there would be no sandwich, no lunch parcel neatly wrapped in clingfilm.
He looked up from the paperwork and the room loomed suddenly large around him. What was he going to do? How would he manage?
* * *
Thobela made an error of judgment with Lukas Khoza. He found him at the abattoir, in a blood-spattered plastic apron, busy spraying away the blood from the off-white floor tiles of the slaughterhouse floor with a fat red hosepipe. They walked outside so Khoza could have a smoke break.
Thobela said he was looking for his brother, John, because he had a job for him.
What sort of work?
You know, work.
Khoza eyed him in distaste. No, I dont know and I dont want to know. My brother is trash and if you are his kind, so are you. He stood, legs apart in a challenging stance, cigarette in hand, between the abattoir building and the stock pens. Large pink pigs milled restlessly behind the steel gates, as if they sensed danger.
You dont even know what kind of job I am talking about, said Thobela, aware that he had chosen the wrong approach, that he had been guilty of a generalization.
Probably the usual work he does. Robbery. Theft. He will break our mothers heart.
Not this time.
You lie.
No lie. I swear. I dont want him for a criminal purpose, he said with spirit.
I dont know where he is. Khoza crushed the butt angrily under the thick sole of his white gumboots and headed for the door behind him.
Is there someone else who might know?
Khoza halted, less antagonistic. Maybe.
Thobela waited.
For a long time Khoza hesitated. The Yellow Rose, he said, and opened the door. A high scream, almost human, rang out from inside. Behind Thobela the pigs surged urgently and pressed against the bars.
9.
T hobela drove to the Waterfront, deliberately choosing the road that ran along the mountain so that he had a view of the sea and the harbor. He needed thatspace and beauty. The role he had played had disturbed him and he couldnt understand why. Impersonation was nothing new to him. In his days in Europe it had been part of his life. The East Germans had coached him in it down to the finest detail. Living the Lie was his way of life for nearly a decade; the means justified by the goal of Liberty, of Struggle.
Had he changed this much?
He came around the bulging thigh of the mountain and a vista opened up below: ships and cranes, wide blue water, city buildings and freeways, and the coastline curving gracefully away to Blouberg. He wanted to turn to Pakamile and say: Look at that, that is the most beautiful city in the world, and see his son gaze in wonder at all this.
That is the difference, he thought. It felt as though the child was still with him, all around him.
Before Pakamile, before Miriam, he had been alone; he was the only judge of his actions and the only one affected by them. But the boy had moved his boundaries and widened his world so that everything he said and did had other implications. Lying to Lukas Khoza now made him as uncomfortable as if he had been explaining himself to Pakamile. Like the day they went walking in the hills of the farm and he wanted to teach his son to use the rifle with greater responsibility, a piece of equipment to treat with care.
The rifle had awakened the hunter in the boy. As they walked he pointed the unloaded rifle at birds, stones and trees, made shooting noises with his mouth. His thoughts went full circle until he asked: You were a soldier, Thobela?
Yes.
Did you shoot people? Asked without any macabre fascination: that is how boys are.
How did you answer that? How did you explain to a child how you lay in ambush with a snipers rifle in Munich, aiming at the enemy of your ally; how you pulled the trigger and saw the blood and brains spatter against the bright blue wall; how you slunk away like a thief in the night, like a coward. That was your war, your heroic deed.
How did you describe to a
He looked up from the paperwork and the room loomed suddenly large around him. What was he going to do? How would he manage?
* * *
Thobela made an error of judgment with Lukas Khoza. He found him at the abattoir, in a blood-spattered plastic apron, busy spraying away the blood from the off-white floor tiles of the slaughterhouse floor with a fat red hosepipe. They walked outside so Khoza could have a smoke break.
Thobela said he was looking for his brother, John, because he had a job for him.
What sort of work?
You know, work.
Khoza eyed him in distaste. No, I dont know and I dont want to know. My brother is trash and if you are his kind, so are you. He stood, legs apart in a challenging stance, cigarette in hand, between the abattoir building and the stock pens. Large pink pigs milled restlessly behind the steel gates, as if they sensed danger.
You dont even know what kind of job I am talking about, said Thobela, aware that he had chosen the wrong approach, that he had been guilty of a generalization.
Probably the usual work he does. Robbery. Theft. He will break our mothers heart.
Not this time.
You lie.
No lie. I swear. I dont want him for a criminal purpose, he said with spirit.
I dont know where he is. Khoza crushed the butt angrily under the thick sole of his white gumboots and headed for the door behind him.
Is there someone else who might know?
Khoza halted, less antagonistic. Maybe.
Thobela waited.
For a long time Khoza hesitated. The Yellow Rose, he said, and opened the door. A high scream, almost human, rang out from inside. Behind Thobela the pigs surged urgently and pressed against the bars.
9.
T hobela drove to the Waterfront, deliberately choosing the road that ran along the mountain so that he had a view of the sea and the harbor. He needed thatspace and beauty. The role he had played had disturbed him and he couldnt understand why. Impersonation was nothing new to him. In his days in Europe it had been part of his life. The East Germans had coached him in it down to the finest detail. Living the Lie was his way of life for nearly a decade; the means justified by the goal of Liberty, of Struggle.
Had he changed this much?
He came around the bulging thigh of the mountain and a vista opened up below: ships and cranes, wide blue water, city buildings and freeways, and the coastline curving gracefully away to Blouberg. He wanted to turn to Pakamile and say: Look at that, that is the most beautiful city in the world, and see his son gaze in wonder at all this.
That is the difference, he thought. It felt as though the child was still with him, all around him.
Before Pakamile, before Miriam, he had been alone; he was the only judge of his actions and the only one affected by them. But the boy had moved his boundaries and widened his world so that everything he said and did had other implications. Lying to Lukas Khoza now made him as uncomfortable as if he had been explaining himself to Pakamile. Like the day they went walking in the hills of the farm and he wanted to teach his son to use the rifle with greater responsibility, a piece of equipment to treat with care.
The rifle had awakened the hunter in the boy. As they walked he pointed the unloaded rifle at birds, stones and trees, made shooting noises with his mouth. His thoughts went full circle until he asked: You were a soldier, Thobela?
Yes.
Did you shoot people? Asked without any macabre fascination: that is how boys are.
How did you answer that? How did you explain to a child how you lay in ambush with a snipers rifle in Munich, aiming at the enemy of your ally; how you pulled the trigger and saw the blood and brains spatter against the bright blue wall; how you slunk away like a thief in the night, like a coward. That was your war, your heroic deed.
How did you describe to a
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