Dead at Daybreak

“And the police,” replied the doctor, his voice deep and self-satisfied, “steal as happily as everyone else.”

He felt the tension in his belly.

“It must be difficult to be a policeman today,” the colored woman next to him said, softly and honestly. He looked at her, the eyes large and scared behind the glasses, wondered whether she had heard the doctor’s remark.

“It is,” he said, and sipped the red wine slowly.

“Do you think it will change?”

Good question, he thought. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” she said.

He drew breath to explain and stopped. Remembered that it wouldn’t help.

That it had never helped. Even when he was still on the Force and had tried to give some perspective to the figures – too little money, too few hands, too big a gap between the haves and the have-nots, too much politics, too many liberal laws, too much bad publicity. Fuck, the publicity had frustrated him so much, the good work and successes on page seven, the mistakes and corruption on page one. Salaries that were a joke, that could never compensate for the working conditions, the long hours, the scorn. He had occasionally tried to explain, but people didn’t want to hear it. “It’s just the way it is,” he said.

The main dish was Malay mutton curry, steaming and flavorful and meltingly tender. He could taste the cook’s pleasure in the making, wished he could meet him or her, ask how you get the mutton so unbelievably tender. He had read somewhere that you left it to soak overnight in buttermilk, that it worked especially well with curries, made the taste even more subtle.

“It’s Van Heerden, not so?” The doctor leaned over the businesswoman’s plate toward him, mouth still filled with food.

He nodded.

“What’s your rank?”

“My what?”

“I heard you saying you were a policeman. What’s your rank?”

“I’m no longer in the Force.”

The doctor looked at him, nodded slowly, and turned to the cultural attache. “Are you still a Western Province supporter, Achmat?”

“Yes, but it isn’t the same as in your day, Chris.”

The doctor forced hearty laughter. “You make me sound like ancient history, Achmat. Sometimes feel like taking the togs out again, old sport.”

Old sport. Even if he wasn’t a doctor, he would still be irritating.

Forget it, he thought. Leave it be. He concentrated on the food, placed rice and meat carefully on his fork, tasted the texture and the flavor, then a swallow of red wine, the waiters keeping the glasses filled, the decibels of the conversations around the table rising and rising, people laughing more heartily, more loudly, cheeks colored rosily by the wine. He watched Hope Beneke, her head at an angle as she listened to and nodded at the author, a middle-aged, bearded man wearing an earring. He wondered whether she was enjoying the party. It seemed like it. Was she another Wendy? An athlete on the social track? She was more serious than Wendy, but so earnest, so focused, so ready to do the right thing, so Norman Vincent Peale, so…idealistic. A practice for women. As if they were special victims.

Everyone was a fucking victim. Special or otherwise.

Between dessert and coffee, just before the bomb exploded, the businesswoman asked whether he had children. He said he wasn’t married. “I have two,” she said. “A son and a daughter. They live in Canada.” He said it must be very cold there, and the conversation died an uncomfortable death.

And then the doctor fucked with Mozart.

The waiters were removing the dessert plates; coffee had already been served to some. A curious moment because the rest of the table was quiet and only the doctor’s strong, rich voice could be heard: he was complaining about a boring holiday in Austria, the unfriendly people, the overcommercialization, the exploitation of tourists, the dull entertainment.

“And what’s it with them and Mozart?” he asked rhetorically, and Van Heerden couldn’t help it, he said, “He was an Austrian,” and he had suddenly had enough of this man and his views and his superiority.

“So was Waldheim and he was a Nazi,” said the doctor, irritated by the interruption. “But no matter where you go, it’s Mozart. If it isn’t the name of a restaurant, they play his music on street corners.”

“His music is very nice, Daddy,” said Mrs. Doctor, two chairs away, soothingly.

“So is Abba’s until you’ve heard it for the third time,” said the doctor.

Van Heerden heard the galloping of the red bull in his ears.

“At the end of the day it all sounds the same. And there is no intellectual depth to his music. Compare The Barber of Seville with any of Wagner’s works – ”

“The Barber was Rossini,” said Van Heerden, his voice a finely honed blade. “Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro. A sequel to the Barber.”

“Nonsense,” said the doctor.

“It’s true,” said the actress from the other side.

“It still doesn’t give it more intellectual depth. It’s still musical candyfloss.”

“Bullshit,” said Van Heerden loudly and clearly and angrily, and even the waiters came to a halt.

“Your language!” said the doctor.

“Fuck you,” said Van Heerden.

“What does a policeman know about music?” said the doctor, red in the face, eyes widened.

“As much as a doctor about intellectual depth, you cunt.”

“Zatopek!” It was Hope’s voice, urgent, pleading, but it made no difference.

“You Nazi,” said the doctor, halfway up, his napkin falling off his lap.

And then Van Heerden hit him as he rose, right fist against the head, a glancing blow, not a direct hit. For a moment the doctor was off-balance, but he recovered quickly, swung toward Van Heerden, who was ready and hit him again, the businesswoman of the year shrieking and holding her head as she cowered between them. He struck the doctor full on the nose with a right, hit again, against the mouth, felt teeth breaking, more women screaming, Hope’s “No, no, no” shrill and high and despairing. The doctor staggered back against the wall, his foot hooked onto the chair, Van Heerden over him, lifting his arm for the last blow, white with anger, but then someone held his arm, a calm, coaxing voice behind him. “Steady on, slowly now,” murmured the cultural attache, “slowly now, he was only a center.” He still pulled against the man’s firm grip, looked down at the bloody face below him, the glassy eyes. “Slowly now,” softly repeated, and he relaxed.

Deadly silence. He dropped his arm, moved his foot to regain his balance, looked up.

At the head of the table, almost upright, stood Kara-An Rousseau, an expression of complete sexual arousal on her face.

? Dead at Daybreak ?

22

Sergeant Thomas “Fires” van Vuuren was a caricature, a peripheral figure in my Sunnyside days, a brandy addict who exhibited the evidence of his passion with a map of blue veins on his face and a knob of a nose, which he wore gracelessly, a man in his late fifties with a vast belly, unattractive and obtuse.

Of all the people at the station, he would have been the last on the list of my nominees of those who would have a lasting influence on my life. I hardly knew him.

In the police, as in any government organization, there are a number of them, those rather pathetic people who get stuck at a certain rank because of some deficiency, sometimes blatant laziness or an unforgivable misdemeanor – the cannon fodder of bureaucracy who trundle down the slow track to retirement without haste or