?You know, Benny. Think about it. There are contributing factors. Your job. I think you all suffer from post- traumatic stress syndrome?with all the murder and death. But that is not the actual source. It?s something else. The thing that makes you drink, too, that made me drink as well.?
Griessel stared at him for a long time and then his head bowed. ?I know,? he said.
?Say it, Benny.?
?Doc . . .?
?Say it.?
?I am afraid to die, Doc. I am so afraid to die.?
He sat behind the wheel. He was still breathing hard, sweat dripped, his heart pounded. Jesus, he was forty?too old for this shit.
He pressed the key into the ignition.
There was one difference. His seventeen targets for the KGB . . . mostly he was detached, mechanical, even reluctant if it was some pallid pen-pusher with stooping shoulders and colorless eyes.
But not this time. This was different. When the assegai pierced the man?s heart, he had a feeling of euphoria. Of absolute rightness.
Perhaps he had, at last, found his true vocation.
18.
It was the following morning before she phoned him in his hotel room. From a public phone booth with Sonia on her shoulder.
?Five hundred rand,? was how she identified herself in an even voice that did not betray her anxiety.
It took only a few seconds for him to work it out and he said: ?Can you be here at six o?clock??
?Yes.?
?Room 1036, in the Holiday Inn opposite the entrance to the Waterfront.?
?Six o?clock,? she repeated.
?What is your name??
Her brain seemed to stop working. She didn?t want to give her own name, but she couldn?t think of any other one. She must not hesitate too long or he would know it was a fabrication?she said the first word that came to her lips.
?Bibi.?
Later she would wonder why that? Did it mean anything, have any psychological connotation, some clue by which to understand herself better? From Christine to Bibi. A leap, a new identity, a new creation. It was a birth, in some sense. It was also a wall. At first thin, like paper, transparent and fragile. At first.
?I have thought about it a lot,? she said, because she wanted to get the story right this time.
?The money was a big thing. Like when you play the Lotto and think of what you would do with the jackpot. In your imagination you spend on yourself and your child. Sensible things: you aren?t going to squander your fortune. You are not going to be like the nouveau riche. That is why you will win. Because it?s owed to you. You deserve it.
?But the money wasn?t the main thing. There was another aspect, something I had since my school days. When I had sex with my father?s friend. And the teacher. How I felt. I controlled them, but I didn?t control myself. How can I explain it? I wasn?t
myself. Yet I
?
She knew those were not the right words to describe it and made a gesture of irritation with her hands. The minister did not respond, but just waited expectantly, or maybe he was nailed to his seat.
She shut her eyes in frustration and said: ?The easy one is the power. Uncle Sarel, my father?s buddy, gave me a lift one day when I was walking home in the afternoon. When I opened the car door and saw the look on his face, I knew he wanted me. I wondered what he would say, what he would do. He held the steering wheel with both his hands because he was trembling and he didn?t want me to see. That?s when I felt how strong I was. I toyed with him. He said he wanted to talk with me, just for a short while, and could we take a drive? He was scared to look at me and I saw how freaked out he was but I was cool so I said: ?Okay, that would be nice.? I acted like I was innocent, that?s what he wanted. He talked, you know, silly stuff, just talking, and he stopped by the river and I kept on acting and he told me how he had been watching me for so long and how sexy I was, but he respected me and then I put my hand on his cock and watched his face and the look in his eyes and his mouth went all funny and it . . . it excited me.
?It was a good feeling to know he wanted me, it was good to see how much he wanted me, it made me
wanted. Your father thinks you are nothing, but they don?t think so. Some grown-ups think you are great.
?But when he had sex with me, it was like I wasn?t in my body. It was someone else and I was on one side. I could feel everything, I could feel his cock and his body and all, but I was outside. I looked at the man and the girl and I thought: What is she doing? She will be damaged. But that was also okay.
?That was the weirdest part of all, that the damage was also okay.?
She found someone to stand in for her at Trawlers. She spent the day with Sonia, rode her bike along the seafront as far as the swimming pool in Sea Point and slowly back again. She thought about what she would wear and she felt anticipation and that old feeling of being outside yourself, that vague consciousness of harm and the strange satisfaction it brought.
At four o?clock she left her daughter with the childcare lady and took a slow bath, washed and blow-dried her
