Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

46

Her name was Nonnie and when she opened the door the wait of a lifetime was over – because I knew she was the One.

How can I describe that moment?

I’ve played it over and over in my head during the past years, that first, magical moment, that overwhelming awareness, that euphoric, immediate knowledge when I looked at her. My eyes drank her in with the thirst of thirty-four years, this gentle, gentle woman, her laughter. She stood there in a one-piece bathing suit because she had been lying next to the small, cheap plastic pool, and when she opened the door her eyes and her beautiful mouth had laughed (the one front tooth was just a millimeter askew) and her voice was sweeter than Mozart: “You must be Van Heerden.” And I looked into her eyes, deep and green and large and shining. There was so much life there, humor and sympathy and heartbreak and joy. I looked at her body, those curves – she was tall, feminine, fertile – and forgive me, but it seemed as if nature shouted out of her body, her divine hips, the handfuls of breasts, the small curve of her stomach, her legs strong, her feet small. She was a siren, irresistibly seductive, her short brown hair, her neck, her shoulders, her eyes, her mouth. I wanted to drink her, to taste, to swallow, to slake that unbelievable thirst.

“Come through, then we’ll have something to drink at the pool.” She had walked ahead of me down the passage, my eyes on her, past the bookcases, my eyes consuming her, the guilt scurrying through my head like a nocturnal animal, out to the backyard, where a book lay. A poetry book. Betta Wandrag: Morning Star.

I knew. She knew, in those first moments.

But I couldn’t understand it.

Why?

Why should the One’s name be Nonnie Nagel?

The wife of my friend and colleague.