See No Evil

6

June 28, 1988

I was in a foul mood all morning. Neels didn’t come home. I called George, who said that he and Neels had made the announcement. It was one of the hardest things George has ever had to do. The journalists were in uproar. And not just the journalists, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, including George himself, of course. Neels has given them three months until closure, September 30. George says it’s going to be a nightmare keeping things going until then.

What will I say to Neels? Last night I was all set to confront him and throw him out on his ear. But now I’m not so sure. It would be demeaning, degrading, to ask him where he was last night. It’s going to be hard to talk sensibly to him, and dangerous to scream at him. I’ll ignore him. He can manufacture a little business trip out of somewhere, he’s done that before.

Caroline looked scared out of her wits this morning before she went to school. How’s she going to take all this? And Todd?

And on top of all that, Zan’s coming this afternoon. I wonder how she’ll be. Polite and surly? Or awkward and bloody-minded? It’s going to be a disaster, I just know it, and I’m not sure I have the strength to deal with it.

Later...

Well, Zan came and it was fine. She’s gone all African. Her blonde hair is braided with beads, her arms are jangling with bracelets and she was wearing a yellow Hotstix Mabuse T-shirt, car-tire sandals and an East African skirt. She still swims, you can see that from her shoulders which are broad and strong. She looks extremely healthy and she still has Neels’s familiar blue eyes. She seemed genuinely pleased to see me when she arrived just after lunch. She was very friendly to Doris; one of the problems we had with her was the way she treated the maids as she got older. You could see Doris was thrilled. I think she was as upset as I was by the way Zan changed as she grew up.

She asked all about Todd and Caroline and my parents. She asked about Neels, and I was positive, I really was. She’s staying in the room she always used to sleep in when she came to Hondehoek, and she started to reminisce about how Doris and I used to help her make clothes for her Barbie dolls. She says she wants to dig them out again. I’m pretty sure they weren’t thrown away; Caroline used to play with them sometimes. Doris promises she will look for them tomorrow. Four years ago Zan would have been mortified at the suggestion that she ever played with dolls. The Barbie stuff is a tad embarrassing, but it was fun at the time.

In fact we had a lot of fun when she was a little kid. She was only five when Penelope and Neels divorced. After we got married she and Edwin came to stay with us for the odd weekend. I felt sorry for her; her mother was an alcoholic with men around all the time. I was trying to get used to this weird country and she became my ally. I probably spoiled her a bit: we got her the pony, and Matt, who started off life as a cute little puppy before turning into that boisterous bruiser of a Labrador. Poor fellow; I miss him. Anyway, she was my little shadow at weekends, prattling away about this and that. When she took up swimming and began to win races, I used to take her to the meets, I cheered her on.

And then... and then it all changed.

But I think it’s going to be okay now. In fact in my current frame of mind, it will be nice to have the company. Of course, she doesn’t know that Neels and I are not getting on. That’s going to be difficult. Because when he comes home tonight she’s certainly going to notice it.

June 29

As I write this, Zan is thrashing up and down in the pool outside despite the temperature — it’s only about sixty. I don’t want her to see me writing in this diary.

She was overjoyed to see Neels last night, and he her. He embraced her so tightly I’m amazed she managed to breathe. Despite myself, I was touched.

But I’m still furious with him, although I did my best to hide it. It worked, I don’t think Zan noticed anything was wrong, but I’m not sure how long I can keep it up. If it hadn’t been for the fact that my husband is a cheating sonofabitch, it might have been a nice evening.

I made coquilles Saint Jacques. Doris and I are a good team, I do like cooking with her. Zan told us a little of what she has been getting up to in Johannesburg. Apparently she shared an apartment with Tammy Mackie, the daughter of Don and Heather Mackie who were both members of the South African Communist Party and are now in exile. Tammy is banned, which means that she can’t go to any meetings of more than a certain number of people, but Zan can and does. I’m sure she didn’t tell us the half of what she’s up to, but it sounded quite exciting. Neels asked her to promise to be careful while she was staying with us. This she agreed to do, to my surprise.

We didn’t mention the newspaper business once, although Neels said he wants to invite the Pellings over to dinner in a couple of days. We know them a little, but we’re hardly best friends. Graham Pelling is loaded, so there’s got to be some business motive behind that, I’m sure. Perhaps Neels can get him to buy the Mail. That would be good.

I let Neels into my bed last night, but I didn’t talk to him. He tried to touch me but I shook him off.

Bastard.

June 30

It’s been raining. The Hondekop is wreathed in wisps of cloud and a couple of miles upstream the valley has disappeared into a ceiling of thick gray. Everything is dripping wet. There’s no wind. The fynbos smells wonderful in the damp air. I was standing by the slave bell, trying to decide how to protect the tulip bulbs from the moles, when I heard a complicated whoop, followed by an answering call. It was a bokmakierie and his mate, flitting about somewhere in the branches of the white stinkwood tree. They are a kind of bush shrike, small with a yellow breast, black collar and loud voice, but the Afrikaans word captures the cadence of the call. The cock sings out “ka-weet, ka-weet, bokmakierie,” and the hen answers. There is something wonderfully domestic about them; I feel as if this is their garden as much as mine.

Suddenly I found myself standing there, in the damp lush garden, with tears streaming down my face. I’m jealous of the married bliss of two dumb birds. I really need to get a grip.

July 1

Zan went to an End Conscription Campaign meeting in Cape Town this morning. I considered asking whether I could come with her, but I don’t quite have the courage.

I’ve seen very little of Neels this past couple of days, although whenever I have seen him he looks in a nasty mood. There’s some heavy criticism of him in the newspapers today. He’s gone from benevolent dictator to evil tyrant in one day. Serves him right. I hope it hurts!

It’s Caroline’s last day at school before the winter holiday. She seems more subdued than she usually does at the end of term. I’m sure she feels the tension between me and Neels. Poor girl!

July 2

Saturday, and Neels is taking the day off. The newspaper editorials, the letter pages and the journalists are all outraged over the closure of the Mail. They hate Neels, and it’s really getting to him. George and his journalists are demanding that Neels allow them to buy the Mail themselves, or find another friendly buyer. Neels told them that if they could find a buyer he would happily sell. He’s certain they won’t and I fear he is right.

He spoke to me and Zan about it this morning over breakfast. He is very bitter: disillusioned. He says he has sunk millions of rand into the Mail over the years and no one is giving him any credit for that. He is a businessman first and always has been and no one can hide from the fact that the Mail’s numbers don’t add up. When P.W. Botha first came to power ten years ago saying he would change things, Neels was optimistic. But now he says he is pretty sure that the country is going to go up in flames in a couple of years and there’s nothing he can do about it. The police are getting ever more brutal, but so are the blacks. Bombs, necklacings, schoolchildren rioting, the Zulus and the UDF killing each other, his brother’s murder. The spiral of violence that he had hoped to avoid has started and it’s going to end in the most God-awful bloodshed. It’s time to quit.

He directed most of this to Zan, and she listened sympathetically, although I could see she wasn’t convinced. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. But he deserves all this blame! He’s right, things do look bad with the State of Emergency and the rioting, but this is when his country needs people like him the most.

And there’s the bimbo. I know I don’t have any evidence, but I know she exists. I just know it. It explains everything.

After breakfast Zan and Neels decided they would go for a long walk up into the mountains. I watched them go, two tall energetic figures cutting through the thin layer of mist hovering a couple of feet above the ground among the golden vine leaves. They left their footsteps in the dew glistening on the lawn. It’s three o’clock now and they are still out. Part of me feels a little jealous of Zan; she is taking on the role that I should have, supporting my husband in his hour of difficulty.

Neels has announced that he is going to Durban and then on to Philadelphia next week, to work on the Herald deal. I’ll be glad to have him gone, believe me. One of his bankers is coming to dinner with the Pellings tonight. I will do my wifely duty.

July 3

Had the Pellings over to dinner last night with Neels’s banker. Zan was there and behaved herself well: she looks stunning with her tan and her beaded hair and she impressed Graham Pelling. I played the perfect hostess.

Actually, I’m not bad at entertaining, especially for small groups. Neels does it a lot, and we get an interesting bunch of people, most of whom are very friendly. When we were first married in the seventies we used to invite some of the leading radicals, white and black, but nowadays they are all in prison or banned from meeting other people or just too suspicious. Then there are the academics from Stellenbosch University who are quite amusing and so gossipy. There’s one of them I particularly like, a professor of journalism of all things, called Daniel Havenga. He’s a funny-looking man: he’s probably only forty-five but he has a shock of prematurely white hair, a little round face with a beard, wicked brown eyes and little ears that stick out at right-angles from his head. He refers to Stellenbosch as “hanky-panky town,” and if half of what he tells us over the dinner table is true, the name is justified. Although none of them talk to us about their support for apartheid, I think several are members of the Broederbond, including Daniel.

I asked Neels once whether he was a brother, and he assured me he wasn’t. I believe him, but then the whole point of a secret society is that you’re not supposed to admit to being a member. I remember when my friend Nancy discovered her father was a freemason when she was twelve it freaked her out. From what I can make out it is the Broederbond who come up with all the apartheid regime’s bright ideas, so it is highly unlikely that Neels would be part of that. I bet they’d love to have him, though.

We all talked about how important the press is, even in these days of ever more draconian restrictions on what newspapers can report, and then Neels mentioned in confidence that he might be forced to sell his South African papers. He did it very well: Graham seemed interested. They talked by themselves after dinner and Neels thinks that Graham might bite. He would make a good owner and with all those gold mines he’s got the cash. Perhaps he’d take the Mail as well?

The banker was black! Oh, my God, can you stand it? We were, I hope, able to treat the man like a normal human being. The poor guy’s name is Benton, and he has to do some kind of work on Neels’s South African newspapers. He’s stuck in an “integrated” hotel in Cape Town but Neels has assigned him a driver to take him wherever he wants. In practice that’s just going to be back and forth to the office.

It was so good to talk to another American, especially just before Independence Day. He seems like a really nice guy, more widely read than most of the investment bankers I’ve come across, and smart too. He’s read all the Latin American literature I like — he said the new Isabel Allende is really good, and he’s just read Nadine Gordimer. He lives in Greenwich Village. Apparently, it’s been hit hard by AIDS; it’s like a ghost town. At least that’s one problem South Africa doesn’t have to worry about.

I feel sorry for the poor man, beavering away at work on the Fourth of July. Maybe I’ll bake some of my chocolate-chip cookies and leave him a care package at his hotel.

But what will I use for the chocolate chips? I’ve still got some Toll House left, but they are made by Nestlé, and I’ve started boycotting them again. I read the other day that they are still trying to sell baby formula to African mothers who can easily use breast milk instead. You would have thought with all the fuss over the years they would have stopped that by now. I might have to slice the chocolate by hand. Perhaps Zan will help me, just like she used to when she was a little girl.

July 4

Independence Day. How I wish I was in America today, without Neels. I delivered the cookies to Benton’s hotel. I hope he likes them.

Zan announced that she’s going back to Jo’burg today for a couple of days. I think it’s got something to do with the End Conscription Campaign, but she wasn’t very forthcoming. I didn’t ask. I’ve asked her about the Black Sash movement, but she won’t tell me anything about it other than it’s an organization for white women opposed to apartheid. I think she still doesn’t trust me. Which is understandable, I guess.

There was a massive bomb blast on Saturday, outside Ellis Park rugby stadium. There was a match going on inside; the papers are amazed that only two people died. It does kind of underline Neels’s point about how the country is falling apart. But I’m not sure we should run away.

July 5

Just got back from dinner with Benton Davis. He sent me a sweet note about the cookies Zan and I baked for him, so I called him and suggested we meet. Benton didn’t want to leave his hotel, so we ate in the dining room. Neels is in Durban tonight, trying to figure out what to do with the Durban Age. Alone, I hope, but of course I have no way of knowing.

Unsurprisingly, Benton can’t stand this country. He says the worst thing isn’t just all the little rules discriminating against blacks, the separate toilets and so on. Those are vile, but he was expecting that. It is the way the white people look at him, a tall black man dressed in an expensive suit. He says the reactions vary: there’s fear, there’s hatred, there’s shock and there’s contempt on their faces. The one response that he can handle is astonishment. That’s what makes it worthwhile.

He was walking through the lobby of the hotel on his first morning in the country when he heard a shout: “Boy!” He ignored it, not for a moment thinking it was meant for him, when it was repeated. “Boy! Wait!” He turned and saw a short gray-haired man with a moustache approaching him.

“Can I help you, sir?” he had said, falling back on politeness in his confusion. He could smell alcohol as the man got closer.

The man’s eyes lit up when he heard the accent. “Go back to your own country, boy. We don’t want you stirring up trouble with our Kaffirs here.”

Benton’s first instinct was to hit the man, who was much smaller and older than him. Then he realized that’s exactly what the man wanted, and he turned on his heel and walked out of the hotel. But he spent the rest of the day rehearsing to himself all the replies he should have come up with.

He asked me whether they have the term “redneck” in this country. I told him “redneck” is actually a term the Boers use for English-speaking liberals, but there are a couple of near equivalents to the American usage: “rock-spider” or “hairyback.” He liked rockspider.

I asked him why he had come. After years of ignoring South Africa, America has gotten itself all excited about the place, especially black America. Didn’t he think he was consorting with the enemy?

He said it had been difficult. He hates his boss. When it became clear that someone from Bloomfield Weiss had to go to South Africa to check up on Neels’s South African newspapers, his boss thought this was a great opportunity to send Benton. Benton objected and his boss called him a coward. I’d have thought that was asking for a racial discrimination suit, but apparently that’s this guy’s game: he’s always trying to force Benton to play the race card. This is something Benton says he has never done and never will do; he’s determined to succeed on his own terms, not because of his color. He was unsure whether to go when Neels spoke to him.

Apparently, Neels had anticipated the whole problem. He said that South Africa needed blacks like Benton to travel there, to show the whites that in the outside world blacks could be well-educated men and women in positions of power and authority. Andrew Young, the US ambassador to the UN, and Leon Sullivan, the black board member of General Motors, were both prominent black Americans who had visited South Africa and sent out an important message. Benton could do that too.

Benton was clearly impressed with Neels. He has always been a fan of Leon Sullivan in particular. He decided to come.

Dinner was fun. But toward the end Benton let slip something about Zyl News that I hadn’t suspected. It was a shock, a major shock. I will try to find out more from Neels when we are speaking to each other again. If we speak to each other again.

July 7

Neels came back from Durban yesterday and he’s off to the States tomorrow. I’ll be glad to see him go. Especially since I know he will be away from his woman, whoever she is. At the moment I don’t want to think about her.

With Zan gone, things were strained. I mentioned I’d had dinner with Benton the night before, but didn’t ask Neels about what Benton had told me. We went to bed in silence. Just after he turned the light off, Neels began to speak to me.

“Liefie?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something I want to tell you. I’ve been meaning to tell you for a couple of days.”

I steeled myself, lying on my side in bed, facing away from him. I was the one who was supposed to mention his mistress, not him. I didn’t like surrendering the initiative.

“Do you remember that Zan and I went for a long walk on Saturday?”

“Yes,” I said, puzzled.

“She told me something then. Something she heard while she was in London.”

“I didn’t know she’d been to London.”

“Neither did I,” said Neels. “Maybe she had to interview for her place at the LSE. I don’t know. I didn’t want to ask her.”

“Okay.”

“Well. She bumped into a South African. A member of the South African Communist Party.”

“Who?”

“She wouldn’t say. But remember she lives with the Mackie girl. Maybe it was her parents. Or friends of her parents. Who knows? But this South African told her something quite disturbing.”

I waited. Cornelius was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“He said there was a list. A list with my name on it.”

“What sort of list?”

“A come-the-revolution-who-are-we-going-to-line-up-against-the-wall list.”

“No!” I turned toward him.

“Yes.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know. I think so. The SACP’s headquarters is in London, everyone knows that.”

“Who else is on the list?”

“It’s a long one, apparently. The man didn’t give her any more names. Apart from one.”

“Whose is that?”

He raised himself on to his elbow and looked me in the eyes for the first time that evening.

“Yours.”