The Memory of Water

¹⁰ EVE’S GRACEFUL DEMISE

I have to plan her murder. I am pinned to that fate like a crucified man to his olive tree.

In my mind’s eye there is the dry and desolate landscape of my life; planted in the middle is Eve’s murder, startling in its clarity and brilliance. I fight the idea for a while but it’s like losing a mental arm-wrestle, millimetre by millimetre. God knows I love her, have always loved her but, for the sake of my own survival, I need to do this. Destinies have to be met. Sacrifices have to be made.

This is what will save my career. And with my career – everything else. I know it. Already I feel the hot excitement in my fingers. I am nothing without writing. It is my life force.

And my writing, like a certain bloodthirsty plant, needs to be fed.

I begin the planning tentatively, tasting it, rolling it around in my mouth. As it picks up momentum I find myself tantalised. There are so many ways to kill someone I am almost overwhelmed. Worried that I will become rabid and crazed like a family pet after tasting human blood, I take a step back and realise that this has to be approached in a cold and logical way: without the psychological chaos of bloodlust. Hitler was, after all, a vegetarian.

I take a cold shower (Inuit Deluge™), shave, dress in sensible clothes, and unplug my cappuccino machine. Caffeine has no place in this no-nonsense man’s bloodstream. No sir, not today. Even the Juicerator is shunned: who knows what effect all that fructose can have on a sober man. If I had a tie, I would wear it now. But I don’t. So I make up for it by wearing tan loafers I never knew I had. I begin to wish that I had a dictaphone to speak into, in a clipped American accent, like Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks. I pretend to have one anyway and, after pressing the imaginary red button in the palm of my hand, I say “Diane, remind me to buy a tie the next time I’m in town. An appropriate one, with stripes. You’ll be pleased to know that for now, I have other things to worry about. I received the doughnuts you sent me, the ones with holes. Thank you. Diane, I need to go, I have a murder to plan.” Stop.

On the kitchen table I set out reams of white paper, pens and pencils. I crack my knuckles and do a few wrist rotations and breathing exercises before I sit down. I need to be cool and collected. I need to be methodical. I wish my stomach wouldn’t flutter so. I try to keep my mind even.

Where do I start?

In my limited experience of murder and speaking very generally, there seem to be three different ways of dying and eight different causes (please accept my apologies for my oversimplification; deconstructing death: it is necessary for me to get my head around this). Scribbled on the paper before me I have:

Now you could put these lists side by side and play joining the columns and come up with perhaps (I’m no mathematician) A Billion Ways To Die.

Id est, draw a line from Suicide to Weapon and you get hanging, a shotgun to the head, or taking the Panini Press into the jacuzzi with you. It’s a bit like playing Cluedo. A line from Suicide to Illness will give you a heart attack via anorexia nervosa, or dying from Pneumonia after having sex without a condom. The list seems infinite. Then of course there are other broad categories such as homicide, patricide, matricide, infanticide. Cross Murder with Water and you get women driven by demons who drown their babies. Or Murder with Weapon: fathers who gun down their entire families, or lonely school kids in trench coats who don’t like Mondays and take revenge the best way they know how. I try it out by resurrecting a few top-of-mind deaths I can think of, and all of them fit neatly somewhere on my list.

Of course, some peculiar ways of dying are also revealed playing this fatal game of join-the-dots. Cross Murder and Weather: that could be interesting. Suicide and Freak Accident? Weapon and Illness: it’s a story waiting to be told.

It goes without saying that there are a lot of violent deaths in South Africa: a legacy of our fractured history. You won’t catch me bemoaning our crime rate at a dinner party (yawn!) but I’m not in denial either. It’s no secret that we have the highest rape stats in the world. It’s said that women born in SA have a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read. And those are only the reported attacks. Sure, the old joke goes that 99% of statistics are bullshit, but where there is smoke ... Or in this case, where there is blood, there will most likely be bodies.

So it would make sense to dress up the murder as an attempted hijacking. In a country where there are thirty-nine violent hijackings a day it would simply disappear. I am sure a lot of assassins use this cloak. South Africa could become a veritable knock-off travel destination for aggrieved spouses. Honeymoon Hits. Perhaps it is already. Hired guns and better halves are not to be put off by Dewani. But a bullet in Gugulethu doesn’t feel right, not for Eve. She is worthy of more.

All projects require a title, so I will name this ‘Eve’s Graceful Demise’. I write it in black koki in large letters. It takes up a whole sheet of paper.

It could be bloody (there is a satisfying symbolism in blood) but it shouldn’t be too messy. Of course there shouldn’t be any pain involved at all; I’ll be strict about that. But it should be passionate. She is, after all, my unrequited love. We can play the ‘If I can’t have her then no one will’ card.

A hit man (Mr. ‘Jones’ from Fochville: R12K a hit, R20K for two – almost makes you want to knock off another person just for the discount, like those three-for-two golf socks at the cash point you know you don’t need but you end up buying anyway) will probably be the safest option as far as not being caught is concerned but it doesn’t feel personal enough. No, I should be able to look her in the eyes as they close. I need to have courage. It should be a clear murder and should not be able to be construed as an accident. Henceforth I cross out the following on the list: hitting head on slippery bathtub; fingers mistakenly placed in electric socket; rotten oysters). It needs to be authentic. An overdose is tempting (mainlining heroin after drinking a bottle of Kristal might be the most delightful way to exit this world) but will most likely be construed as suicide.

Maybe something highly original, that no one else would think of. Could I create the circumstances for a freak accident? Flood? Earthquake? Lightning? African killer bee attack? I could be creative and have her die from eating rhubarb leaves (too old-fashioned) or moonflower seeds (too obscure), or give her a rare tropical disease (not practical. Also: contagious.). Or, I could distract her on a bird-watching trip in the Waterberg and push her off the edge of a cliff, but that seems a little underhanded.

A fire! A fire is very glamorous. Of course she would be dead beforehand, I wouldn’t make her suffocate or burn, it would just be a way to get rid of her body. If we were at the coast I could put her on a boat and explode it. In South America I could sell her organs and leave her empty carcass in a refrigerated truck. If we were in Greenland I could drive an icicle through her heart and never have to worry about the cops finding the murder weapon. Then there’s the old Roald Dahl favourite: braining someone with a frozen leg of lamb, roasting it with some carrots and spuds and serving it to the cops who come to investigate. There is, of course, the method used famously by the Turkish nobility who served chopped-up tiger whiskers to their enemies. The legend has it that the barbs on the whiskers stick in your intestines and cause you to leisurely bleed to death.

I also cross the following off the list: death by nicotine or Mr Muscle Window injection; hit-and-run; ricin-laced umbrella stab; silver body paint; gas leak; butterfly punch; arsenic-in-soup; puffer fish in the shower; strangulation; pillow-smothering. I find pillow-smothering such an interesting one. It’s a pillow, for Christ’s sake. Pillows are clean and soft and are associated with dreams and comfort and sex. In my opinion only Very Bad People would turn that into a murder weapon. A gunshot is so quick and can take place with half an intention. Pillow smothering requires a full two minutes of heavy-handedness and a sense of commitment I just don’t think I have.

After hours of throwing a paper ball against the wall I realise that the answer may not be in my brain and that I need some outside help.