of the natural order of things that whites and blacks lived differently. Whites, like Jan Kleyn, were human beings. The blacks hadn’t yet got that far. Some time in the distant future they might possibly be able to reach the same level as the whites. The color of their skins would grow lighter, their powers of understanding would grow greater, and it would all be as a result of the patient upbringing the whites gave them. Even so, he had never imagined their houses would be as awful as those he could see before him.
But there was also something else that attracted his attention. Matilda was met by a girl of his own age, lanky and slim. That must be Matilda’s daughter. It had never occurred to him that Matilda might have children of her own. Now he realized for the first time that Matilda had a family, a life apart from the work she did in his home. It was a discovery that affected him badly. He could feel himself getting angry. It was as if Matilda had deceived him. He always imagined she was there for him alone.
Two years later Matilda died. Miranda had never explained to him how it happened, just that something had eaten away her insides until all life left her. Matilda’s home and family had broken up. Miranda’s father took two sons and a daughter with him to where he came from, the barren countryside far away on the Lesotho border. The idea was that Miranda would grow up with one of Matilda’s sisters. But Jan Kleyn’s mother, in a fit of unexpected generosity, decided to take Miranda under her wing. She was to live with the master gardener, who had a little cottage in some remote corner of their large grounds. Miranda would be trained to take over her mother’s job. In that way, the spirit of Matilda would live on inside the white house. Jan Klein’s mother was not a Boer for nothing. As far as she was concerned, maintaining traditions was a guarantee for the continuation of the family and Afrikaner society. Keeping the same family of domestic servants, generation after generation, helped to provide a sense of permanence and stability.
Jan Kleyn and Miranda continued to grow up near each other. But the distance between them was unchanged. Even though he could see she was very beautiful, there was in fact no such thing as black beauty. It belonged to what he had been taught was a forbidden area. He heard young men his own age telling secret stories about white Afrikaners traveling to neighboring Mozambique on weekends, in order to bed black women. But that just seemed to confirm the truth he had learned never to question. And so he went on seeing Miranda without actually wanting to discover her, when she served his breakfast on the terrace. But she had started appearing in his dreams. The dreams were violent and sent his pulse racing when he recalled them the following day. Reality was transformed in his dreams. In them, not only did he recognize Miranda’s beauty, he accepted it. In his dreams he was allowed to love her, and the girls from Afrikaner families he associated with normally faded away in comparison with Matilda’s daughter.
Their first real meeting took place when they were both nineteen. It was a Sunday in January, when everyone but Jan Kleyn had gone to a family dinner in Kimberley. He was not able to join them because he was still feeling weak and depressed after a lengthy bout of malaria. He was sitting out on the terrace, Miranda was the only servant in the house, and suddenly he stood up and went to her in the kitchen. Long afterwards he would often think he had never really left her after that. He had stayed in the kitchen. From that moment on, she had him in her power. He would never be able to shake her off.
Two years later she got pregnant.
He was then studying at Rand University in Johannesburg. His love for Miranda was his passion and at the same time his horror. He realized he was betraying his people and their traditions. He often tried to break off contact with her, to force himself out of this forbidden relationship. But he could not. They would meet in secret, their moments together dominated by fear of being discovered. When she told him she was pregnant, he beat her. The next moment it dawned on him that he would never be able to live without her, even if he would never be able to live with her openly either. She gave up her position at the white house. He arranged a job for her in Johannesburg. With the help of some English friends at the university, who had a different attitude toward affairs with black women, Jan Kleyn bought a little house in Bezuidenhout Park in eastern Johannesburg. He arranged for her to live there under the pretense of being a servant for an Englishman who spent most of his time on his farm in Southern Rhodesia. They could meet there, and there, in Bezuidenhout Park, their daughter was born and, without any discussion being necessary, christened Matilda. They continued to see each other, had no more children, and Jan Kleyn never married a white woman, to the sorrow and sometimes even bitterness of his parents. A Boer who did not form a family and have lots of children was odd, a person who failed to live up to Afrikaner traditions. Jan Kleyn became more and more of a mystery to his parents, and it was clear to him he would never be able to explain that he loved their servant Matilda’s daughter, Miranda.
Jan Kleyn lay in bed thinking about all this, that Saturday morning of May 9. In the evening he would be visiting the house in Bezuidenhout Park. It was a habit he regarded as sacrosanct. The only thing that could get in the way was something connected with his work for BOSS. That particular Saturday he knew his visit to Bezuidenhout would be very much delayed. He needed to have an important meeting with Franz Malan. That could not be postponed.
As usual, he woke up early that Saturday morning. Jan Kleyn went to bed late and woke up early. He had disciplined himself to get by with only a few hours sleep. But that morning he allowed himself the luxury of sleeping late. He could hear faint noises from the kitchen where his servant, Moses, was making breakfast.
He thought about the telephone call he had received just after midnight. Konovalenko had finally given him the news he was waiting for. Victor Mabasha was dead. That did not only mean a problem had ceased to exist. It also meant the doubt he had been entertaining the last few days about Konovalenko’s abilities had been put to rest.
He was due to meet Franz Malan in Hammanskraal at ten. It was time to decide when and where the assassination would take place. Victor Mabasha’s successor had also been chosen. Jan Kleyn had no doubt he had once again made the right choice. Sikosi Tsiki would do what was required of him. The selection of Victor Mabasha had not been an error of judgment. Jan Kleyn knew there were invisible depths in everybody, even the most uncompromising of people. That was why he had decided to let Konovalenko test the man he had chosen. Victor Mabasha had been weighed in Konovalenko’s scales and found wanting. Sikosi Tsiki would undergo the same test. Jan Kleyn could not believe that two people in succession would turn out to be too weak.
Shortly after half past eight he left his house and drove towards Hammanskraal. Smoke hung low over the African shanty town alongside the freeway. He tried to imagine Miranda and Matilda being forced to live there, among the tin shacks and homeless dogs, the charcoal fires constantly making their eyes water. Miranda had been lucky and escaped from the inferno of the slums. Her daughter Matilda had inherited her good fortune. Thanks to Jan Kleyn and his concession to forbidden love, they had no need to share the hopeless lives of their African brothers and sisters.
It seemed to Jan Kleyn that his daughter had inherited her mother’s beauty. But there was a difference, hinting at the future. Matilda’s skin was lighter than her mother’s. When she eventually had a child with a white man, the process would continue. Sometime in the future, long after he had ceased to exist, his descendants would give birth to children whose appearance would never betray the fact that there was black blood somewhere in the past.
Jan Kleyn liked driving and thinking about the future. He had never been able to understand those who claimed it was impossible to predict what it would be like. As far as he was concerned, it was being shaped at that very minute.
Franz Malan was waiting on the veranda at Hammanskraal when Jan Kleyn turned into the forecourt. They shook hands and went straight in to where the table with the green felt cloth was waiting for them.
“Victor Mabasha is dead,” said Jan Kleyn when they had sat down.
A broad smile lit up Franz Malan’s face.
“I was just wondering,” he said.
“Konovalenko killed him yesterday,” said Jan Kleyn. “The Swedes have always been very good at making hand grenades.”
“We have some of them here in South Africa,” said Franz Malan. “It’s always hard to get hold of them. But our agents can generally get around the problems.”
“I suppose that’s about the only thing we have to thank the Rhodesians for,” said Jan Kleyn.
He recalled briefly what he had heard about events in Southern Rhodesia nearly thirty years ago. As part of his training for his work in the intelligence service, he heard an old officer describing how the whites in Southern Rhodesia had managed to evade the worldwide sanctions imposed upon them. It had taught him that all politicians have dirty hands. Those vying for power set up and break rules according to the state of the game. Despite the
