Later he unlocked the safe and placed the document carefully on the topmost shelf. Then he reached for his firearms, three of them: Pakamile?s airgun, the .22 and the hunting rifle. He took the longest one and walked to the kitchen.
As he cleaned it with methodical concentration he slowly became aware that guilt and loss were not all that lay within him.
?I wonder if he believed,? she said, the minister?s full attention on her now. His eyes no longer strayed to the box.
?Unlike me.? The reference to herself was unplanned and she wondered for a moment why she said it. ?Maybe he didn?t go to church or such, but he might have believed. And perhaps he could not understand why the Lord gave to him and then took away. First his wife, and then his child on the farm. He thought he was being punished. I wonder why that is? Why we all think that when something bad happens? I do too. It?s weird. I just could never work out what I was being punished for.?
?As an unbeliever?? asked the minister.
She shrugged. ?Yes. Isn?t it strange? It?s like the guilt is here inside us. Sometimes I wonder if we are being punished for the things we are going to do in the future. Because my sins only came later, after I was punished.?
The minister shook his head and took a breath as if to answer, but she didn?t want to be sidetracked now; didn?t want to break the rhythm of her story.
They were out of reach. There were eight men behind the one-way glass, but he could only focus on the two for whom his hate burned. They were young and devil-may-care, their mouths stretched in the same ?so-what? smirks, their eyes staring a challenge at the window. For a moment he considered the possibility of saying he recognized none of them and then waiting outside the police station with the hunting rifle . . . But he wasn?t prepared, hadn?t studied the exits and streets outside. He lifted his finger like a rifle barrel and said to the superintendent: ?There they are, numbers three and five.? He did not recognize the sound of his own voice; they were the words of a stranger.
?You are sure??
?Dead sure,? he said.
?Three and five??
?Three and five.?
?That?s what we thought.?
They asked him to sign a statement. Then there was nothing more he could do. He walked to his pickup, unlocked the door and got in, conscious of the rifle behind the seat and the two men somewhere inside the building. He sat and wondered what the superintendent would do if he asked for a few moments alone with them, because he felt the compulsion to thrust a long blade into their hearts. His eyes lingered a moment on the front door of the police station and then he turned the key and drove slowly away.
3.
The public prosecutor was a Xhosa woman and her office was filled with the pale yellow dossiers of her daily work. They were everywhere. The desk was overloaded and the heaps overflowed to the two tables and the floor, so they had to pick their way to the two chairs. She had a somber quality and a vague absence, as if her attention was divided between the countless documents, as if the responsibility of her work was sometimes too heavy to bear.
She explained. She was the one who would lead the state prosecution. She had to prepare him as a witness. Together they must convince the judge that the accused were guilty.
That would be easy, he said.
It is never easy, she replied, and adjusted her large gold-rimmed spectacles with the tips of her thumb and index finger, as if they could never be wholly comfortable. She questioned him about the day of Pakamile?s death, over and over, until she could see the event through his eyes. When they had finished, he asked her how the judge would punish them.
?If they are found guilty??
?When they are found guilty,? he replied with assurance.
She adjusted her spectacles and said one could never predict these things. One of them, Khoza, had a previous conviction. But it was Ramphele?s first offense. And he must remember that it was not their intent to murder the child.
?Not their intent??
?They will attest that they never even saw the child. Only you.?
?What sentence will they get??
?Ten years. Fifteen? I can?t say for sure.?
For a long moment he just stared at her.
?That is the system,? she said with an exonerating shrug.
A day before the court case was to begin he drove his pickup to Umtata because he needed to buy a couple of ties, a jacket and black shoes.
He stood in his new clothes before the long mirror. The shop assistant said, ?That looks
The eyes mesmerized him. Were they his? They reflected no light, as if they were empty and dead inside.
From the late afternoon he lay on his hotel bed, arms behind his head, motionless.
