The fat man snorted and said Davids had been in his office before the drinking began. Boastful and smug. The police had his cum, in their hands, the dee-en-ay evidence, they could have nailed him right there with a life sentence with their test tubes and their microscopes and then they
the bottle away, thick as bricks, and so the prosecutor came up to the judge dragging his feet and said dyor onner, we fucked up a little, no more dee-en-ay, no more rape charge. Did that judge
them out, my bro?, like you won?t believe. ?What kind of person?? the Boss Man asked Thobela with total revulsion, ?what kind of person rapes a baby, I ask you??
He had nothing to say.
?And they?ve gone and abolished the death penalty,? the Boss Man said as he got up.
Thobela said goodbye and left and went and sat in his pickup. He put his hand behind the seat and felt the polished shaft of the assegai. He stroked the wood with his fingers, back and forth, back and forth.
Back and forth.
So he waited for them.
When the minister moved away from her and sat on the edge of the desk, she knew something had altered between them, a gap had been bridged. Maybe it was just on her side that a certain anxiety had subsided, a fear allayed, but she could see a change in his body language?more ease.
If he would be patient, she said, she would like to tell the whole story, everything. So that he could understand. Perhaps so she could also understand, because it was hard. For so long she had believed she was doing what she had to, following the only course available. But now . . . she wasn?t so sure.
Take your time, he said, and his smile was different. Paternal.
The last thing Griessel could remember, before they took him to Casualty at Tygerberg Hospital and injected him with some or other shit that made his head soft and easy, was Matt Joubert holding his hand. The senior superintendent, who said to him all the way in the ambulance, over and over: ?It?s just the DTs, Benny, don?t worry. It?s just the DTs.? His voice bore more worry than comfort.
She went to university to study physiotherapy. The whole family accompanied her on a scorching hot Free State day in January. Her father had made them all kneel in her hostel room and had prayed for her, a long dramatic prayer that made the sweat pop out on his frowning forehead and exposed the wickedness of Bloemfontein in detail.
She remained standing on the pavement when the white Toyota Cressida eventually drove away. She felt wonderful: intensely liberated, a floating, euphoric sensation. ?I felt as though I could fly,? were the words she used. Until she saw her mother look back. For the first time she could really see her family from the outside, and her mother?s expression upset her. In that short-lived moment, the second or two before the mask was replaced, she read in her mother?s face longing, envy and desire?as if she would have liked to stay behind, escape as her daughter had. It was Christine?s first insight, her first knowledge that she was not the only victim.
She had meant to write to her mother after initiation, a letter of solidarity, love and appreciation. She wanted to say something when her mother phoned the hostel for the first time to find out how things were going. But she never could find the right words. Maybe it was guilt?she had escaped and her mother had not. Maybe it was the new world that never left time or space for melancholy thoughts. She was swept up in student life. She enjoyed it immensely, the total experience. Serenades, Rag, hostel meetings, social coffee-breaks, the lovely old buildings, dances, Intervarsity, men, the open spaces of the campus?s lawns and streams and avenues of trees. It was a sweet cup and she drank deeply, as if she could never have enough of it.
?You won?t believe me, but for ten months I didn?t have sex. I was one hundred per cent celibate. Heavy petting, yes, there were four, five, six guys I played around with. Once I slept the whole night with a medical student in his flat in Park Street, but he had to stay above the belt. Sometimes I would drink, but I tried to only do that on a girls? night out, for safety.?
Her father?s letters had nothing to do with her celibacy?long, disjointed sermons and biblical references that she would later not even open and deliberately toss in the rubbish bin. It was a contract with the new life: ?I would do nothing to make a ba . . . a mess of it.?
She would not tempt fate or challenge the gods. She vaguely realized it was not rational, since she did not perform academically, she was constantly on the edge of failing, but she kept her part of the deal and the gods continued to smile on her.
Then she met Viljoen.
In sharp criticism of the state?s handling of the case, Judge Rosenstein quoted recent newspaper reports on the dramatic increase in crimes against children.
?In this country 5,800 cases of rape of children younger than 12 years old were investigated last year, and some 10,000 cases where children between 11 and 17 years old were involved. In the Peninsula alone, more than 1,000 cases of child molestation were reported last year and the number is rising. ?What makes these statistics even more shocking is the fact that only an estimated 15 per cent of all crimes against children are actually reported. And then there is the matter of children as murder victims. Not only are they being caught in the crossfire of gangland shootings, or become the innocent prey of pedophiles, now they are being killed in this senseless belief that they can cure AIDS,? he said.
?The facts and figures clearly indicate that society is already failing our children. And now the machinery of the state is proving inadequate to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice. If children can?t depend on the justice system to protect them, to whom can they turn??
Thobela folded the article up again and put it in his shirt pocket. He walked down to the beach, feeling the sand soft beneath his shoes. Just beyond reach of the white foaming arcs spilling across the sand he stood, hands in pockets. He could see Pakamile and his two friends running in step along the beach. He could hear their shouts, see their bare torsos and the sand grains clinging to their skins like stars in a chocolate firmament, arms aloft like wings as their squadron flew in formation just above the waterline. He had taken them to Haga Haga on the Transkei coast for the Easter weekend. They camped in tents and cooked over a fire, the boys swam and caught fish with hand lines in the rock pools and played war games in the dunes. He heard their voices till late at night in the other tent, muffled giggling and chatting.
He blinked and the beach was empty and he was overwhelmed. Too little sleep and the after-effects of
