**
'I'm truly sorry, Carew.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'There's not a decent man I know who can get pleasure out of this moment.'
'I'm sure there isn't, sir.'
'For what we do in life… we have to take the consequences of our actions.'
'Just so, sir.'
'I take no delight in seeing a man go to his punishment, whatever he's done.'
'I appreciate that, sir.'
The governor stood ramrod straight in the doorway of the cell. Behind him, his message read, the deputy sheriff of Pretoria waited, his arms hanging, his hands clasped in front of his trouser flies. Jeez had the centre of the floor space, he was at attention, his thumbs on the seams of his trousers. He thought the sympathy was genuine. He thought the governor was an honest man. The governor didn't frighten Jeez, not so that he had to imagine him out of his tailored uniform, shorn of his medal ribbons, stripped to his underpants. The governor was nothing like the bastard who had run Spac, who had been Jeez's gaoler way back for so many long years.
'I like a man to go proudly. I like a man to behave like a man. I can tell you this, Carew, go like a man and it will be easier for you. A prisoner who makes difficulties hurts himself, not us.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'I'd bet money on you, Carew, that you'll go like a man who is proud.'
'Yes, sir.'
'I always tell a man at this time that he should think through his life, think about his affairs, and stay with the good times. We don't want any melancholy.'
'No, sir.'
'Carew, you wrote a letter a few weeks ago, I checked with Records and you've had no letter back. I'm sorry. Of course, you are permitted to write as many letters as you wish.'
'There won't be any more letters, sir.'
'Is there anyone we should contact, anyone you would like to be offered facilities for a visit?'
'No, sir. There's no one who should visit.'
'I tell you frankly, I've never met a man who has been here, White, who has been as private as you. Nor of your bearing, if I may say so.'
'Yes, sir.'
'There's a point I would like to make to you, Carew. The State President has refused you clemency, he has named the date of your execution. There have come from abroad several representations to the State President urging him to think again. From His Holiness the Pope, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, many others. Carew, you should know that in these matters the State President will not alter his decision. I tell you that, man to man, because it is better that you prepare yourself without the distraction of false hope.'
'Yes, sir.'
'The decision that you hang next Thursday is irrevers-ible.'
'I know that, sir.'
'The colonel from the security police, he will come back and see you, Carew, if you care to reconsider his proposal.'
'I have nothing to say to the colonel, sir.'
13
He took a taxi from the hotel to the zoo gardens.
Jack had memorised his instructions and flushed the sheet of paper away down the lavatory.
The driver hissed against the wooden toothpick that was clamped in his teeth through each detail of the bland police statement of unrest overnight in the Cape and the East Rand on the early morning news. Two shot dead by the police in the Cape, and a Black woman burned to death in an East Rand township.
'Seems to be getting worse,' Jack said.
The taxi driver looked over his shoulder. 'You'd need to be smiling from your cheeks to your backside to think it's getting better.'
'What has to happen for it to get better?'
The taxi driver settled comfortably in his seat, like the question was a box of chocolates, to be enjoyed.
'My opinion, take a tougher line with the Blacks. That's not what we're doing at the moment. Right, the State President's put the military and the police into the townships. Wrong, each time he makes a speech he's talking about reform. Result, they think they're winning, they reckon if they keep up the murder and the arson that they're on their way to government. On the one hand the State President is trying to intimidate the Blacks into ending the violence, on the other hand he's trying to buy them off with promises.
The two don't sleep in the same bed… '
Jack slid out of reach of the driver's eyes in the rear-view mirror, took a fast, deep breath, and asked: 'Did you know the taxi man, the one they're going to hang?'
'Carew, that bastard?'
'Did you know him?'
'I didn't myself. I've a friend who did.'
'What sort of fellow was he?'
'Mystery man, that's what my friend says. When the name was in the papers he just didn't believe it, says he was a very private fellow.'
A recklessness in Jack. 'Where did he live?'
'He had a flat, behind Berea, furnished, that's what my friend says. When he was arrested he gave instructions to his lawyer man that everything in the flat should be sold, went to a children's home charity. My friend says there wasn't much, bits and pieces and his clothes, but they've all gone, like he knew he was never coming out. My friend says that he used to talk quite a bit with this Carew, but he never knew anything about him. I mean, they didn't talk about family, just used to talk about the motor, that sort of thing.
Long time ago, he wrote to ask whether Carew would like a visit, and the letter came back from the authorities that Carew didn't want any visit… What's your interest?'
Jack said, 'I read about it in the English papers.'
He was dropped at the main entrance.
He must have been one of the first customers that morning because the wide sloping grounds with the autumn in the trees were near-deserted. He walked over the dun yellow parched lawns. He did exactly as he had been instructed.
He went to ihe cafeteria where they were still putting out the tables, and he ordered a cup of coffee. When he had drunk it he walked away past the big wingspan vulture in a tall cage, and past the compound where a young gorilla gambolled, and past the green water pool of the sea lions.
He understood why the instructions had demanded that he followed a set route. He was being watched and checked to see that he had no tail. He climbed the hill and strolled slowly past the big cat enclosures. Well before the heat of the day and the leopards and the jaguar and the lions were pacing. He sat on a bench in front of the Bengali tigers. He didn't look around, he made no attempt to identify the people he assumed to be watching him. Up again and past the stink of the elephant and the rhino, past a bee swarm of tiny Black children out with their teacher, past a party of shambling mencaps with their nurses. He followed the instructions.
He went up the long hill towards a huge memorial, to British victory in the Boer War of nearly a century ago. He drifted into the military museum. More schoolchildren, but middle teens and White, and with a pretty young teacher who had a strident voice as she quizzed her pupils on Bren gun carriers, Churchill tanks, 25 pounders, an 88
