vertical knifemarks on each side of her mouth before she was much older. Natalie had those lines coming too.
Clare waited for Natalie to decide whether to trust her with her story. It was a delicate moment that could be destroyed with one careless word or sudden movement. Natalie would look good on television, her beauty would sell her story.
The stillness took Natalie back to the chaos that had driven her from her home village. The first bout of noise and violence had come from her husband – who’d been chosen for her – and not from the war. Although once she left him, the war did catch up. Like a hyena, it snapped at her heels, driving her and her daughter from displacement camp to displacement camp, where Natalie traded her careful English for a bemused aid worker’s spare tent, cooking pot, mosquito net. Like the other women who were young enough, she cajoled food from peacekeeping troops. She used charm when she could, or the temporary gift of her still-firm body when necessary. Her daughter she refused them, even when offered almost-fresh meat for her. She had made her way to Kalangani, where the fighting skirted the town and where she had some relatives. Here her daughter would be safe. But this, Natalie intuited, was not the story Clare wanted.
Natalie’s voice bridged the distance between them. ‘I will tell you, Madame, my story how I got here. For your film I will tell you. For my daughter.’
‘Can I record this?’ asked Clare, opening her camera bag.
Natalie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why not?’
Clare slipped the video camera out of her bag and flicked out the legs of the tripod to set up the camera. Natalie adjusted her hair, wiped the corners of her mouth, the instinctive gestures a camera elicits. She sat straight up in her chair and pulled her skirt over her knees.
‘Shall I look at you or there?’ she gestured towards the lens.
‘Look at me,’ said Clare. ‘Forget about the camera. I’ll ask you questions, so don’t worry about saying things right or wrong. Just speak to me.’
Natalie nodded.
‘Tell me who you are, where you are from,’ said Clare.
‘I am Natalie Mwanga,’ she said. ‘I am thirty-five years. I am from the Congo before I came to South Africa. The cousin of my father comes to me and he says you are suffering a lot. Why don’t you go to South Africa, you will find a job, you will find everything. Go and find your new life. I didn’t know what he thinks – what he means for me. When we came to South Africa he says, “You must do everything that I tell you.” And in the afternoon I saw him coming with his friends, here in Cape Town. And he said, “If you make sex here with the people, you are going to find a lot of money.” I was forced to do it.’
The woman’s voice died away. ‘Do you know what it feels like? What I feel like when it happens?’ she asked. Clare shook her head.
‘I just start to cry. I did feel bad, so bad. I just cry every day, every time. I am not used to do it.’
‘Did they give money to your uncle?’ asked Clare.
‘Yes, they gave money to him. I don’t know how much. When I asked him how much they gave him, he said, “It is not your problem. You eat here, you drink here, you sleep here. What do you want to know how much they give?” I was afraid of the HIV, about infection. But God loves me. I did the test and I am well. I am well.’ Natalie’s face transformed with the delight of this reprieve.
‘How did you get away?’ asked Clare.
‘It was a Saturday, I think. He did lock the front door but he forgot to lock the back door. I didn’t go to the police. I also didn’t know where they were. I didn’t have any papers. When I asked my uncle for my papers he said, “Myself, I’m your paper.” So I ran to my friend. She told me, “I can’t help you. My house is small. Maybe my boyfriend won’t accept you to stay here.” She told me to go to the church. I went there and I got help. I spent four days at the church and then Shazneem came to fetch me from the shelter.’
‘And your family?’ asked Clare.
‘I have one girl in my country. She is thirteen years. She is beautiful. I am so afraid for her.’ Natalie had only needed one or two questions to free the river of her story, but now she fell silent.
‘I was very afraid of that camera,’ said Natalie. Her quiet voice agitated the motes of dust suspended in the light that lay between them.
‘Why?’ Clare asked. She reached over to switch off the camera.
‘When I first come here to Cape Town some men make a film. These men, they pay my uncle.’ Natalie stopped. Clare switched the camera back on.
‘Go on,’ she said. There was enough tape for another five minutes.
‘They are men there and they take my clothes. They say they will teach me to make love. I say I am a married woman. That I know. They laugh and give me other clothes to put on. A lady helps me because I don’t know how to wear these clothes.’ She stopped and looked down at her hands. They are broad, strong, the nails bitten to the quick. ‘I am very ashamed of that,’ she whispered. ‘They make picture and there is one man who say, do this, do that. He is like Hollywood and he has the camera too sometimes. Sometimes another man with a camera.’
‘What did they want you to do?’ asked Clare. Her tape ended, clicking into the silence.
Natalie raised her head. ‘I don’t want to say about it. I am very ashamed. More than the men because now I am here the men are over. I am safe. But in my film I am never over. Always I do the things, do the things in the film.’ She wiped the tears that welled in her eyes. ‘Maybe if you find that film you will bring it back to me so that I can stop.’
Clare switched off the camera again. ‘If I see it I will try to get it. Thank you, Natalie.’ She packed up her things and readied herself to leave.
‘Dr Hart, I give you my story for your film. I would like to ask you for something,’ said Natalie.
‘What is that?’ asked Clare. Her stomach knotted.
‘With my daughter. Help me bring her here where she can be safe. Where she can eat and go to school.’ Natalie handed her a sheet of paper. It was dog-eared, as if it had been smoothed open countless times. A young girl’s face looked out at her from beneath the Red Cross letterhead. It was dated six months earlier.
‘You know the right people. I saw your film on television,’ said Natalie.
Clare took her phone out of her bag and dialled. The tension around Natalie’s shoulders went as Clare gave the information about her daughter.
‘They will do what they can. That was the director of the Southern African Refugee Centre,’ said Clare. ‘They will phone the shelter as soon as they have located her.’
‘Good,’ said Natalie, satisfied with their transaction. ‘I will phone you and tell you what they do.’
The interview was over and Natalie looked exhausted. Clare felt exhausted too. She was glad that she had a flask of tea in her car. She was going to need it before the next part of her journey.
8
Clare sat in her car. She lifted her hands to her temples and pressed, trying to contain the horror that pulsed there. She turned the key and the car purred in response. The street was empty, desolate, as she paused, looking for running children before turning right. Someone had flanked a concrete garden path with petunias but the tender pink petals had been mutilated by the south-easter. Clare turned away from their defeat. She did not pay much attention to the white car ahead of her that indicated left towards the majestic solidity of Table Mountain.
She turned right, accelerating across the oncoming lanes when there was a lull in the traffic. She headed north, where the mountains petered out into hills and wheatfields. She was looking out for the sign to Serenity Farm, so she did not notice the white car pull over into a lay-by. Even if she had, she’d have been too far away to notice the fury that her sudden disappearance provoked in the driver.
As always, the faded lettering on weathered wood came too soon after the bend. Clare turned left sharply, a driver hooting in her wake. And then the sound of traffic was gone. Overhead, the ancient, ghostly gums reached their branches upwards and over. Their embrace created a dappled arch that extended like the nave of a cathedral towards the house in the distance. Clare drove down the rutted drive, avoiding the corrugations that had become worse over the years she had been taking this road. This suspended moment was the bridge between her world and the cloistered place that sheltered her twin.
