Blood Safari

32

Tertia didn’t ask me to guess about her again, because the restaurant filled up and the orders streamed in. Someone turned up the music. Pop music from the seventies. She put down a bowl of peanuts on her way past. She winked and shouted, ‘We’ll have to try tomorrow evening.’ Ten minutes later a second bar lady came on duty, ten years younger than Tertia, though I suspected her life story was not remarkably different. Red hair and freckles, smaller breasts. She compensated by not wearing a bra. Bigger earrings. They worked well together, never in each other’s way.

I shifted to the corner to make way for the crowd. I watched the people. The purpose with which they drank, the frenzy of their pursuit of pleasure. I could never understand this dedication to New Year, but perhaps it was because for so long I had spent it on my own or with Mona. Or just couldn’t understand the festivity of the occasion. Another mediocre year past. Gone, lost. Another one to come.

I wanted to get out. I couldn’t think here.

I realised that I had no place to stay.

Unasked, Tertia brought me a plate of food. I thanked her and asked her how I could hire a chalet for the night. She couldn’t hear me. She had to hold her ear to my mouth. I asked again. Her skin glistened and I smelt her perspiration and cigarettes. She laughed and frowned simultaneously. ‘On New Year’s Eve?’ and she went off to deliver four beers to a table.

I ate the spit-braaied mutton, potato salad, three-bean salad, cheese bread and grape jam. The racket continued to escalate. She came past again and plonked a set of keys down in front of me. The key ring was a silver dolphin with a blue bead for an eye. She leaned over the bar counter, her mouth against my ear. ‘Straight down the road past the garages. It’s the last place on the left, with the blue door. Take the room with the single bed.’

Then she was gone.

I unlocked the blue door with my black sports bag in my hand.

A lava lamp glowed in the corner, its orange light threw long shadows across the sitting room. It was a busy room. Dark blue and green material with delicate Indian patterning swept down from the ceiling to the wall, which was hung with paintings, etchings and drawings. Mythical and fantastic figures, unicorns and dwarves. Princesses with incredibly long hair. Each was signed in big round letters: Sasha.

She was a painter, not a brilliant one, but not a bad one either. Somewhere in the gap in between.

The heavy curtains were drawn. There was a deep-pile carpet. A bookshelf stood against another wall. Sofa and two armchairs, a coffee table in the middle on which stood an ashtray, three books and a small woven basket. In the basket were more dolphins with blue-beaded eyes like the one on the key ring.

The whole room smelled of incense.

To the left were two bedrooms, to the right a small kitchen and a bathroom.

The bedroom with the single bed was somewhat more spartan. The duvet had big multicoloured blocks. There was a single painting on the wall. It was a moonlit scene, featuring a longhaired princess standing with her back to the observer and her hand stretched out to a unicorn foal. I put my bag down on the bed, unzipped it, took out the Glock and put it on the bedside cupboard. Pulled off my shoes and socks, found my washbag and put that on the bed. I picked up the cell phone and called the SouthMed Hospital. It took a few minutes before I got a nurse from intensive care on the line. She said there was no change in Emma’s condition. ‘But we live in hope, Mr Lemmer.’

I phoned B. J. since he was on night duty.

‘All quiet,’ he said.

Jeanette Louw answered on the second ring. ‘South-easter is blowing us away,’ she said. I could hear the wind howling. There were voices in the background, the faint rush of the sea. I wondered where and with whom she was celebrating on New Year’s Eve. ‘Your Jeep has a false number plate. Where are you?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Are you making progress?’

‘No. But I’m working on it.’

‘I’m sure it will take time,’ she said.

I picked up my washbag and went to the bathroom. When I switched the light on it was blue. Every white tile was colourfully decorated by hand with patterns, fish, dolphins, shells and seaweed. On the toilet cistern there were fourteen candles. Only a bath, no shower. On the edge of the bath against the wall the bottles stood in a row: oils, creams, shampoo and herbal bath salts.

I opened the taps and undressed. I briefly considered experimenting with a bubble bath. Laughed at myself.

I got in and lay in the hot water.

In the distance I could hear the bass beat of the music – and now and again people screaming jubilantly. I checked my watch. Another two hours to midnight.

I closed my eyes and set my mind to work.

Forget about the frustration. Drop the urge to do something. Review everything. Objectively. Coldly. I arranged all the facts slowly and carefully in a row like dominoes. What had tipped the first one over; what started the whole chain of events? No matter how and where I looked, it all came back to one cause: Emma’s phone call to Phatudi.

I took it step by step from there. Four key events. The attack on Emma. The murder of Wolhuter. The attack on us. The murder of Edwin Dibakwane.

The thought process brought a new perspective to bear. At first there were only actions of eco-terrorism that were within the law and relatively harmless. Then there was a systematic escalation to illegal offences like arson and assault. Suddenly the big jump to murder, the ice broken by Cobie de Villiers, with attempts to murder Emma and the death of Wolhuter and Dibakwane following shortly after.

Why? What was the catalyst? Why so suddenly?

I didn’t know, didn’t fret over it.

What made the big dominoes fall? First there was a telephone call. Then there was a second one. I sat upright in the bath and pressed my palms to my temples. Think now. Third one? Fourth one? No, no phone call. Or was there? How had the day gone, the day Emma stood in the rain?

We drank coffee on the veranda. Her head was a bit sore, but her self-mocking smile was beautiful. She had phoned Mogale. Branca had phoned back. Two calls. But we hadn’t learned about the letter at the gate yet. Dick came to flirt, Susan came to tell us about the letter. We saw Edwin at the gate, as large as life. Then we drove to Mogale. Looked through Cobie’s house with Branca, looked at the blood smear on the safe and left. Then the attack.

What was I missing?

How had they known about Edwin and the message? How had they known where we were in order to ambush us?

I went back to that morning. We get the letter from Edwin. Emma questions him. Gives him money.

Could someone have seen us while we were talking to Edwin at the gate of Mohlolobe? Were there eyes somewhere that saw the letter being handed over?

Game fence, high fences, dense bush on both sides of the road. No vehicles parked at a distance. I would have seen them. But even if there were a hidden spy with binoculars, they couldn’t have known the contents of the letter.

We drive away. Emma stares at the letter. Reads it over and over. Speculates over the style of writing.

Then her cell phone rings.

There was a call. Carel the Rich. She told him everything. Everything. About the letter too, and then I knew how they did it. I hit the bathwater with my fist, the water splashed against the fish and seaweed. A dolphin grinned at me with an open mouth and I grinned back, because I knew.

They were listening. The fuckers were tapping the phones and cell phones. How, I didn’t know yet, and I didn’t know who yet, but I knew they were doing it.

Emma’s phone. Somehow or other they were listening in on her calls and her messages. Phatudi’s too? Maybe. But definitely Emma’s.

So many questions. How had they known they should monitor her calls? How long had they been doing it? Were they just lucky? What did it take to tap a cell phone? Did a bunch of khaki-clad bunny-huggers in the Lowveld have access to such technology? Or were they part of something bigger, something more sophisticated?

Don’t worry about what you don’t know. Focus on what you do. They were listening, I was sure of it. That gave me an advantage.

How could I use it?

I looked for soap to wash. There wasn’t a traditional cake. I ran my fingers down the row of bottles. The two in front contained liquid soap in pump dispensers. I squirted some into my palm and washed.

How could I use my new knowledge?

How could I get them? How could I find them?

There was one way. I had to play my cards right. If I was clever and thought it through carefully, it might work. I must fetch Emma’s cell phone. It was in her handbag in the VIP suite at the hospital.

Don’t go looking for them.

Let them come to me.

I pulled on my shorts and lay down on the single bed with my arms behind my head and thought for forty minutes, until I had the whole thing planned.

Then I got up because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My head was too busy. I went into the sitting room. Tertia’s bedroom door was ajar. Or was she Sasha when she was home? I leaned against the door frame and looked in. There was a large, dramatic four-poster bed with more Indian fabric draped over it and a horde of cushions. From the ceiling hung a framework of silver birds in flight. There were more paintings against the wall, an easel and paintbrushes in the corner, heavy-duty curtains, a dressing table full of bottles and jars. A bedside cupboard with books, an exercise apparatus, one of those they advertise on morning television to keep the body in shape and stay young.

What did Emma le Roux’s bedroom look like? What was her house like inside?

I sat in the orange-lava-lamp twilight of the sitting room.

Emma’s home would be different from Tertia/Sasha’s. More subtle. Open and clean and light. Her clothes would be white and cream, her furniture of Oregon pine with a little glass and chrome. Her curtains would be open wide to let in the light of day. At night the lamps would be bright.

How people differed.

The things that made us what we were.

I got up and went to Sasha’s bookshelf. Paperbacks from end to end. Dog-eared from being read over and over, or bought second hand? The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.

Searching Sasha.

Your Immortal Reality: How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death. Earth Angels: A Pocket Guide for Incarnated Angels, Elementáis, Starpeople, Walk-Ins, and Wizards.

Did she really believe this stuff? Truly? Or was it a sort of game, a way of escaping reality now and then, a form of fantasy?

The Unicom Treasury: Stories, Poems, and Unicom Lore. Dragons and Unicorns: A Natural History. Man, Myth and Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown.

And then Linda Goodman’s Love Signs: A New Approach to the Human Heart. And Sexual Astrology: Sensual Compatibility.

I pulled out the last book and opened it. What was Emma’s star sign? She had said she shared a birthday with the old South Africa: 6 April. Another Aries, just like me. I looked in the index and found the reference. Aries and Aries. An excellent match, with an intense sexual attraction and mutual erotic satisfaction, but it is a high-maintenance sensual relationship: both man and woman demand lots of sexual attention. Potential for a long-term rehtionship is far above average.

A load of bullshit.

I looked up what the book had to say about the Aries woman: Turn off the lights, and she will become a tiger, anywhere, any time. But be warned, she is more focused on her own pleasure than on yours.

I shut the book. I went to the bathroom, urinated and then returned to my single room. I closed the door, opened the window in the hope that the night would cool down and turned off the light. I had to sleep. Tomorrow would be an interesting day.

At midnight the racket woke me. I went back to sleep. Not deeply. Restlessly.

At one o’clock I heard drunken voices and a fumbling at the door of the chalet next door.

At half past one the blue door opened. After a while I heard taps running in the bathroom. Between sleep and waking I couldn’t keep time. I smelt the sweet scent of marijuana, heard her in the sitting room. A last joint before bedtime. For the New Year.

Heard the door of my room open quietly.

Then nothing. I opened my eyelids a crack.

Sasha stood in the doorway, shoulder against the door jamb and a hand on a tilted hip. Behind her nakedness was a vague soft light. Not the orange of the sitting room. Something else. Candles. She stood and looked at me. Her face was in deep shadow, unreadable.

‘Lemmer,’ she said very softly, nearly inaudibly.

I don’t like my surname. It rhymes with gemmer, or ginger. It hints at the Afrikaans word for blades, and knife fights in back alleys. Thanks to Herman Charles Bosman it has a certain backward connotation that in my case lies too close to the truth. But it’s better than ‘Martin’ or ‘Fitz’ or ‘Fitzroy’.

My breathing was artificially shallow. A familiar game, for new reasons. I shut my eyes completely.

She stood there for a long time. Once more she said ‘Lemmer’, and when my breathing did not change, she clicked her tongue and I heard her footsteps recede.

Her bed creaked.

Searching Sasha.

A week ago I would have accepted this invitation with gratitude.

Ironic. I felt like laughing. At myself. At people. At life. A few nights ago, I was too scared to stretch out my arm to Emma. Too afraid of rejection, too scared that she would jerk back violently and say, ‘What are you doing, Lemmer?’ with indignation. Too aware of my status, the chasm between us and the consequences of an incorrect assumption.

Emma had stood next to me. Why had she stood beside my bed? Was it because she was a little drunk? Had she remembered the embrace when I had comforted her? Was it because she was lonely, she wanted to be held again, because I was available? Or had she been lost in thought and stood there accidentally? I wasn’t her type. Neither in background, or appearance.

I knew that instant would remain in my head. I would relive it over and over when I lay in my bed at home in the silence of a Loxton night. My single bed.

From Tertia’s room I heard a faint scuffling noise, like muffled footsteps.

With her standing in my doorway there had been no doubt, no question, no difference in position. I was not afraid. Just unavailable. Ironic.

The rhythmic rustling from her bedroom could be ignored or explained away at first. It was slow and soft. But it kept on, way beyond the time frame of logical alternatives.

I pricked my ears. Was it her exercise apparatus? No. Subtler, softer, slyer.

Then the knowledge bloomed like a flower in my brain. It was the sound of a mattress and a bed gently swaying. Endlessly.

Unhurried. Peacefully, the tempo gradually, unconsciously quickening.

A sound joined in. It wasn’t her voice but her breath, forcing past her throat or nose or teeth, keeping time with growing enthusiasm.

My body responded. Faster.

It was very hot in the room.

Harder.

Dear God.

Fiercer. My imagination conjured up the image.

I lay listening, captivated, held. What she was doing was both mean and brilliant.

I wanted to press my hands to my ears. I wanted to make some noise of my own to shut out hers. I did nothing. I lay and listened.

I visualised it. For how long I didn’t know. Four minutes? Eight? Ten?

Eventually she was a machine, racing, fast, in a mad, urgent rush.

If I went in there now, I knew how it would be. Vocally she would encourage me, shout out her joys, she would move artfully, roll her hips with skill, she would turn over and offer a new sensation, she would climb on top, she would know when to withdraw so it would last longer, stretch out the hours, so that she would not have to be alone.

Just like all the rest. Desperate, lonely and meaningless.

My head told me all this. It wasn’t worth it. When everything was over, my conscience would call Emma’s name, but Tertia would want to be held, she would want to light a cigarette and talk about tomorrow.

I got up in one movement. It was only four flowing strides to her door. I saw her on her bed. There was a candle on the bedside cupboard. She lay on her back, knees apart, her beringed finger stroking quickly, the light flickering over her shuddering, sweating body.

She saw me. She had known I would come. Only her eyes betrayed it. Her face was taut with effort and pleasure.

She took her finger away just before I thrust into her violently.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Fuck me.’