The Crack Page 7

  Shelley’s Secret Journal

  Word for the day from Granny’s list is INVETERATE.

  The moles are back. They are inveterate. If we don’t kill them gently Pappie will get them indubitably with his gun or maybe he will beat them to death in the night or wring their bloody necks. That’s what he says. The moles do not realise this. They are very inveterate. They are also vertebrates and have nervous systems. Drowning is like falling asleep in water so I shall drown them before he kills them. Pieter does not understand this. You have to be cruel to be kind just like Grandad says about you Granny. God does not love dogs but I hope he cares about moles. I still love you inveterately Granny. Shelley.

  He stumbled from one dream to the next. If there were many rooms in his father-in-law’s house, there were even more in the depths of his own mind. He stood back in wonder as his thoughts clambered from one chamber to the next. It was not the darkness that set his teeth on edge. No. It was the sounds. The sound of lips splitting, right inside his head. The sound of a sigh as breath came shuddering back into a body after the solar plexus had been carefully punched a minute or two before. The screams of men. Men made into women by the sudden understanding that fingernails ripped from their soft warm beds offer up a bright pain, a loud, searing hurt that has breadth and depth and length and colour and takes your breath away. That agony has dimensions and weight and texture and – personality. That pain can be sly, that pain can be frank and honest too. Blunt, sincere, gentle, insidious, gregarious pain. Who would have believed that torture could be so sociable. The stunned subject, waiting for the next move in the interminable minuet. The admiring gasps of the onlookers, an audience captivated by blood and squeals, the crunch of living flesh, the ingenuity of the torturer who might discover an impromptu method, another way, of hurting a fellow human. Yes, it was a dance, a performance. And who would have thought that he, Hektor-Jan Snyman, could have such a capacity for pain. That he could, like a dervish of perverse delight, spin such sounds, such gagging, squealing, gurning sounds and send such signals down the network of human nerves. That his large, square body could be so delicate, so brutally delicate. That he could honour his subject and his audience and his new-found art by drawing out such exquisite pain. It was a screaming sonnet sequence, a neat triptych of terror, an aria of horror. He got carried away. It was quite beautiful.

  Hektor-Jan twisted in his sleep. Why was he so restless. What need, what hunger drove him. Was it the obligation to feed his family. Was it the pressure of his peers, the whoops of encouragement and even of wonder. Did he simply play to the audience. Hektor-Jan twisted and turned alone in his bed. My magtig. Allawereld. Liewe hemel.

  In his heart, Shelley watched him as only a child can watch. She stood awkwardly, twisting one foot to the side and fiddling with her hair. But her eyes were wide and steadfast. Somewhere, a dog barked. Shelley’s eyes were very wide indeed.

  Hektor-Jan twisted again in his sleep, and turned.

  Outside, the sun shrieked until blue in the face of heaven and doves exploded with guttural coos.

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  Dog, talk not to me neither of knees nor parents; would that I could be as sure of being able to cut your flesh into pieces and eat it raw, for the ill you have done me, as I am that nothing shall save you from the dogs – it shall not be, though they bring ten- or twenty-fold ransom and weigh it out for me on the spot, with promise of yet more hereafter. Though Priam son of Dardanos should bid them offer me your weight in gold, even so your mother shall never lay you out and make lament over the son she bore, but dogs and vultures shall eat you up utterly.

  – Homer, Iliad, 22.344

  The next morning Rynard and I were ordered to burn the bodies in the bush, using wood and diesel. Fingerprints had been taken for identification purposes. We argued that it didn’t matter whether we burnt or blew up the corpses, as long as we got rid of them. Burning seemed like hard work, so we decided to place explosives under the bodies and blow them up. It turned out to be a bad idea, for when the dust settled, body parts lay scattered over a large area.

  About a week later, a dog came running into the base with part of a human arm in his mouth. Rynard and I were called in. We confessed that we had blown up the bodies instead of burning them as we had been ordered. Van der Westhuizen sent us back under supervision to collect all the body parts we could find. The remains were set alight and we had to stay there until everything had been burnt.

  – Johan Marais, Time Bomb: A Policeman’s True Story

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  And still Alice did not come.

  The weekend came and went, and the kaya remained dark and silent and there was no cheery, Good morning, Madam, good morning Master. How is the Madam? How is the Master? Eish it is hot today, ne? It is too much hot. I am bringing you more tea. The Madam, the Master is wanting more tea, ja?

  Janet cooked Hektor-Jan another full English breakfast. He set off into Friday night. While the rest of South Africa was enjoying an extension to its New Year celebrations, her husband had to abandon his family and head off to work. Night ships.

  But these night ships meant that he did not go near the pool. He did not have to face what was there and he did not have to go crazy about the cost of having to repair the swimming pool that he had not paid for in the first place. Janet knew how his mind worked. If things went well, that was his idea; if things did not go well, it was someone else’s fault. Most often her father’s. How could that Engelsman – that Englishman – do X or Y or Z. Then Janet realised that lurking beneath the surface of her husband’s Afrikaner brusqueness and good cheer was a world of the bitter past: the Anglo-Boer wars, the sense of Great Trek entitlement to the land, an inbred suspicion of the English, those tweegatjakkals and the soutpiele. Hektor-Jan’s expressive terms of not-quite-endearment: the English, the double-hole jackals and the salt penises. The jackals who had two holes where they kept separate wives, not be trusted, and the men with one foot in Africa and one in England, their reproductive bits dangling in the deep briny sea. Janet sighed as she tucked the children into bed. She waited for the day when Pieter would trot out such terms. She had the soap at the ready – the children knew that. For more serious occasions, her wooden spoon would come in very handy.

  And then she went through the ritual; what was quickly becoming a ritual. She waited in the lounge until the children were sure to be fast asleep. Then she got up and switched off all the lights. She waited in the baby’s bedroom until the warm night flooded into every corner of the house, lapping up against her ankles, knees and throat. She breathed it in, the soft black air and waited. When she could resist the pull no longer, she went out into the garden, past the willow tree and across the dew-wet lawn. The waxing crescent moon had long since set. The tiny slice of moon pie had crumbled into the horizon before 6 p.m., even before Hektor-Jan had set off on his night ships. Now it was dark, with just the bright crumbs of the stars.

  To her relief, Janet found the water level unchanged. It lay flat and black, without a ripple, a dull eye at the far end of the garden. Janet did not fall out of her clothes. She stood there immobile.

  That was just as well. For across the garden came a hiss.

  As far as her dental name could be rendered in urgent sibilance, there came a hiss that was definitely Janet.

  Janet turned against the dark cheek of the night. Her children.

  No, it came again, from the van Deventer side of the garden. From their wall. Yes, the rhododendrons were rustling too. She stepped closer. It was Doug. Doug was leaning over the wall.

  Janet, he whispered.

  Janet stopped on the dewy grass. The willow tree was to her right, the line of the flower bed that ran along the length of the van Deventer wall lay in front of her. And there, rising over the crest of the wall, was Doug. He peered down at her through the thick branches of the rhododendrons. For a second, Janet wanted to giggle. At least he was not looking up her skirt as she knelt over the pool. Thank God she had not repeated w
hat she did last night. With such a neighbour, what had inspired her to slip out of her nightie by the side of the pool. Now, here she was with Desperate Doug leaning like some reverse Romeo from his balcony of rhododendrons. Doug’s shape seemed to look anxiously from side to side. His stepladder appeared to wobble as he had to grab a branch.

  Then Janet was struck by a chilling thought. Suppose Doug had in fact been lurking along the wall last night. Suppose he was now waiting for a reprise, for a repeat performance of her solitary striptease. She clutched the sides of her dress, as though to pull it closer around her. Poor old Desperate Doug.

  Yes, she said.

  The darkness waited with warm intimacy.

  She could not stand there all night.

  What are you doing, she said.

  Janet, Doug whispered.

  Why are you whispering, Janet said, her voice clear and firm in the night.

  From the other side of the wall came a bluff bark.

  Nesbitt, whispered Doug. Then he paused. Actually, I don’t know why I am whispering, he said, his voice suddenly deep and clear, and rather less penetrating.

  They stood there, facing each other. Janet was level with the concrete panel that hid Doug’s lower half. Doug peered at the dark penumbra, the top of Janet’s head.

  Nesbitt’s poodling bark had found an echo in the neighbourhood. A short round robin of barking wheeled about them, gruff and warbling, big and small, and finally a little howl from a tiny dog somewhere to Janet’s left.

  How is H-J’s night shift treating you, Doug said. He used the Afrikaans pronunciation of H-J: Haa-yeer, so it sounded strangely like Higher. How is Higher’s night shift treating you, Doug’s voice came from above.

  Janet looked up in the darkness. It was odd. Doug’s voice was more present than himself. His body was a vague blur in the surrounding gloom, but his voice had emerged from its whispering chrysalis and now was clear. She seemed to be speaking to a voice. Voices in the night.

  Fine, she said. But that sounded a little rude. Too blunt.

  It’s not too bad, she said. Breakfast at night and supper in the morning: it’s all a bit topsy-turvy actually.

  The kids, said Doug. How are the kids.

  The children don’t mind, said Janet. They hardly seem to have noticed. You know children.

  Immediately, she wished she had not said that. Doug and Noreen did not know children. They did not have children. They had tried for too long to have children and now they had just a dog. A Nesbitt.

  We shall see, Janet said quickly. We shall see how it all turns out.

  They stood there. Roses by any other name might smell more romantic, but that was Doug and this was Janet and Janet tried not to smile at the squirming, shrieking disgust of her imaginary children right behind her. Yes, if they were there, witnessing the scene – well, there would be a scene. In fact, they were there. In Janet’s mind, they were just behind her, poised in the house, their needy wakefulness but a hair-trigger away. All it would take was a moth, the silent flitter of a bad dream or a night terror to set them off. They were little landmines of love. Waiting to explode into calls of Mommy! Mom! Ma!

  She looked up at where Doug’s voice came through the darkness and the blackest leaves.

  I don’t know how you do it, said Doug.

  Janet did not know how to respond. There was another silence.

  Doug reached for his wife. Noreen takes her hat off to you. That’s what she said. Just this night she said, I take my hat off to Janet.

  Thank you, said Janet to the darkness.

  I just wanted you to know.

  Thank you, said Janet again. She turned to go inside.

  Before you go, said Doug.

  Obviously, he could see better in the dark than she could.

  Before you go, I just wanted to say that if you need anything, I mean anything at all, whilst Higher is on night shift, well, you know –

  Janet was caught trying to walk, trying to step away into the house. Doug’s voice held her back. His hesitation pulled her back.

  You know who to call on: call on me, Doug’s voice blurted from the rhododendron bush. It shot over the wall and seemed to splash onto the grass. Janet was released.

  Thanks, she said over her shoulder as she stepped towards the house, as she stepped over the puddle of Doug’s imperative, one step closer to her children. Thanks, Doug, and she was inside and the door was closed and locked and Desperate Doug was outside, still leaning over the wall in the darkness and the crack lay hidden at the bottom of the pool.

  The children slept. Janet checked and their noisy breathing made the silence in the house more intense.

  Janet finally tackled the washing-up. As she scoured the plates and pots and pans, she thought of Noreen and Doug. She thought of Noreen fondly, and smiled when she pictured Doug. When she had finally finished, she went to shower. Janet shook her head in the shower as the water thundered on her plastic shower cap and smiled. Thank goodness the children were not outside that night to witness the scene. Doug meant well. Well, who knew what Doug meant.

  She slept eventually and was up when Hektor-Jan came home.

  He wanted to shower first so Janet carried on cooking his supper, making dirty everything she had cleaned the night before. It was a simple meal: steak and chips and peas, with a monkey-gland sauce that Janet made herself. No monkey, no glands, just garlic, onions, tomatoes, chutney, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, tomato sauce and vinegar. The kitchen was a spice den by the time Hektor-Jan appeared. The children slept and she and Hektor-Jan could enjoy a companionable silence at the breakfast nook.

  Janet knew better than to ask how the new shift, the new job was going.

  She placed a soft hand on his knee as he powered his way through the steak and chips. Good sauce, he muttered, heaping great mounds of it onto the shovel of his steak. Then he was off again, munching and chewing with gusto.

  Janet almost mentioned Doug’s late-night hovering, but thought better of it. Sometimes Hektor-Jan saw the funny side of things; sometimes not. Janet did not want to say good night so early in the morning to a sullen husband. When he had taken things the wrong way. Living in the house, married, yet with her parents, she had grown used to giving in. Keeping the peace. Keeping her mother’s queries, her father’s anxiety at bay. Now, she thought that she would let him sleep in peace. He certainly looked like he needed a good night’s – day’s – sleep.

  Hektor-Jan leant back in his seat. He folded his hands behind his head and gave a long sigh. Dit was lekker, he said, heerlik. His Afrikaans purred in the kitchen. So much more expressive than saying that was nice, that was wonderful. Such a manly language, Afrikaans. Even the name, Af-ri-kaans. Longer and more resonant than the sharp, pinched Ing-lish, all little ‘i’ sounds – the narrow Ing and the little lash of -lish. Whereas the big continent Afrika was embedded in Hektor-Jan’s language, rolled right into it with its resonant ‘r’ sound, as well as the -kaans, almost like chance, kans, the Afrikaans word for chance. Take a chance on Afrika seemed to be the very essence of the language. Hektor-Jan was speaking to her; Janet shook the thoughts from the tablecloth of her mind and smiled at him.

  Dankie, vrou, Hektor-Jan, grinned at her, again using his native tongue. Thank you, wife. And again wife would have sounded somehow skew and aslant, too much like the old Cockney rhyming slang of trouble and strife. Vrou, pronounced fro, was gentler, less cutting, rocking gently to and fro.

  And Hektor-Jan waggled his eyebrows at her.

  Tomorrow is a day of rest, he said. I shall take the children to kerk, of course.

  Of course, that’s what Hektor-Jan always did. The children’s weekly dose of church. An essential bit of Afrikanerdom, so that they were not simply the heathen offspring of an Engelse oupa called Ward. No. They could be brought into the laager of Afrikanerdom, even though they spoke mostly English like klein rooinekke, like little rednecks. But that would leave Janet free, her morning of freedom on Sunday when
she would have the entire house to herself. When she would leave Alice to do the tidying up and she would lie back under the willow tree and learn her lines for the first rehearsal of Brigadoon that was coming up all too soon. Too soon, Brigadoon.

  Hektor-Jan waggled his eyebrows again.

  Are those kids still vas aan die slaap, he asked. Are they fast asleep.

  Janet held his humorous gaze. It was pleasant to have a husband in playful mood. She knew what was coming.

  We read a lot last night, Janet said. She started to list the Blyton books.

  Hektor-Jan placed a warm hand on hers.

  Janet’s voice stopped. Five on Kirrin Island Again. Kirrin Island, she said, and stopped as her husband again reached out to suggest that no man is an island –

  His eyebrows jived a third time and he stood up. His body was burly in his t-shirt and shorts. Tufts of hair sprung out of his shirt at the neck and his arms were dark with it and strong. Despite his apparel, his bare feet and his five o’clock shadow at seven in the morning, Hektor-Jan bowed and seemed to be inviting Janet to dance. Janet smiled.

  Kom vrou, said Hektor-Jan, and he led her by the hand to the bedroom.

  The passage was quiet and dreamy, the children sound asleep.

  In their bedroom, the curtains were drawn, as though they were backstage. Janet felt an actor’s thrill and more thoughts of Brigadoon skipped before her. Hektor-Jan stood on something on the carpet and hopped on his bare foot. Not one of the children’s toys, Janet was about to say, but then Hektor-Jan closed the bedroom door and locked it.

  Usually, if the children woke up and knocked or tried to open the door, they knew what to do. Shelley and Pieter and Sylvia would find Alice and chat to her until Mommy and Pa appeared, tousled and slightly breathless and oddly solicitous, with a small smile on Pa’s face and Mommy freshly scented with a dash of perfume.