Less blood had flowed here, for sure; their history was less fraught. But why?
Perhaps they had fewer reasons to shed blood. Fewer gripping vistas, less succulent pastures, fewer hotheads, less valuable minerals. Perhaps that was the curse of South Africa, the land where God?s hand had slipped, where He had spilled from the cup of plenty? green mountains and valleys, long waving grass as far as the eye could see, precious metals, priceless stones, minerals. And He looked over it and thought,
Or perhaps Botswana?s salvation was merely that the gap between rich and poor was so much smaller. Less envy, less hatred. Less blood.
His thoughts were invaded again.
the refrain ran in his mind;
it blended with the monotonous drone of the GS?s engine, the wind that hissed on his helmet, the rhythms of his heart pushing blood painfully through his hip. He sweated; the heat increased with every kilometer, and it came from inside him. He would have to be careful, keep his wits; he would need to rest, take in fluids, shake the dullness from his head. His body was very sick. He counted the kilometers, concentrated on calculations of average speed, so many kilometers per minute, so many hours left.
He eventually stopped at Francistown.
He dismounted with difficulty at the petrol station, put the bike on its stand. There was a slippery feel to the wound, as if it was opening up.
The petrol jockey?s voice was distant. ?Your friend was looking for you early today.?
?My friend??
?He went through here early this morning in a Golf.? As if that explained everything.
?I don'?t have a friend with a Golf.?
?He asked if we?d seen you. A black man on a big orange BMW motorbike.?
?What did he look like??
?He?s a lion. Big and strong.?
?Which way did he go??
?That way.? The man pointed his finger to the north.
40.
A
llison the onlooker.
She was always good at that, to look on from the outside, to be part of a group but in her head to be apart. She had worried about it, thought it over for hours at a time, analyzed it for years, and the best conclusion she had come to was that that was how the gears and springs and levers of her brain were put together, a strange and accidental product, no one?s fault. Yesterday afternoon already she had known that he was like that, too. Two freaks who had sniffed each other out in a sea of normality, two islands that had improbably collided. But once again she found herself with that distance separating her from others, the itch of it was a gnawing voice of conscience that it was a form of fraud, to pretend you were part when you did not fit. You knew you did not belong here. The advantage was that it made her a good reporter because she saw what others were blind to.
There was an undercurrent to the negotiations.
The communication was stilted, in English, grown-ups speaking grown-up language so the child would be protected and the painful truths delayed.
The conversation was not for the record, the minister said. The nature of it was too sensitive, and she wanted agreement on that from all the parties.
One after another they nodded.
Good, she said. We will proceed. There was a child psychologist on the way. Also two women from the day- care center, as the therapist said familiar figures would be a cushion when the news was broken to him. Also a man and a woman from Child Welfare would be arriving soon. Senior people, very experienced.
Everything would be done, everything the state had access to, and the full machinery would be turned on, because what we had here was a tragedy.
Allison read the subtext. The minister watched the other woman, not continuously, but as staccato punctuation in the discourse, as if she were checking that she was on the right path.
This other woman. Not officially introduced. Sat there in her business suit like a finalist for Businesswoman of the Year, gray trousers, black shoes, white blouse, gray jacket, hands manicured but without color on the nails, makeup soft and subtle, hair tied back, eyes without expression, a hint of beauty in a face with stern, unapproachable lines, but it was the body language that spoke louder, of control, a figure of authority, driven, self- assured.
Who was she?
A tragedy, the minister was saying, carefully choosing adult words and phrases, euphemisms and figuratI've speech to spare the child. Innocent people who were involved through chance. She wished she could tell the media everything, but that was impossible, so she had to make an appeal. They would have to trust her that you couldn'?t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and that made Allison shI'ver; we live in a dangerous world, a complicated world, and to help this young democracy to survI've was much more difficult than the press could ever imagine.
There was the operation, a sensitive, necessary, well-planned operation, fully within the stipulation of the National Strategic Intelligence Act of 1994 (Act 94-38, 2 December 1994, as amended) and in the national interest; she did not use the term lightly, knowing how often it had been abused in the past, but they would have to take her word for it. National interest.
