?So he has money? Is that from the drugs or the assassinations??
?A valid question. But the answer is ?not from either of those.? ?
He saw her shake her head dubiously, and he said, ?I had better tell you the whole story. About me and Orlando and Thobela and more American dollars than most people see in a lifetime. It was two years ago. I was moonlighting as a private investigator, probing a murder case the cops couldn'?t crack. In a nutshell, it came out that the victim was involved in a clandestine army operation, weapons transactions for UNITA in Angola, diamonds and dollars??
He finished the story by the time they landed in Johannesburg to refuel. When they took off again, she pushed up the armrest between them and leaned against him. ?Am I still a bastard?? he asked.
?Yes. But you are my bastard,? and she pressed her face in his neck and inhaled his smell with her eyes shut.
That afternoon she had thought she had lost him.
Before they flew over the N 1 somewhere east of Warmbad, she was asleep.
She stayed in the plane, looking out the oval window of the Beechcraft. The air coming in the open door was hot and rich in exotic scents. Outside the night was lit up by car lights, the moving people casting long deep shadows, and then four appeared from behind a vehicle with a stretcher between them, and she wondered what he looked like, this assassin, drug soldier, the man for whom Miriam Nzululwazi had wept in her arms, the man who had dodged the entire country?s law enforcers for two thousand kilometers to do a friend a favor. What did he look like? Were there marks, recognizable features on his face that would reveal his character?
They struggled up the steps with the weighty burden. She went to sit at the back, out of the way, her eyes searching, but he was hidden by the bearers, Van Heerden, the doctor who had flown with them, Dr. Pillay and one other. They shifted him carefully onto the bed in the aircraft. The white doctor connected a tube to the thick black arm, the Indian said something softly into the patient?s ear, pressing the big hand that lay still, and then they went out and someone pulled the door up and the pilot started the engines.
She stood up to see his face. The eyes caught hers, like a searchlight finding a buck, black-brown and frighteningly intense, so that she could see nothing else, and she felt a thrill of fear and enormous relief. Fear for what he could do, and relief that he would not do it to her.
The black man slept and Van Heerden sat with her again and she asked, ?Have you told him??
?It was the first thing he wanted to know when he saw me.?
?You told him??
He nodded.
She looked at the still figure, the dark brown skin of his chest and arms against the white bedding, the undulations of caged power.
?What did he say?? she asked.
?He hasn?t said a word since.?
Now she understood the intensity of those eyes.
?Do you think he will??
She looked at Van Heerden and for the first time saw the worry.
?How else?? he said in frustration.
?But you can help him. There must be a legal?? ?It is not he who will need help.?
That?s when she grasped what Van Heerden was afraid of, and she looked at Mpayipheli and shI'vered.
On the last leg to Cape Town she woke with a heavy body and a stiff neck and she saw Van Heerden sitting next to Mpayipheli, his white hand holding the Xhosa?s, and she heard the deep bass voice, soft, the words nearly inaudible to her above the engines, and she closed her eyes again and listened.
?? go away, Van Heerden? Is that part of our genetic makeup, too? Is that what makes us men? Always off somewhere?? He spoke in slow, measured tones.
?Why was it that I could not say no? She knew, from the beginning. She said men go away. She said that is our nature, and I argued with her, but she was right. We are like that. I am like that.?
?Thobela, you can?t??
?Do you know what life is? It is a process of disillusionment. It frees you of your illusions about people. You
