It didn?t really matter.
He turned the page. On page three there was an article on a radio station?s phone-in opinion poll. Should the death penalty be reinstated? Eighty-seven per cent of listeners had voted ?yes?.
On page two were short reports of the day?s criminal activity. Three murders in Khayelitsha. A gang-related shooting took a woman?s life in Blue Downs. A man was wounded in Constantia during a car hijacking. A cash in- transit robbery in Montague Gardens: two security guards in intensive care. A seventy-two-year-old woman raped, assaulted and robbed in her home in Rosebank. A farmer in Limpopo Province gunned down in his shed.
No children today.
A waitress brought his bill. He folded the paper and leaned back in his chair. He watched the people walking down the mall, some purposefully, some strolling. There were stalls, clothes and artworks. The sky was blue above, a dove came down to land on the pavement with its tail and wings spread wide.
It was dejr vu, all this, this existence. A hotel room somewhere with his suitcase half unpacked, long days to struggle through, time to wait out before the next assignment. Paris was his place of waiting, another city, another architecture, other languages; but the feeling was the same. The only difference was that in those days his targets had been picked for him in a somber office in East Berlin, and the little stack of documents with photographs and pages of single-spaced typing was delivered to him by courier. His war. His Struggle.
A lifetime ago. The world was a different place, but how easy it was to slip into the old routines again?the state of alertness, the patience, the preparation, planning, the anticipation of the next intense burst of adrenaline.
Here he was again. Back in harness. The circle was complete. It felt as if the intervening period had never existed, as if Miriam and Pakamile were a fantasy, like an advertisement in the middle of a television drama, a disturbing view of aspirations of domestic bliss.
He paid for his cold drink and walked south to the pay phones and called the number again. ?Is Professor Ackerman available now??
?Just a moment.?
She put him through. He used the other name again and the cover of freelance journalism. He said he had read an article in the archives of
where the professor stated that a fixated pedophile always reoffended. He wanted to understand what that meant.
The professor sighed and paused a while before he answered. ?Well, it sort of means what it says, Mr. Nulwazi.?
?Nzuluwazi.?
?I?m sorry, I?m terrible with names. It means the official line is that, statistically, rehabilitation fails to a substantial degree. In other words, even after an extended prison sentence, there is no guarantee that they won?t commit the same crime again.? There was weariness of life in the man?s voice.
?The official line.?
?Yes.?
?Does that differ from reality??
?No.?
?I get the idea you don?t support the official line.?
?It is not a matter of support. It is a matter of semantics.?
?Oh??
?Can we go off the record here, Mr. Nulwazi??
This time he ignored the pronunciation. ?Of course.?
?And you won?t quote me??
?You have my word.?
The professor paused again before he answered, as if weighing the worth of it. ?The fact of the matter is that I don?t believe they
be rehabilitated.?
?Not at all??
?It?s a terrible disease. And we have yet to find the cure. The problem is that, no matter how much we would like to believe we are getting closer to a solution, there doesn?t seem to be one.? Still the desperate, despairing weariness. ?They come out of prison and sooner or later they relapse, and we have more damaged children. And the damage is huge. It is immeasurable. It destroys lives, utterly and completely. It causes trauma you wouldn?t believe. And there seem to be more of them every year. God knows, it is either a matter of our society creating more, or that the lawlessness in this country is encouraging them to come out of the woodwork. I don?t know . . .?
?So what you are saying is that they shouldn?t be released??
?Look, I know it is inhuman to keep them in prison forever. Pedophiles have a tough time in penitentiaries. They are considered the scum of the earth in that world. They are raped and beaten and humiliated. But they serve their sentences and go through the programs and then they come out and they relapse. Some right away, others a year or two or three down the line. I don?t know what the answer is, but we will have to find one.?
?Yes,? said Thobela, ?we will have to find one.?
How tedious the clergyman?s day-to-day existence must be, because he was still sitting there with the same interest. He was still listening attentively to her story, his expression neutrally sympathetic, his arms relaxed on the desk. It was quiet in the house, outside as well, just the noise of insects. It was strange to her, accustomed as she was to the eternal sound of traffic, people on the move in a city. Always on the go.
