away and then the skin rolled back again to sag over the hollowness.
Jeez sat down opposite him.
God, how to be sharp with a man who was going to walk to the gallows.
There was a small smile on Jeez's face. The solicitor understood. The bastard knew. The obstinate bastard had known what he had done when he had walked out on the colonel. The solicitor could not consider how a man voluntarily turned his back on life, not when the choice was his.
'Good of you to call round, young man. Did you have a pleasant drive over?'
The solicitor swallowed hard. The resentment died in him. In a torrent flow he told Jeez that the legal options were exhausted.
• •*
It was all because of a series of coincidences.
Because an assessor had been called back into the army for reserve service, and another assessor had been at home with his wife and newly-born baby, and her supervisor had thought it would be good experience for her to be out of the office, Ros van Niekerk had gone to a fire damaged home in Sandton. The cook/maid had left the electric chip frier on all night. The chip frier had finally caught fire in the small hours, gutting an expensive kitchen. She had gone to work that morning in a pure white skirt, and that skirt had been dirtied as she had moved about the kitchen assessing the damage and agreeing the size of the claim. Ros went home to change after the call.
Because her father was at work and her mother was at morning bridge, she let herself into the house that she expected to be deserted except for their maid. The maid had been a young nanny once, but with Ros and Jan grown up the nanny's role was gone. She could hear the maid in the back washhouse. Ros didn't announce herself, went up the stairs to her room.
Because the radio was playing in Jan's room she went to the slightly opened door. It surprised her to hear the radio.
She thought her brother must have left it on when he had gone to Wits – always late. She eased the door open. The room was empty. The bed was made. The radio was playing.
There was a sprawl of papers on the small teak wood desk where he did his studying.
Because Ros sometimes wished that she had gone to university and not straight to work when she had left school, because she always took an interest in what Jan read and what he wrote in his essays, she glanced down at the papers on the table.
Because of that short series of coincidences Ros van Niekerk found herself staring down at the drawn plans made by the old Hungarian for Jacob Thiroko.
She was no fool. She understood immediately the content of the map drawn on the uppermost sheet of paper. The broad strokes of the roads were marked. Potgieterstraat, Soetdoringstraat, Wimbledonstraat. There were rectangular blocks drawn beside the roads. Local, White Political, Pretoria (Old) Central, New Women's, Beverly Hills. She knew what she looked at.
Mechanically, as if she sleepwalked, she lifted the piece of paper. The second sheet was drawn to a larger scale. A rectangular block enclosing another block, and a part of the inner block was drawn in detail. She read. Gate house and radio control, wooden gates, steps, light, watchtower. She read measurements. The longest of the outer lines was marked as 200 metres, what she took to be an inner wall was marked at 100 metres.
She heard the toilet flush down the landing. Her eyes didn't leave the detail. She read. Corridor, C section 1, exercise yard, visit r o o m… She heard Jan's trailing footstep shuffle towards his room. .. She read. Workshop, washhouse, preparation room. She read the one word… She heard him stumbling from the door towards her… She read. Gallows… Jan's hand caught at her, spun her away from the papers.
'What the hell are you doing?'
She faced up to him. He was the boy but he was no taller than her. She could look straight into his eyes.
'You bloody ask yourself what you're doing.'
She had never before seen such violence on Jan's face.
She said, 'This is bloody treason.'
He shouldered past her, he was snatching at the papers.
She caught his arm.
She said, 'You can't undo what I've seen. I've read the word. Gallows. That map's treason.'
He shook her hand off him. There was a high livid flush on his face. He was vulnerable, in her eyes always had been.
'You shouldn't have come snooping in here… '
'I come in here, I find a map of Pretoria prison. I find a map of the place where they hang people. You have to do better than tell me I'm snooping.'
He thrust the papers into his desk drawer. He locked the drawer with the key on his waist chain. He turned to her, defiant, cornered.
'So what are you going to do?'
'What the hell does that mean?'
'Are you going to inform on me?'
'I'm your sister, Jan. Your bloody sister. Where did you learn that sort of bloody talk? Sister, got it.'
'Are you going to Father, are you going to the security police?'
'For God's sake, I'm your sister. I love you, you're my brother.'
They clung to each other.
Ros said softly, 'How long have you been living a lie, Jan?'
'I swore an oath of secrecy.'
'I'm your sister, I'm not your enemy.'
'It was an oath, Ros.'
'We never had secrets.'
'You wouldn't understand.'
'That my brother is involved in treason, perhaps I wouldn't understand that.'
'Treason is their word. It isn't mine.'
'Jan, I love you, but you are involved in something that is against the law.'
'That's important?' He shouted at her. 'It's only important because it's against the law? Don't play the bourgeois cretin, Ros. The evil in this country is ending, its time's up.
We're on the march, going forward. It's over for the Boers and the racists… '
'The Boers make the laws.' Her voice raised against his.
'If you go against the law then you go to prison.'
'I swore the oath, Ros.'
'For what?' A snap of contempt.
'To be able to look in the eye the men and women of our country. To have my pride. You have to fight something that is wrong. Not like those bastard businessmen fight it, mealy statements about 'concern', plane trips to Lusaka to plead with the Freedom Movement not to give all their shares and their stocks to the people when the revolution comes. Not like those crappy Liberals at Wits, all piss, all wind. I fight the evil with the language the system understands.'
She snorted at him. 'What do you do?'
'I do my part.'
She couldn't help herself, there was the sneer of the elder sister. 'What's your part? Running messages on your little moped?'
'My part.'
'How can little Jan van Niekerk hurry the revolution?'
'I do my part.'
'The Blacks wouldn't trust you.'
'They trust me.'
'How do they trust you?'
He turned away from her. He went to his bed, flopped down. His head was in his hands.
'I swore an oath of secrecy.'
'How do they trust you?'
