Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

48

Perception. And reality.

The perception of Nagel’s “chains”: a large battleship with curlers in her hair and a permanent frown, a complaining, nagging millstone, a sloppy television addict, a caricature of a wife in a suburban comic strip.

The reality: this dream woman, this beautiful, gentle, laughing miracle who walked ahead of me through a painfully neat house filled with books, to the small garden at the back, an enchanted spot created with her own hands.

Why had he hidden her? Why, over so many months, had he created the false impression? So that we – I – should have sympathy with his chronic extramarital wanderings, his drinking with the boys?

He had telephoned from De Aar, where he’d gone to investigate a serial rapist case, to say that he had left his service pistol at home. “I know my fucking wife – she’ll let the thing go off and someone will get hurt and then it’s a disciplinary hearing and I don’t know what other shit, so can you fetch the fucker and keep it with you until I get back?”

I phoned his house first and her voice hadn’t prepared me; there was politeness, but the technology hadn’t carried the music, the beauty, so there was no forewarning. That day we had talked and couldn’t stop. We sat next to the little swimming pool and later went inside and I prepared supper in her kitchen and we talked, I can’t remember what about – it wasn’t important, it was what was implied between the words and the sentences, it was the thirst for each other. We ate and talked and looked and laughed and I couldn’t believe it: the search of a lifetime, and here she was, here I was.

I didn’t touch her that evening.

But I was there again the following day after I had phoned Nagel and heard that he was making slow progress and I was glad, my first act of treason, that call, my first betrayal of my friend and colleague. “Hallo, Nagel, how’s it going?”

“Did you get the pistol?” And I went ice-cold because I had forgotten about the weapon. It was still lying around in her house.

“Yes.” And then I realized it was an excuse to go back and I stopped talking, heard that he was still going to be busy for days, that there were a few suspects but “the country members of the Force are hopeless, let me tell you,” and then I drove back to Nonnie Nagel.

The story of their marriage unfolded gradually during our conversations, the true story, not the imaginary tales Nagel would dish up to anyone who would listen.

It had been a whirlwind courtship. He was a smooth-talking lover who promised her the world, who painted a dream future for them, told her he was on his way up in the South African Police, and she was enchanted by the charm, the humor, the self-assurance. She, a junior-school teacher who had reported a burglary in her Bellville flat and found Nagel, Detective Constable Willem Nagel, the man who had the culprit behind bars within days and then used his considerable ingenuity to put her in a prison as well.

It went well for the first year or two. She worked, he worked, they went visiting, had barbecues, and sometimes went to the movies, and then when he couldn’t get her pregnant, he sent her to a doctor, time after time. Every time the message came back – she was normal, that there was nothing wrong – and every time he swore and said there had to be, and gradually he lost interest in her, in sex, and on top of it he was promoted to Murder and Robbery as sergeant, his talents recognized, his prophecy of promotion fulfilled, his hours longer and longer, endlessly longer, and the green monster of jealousy began raising its ugly head.

She said she believed he had realized that the problem of conception lay with him. Perhaps he had had tests done without her knowledge, discovered that he was infertile or had too low a sperm count. She could only guess, but something triggered the jealousy, only insinuations at first, then hints, later direct accusations, as if he was afraid that someone else would make her pregnant. That was all she could imagine – there was no other reason. And then one evening, when she was at a school concert, he came to fetch her, out of the hall, dragged her to the car, and told her she was going to be a housewife from now on, that she was going to resign, that he didn’t want to come home and find no food. His work, the tension, the hours, the stress – he needed her at home. She had cried that evening, through the night, and he had said: “Cry – it’s no use. Your place is at home.”

And then he would phone. At any hour of the day or night, and if she wasn’t home, there was trouble. No, he had never hit her, only verbal abuse.

Mornings between eight and ten were safe. He never phoned before ten, and it became her library time, and when he gave her money it was her bookshop time, the secondhand bookshops of Voortrekker Street – her book exchange circuit, she called it – and she cooked with distaste, gardened with enthusiasm, and wrote stories by hand, the manuscripts stacked high in her wardrobe. I asked her why she didn’t send them to someone and she merely shook her head and said it was fantasy, not literature, and I asked her if there was a difference, and she laughed.

That second night we succumbed to our urges. On that second night I – we – completed the betrayal, not like illicit, guilt-stricken lovers, but like released prisoners, with joy and humor and an unbearable lightness of being.

That second night and every night after that until Nagel returned.