Left alone again, she investigated the tray. There was a bowl of mealie-porridge. The spoon seemed encrusted with the remains of other, long-ago breakfasts. Quelling her revulsion she brought a spoonful of the food to her mouth, but before she tasted it she gagged, and a wash of nausea lapped over her. It ebbed, left her shivering and light-headed. She dropped the spoon into the porridge and put the bowl back on the tray.
There was a beaker of coffee; it was no longer hot, but she held it between her hands for comfort. She took a sip; it tasted of nothing. Comfort receded.
The third item on the tray was a cob of brown bread. She broke some off and put it into her mouth. It stuck there, unnegotiable, like a stone. Last night at Flower Street, she had complained it was too hot to eat. She had meant to get up early, boil an egg predawn.
Some time later—perhaps an hour—the unspeaking wardress returned. She brought a water jug with a cover, and stood holding it while she waited for Anna to move the tray. In her other hand was a bucket. She put it down by the bed. “Is that what I must use?” Anna said; looking up, without belligerence, wanting nothing but to learn the rules.
The wardress indicated the tray. “You don’t want that?” She picked it up without waiting for an answer.
“Can I have my bag?” Anna said. “Can I have my watch?”
The door clicked shut. The key grated. She was alone again. Her hands returned to her lap. She examined the crack in the cell’s wall. From the base it ran a meandering course, to a height of four feet. Then other cracks seemed to spring from it, creeping wide of their source. It was like the delta of some great river. Anna took her handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed its corner into the water jug. She laid the damp linen first against one eyelid, then against the other. Don’t cry, dont cry, she said to herself. Let this be in place of tears.
At intervals, the spyhole in the door would flick open. She would raise her face to it: let them see that I have nothing to hide, she thought, not even a covert expression. She wondered if they came to stare at her on the hour; she began to count. She thought, by the heat in the cell and what she could see of the sunlight, that it might be midday when the door opened again.
A different wardress.
“Where?”
“Fingerprints.”
They took her along the corridor to a room furnished only with a table and two chairs. A second wardress took her flinching hand, straightened her fingers and pressed them into the pad of black grease. On the waiting paper, she saw loops, whirls, smudges like ape prints. It was hard to believe they belonged to her.
They let her wash her hands then, but she could not get the slime from under her fingernails.
When she came out into the corridor, an African woman in a prison dress was kneeling, scrubbing brush in hand, a scum of soapy water widening around her in a pool. She was singing a hymn, her voice strong, unwavering. When she saw Anna she stopped singing. She sat back on her haunches to watch her pass. Anna looked down into her face; then over her shoulder, to see the woman bend her back again. The soles of her bare feet were a grayish-white, hard as hooves. The hymn followed her as they swung open the cell door:
When the light began to fail, they tossed two blankets into the cell, and brought in her bag. She had packed her hairbrush and a comb but she had no mirror. She could not think why it seemed so important to see her own face. She said to the wardress, “You haven’t got a mirror in your pocket, have you? That I could borrow just for a minute?”
“What do you think, that I’m a beauty queen?” the woman said. She laughed at her own joke. “It’s against the rules,” she said. “You might hurt yourself, you see? Try and sleep now.”
Early in the afternoon there had been another tin tray, with a bowl of broth this time. She had stirred the ingredients without much hope, disturbing cabbage and root vegetables and what might be scraps of meat. Globules of fat lay on the surface, and when she brought the spoon to her mouth the morning’s reaction repeated itself, and she thought she would vomit. The last meal of the day had been another beaker of weak coffee and a hunk of bread. She regretted now that she had let them take away the bread untasted. She was so hungry that her stomach seemed to be folding in on itself, curling into a hollowness above her navel. “Can you help me?” she said to the wardress. “I couldn’t eat earlier, I was feeling sick. Can I have some bread?”
The woman hesitated. “I’ll see,” she said.
She went out, banging the door, rattling her keys. An electric light flicked on overhead, taking Anna by surprise. Anna waited, unmoving, under its glare.
She’ll not come back, she thought. But after some time the woman did return, with bread on a plate and a smear of margarine.
“I can’t let you have a knife,” she said. “You’ll have to do the best you can.”
Anna took the plate. “I’m grateful.”
Then the woman took an apple out of her pocket. “Don’t tell anybody.” She put it down on the metal locker.
Anna said, “Do you know what is going to happen to me? Can you tell me where my husband is?”
“Don’t take advantage,” the wardress said.
“I want to write a letter. I have things to do. I work at a mission you see, in Elim, Flower Street, and there are things I have to take care of. I have to give instructions, or nothing will be done.”
“I dare say they got on all right before you came,” the woman said.
“I ought to be given access to a lawyer.”
“You must take that up with the colonel.”
“When can I see him?”
