Mine.
How I have failed you.
~ ~ ~
*
TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION
19 JUNE 1996, GEORGE
VICTIM: Jimmy Sukwini
VIOLATION: Killed in ANC Bomb Attack
TESTIMONY FROM: Ethel Sukwini (Wife)
On continuation.
CHAIRPERSON: And on the night of the explosion?
MRS SUKWINI: I did not hear about it until sometime the next day. My husband worked the night shift and when someone phoned to say that the refinery had blown up I knew in my heart that he was dead. In my heart I knew already something was wrong before my friend phoned to say what the news was about the explosion.
CHAIRPERSON: Can you tell us, Mrs Sukwini, how your life changed after your husband’s death?
MRS SUKWINI: Mr Chairman, this is the worst thing that can happen. I don’t think I have to [indistinct] very hard for us after he died and we went to live with my parents. I was missing him all the time and my girls were missing their father. I still miss him. He was a good man. I understand why the comrades did what they did but I think maybe it should not have been like this. I don’t know. I was not a part of these things. I am only a teacher.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mrs Sukwini. Is there anything else you would like to say?
MRS SUKWINI: Only that I am still waiting for someone to come to me, to say to me that they are sorry, that they wish for me and for my daughters that my husband did not die. I am still waiting. Please, will you tell them to come find me?
1989
The blast and the flash woke the boy and when he looked back to the north he could see the mountains on fire and a moment later her face was at the window of the truck and she was pointing a gun at him. Then she recognized him and put down the gun and said Open the door. They had known each other for a long time. Except for his dead parents he didn’t know anyone better in the whole world than Laura.
What are you doing here? she asked, looking at the boy’s face in the dark. Where’s Bernard?
He turned on the headlights and pointed.
Laura turned off the lights and perched on the steps leading up to the cab with the door open. Is he dead?
The boy nodded. He was sleeping. The truck went into gear.
We can’t leave him there.
Laura climbed down and together they went around to the back of the truck and they had to lift their shirts to cover their noses. The clouds were clearing and there was enough light from the moon for her to see the bodies inside and the boy didn’t have to tell her who they were because Laura knew the kind of work Bernard did. So let’s put him back here, she said, and together they lifted him up and carried him to the back of the truck and pushed him inside, and Bernard rolled against another body with its left arm missing and its hair burned off and the lips were curling away from the teeth. They closed the doors, locked the back, and rubbed their palms against the ground.
The boy tried to work out how long it had been since they’d seen each other. It was definitely before his parents died, so maybe no more than seven months, but Laura had been away and she looked different, her hair was short against her head and her face was like a carving and her eyes were darker. She hadn’t come to the funeral. At the service he’d sat alone with Mrs Gush, the woman who took care of him in the days after the accident. He had waited for Laura to arrive. He’d asked Mrs Gush, Did you tell her? and the woman said they had tried to contact Laura and left word, but did not reach her directly. There were people from the university who were his father’s fellow students and professors who came past and shook his hand. And then there was his father’s mentor Professor William Wald with his dark hair and grey beard, and he came very gently over to the boy and took his hand and whispered what good people his parents were and what an extraordinary woman his mother was, and how sorry and sad he was that they were gone. The boy knew that Professor Wald was also Laura’s father, and this made the boy trust him. The man had put his hands on the boy’s head and said if the boy needed anything at all he just had to ask, and if there was no one else to look after him then something could be done about that. Professor Wald gave Mrs Gush a funny look and she gave the Professor a funny look, and then Professor Wald went away with his tall wife and the boy never saw the Professor again because Bernard took over but now Bernard was dead.
There were no grandparents since all the boy’s grandparents were dead. His father had no siblings and his mother’s sister Ellen said she couldn’t come Because it’s too far away and I can’t afford to come, sweetie, so you’ll have to forgive me and I’ll see you soon, okay? After the funeral Mrs Gush told him that although Ellen had been asked to look after him, she had refused — it would be too great a burden. Bernard was the only other choice.
The memorial was at the university because the officials thought that was what he’d want although the boy knew that his parents would have preferred everyone to gather on the beach at Camps Bay to sing, and then lift them up to the air and let them float away, but in a way it didn’t matter because their bodies had already gone into the air. No remains recovered, the report said on its funny paper. He could tell that the flowers were leftovers from some other function like a banquet. They looked too happy with their big scarlet pink faces, and instead of live music there was a tape recording of some low and crying organ and the sound wobbled and it was the kind of song his parents would have called music to dig death by. And throughout the music and the man at the podium talking and talking and talking and raising up his eyes to the ceiling the boy kept turning around to look for Laura who was the only person in the world at that moment he wanted to see. But she never came and he only saw her again that night at the truck when she pointed the gun at his face.
Sam
Clare sends me away for a week, claiming other responsibilities. Some days while Greg goes to work I stay at his house, lying by the pool and listening to the recordings of my interviews. Other days I go to his gallery on Loop Street, where I sit in one of the vacant offices and work on the materials I’ve gathered, or I explore the city over long lunch breaks while Greg deals with his artists. One day I go to buy a car, agreeing with Sarah over the phone that it makes no sense to carry on renting until she arrives in December. A car is a car, she says, one is as good as another, and she trusts my judgement.
On Wednesday I walk all the way up Long Street until it runs into Kloof. I drop off some dry cleaning and go to a movie in the middle of the afternoon. As I’m coming out of the cinema and waiting to cross the street, a young man approaches me. He’s polite, well dressed, but his clothes are dirty and he smells.