glance everything seems acceptable. No inauspicious numbers; nothing that he balks at immediately or has an aversion to. Her hair is dyed raven black and she walks with her feet at ten to two. The presence of three small dogs on the sofa (on which she sits) does admittedly give him the heebie-jeebies. One of them has a shaved patch with a wound of which the stitches are still visible. Wounds are high on the list of things Karl doesn’t do. He tries not to look at it. The room is furnished in autumnal shades, with many ornaments. A sudden urge to wash his hands overpowers him. Before she starts, the woman covers the little dogs with a blanket to get them to settle. (Which for the duration of the session they don’t do.)

He wants to know what’s up with his brother, he says. It looks as if his brother is experiencing some kind of a crisis. But she silences him. Holds up her hand dramatically. No, she has no need to know why he’s here.

Then she evidently goes into a kind of trance. (Somewhere in the background he hears a vacuum cleaner. The dogs romp under the blanket.) She’s silent for a while. When she starts speaking, her voice sounds strange, as if it’s not her own. One of the dogs growls ferociously. She slaps him lightly on the head but is apparently not roused from her trance. (How does she know which one growled?)

She sees two figures, she says. Or is it three? Two are very distinct … two men … both of them with strange (she gestures around her head, makes quick scurrying movements) … rays … it’s very hot … somebody is crawling on his knees …

She’s silent for a long time. She presses her fingertips to her temples as if she’s in pain. Sweat beads on her forehead. He waits. She presses the fingertips. Then she suddenly comes out of her trance. She opens her eyes wide. No, jeez, she says, she can’t go any further. There are too many goings-on. She can’t help him any further.

Where? What kind of goings-on? he demands.

But she shakes her head emphatically. No, unholy goings-on. She can’t have dealings with that kind of thing. She’s too sensitive. There’s too much negative energy.

Where? he asks.

Jesus, no, she says, now that she can’t pronounce upon. It’s just her sense of a space. Somewhere. A dark place. And she knows a dark place when she sees one.

Did she see it? asks Karl.

She sensed it. She as good as saw it.

Is it perhaps near a mountain, something like Table Mountain? he asks.

No, now that she couldn’t say. It could be. It’s not important. All she knows for sure, is that she sensed a very dark place. Lots of pain and anger there.

Is my brother there? Karl demands.

No, that she can’t pronounce upon, but if he is there, in such a place, then Karl must get him away from there immediately. She saw the two men. The one is dreaming of business, the other looks as if he’s dreaming of dead people, and he’s biting his hand for sure while he’s sleeping. That she could see clearly. Lots of grief. Goings-on.

The grief is not perhaps his brother’s grief? Karl asks.

Could be, says the woman. She also sensed other presences. But she couldn’t make out exactly whose pain it was. But lots of pain, as she said.

Pain of what kind? asks Karl.

No, Jesus, now that she can’t pronounce upon, says the woman.

But Karl persists. Since he’s here anyway. His brother has fair hair, he says. He wears glasses. He has a friendly face, gentle.

She didn’t see anyone like that, says the woman. At the beginning there were three figures. One of them could maybe have been his brother. It’s possible that one of them had fair hair.

And the person crawling on his knees?

The woman shakes her head. No, she doesn’t think that was his brother.

Can he just wash his hands quickly? asks Karl.

Sure, she says, but she looks at him oddly anyway. Is there a problem?

No, there’s no problem.

He can’t find a towel that looks clean enough in the bathroom. Wipes his hands on his pants. Has to wash them again, because he’s been sitting on the chair on which the dogs probably sit at times. Blows his hands dry so that he needn’t use the towel.

The woman looks at him mistrustfully when he returns.

That will be R75, she says. A full session is R135, but his was just half a session. She’s sorry she can’t be of further assistance.

Now he has to get out of here as quickly as possible. When the woman gets up, the dogs jump off the sofa and mill around his feet. He’s scared the one with the wound will rub up against his trouser leg.

Shame, she says as she opens the front door for him, that your poor brother should be in such a terrible place.

What place?

The woman clasps her hands to her chest. Looks at him expressively. Okay, she may not have seen his brother, but the fact that such a dark place came up is a sure sign that his brother’s in a bad place. And if she can advise him, Karl must take him away from there as soon as possible.

Where to? he asks, panic-stricken. (Dumb question, he knows, how would the woman know.)

That is for Karl to decide, she says, unfortunately she can’t be of any assistance in that regard.

He goes home and listens to Pantera’s album Cowboys from Hell at full volume. He thinks of Juliana. He hadn’t realised she was so depressed. Till one evening in the hotel room in Bilbao, during the trip they’d looked forward to for so long. She said later that she’d considered slitting her wrists that evening. (Where would she have done it – in the unsavoury bathroom?) That bathroom in the corner of the room stank of sulphur. It was enough to give you the heebie-jeebies. At the market the following day she stood still for a long time in front of the baby turtles in glass bowls. There were flowers in containers. Big crabs on ice. The stink! Slaughtered rabbits like López Garcia’s still-life with a dead rabbit, which they’d seen in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. (He’d liked it a lot.) Bull’s, pig’s and sheep’s testicles. Sheep’s and other brains. Fucking repulsive. He was terrified that he’d touch something by accident, or step on something: a scrap of meat, fish, crab, crayfish. The contamination takes over, it invades his body. Everything he has is taken away from him.

She didn’t let on that anything was wrong. She wandered expressionlessly from stall to stall. He was totally unaware of her state of mind, he was too busy trying to keep body and soul together. Early every morning he’d go down the stairs to put a coin in a slot and return with two little mugs of coffee. She was writing in her diary. The sulphurous bathroom stinking as with the vapours of hell; he could hardly bring himself to use it; every single surface in it filled him with fear and loathing. The sticky plastic curtain, the bath’s gritty surface, the stained mirror; the encrustations and fungal matter that he thought he could see everywhere; but especially the toxic fumes. He practised shallow breathing; scared the poison would invade his body.

One evening they ate paella in a pan, with black rice – on a little square with plane trees. I can no longer help you, she said, you have to help yourself now. I can no longer support you, from here on you’re on your own. A courtyard with cobblestones, so terribly forlorn the coloured lights in the wind. Even in the beautiful Guggenheim Museum her attention was elsewhere. What was she thinking of? What does a woman think of who’d considered slitting her wrists in a foreign land? What are the kinds of things Juliana thinks of – he doesn’t know. It panics him even more. She likes landscapes. She likes music. Is she thinking of famous landscapes? Is she thinking of the books she so dedicatedly reads? Does she listen to music in her head – requiems and Stabat Maters and all the other infinitely doleful songs and desolate piano notes to which she so loves listening? Is she thinking of former loves, perhaps? Is she thinking of her lonely youth – of the boy, perhaps, that she once told him about, with whom she played table tennis when they were both twelve years old, in a large double-storey house on a rocky coast, in a windy city, the upper rooms with wood panelling and round windows like the portholes of a ship?

*

That afternoon he gets another call from the Josias fellow.

‘Well,’ says the man (a touch impatiently), ‘when are you coming?’

‘I’m coming as soon as I can get away,’ he says.

And with that the deal is clinched, the die is cast. He’s said he’s coming, now there’s no turning back.

That evening he drops in on Hendrik again. So I went to the psychic, says Karl. What does she say? asks Hendrik. She sensed a place, a dark place with lots of negative energy, says Karl, at one stage she wouldn’t carry on, said it was too dreadful. Sounds bad, says Hendrik, so would that be Josias Brandt’s place? No, says Karl, that she couldn’t pronounce upon. She was very vague. It’s just a place that she sensed. No, man, says Hendrik, the woman is obviously reliable, if she sensed darkness it must be an indication of something. Perhaps, says Karl, but that still doesn’t get me anywhere. She did say I should take Iggy away from there immediately. But that’s what the Brandt fellow is also saying. Ye-es, says Hendrik, but for different reasons. What did Iggy say when he moved in? He said it was an amazing place, says Karl, he could see the mountain from his room. He thought he’d be able to get some work done there. What else did the woman say? asks Hendrik. Not very much, just the negative energy and the goings-on, and two men – one of them bites his hand while he’s sleeping, the other dreams of business, says Karl. What kind of business? asks Hendrik. She didn’t specify, says Karl. And a man biting his hand while he’s sleeping – how weird is that! says Hendrik. Yes, says Karl, but now I still don’t know what’s up with Iggy. And the man’s phoned again. What does he say? asks Hendrik. He wants to know when I’m coming. And when are you planning to go? asks Hendrik. As soon as I can get away, says Karl. There’s a metal festival at the Gariep Dam, says Hendrik. That’s on your way. Or at least it’s not too much of a detour. Where did you hear that? asks Karl. Saw it yesterday on the internet, says Hendrik. Who’s playing? asks Karl. No very high-profile bands, says Hendrik, except perhaps Rammstein. They were going to have Annihilator, but the guys cancelled. Oh well, says Karl, Rammstein’s not my favourite, but I wouldn’t have minded. See what you can do, says Hendrik.

*

Maria thinks: She can’t put it off any longer. She must phone the man, she has a few things to ask him, and she must pick up the parcel that Sofie left for her. Sofie has been dead for nine months. Maria is not looking forward to this visit, but she can combine it with a visit to her parents’ grave. She can go and see the house where she and the sculptor, her ex-husband, used to live, that charismatic, highly successful, recklessly egoistic marriage spoiler, Andreas Volschenk. (His name since then up in lights internationally.) She can see herself doing it – standing at the garden gate dispassionately gazing at the house and garden in which she experienced so much. Raised the child on goat’s milk and obliged the man where possible and for the most part, all in deference to his career. She can once again run her eyes over the mountains, which she always found so beautiful. She can look up a few old friends. She often wonders about all these figures from her past, what they’ve been up to. Perhaps she’ll bump into Joeta somewhere, miraculously spared the depredation of the years, or perhaps Donny. Or one of the many vagrant couples who wandered (sometimes staggered) their fixed routes through town winter and summer. Face down in the ditch in front of her and the ex-husband’s house. Pissed in their garden and filched their washing from the line. Donny, for one, would certainly have something to report, in the twenty years or so since he bumped off his child bride. (Maria has always imagined that the appalling deed was committed somewhere against the slope of a low hill.) Also not improbable that she’ll come upon Donny on some street corner or other, passionately fulminating against the wickedness of mankind.

*

Shortly before her death Donny’s late child bride in her dolled-up little Pep Stores frock stood under a tree on the pavement – a blood-red dress (prelude to coming events?) with embroidery and lace gussets and here and there a skittish little sequin. Maria stood watching her from the bedroom window; the woman was surely biding her time to come and ask for bread or money. (Where was Donny that day?) But she was evidently taking her time (waiting for Donny?), because for a while she leaned up against the tree. Maria was standing at the window, and the late-afternoon light lit up the woman’s figure from behind so that she was outlined in silhouette and she seemed to be surrounded by a fiery aureole. Literally radiant, Biblical, an Old Testament apparition – something out of Ezekiel. And as the glow of the setting sun intensified, it looked as if the woman’s body was itself starting to radiate a glow, starting to shine. This glow, this strange radiance became gradually more brilliant as the setting sun blazed ever more brightly, and the woman’s body was so enveloped in the fiery aureole that it looked like a body being consumed by flames on a pyre, or a saint in the process of transfiguration, as Maria had seen it depicted in certain paintings.

It didn’t last long, this strange manifestation in the late-afternoon light, almost like a vision. Maria wondered whether there had for a brief moment been a short-circuit in her brain, or a disturbance in her vision, so singular was what she had just witnessed. The sun had set, the woman had left her station by the tree and come up to the house, she had knocked at the front door and asked for bread or money, her diminutive face devious and sly.

A few days later she succumbed on the mountain to wounds inflicted by Donny – her lover, common-law spouse and beloved companion. Her skull cracked (bashed with a stone), her pelvic bone fractured (by well-placed kicks), three ribs broken (fist blows), her throat cut and her vagina penetrated with a bottle.

‘Poes,’ he’d called her on Maria’s stoep.

Turned around and peed in a pot plant.

When Maria opened the door, turned around and said, ‘Meddim.’

Then he extended his two hands in a gesture of subservience, cupped, performed a deferential genuflection, eyes cast down humbly, and said: ‘Meddim, a bit of bread for me and the girl.’

‘Poes,’ he said, when Maria turned around to go back into the house.

Not clear whether this was directed at her or the girl, the little child bride.

First poes, and then hallelujah! For Danny was Reborn through the Rema (or similar) Church, a salvaged soul, inspired with tongues of fire, evangelically fired up when the occasion required.

*

Maria Volschenk grew up on the West Rand. Her father was a geography teacher with a great love of faraway places. Her mother was initially a housewife. She worked for a while at the local shop (she walked there in the morning), then at a chemist’s (she wore a white uniform). She made hats and attended courses in flower arrangement. She baked cakes for the Women’s Agricultural Union; she knitted and read. But one day, apparently deciding she’d had enough of all that, she enrolled for a diploma course with some college or other. She qualified herself in accounting, bookkeeping and economics, took a job with a small business in the village, and opened her own bank account. She learnt to drive a car and took up tennis twice a week: on Thursday and Saturday afternoons. It was at about this time, too, that she stopped going to church on Sundays.

When her father retired, Maria’s parents came to live in the Western Cape. Her mother kept on working as part-time bookkeeper till shortly before her death. Now both of them are lying buried against a low hill, far from their place of origin.

Maria followed in her mother’s footsteps, worked by day as a qualified accountant for an auditors’ firm; did auditing jobs for various businesses in the town, the city and surroundings, and in the evenings she read widely to extend her range of reference. As an accountant, somebody who had for all her adult life dedicated herself to accounts and balance sheets, she was all too inclined to feel inferior to Sofie, her sister, a poet, and also to her ex-husband, the sculptor. She thus earnestly educated herself in history, history of art, philosophy, psychology. All of this also for the sake of her sculptor ex-husband, in order to hold her own in the company of his friends, admirers and acolytes. She would not permit her numeracy to stymie her general cultural literacy. (Not that she expected any of them to conduct an informed conversation with her on the subject of markets or figures.)

Until, one day, she’d had enough and told the sculptor: Go take a flying fuck. Enough of trying to second-guess your every need in every possible way. You bugger on in your own time now. Select a more suitable candidate for your requirements from your wide circle of groupies.

A year later she embarked on a relationship with a steadfast man. This time she selected someone from the business world, who appreciated her aptitude for figures. She’d learnt her lesson – no more getting into bed with an artist.

Martin du Bois’s job involved frequent relocation. They lived in Johannesburg, overseas for a while, and for the last seven years in the harbour town of Durban, the garden a true bower of delight, verdant and tranquil, secluded from the street. A refuge, she thought, a safe haven, paradisal. A balmy, sultry garden in summer, with snake, monkey and chittering locust. In winter, when the rest of the country was shivering, bloodwarm, and the days so perfectly balanced, the garden so fruitful that at times it took her breath away, and she felt a kind of fullness rising in her throat (from the regions of the heart). A landscape of plenty, she thought at such times. And that was what it was, the last few years. Her life, by and large, perfectly satisfactory.

Their relationship, hers and Martin’s, always courteous and considerate, but suddenly, a while ago, Maria started craving silence and solitude. Enough of having to adapt to someone else’s rhythms and requirements – however unexacting the person’s requirements, or predictable his rhythms. It suited her well when he decided, a month or two previously, to open a branch of his business in Taiwan. So now she needn’t send him packing. Now she needn’t say to him: Goodbye, see you in a year or two.

She stayed behind on her own in the house. She’d earned well all her life, dealt sensibly with money and invested cleverly. If she wanted to, she needn’t work full-time ever again. She had time.

Fortunately the child from her marriage with Andreas Volschenk has left home, because in his twenty-seven years he has complicated her life considerably. He gave her trouble from early infancy. He’s asthmatic. His nature is terrifyingly contradictory. He can be affectionate and engaging, and then whip around and bite you on the ankle, as it were. On the one hand ridiculously accommodating and on the other obdurately rebellious. Mistrustful and gullible at the same time. A large, clumsy child. His psyche a veritable battle ground of conflicting impulses: of good and evil intentions. At times, during adolescence, he was downright impossible to manage.

As a baby he was a projectile vomiter. Allergic to mother’s milk, and then to cow’s milk. On goat’s milk and soya milk she had to raise the child. He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t drink, he wouldn’t sleep. Always picky and particular about food. Allergic to everything. Passionately fond of animals, but dog and cat hairs brought him out in an inflamed scabby rash. Waxen, etiolated, his mouth perpetually half-open because of enlarged adenoids, he looked a bit like a retard.

But he had an extraordinary gift for figures (like Maria and her mother), and in addition, perfect pitch. Against his will he endured violin lessons up to the age of eleven. The teacher was full of praise for his exceptional abilities; the child would go far, he opined. Before every lesson Benjy was pale with tension. And she was tired to death of the effort of persuading (or blackmailing) him to go just once more. Until one day he vomited on the carpet by the teacher’s feet. And from that day on he refused ever to touch a violin or any other musical instrument. So that was a round she lost.

He has attention deficit syndrome. He has trouble completing things. He doesn’t want to study. He wants to invent things, he wants to undertake things. It was hell getting him through school.

He is both gullible and cunning. He frequently gets bamboozled by swindlers and sharpers. He is vengeful and tender-hearted. He often comes up with the most surprising things. She has a vivid image of him on the hot pathway in front of their house. He’s lying under a blanket. He’s breathing through his mouth. He is totally engrossed in his game. His skin is raw with scratching. He is building an elaborate castle of clay for two snails.

He has poor muscle tone, but attractive eyes: light-grey with speckles, like a guinea-fowl feather, and long, lush lashes like a girl’s.

To make things worse, he got mixed signals from his father ever since infancy. Andreas encouraged Benjy, but quickly got impatient with him – if he didn’t get going soon enough, if he didn’t complete a task.

With his aptitude for figures it was clear that Benjy should study mathematics, or physics. In this direction he persevered for two years, with high marks, but dropped out at the beginning of his third year. He refused to study any further. Neither heaven nor earth nor mother nor father could budge him. He wanted to be an artist. Like his father. Maria blamed her ex-husband; she saw Benjy’s choice as an unresolved father-son issue – if the child had had a sounder relationship with his father, he wouldn’t have had this foolish compulsion.

Now Benjy is living in Cape Town, where, as far as Maria can make out, he’s enrolled himself as a kind of apprentice to some or other established artist. A magus, Benjy calls him. If it’s a question of magic, it’s probably black magic, thinks Maria, as she knows Benjy.