?Did she take you back??
?She did,? said the doctor and smiled. ?We had two more children, just to celebrate. The trouble is, they look like their father.?
?How did you do it??
?Sex played an important role.?
?No, I mean . . .?
The doctor took Griessel?s hand and he laughed with closed eyes. ?I know what you mean.?
?Oh.? For the first time Griessel smiled.
?One day at a time. And the AA. And the fact that I had hit rock bottom. There was no more medication to help, except disulfiram, the stuff that makes you throw up if you drink. But I knew from the literature it is rubbish?if you really want to drink, you just stop taking the pills.?
?Are there drugs now that can make you stop drinking??
?No drug can make you stop drinking. Only you can.?
Griessel nodded in disappointment.
?But they can make withdrawal easier.?
?Take away the DTs.?
?You have not yet experienced delirium tremens, my friend. That only comes three to five days after withdrawal begins. Yesterday you experienced reasonably normal convulsions and, I imagine, the hallucinations of a heavy drinker who stops. Did you smell strange scents??
?Yes.?
?Hear strange things??
?Yes.? With emphasis.
?Acute withdrawal, but not yet the DTs, and for that you should be thankful. DTs is hell and we haven?t found a way to stop it. If it gets really bad, you could get
seizures, cardiac infarction or stroke, and any one of the three could kill you.?
?Jesus.?
?Do you really want to stop, Griessel??
?I do.?
?Then today is your lucky day.?
13.
She was a colored woman with three children, and a husband in jail. She was the receptionist at the Quay Delta workshop in Paarden Island and it was never her intention to send the whole thing off at a tangent.
The
came at 12:30 every day, four papers for the waiting room so that clients could read while they waited for their cars to be finished. It was her habit to quickly scan the main news headlines of the day. Today she did this with more purpose because she had expectations.
She found it on the front page just below the fold in the newspaper. The headline already told her that all was not right.
POLICE LINKED TO KILLING OF ALLEGED CHILD RAPIST
Quickly she read through the article and clicked her tongue.
The South African Police Services (SAPS) might have been responsible for the vigilante-style murder of alleged child rapist Enver Davids last night. A spokesperson for the Cape Human Rights Forum, Mr. David Rosenthal, said his organization had received ?sensitive information from a very reliable source inside the police services? in this regard. The source indicated that the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit (SVC) was involved in the killing.
HIV-positive Davids, who was freed on charges of murder and child rape three days after the SVC had misplaced DNA evidence pertinent to the case, was found stabbed to death on a Kraaifontein street early this morning.
Senior Superintendent Matt Joubert, head of the SVC, vigorously denied the allegation, calling the claim that two of his detectives tracked down Davids and killed him ?malicious, spurious and devoid of all truth.? He admits that the unit was upset and frustrated after a judge sharply criticized their management of the case and then dismissed it . . .
The woman shook her head.
She would have to do something. This morning when she went into her dark kitchen to get the bottle of Vicks for her child?s chest she could see the movement from her window. She had been a witness to the awful dance on the pavement. She had recognized Davids?s face in the streetlight. Of one thing she was absolutely sure. The man with the short assegai was not a policeman. She knew the police; she could spot a policeman a mile away. She had had plenty of them on her doorstep. Like this morning when they had come to ask if she had seen anything and she had denied any knowledge.
She looked up the telephone number of the
on their front page and dialed it. She asked for the journalist who had written the article.
