The jockey?s eyes narrowed. ?The Kimberley side. Turn left at the four-way stop.? He indicated up the street.
?And the other one??
?On the Paardeberg gravel road. It?s farther on, other side the co-op, then left.?
?And if I want to go to Boshof ??
?What is your name?? asked the man in Xhosa.
?Nelson Mandela.?
The jockey looked at him, and then the smile spread broadly across his face. ?I know what you are planning.?
?What??
?You want to wait for him on the other side of Kimberley.?
?You are too clever for me.?
?Boshof is straight ahead via Poplar Grove for about twenty kilos, then turn left other side the Modder and right again at the next bridge.?
?The Modder??
?The mighty Modder, Capie, the Modder river.?
?Thank you.? He had the helmet on, just pushed his fingers into the gloves.
?If you see him, tell him, ?Sharp, sharp.? ?
He pulled away. ?You speak the language, my bro, you speak the language,? he heard the jockey calling after him.
Miriam Nzululwazi knelt by the chair in the interview room and wept. Her tears began with the fear that had grown too big, the weight of the walls too heavy so that she slid from the chair, her eyes shut so that she could not see them closing in on her, the memories of the Caledon Square cells that echoed in her head. The fear had grown too great and with it the knowledge that Pakamile would wait and wait and wait for his mother to fetch him, for the first time he would wait in vain because she was never late, in six years she had always been there to pick him up. But today he would not know what was wrong, the other children would be fetched, one after the other except him? please God? she could see him, she could feel her child?s fear, and it crushed her heart. Gradually her weeping included the wider loss of her life with Thobela, the lost perfection of it, the love, the security in every day, the predictability of a man who came home evening after evening and held her tight and whispered his love to her. The scene of him and her son in the vegetable garden behind the house, the block of man on his haunches by the small figure of the boy, close together, and her Pakamile?s undisguised hero worship. The loss of those evenings when they sat in the kitchen, he with his books that he had studied and read with a thirst and a dedication that was scary. She had sat and watched him, her big, lovely man who now and again would look up with that light of new knowledge in his eyes and say, ?Did you know ?,? and express his wonderment of the new world he was discovering. She would want to stand up and throw herself down before him and say, ?You can?t be real.? When they lay in bed and he shifted his body close to hers and with his arm over her pulled her possessively tight against himself, his voice would travel wide paths. He would share with her what was in his heart, so many things, the future, the three of them and a new beginning on a farm that lay waiting, green and misty and beautiful. About their country and politics and people, his often weird observations at work, his worry over the violence and poverty of the townships, the filtering away of Xhosa culture in the desert sands of wannabe American. And sometimes, in the moments before they drifted into sleep, he would speak of his mother and father. How he wished to make peace, how he wished to do penance, and now she wept because it was all gone, lost? nothing would ever be the same. The sobs shook her, and the tears dampened the seat of the chair. Eventually she calmed, emptied of crying, but one thing remained? the impulse to get out.
She did not know why she stood up and tried the door. Maybe her subconscious had registered no sound of a key turning with that last exit, maybe she was merely desperate. But when she turned the handle and the door gave to her fingers, she was shocked and pushed it shut again. She went back and sat in the chair, on the edge, and stared at the door, her heart beating wildly at the possibilities awaiting her.
Allison sat on the veranda of the little white house with its green roof. She sat in a green plastic garden chair opposite Dr. Zatopek van Heerden, captivated by his lean body and his intense eyes and energy locked up in him like a compressed spring, plus something indefinable, unrecognizable but familiar.
It was hot and the light was soft in the transition from afternoon to evening. He had a beer and she drank water with tinkling ice cubes. He had cross-examined her for all she knew, hovering like a falcon over her words, ready to swoop on nonsense, and now he had heard her chronological story and he asked, ?What now? What do you want??
She was discomfited by the intensity of his gaze? he looked right inside her, those eyes never still, over her and on her, searching and measuring, evaluating. With his psychological expertise, could he multiply the fractions of her voice and body language to a sum of her very thoughts? Strangely there was a sexuality in him that reached out and lured an involuntary response from deep in her body.
?The truth,? she said.
?The truth.? Cynical. ?Do you believe there is such a thing?? He did not look away as other people did when they talked. His eyes never left her face. What was it, this thing she felt?
?Truth is a moving target,? she admitted.
?My dilemma,? he said, ?is loyalty. Thobela Mpayipheli is my friend.?
Four Rooivalk attack helicopters flew low over the flat earth, crossing the boundary between Northern Cape and the Free State Province. Behind flew two Oryx, slow and cumbersome by comparison, each carrying four members of the RU?s Team Alpha in its constricted interior. The men were in full kit for the job: bulletproof vests, steel helmets mounted with infrared night sights, weapons held comfortably clasped with both hands between knees. In the leading Oryx, Tiger Mazibuko tried to conduct a cell phone conversation over the roar of the engines.
Janina Mentz was in the dining room of her house, between the school homework books of her daughters. She could barely make out Mazibuko?s words.
