She can hardly wait for Jacobs to complete his wide turn as they come to a standstill right at the entrance. She climbs out of the sidecar and starts speaking immediately. He is still pondering over the last snort of the engine, or busy with one of those studied intimacies that exist between men and their machines, when she almost shouts at him: “Why did you show me that?” She sees him look up, startled, immediately loses steam, but takes a deep breath and tries again: “Why did you show me that house?”
He obviously doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “That house?”
“Yes, that house. That belongs to the general. Why?”
He removes his goggles slowly, and that lazy, carefree gesture is all it takes to bring her to her senses. Only then, and at a distance, can she hear herself and see herself standing there in a new world – woman, man and machine, and behind them the large hospital.
“Never mind,” she says and takes her suitcase from him. “Never mind.” And she turns around and walks into the hospital for the very first time. How could I? she thinks, and she knows that Jacobs is staring at her. I am completely daft. She lifts her chin and strides away from the clear afternoon light into the hospital’s shadowy arches.
Chapter 4
It’s easiest to lie on my side. My head, at least, is on a folded sack of sorts, and below me is a dark-coloured blanket that has probably been spread over flattened grass. My body is not shaking now, not now, but I know that the spasms will keep coming. It’s too painful to move my head. Also, my eyes are still full of what feels like rusk crumbs.
My thoughts come to me more clearly now, but mostly just eddy away. Like the mud at the bottom of a rock pool becoming a brownish cloud as you put your hand into the water, unable to grab hold of anything.
If only I could get hold of something to quench this terrible thirst, but how can I drink when my mouth is full of sand? What could I drink?
It hurts. It stinks. There is light, yes, there is light. There are also noises. A red-winged starling. Cher-leeeoo-cher-leee-oo is its call. I remember that.
Rock. Above me and around me. I am in a cave, I know that now. On the rockface eland are leaping over me, and between them are little black men with knobkerries in their hands. I also know what that is.
On Bosrand there was a cave with Bushman paintings. Yes, Bosrand. Now things are coming back to me. Pa had shown us. Pa. Ma. Neels. Me.
There was also a face in front of me. I remember now. And the shock. He sat on his haunches next to me, and I saw the grains of sand on his pants and on his hand. Then I saw that the hand was black. I closed my eyes. Shut them. Later on, I again tried to work out where I was but all I could see were these mud clouds and the only thing that existed was this terrible fear.
It’s also him talking now, that face. It’s like rocks tumbling down a mountain from up high. It is a sound that I know. I understand what he is saying. Kgotso, Mofumahatsana, he says. That is how they greet one. The good ones, that is their greeting. But he just wants me to believe that he is one of the good ones, what he really wants is a white woman to do with as he pleases.
I can see him clearly now. He sits with his knees pulled up and holds a knobkerrie between his legs. His head is turned away, but I know he is watching from the corner of his eye. Metsi. That is what I need to say. Water. I want water. He must give me water, that is all I want, and then I can die. He must just kill me quickly so that I cannot see or feel what he is doing.
He puts the knobkerrie down and stands up. I’m scared half to death. But all he does is dip his hand into a calabash next to me – I’ve only just noticed it – and bring his hand to my mouth. Cupped.
I stick out my tongue and can at least taste the water. He lets it drip. I try to swallow, but my tongue won’t move. Luckily, more comes, and then more. The water is bitter, tasting of leaves, something like aloe or sage. My whole face is wet, and so are my chin and throat.
There is something wrapped around my head, I can feel that now. Why am I lying here under a blanket? Am I naked? What has this herdsman done to me? What is he going to do to me?
O mang? That is what I should say. Who are you? But the words refuse to come out. I can’t speak. Like Ma, when she tried to pray but couldn’t find the words and stretched her hands out towards me. Lord, watch over us, and let your light shine upon us.
My lips crack when I try to open my mouth. Only prayer will prevent darkness from descending on the land. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, sayeth the Lord. There is a priest sticking his hands up in the air, straight as an arrow up at the clouds and he looks down at me, and I look away from his terrible face, away from his eyes glaring at me like a glowing furnace, seeing only evil and wretchedness. Where is that herdsman who is always sitting here, next to me, where is he?
His name is Tiisetso. He doesn’t call me nooi. But then he looks away and says ke sôno. It’s a great pity, he says. He says I must sleep again so that I can become strong again. He says I was hurt badly at Balla Bosiu. With his knobkerrie, he pounds the ground between his feet.
Balla Bosiu. The camp. The place where they weep at night, that is what they call it. That I do remember. The camp. That is where I have come from. I know that now. But if I close my eyes and think, then all that comes to mind is the feel of a sheep’s hoof in my hand, how hard the bone is under the skin, and the prickly wool, and the kick that jerks my arm right up to my shoulder. Then I see someone pull back the head and swiftly draw a blade across the throat and cut, cut, cut as the blood bubbles and the windpipe bursts, and I cannot look away even though I want to and the man who is slaughtering looks at me, his nose is thin and skew and his lips are dry and the same colour as his skin, not red, and he says something to me, but I cannot hear what he is saying.
Instead, I keep my eyes open.
But how did I get here? This man must tell me. What is he going to do with me? If only I could ask. What is he going to do with me?
Chapter 5
Afterwards, long afterwards, the thought occurred to her that her whole life and everything that had happened to her had culminated in that exact moment, in that instant when she reached for the handle, lifting her hand to that doorknob from under the dead weight of time – everything had spiralled towards that door and what lay behind it.
But she needed to calm down before she could see clearly: her presence before that door and how she’d come to be there. Strangely, it had happened long after she’d lost her faith in a natural order of things. By then she was already a full partner at Reymaker Psychiatrie, and the gap between what she theoretically believed in and her instincts had eventually narrowed to the point where she could practise her profession freely with an open mind. Though with a certain Dutch insouciance – no, instead she did so in an almost constant state of anger, impatient with frivolities. She had been completely assimilated. How else, she looks so Dutch: her face open and glowing, flaxen hair that she often rolls into a bun so that the old scars on her forehead are visible, the days when she’d so diligently hidden them long gone. Furthermore, she is tall and not at all fragile, her mouth is wide and full – rather greedy, this mouth of mine, she sometimes thinks when she allows herself to be self-critical. But she guards against that; too much self-criticism does no one any good, neither you nor those around you. And when she looks at her eyes, today still, she knows to be careful: you are not as strong as you think you are. She can be wilful. Probably the reason why she allowed her Dutch to retain an Afrikaans hue. Pure wilfulness. But then obstinacy is a known quality of the Dutch. So, where does that leave one?
One thing’s for sure, she’s far more at home with business-like communication. That’s if she compares it to the idle chatter she’d grown up with, the conversations and things. Her interaction with patients is direct and to the point. She would, for example, firmly silence