Читать книгу The Shallows - Ingrid Winterbach - Страница 12

When by Monday afternoon Charelle had still not returned, Nick called her on her cellphone. The subscriber you have dialled is not available, was the only message he got repeatedly. He went to check her bedroom again. Spacious, almost the size of two rooms. She’d said more than once that she’d never in her life had so much space to herself. Everything arranged in a very orderly fashion on the large worktable (which she’d been very pleased with). There were few of her own possessions in the room, apart from her crocheted spread on the bed. Everything painfully tidy. Not a frilly, girlish room. He looked in the wardrobe. All her clothes were still there, as far as he could tell. He’d so often been fascinated with her attire – everything seemed second-hand to him – not fashionably second-hand, poor second-hand. The worn boots and the home-knitted jerseys. He’d wondered whether he should take her to buy clothes – but that would probably have been outrageous and presumptuous on his part. He looked in the bathroom again. Toothpaste and toothbrush. Skin products (not very expensive, by his estimate). In a small make-up bag (soft material with an embroidered Chinese dragon motif on it, probably bought at some Chinese store) – mascara and lip gloss. Two flagons of nail polish. (Slender fingers, slender nails.) Nail scissors, nail file. Tampax in the cabinet under the washbasin. Toilet paper. Shampoo and conditioner in the shower, a shower cap. He couldn’t remember what she normally took with her in the morning. He vaguely recalled that she sometimes carried a rucksack. It was not there.

He sat down on her bed. He recalled that she’d told him she hadn’t known the girl very well in whose room she’d stayed when she first came to Cape Town. The room had been terribly untidy, and terribly cluttered. She couldn’t believe that anybody could have so many things – so many useless things. She’d tried to tidy up, but she hadn’t known where to put everything, and then she’d become discouraged. She’d felt completely alienated in that room. And she’d always been cold there. But she’d really liked the other girl who lived in the house. The one who’d cried so much that day about her parents’ dog.

On Tuesday he phoned again in the course of the day. Still the same message. He didn’t know where to get hold of the Desirée woman, he didn’t know her surname.

By Wednesday morning Charelle had still not returned. He reluctantly went to work. The students were back from their three-week-long Easter break. Thank God he didn’t have an appointment with the Karlien girl that day. At the end of the previous term she’d started dragging her feet on her satanism project (stillborn, Nick was starting to suspect). Possibly because her parents disapproved. (The father had looked like a bully. A brutal fellow, used to having his way.) He didn’t think he’d be able to be tactful with her today. He went home early. He phoned Marthinus and asked if he could drop in. There was something he urgently needed to discuss with him. Marthinus awaited him at the top of the stairs, mug of tea and cigarette in hand. Come in, come in, he said. A cordial kind of guy. Nick was grateful to see him.

He explained the situation to Marthinus. How long had she been gone? Marthinus asked. Ever since Saturday morning. That was to say four days. Should he go to the police? No, said Marthinus, forget the police. They weren’t interested. There were too many missing persons. He had a better idea. He’d take Nick to a place where the people had a very shrewd notion of everything that happened in the neighbourhood and down in the city – everywhere: under bridges, in tunnels and culverts, in every conceivable hideout. These guys had their fingers on the underground pulse of the city. Underground and above ground. He’d take him there this very afternoon.

‘Where does she work, who are her friends?’ asked Marthinus later that afternoon as they walked, first a few blocks towards the mountain, then turned right and walked another few blocks up a slope.

‘I don’t know. She has a friend, Desirée, a woman with a turban.’

‘That’s a start,’ said Marthinus, ‘there aren’t many women with turbans.’

‘Her name is Charelle Koopman,’ said Nick. ‘She’s studying at the Peninsula Academy of Art. She’s very serious about photography. She helps a friend twice a week at a hairdressing salon. She’s quiet, she doesn’t go out very often. She’s never really received friends at the house. I sometimes cook for us in the evening.’ (He feels a bit shit having to say this.)

‘Where does she come from?’ asked Marthinus. From Veldenburg, said Nick. And he was scared that the people who’d sworn at him, and the chap who’d threatened her a while ago, might have something to do with her disappearance.

What made Nick think that? (Any intrigue, and the man was all ears. The matter of Victor Schoeman and the escaped psychiatric patients a case in point.) A black car that he’d seen driving past his house once or twice after the swearing episode, he said, and if memory served, he’d also been sworn at from a black car, although he couldn’t say that with any certainty. She had, however, recently said that for a long time she hadn’t had grief from the man who’d threatened her. Apparently he hung out with bad company – tik-heads and the like.

‘Doesn’t sound good,’ said Marthinus. ‘There probably is something to your hunch.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Nick.

‘To a settlement here up against the mountainside,’ said Marthinus.

‘A settlement?’ asked Nick.

‘A friend of Alfons’ started it as a refuge for outcasts and rejects. You could say the man was a kind of founding father. He managed the place for years in a very unorthodox style. Then he handed it over recently to a younger chap – very idealistic – who’s in the process of as it were reforming the whole bunch,’ said Marthinus, uttering his abrupt little chuckle. ‘Oh Lord,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Nick, not entirely buying into Marthinus’ plan, but relieved that he was at least doing something, not just sitting around fretting and fiddling.

At the top of the steep hill they turned right again. A short distance along they came to a gate. There was a guard here. The gate was locked. Marthinus evidently knew him, he talked to him in Xhosa. The man let them in. As they followed the road up, Marthinus explained.

The first building on the right was the kitchen and recreation area. Here once a day a nutritious meal was prepared, sponsored by the Department of Welfare. On the left there were a few prefab buildings, where the permanent residents lived. It was still early, most of the people had probably not returned from work, said Marthinus.

Behind the kitchen was the vegetable garden. It covered a large area, everything here was planted in neat rows and clearly well maintained. The people worked in the gardens themselves in exchange for accommodation, said Marthinus. He’d helped here with the new lay-out and plantings – the original garden had been so neglected, there was hardly anything left of it. Now they were growing enough fruit and vegetables to be self-sustaining. Man, woman and child were expected to work here.

To the right of the vegetable garden was where the animals were kept: pigs, chickens and two milk cows. Eggs and milk were plentiful, said Marthinus. His pigs were the descendants of these pigs.

Behind the vegetable garden was the orchard.

‘Everything here used to be much more chaotic,’ said Marthinus. ‘Less regulated. The founder had previously taken in more or less anybody in need – although mainly orphans and homeless people. He laid out the original vegetable garden and planted the trees. It was an admirable project but it started getting out of hand eventually. Hygienically it left a lot to be desired. The kitchen was apparently so dirty that the Department of Health was scared the plague would break out here. The inhabitants started fighting amongst each other. The dogs proliferated. The pigs wandered about in the neighbourhood. Nobody cared for the gardens any more. The orphans formed roaming gangs. They shat on suburban sidewalks. The Department of Welfare received complaints from all over.’

At the very top of the hill the road swerved to the right. (Nick was struggling up the hill, he was unfit, he hadn’t exercised for a long time.) For the last few days it had been good and hot again during the day. In front of them were five bunker-like buildings.

‘Arms depots during the British military occupation of the Cape,’ said Marthinus. ‘The man was an artist. An artist and a founding father! He used the bunkers as installation spaces. Now that sure as hell was something to witness,’ he said, shaking his head and whistling softly through his teeth. ‘Oh Lord. It was ground-breaking, it was way out. Five separate spaces and each with a different theme. But dark, make no mistake. A merciless onslaught on established Afrikaner cultural values.’

‘What became of him?’ asked Nick.

‘I’m not sure. Look, that man was a pioneer, and restless. He got bored with the whole project. He got fed-up with battling the Department. The whole neighbourhood. He had every department and body and bourgeois interest group constantly at his throat. The logistics demanded too much of his time and energy. The animals and the people started irritating him. He was most definitely humanitarian and philanthropic, but he also knew how to look after his own interests. He may have started feeling that all the demands on him were driving him into a corner. So he left this place. From one day to the next. Handed over the whole project just like that to someone else. Who knows – perhaps he founded something else somewhere else. A man with vision. Needed a new challenge. A complex fellow, all in all, even though I didn’t know him very well.’

Nick was listening with half an ear, worried about where Marthinus was taking him.

‘The man who took over from him,’ said Marthinus, ‘has a totally different approach. Good organiser, orderly mind-set. Possibly too orderly, but good. A kind of reformer – one of your missionary types. I suspect he’s planning a kind of utopia here – his idea of an ideal society. But it’s one thing planning something like that, and another making it work. Oh Lord, you’ll see. The man has no idea as yet of what he’s up against. There are forces at work here that won’t be thwarted by any utopian visions. Perhaps we’ll come across the man. A kind of Albert Schweitzer incarnation.’ And he laughed pleasantly.

Nick was no longer quite sure what all this had to do with Charelle’s disappearance.

‘Come,’ said Marthinus, ‘I’ll show you inside the spaces.’ From one of them came the sound of a little children’s choir. What they were singing sounded like something between ‘This old man’ and ‘Shosholoza’.

‘Preschool children are now being looked after while their parents are at work,’ he said. ‘Previously they roamed around here and in the neighbourhood like stray dogs. Now they start each day with a balanced breakfast.’

Nick was tired and impatient. He didn’t want to see the spaces either from the inside or the outside. He now wanted to make contact with whoever might be able to provide information about Charelle.

‘The new man,’ said Marthinus, ‘got rid of an almighty pile of rubbish. Do you feel like meeting him? He may be somewhere around here. Otherwise we can arrange something. As I’ve said, he’s also a friend of Alfons’. We’ll invite him for a beer. Although he may well not even drink beer!’ And he laughed. How unquenchably the man exuded enthusiasm and a sense of fun. Godaloneknows. The last thing on earth Nick wanted now was to meet this reformer – not now and not in the foreseeable future – whatever the scope and nature of his utopian dream or project.

‘Let’s move on,’ he said. ‘Some other time perhaps.’

‘For sure, for sure,’ said Marthinus. ‘We’ll make an appointment with the man sometime so he can show us around personally.’

‘Good idea,’ said Nick.

‘Come,’ said Marthinus. And he struck out along a small footpath to the left of the bunkers, until they reached a sturdy wire fence some distance along. They had by now climbed one of the slopes. He whistled. Shouted something in Xhosa. A man appeared from behind one of the low slopes and came up to them. They walked along the fence for a distance, up to a gap in the fence, artfully concealed with branches, which the man moved aside so that they could climb through.

‘Do you come here often?’ asked Nick.

‘Yes,’ said Marthinus. ‘A while ago I had my eye on someone here.’

‘Okay,’ said Nick.

‘A woman from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Suffered terrible hardships to get as far as this. On foot through war-torn regions.’

‘Where is she now?’ asked Nick.

‘She’s gone to Johannesburg to be trained as a lawyer’s clerk. She’d had to interrupt her studies when she fled here. She’d considered her options carefully. She’s a principled woman of sound judgement.’

‘I see,’ said Nick.

They’d in the meantime trudged a good distance up the slope, and when they were halfway to the top they looked down on what looked suspiciously like a small informal settlement, in a basin between two slopes. Not visible from further down. A laager of shelters. A variety of materials had been used to cobble together these tent-like structures – thick sheets of cardboard, planks, fibreboard, canvas, although mainly plastic and branches, which the people had probably scavenged from all over. Higher up, against the slope, it even looked as if shelters had been dug out, the entrances covered with plastic bags. Discreet wisps of smoke. A subdued atmosphere prevailed here.

‘These are the people, you understand,’ said Marthinus, ‘who live with their ear to the ground. They know everything that happens down there in the city. They’re in touch with people living like rats in cement tunnels under the city. In culverts under roads and bridges. This place gets bigger by the day. But the people are careful. They keep a low profile. Some of them only emerge at night. Supervigilant. If they’re caught, they’re deported. Back to former homelands and internment camps.’ He laughed. ‘Oh Lord,’ he said. ‘But who’s going to stem the flow?!’

‘I get the picture,’ said Nick.

They walked towards a relatively solid little corrugated iron structure. Outside, seated in the sun on an old car seat, were two men.

‘Nick, meet Messrs Tarquin Molteno and Junius X,’ Marthinus said.

Nick considered going forward to shake hands, then thought better of it. Tarquin was picking his teeth with a match. His forearms were tattooed, he was wearing a thick gold chain around his neck and a signet ring on his little finger. His hair was short and gelled up straight. Small chin tucked deep into the folds of the neck. Fleshy gills. Neat pair of jeans. Dark glasses. Fancy sneakers. Cool customers, thought Nick. Perhaps drug lords. Fuck knew.

Tarquin gestured towards two plastic garden chairs. Marthinus dragged them up. He and Nick sat down. An audience, Nick thought. He could smell himself, he was sweating like a pig, from the walking and the tension. He hoped the two of them couldn’t smell him. It could make a bad impression. Marthinus, by contrast, seemed not fazed in the least. He lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke at his leisure, admired the view, which indeed was quite something from this height. In front of them all of Table Bay lay stretched out. Under different circumstances one could have admired the breathtaking view.

For a short while they sat in companionable silence. There was an uncomfortable prickling under Nick’s armpits. Not his idea of an afternoon’s entertainment. Alfresco with the mafia. Convivial. He took a deep breath, tried unsuccessfully to enjoy the view, and hoped for the fucking best.

Tarquin called over his shoulder and a girl came out. She didn’t look much older than fifteen. Tight jeans and big earrings. Tarquin signalled something with his head. She went back inside and re-emerged shortly afterwards with a tray, a bottle and four glasses. Pour, Tarquin indicated. Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Nick was on the point of suggesting that it was too early in the day for whisky, but he caught Marthinus’ eye and something in his glance told him you don’t turn down this drink. The girl poured briskly. Tarquin and Junius X knocked back theirs virtually in one gulp. Nick was scared that if he tried it he’d throw up. Not a good start to any negotiations.

‘What’s your problem?’ asked Tarquin.

Marthinus said, ‘My friend Nick’s lodger has been missing for several days now. We want to know if you know of any missing or abducted girls in the area.’

‘Stacks of ’em,’ said Tarquin. ‘So what’s so special ’bout this one?’

They all looked at Nick, who was sitting with the half a glass of whisky in his hand, and the sun blazing down on his head, and a fucking blank as big as a house suddenly hitting him.

‘She’s an epileptic,’ he said.

‘So?’ said Tarquin. ‘Stacks of ’em too. Ep’leptics and worse.’

‘She’s renting a room from me and I feel responsible for her safety,’ said Nick. (All of a sudden he felt like a big white bourgeois cunt. Ridiculous.)

‘What’s her name?’ asked Tarquin. ‘Anything to ID her with?’

What was she wearing the last time he saw her? What should he say: soft skin, slender brown wrists? They’d shit themselves laughing at him.

He cleared his throat: ‘Her name is Charelle Koopman,’ he said, ‘she’s a student at the art school in town,’ and he gestured in an indeterminate direction with his head. ‘She takes photos. She’s smallish with …’ he indicated with his hands, ‘dark hair, curly.’ (Prick, he thought, couldn’t he think – what coloured girl is going to have straight blonde hair?)

Tarquin’s face was expressionless behind the dark glasses. Over his shoulder he summoned the girl again. ‘You!’ he ordered. ‘You go call Blackie.’ Away she went, weaving fleet as a gazelle through the shelters.

Tarquin checked his cellphone. They sat. Nick drained his whisky. Jesus, the stuff scorched his stomach and had already gone to his head. Soon afterwards the girl emerged from among the tents with someone. An albino with snow-white dreadlocks.

Tarquin hardly looked up from his cellphone. ‘Any casualties this weekend,’ he said, ‘rapes and mutilations and abductions and so?’

A girl was raped down in Strand Street – first strangled with the hands and then with a wire hanger and thrown on a rubbish dump, the albino said in a flat, expressionless voice. The rest of his inventory was also delivered with no show of emotion. A girl’s decomposed body was found in the Liesbeek there where the road makes a bend near the highway. At Bellville station a girl was raped and robbed and left for dead. A student from the university was ambushed and robbed and raped and kicked. Two children were abducted there by the flats in Clarke Estate. The cops haven’t found anything yet. A man shot his girlfriend dead in Riverlea. A girl was gang-raped in Bishop Lavis. Two children were murdered in Lansdowne. Two high school girls have gone missing in Khayelitsha, the cops reckon it’s the satanists sitting behind it. One child was raped in Delft South and set on fire and another child was raped when she used the communal toilets nearby her house. A child was shot dead when he landed in the crossfire of two gangs. Three other laities from the one gang were shot dead by the other gang and one car was set on fire in Bishops and two houses in Delft South when some of the gang went to hide out there.

Nick wanted to hear no more. The fucking sun, the fucking whisky, and now this gruesome fucking list. Marthinus was regarding him sympathetically. A reply was probably expected from him. He didn’t know, he said, he couldn’t tell.

Audience over. Tarquin and associates would keep an eye open. Down again went Nick and Marthinus. Down the steep mountainside. Through the settlement or whatever it was called. Utopian experimental farm. Back to the coolness of Marthinus’ house.

‘Come watch a few DVDs with us tomorrow evening,’ Marthinus invited him. ‘It will distract you.’

Nick didn’t want to. He did not want to be distracted.