VISITATION
Severine was collecting one of her many prescriptions from Clicks, the supermarket-type pharmacy in the Constantia Village mall two blocks from her home. Her mother, who had accompanied her, waited for her at a coffee shop nearby. She was reluctant to allow Severine to walk around alone outside of the security estate where they lived, preferring to drive her the two blocks there and back.
Severine headed for the dispensary but was distracted by a display of aromatherapy oils: myrrh, bergamot, cypress and rose. She unscrewed the top of the rose bottle and sniffed, disregarding the ‘please do not open’ sign above the shelf. So absorbed was she with the pungent scent and the small exotic bottle that at first she didn’t notice him.
Only when he moved closer, and then too close, did she become aware of his strangely immobile presence. She looked down at the broad hand resting on the shelf beside hers. A hand that extended from the cuff of a pale-blue shirt.
‘Don’t be afraid.’ The voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but had an unmistakable urgency. Severine stepped back, startled, and the open bottle slipped from her hands and rolled across the floor. She turned to meet the man’s dark eyes staring at her anxiously. Two crossed lightning strikes were embroidered on the badge of his shirt pocket, underneath which a plastic id tag read ‘James Chilenga, Security’.
‘There are robbers in the store,’ he said. ‘Please do what they say.’
Severine found it difficult to understand what he was saying. She could only think about the pungent smell of rose oil from the spilled bottle that was making it difficult for her to concentrate. Should she offer to pay for it?
James Chilenga took her hand. His was big and warm. He led her gently down the aisle towards the tills. He was much taller than Severine, and broad-shouldered. A sweat stain darkened the back of his shirt.
Smartly dressed men were at the till, pointing ak-47s at the cashiers in a bored, nonchalant way, which seemed to Severine to disguise some inner turmoil. Facing them, his arms raised in supplication, was the store manager, looking embarrassed by his own helplessness.
As if responding to some backstage cue, the cashiers filed out from behind the tills with their hands up. First out was a large woman with a shining, sweating face and strained eyes. Following her came an older woman with livid pigment discolourations on her cheeks and forehead that made her look as if she were wearing a mask. The large woman struggled to keep her arms raised over her breasts. She also appeared to have lost control of her facial muscles, as her mouth was strangely contorted. Severine noted these minute details, imprinting them on her memory as if she were sketching them for a drawing. A woman in a bunchy fur coat was at the till – she had been waiting to pay. One of the armed men shouted at her. Trembling, she put down her shopping basket and followed the cashiers onto the shop floor.
The man brandished his machine gun and shouted, ‘All of you, face down on the floor!’
As one, shop workers and customers dropped flat onto their stomachs. Severine could feel her heart thudding against the hard surface of the floor.
She lay between the cashier and the fur-coat woman, the store manager prostrate ahead of her. She noticed the checkerboard tiles that seemed to stretch out in an infinite perspective of black and white, like an Escher print. They were coated in a thin film of grease and grit that felt sticky and grainy against her cheek. She focused on the bottom of the manager’s thick-soled shoes, gouged with deep treads like tractor tyres. Blobs of chewing gum and gravel and dark sticky lumps were stuck in the treads. She became aware of a muffled blubbering and wondered if someone had been hurt. The sound set off the cashier with the pigmented skin, who began whimpering and softly moaning, ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.’
Severine shifted her head slightly and saw the robbers picking their way among their hostages in their expensive sports shoes, with footsteps as soft and muffled as cats. Two of them had guns pointed at the people on the floor, the other two were emptying the tills. Severine caught the eye of the fur-coat woman. Close up, she was a lot older than Severine had first thought. Her face was that of a weird baby’s, smooth and tight-skinned from cosmetic surgery and curiously frozen, but her old-woman’s eyes were filled with mute terror. Severine found something curiously metaphysical about the moment, as if it were written in the stars that each and every one of the people around her had been predestined to share this exact moment, lying supine, side by side on the floor, awaiting their fate.
A sudden movement at the entrance caught her attention. A young woman, not much older than herself, had wandered into the shop, unaware. She wore some sort of Middle Eastern or maybe Muslim clothing: a blue tunic to the floor, her head covered with a loose headscarf. She looked so innocent, so otherworldly, and completely oblivious to the danger she was in. Astonishingly, the robbers did not appear to have seen her. Severine felt a creeping cold. Somehow she had to warn the girl without alerting the gunmen. She silently directed all her energy towards her, willing her to leave.
The girl’s benign gaze fell on Severine. Their eyes met, Severine’s full of mute warning, pleading with the girl to leave immediately. Frustratingly, the girl maintained her calm, almost serene, expression, as if there were nothing unusual in the scene before her, the shoppers flat on the floor, the robbers at the tills. Severine became faint with fear. Was the girl simple, or just slow-witted? The scent of roses was overpowering. Suddenly the girl raised her hand in a commanding gesture and directly addressed Severine.
‘Be not afraid,’ she said.
Severine steeled herself for the robbers’ response, but they were busy at the tills, showing no sign of having heard. Severine looked back at the entrance.
The girl was gone.
She wondered if shock had brought on a hallucination, if the girl had been there at all. But strangely her fear had lifted and a calm detachment had taken its place. To her left, the fur-coat woman was watching her. On impulse, Severine reached over and grabbed her hand. The woman gripped her back, the bony white atolls of her knuckles showing. Severine turned her head to the right, to face the cashier. She reached out to her. The woman’s hot, clammy hand grasped hers as if it were a lifeboat in a raging sea. James Chilenga lay just beyond them. He was sweating and his gun holster was empty. Severine met his eyes kindly, reassuringly. An invisible thread of love seemed to connect each one of them to the other, an unbreakable golden cord as fine as silk, through which Severine relayed the mysterious girl’s message. Be Not Afraid.
SATURDAY
28 March
Earth Hour
Fred sat in his car and watched the lights go off in the houses on the street. One by one. He checked his dashboard clock. Eight p.m. exactly. Then the light in his house went off. Natasha would take something like Earth Hour seriously. She’d got some weird ideas in her head. He didn’t mind. It was best to do what everyone else in this neighbourhood did, and not stand out in any way.
The house looked unlived-in from the outside: a seventies, split-level affair with wood and slasto details. Only a rental, as impermanent as every other place Fred Splinters had occupied. He deserved something better by now. It gave him a sour taste in his mouth to think he might be a failure. It was not a good thought, not a helpful thought. Why had Natasha insisted on this area? She liked the ‘ordinariness’, she’d said, that she could walk to the shops. However, it was also close to Diep River Police Station, only four blocks away, which did not suit Fred at all. He preferred to give the law a wide berth. He clicked the gate remote. The metal gate shuddered, partially opened, and then stuck. It was just one of the many things about the dump that set his teeth on edge. It meant he had to get out of the car – a late-model Camry sedan (a deliberately unremarkable choice) – and shift the gate himself, giving it a little shove to dislodge it. Try as he might, he could never discover the exact place where it stuck. He’d tried everything: oiling it with 3-in-1, dismantling and reassembling it, checking the rails and runners. He didn’t want to call in a professional repairman – he never allowed workmen to snoop around at the house if he wasn’t there. He couldn’t trust Natasha not to draw attention to herself the minute his back was turned.
He parked the car and switched off the lights and ignition, taking his time and gathering his thoughts. Unpleasant ones were preoccupying his mind at the moment. Natasha had been more nervous than usual lately. Jumpy almost, since they moved into the house.
He had let himself in one day, when she was out, and gone through her things, finding nothing unusual apart from an old, chipped cup hidden at the back of the kitchen cupboard. Inside was an envelope, and inside that a key. A key for a post-office box he had no knowledge of. His first impulse had been to collect more information first, so that he was well armed beforehand. But the temptation to immediately confront Natasha with the evidence of her perfidy proved too tempting.
‘What’s this?’
Natasha had stared at the key lying in the palm of his outstretched hand, then lowered her eyes. It gave him a thrill, the way she tried to hide her fear. She should be fucking scared. Fred had a nose for fear. He could smell it, like an animal scented danger.
‘Never seen it before,’ she lied, wiping her hair behind her ear. Another one of the nervous habits he’d tried to wean her off.
She was a small woman, slightly built and narrow-hipped, and looked pretty good considering how rough she’d had it. Before Fred came to her rescue.
He shoved it in her face, inches from her nose. ‘You’re telling me you’ve never seen this before?’
Her dumb-animal headshake did nothing to reassure him. She wouldn’t be scared unless she had something to hide.
So he had gone to the nearest post office, which was Plumstead, and tried all the boxes. Eventually, one had fitted. Box 1240. It was empty. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. But the knowledge of it would serve as extra leverage against Natasha.
He wouldn’t rock the boat for the moment. He must be patient with her, soothe her into letting her guard down, and then act.
She would be getting nervous now, wondering what Fred was doing, waiting for him to get out of the car. She would time it so that she was opening the door for him as he came up the stairs from the garage. Fred liked to think she spent all day waiting for the moment when he came home. The least she could do when you thought about everything he had done for her. Saved her from the filth and poverty of life on the street. He shuddered at the thought of the diseases she might have been carrying. Fortunately, he had not defiled himself with her, or any other woman for that matter. He had never enjoyed intimacy. Killing was already a very intimate act, and he did more than enough of that.
Fred’s domestic life was the only refuge he had from his demanding job. He liked to come home and let Natasha bring him a drink as he sat in his La-Z-Boy in his Woolworths robe, feet up, dstv on. She would have his meal ready and would sit next to him, ready to jump for whatever he wanted. Pondering her usual domestic acquiescence, Fred found it difficult to believe Natasha would actually hide anything from him. The thought of it was like a hot needle in his heart. Deep down, he clung to the hope that she was innocent.
But Fred’s assessment of human beings was a cynical one. And nothing in his life had ever challenged that conclusion. Perhaps it was the nature of his work, but he found that people only truly responded to force. He did not necessarily enjoy exercising violence on others. It just happened to be what he did, was second nature to him. He never got emotional, or took it personally. That’s why he had a good reputation.
He watched the flicker of candlelight warm the window of the living room. Then he got out of the car and went inside the house to where Natasha waited for him.
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