When I saw their bodies the following morning I thought, I have done this. I have made this happen. I delivered the assassin to my sister’s door. I was not shocked by their deaths or the violence done to their bodies. I knew what bullets fired at close range could do to living tissue; I had done it myself, to my cousin’s horse. The only thing that shocked me was my own capacity to give away the very information that led to my sister’s death and to feel, in the aftermath, no remorse. They were, I told myself at the time, on the wrong side of history. About that, at least, I was right. About my own role, I can no longer be sure.
You see, Laura, how I played my own part — not as brave as you, but as wilful and headstrong, anxious to make a difference, or at least to appear useful to people more involved than I. Was I callous? Were we both?
In your last letter to me you write:
You know that I don’t ask for absolution, since that’s something you don’t believe in and therefore can’t give, or won’t give. I only offer this document as my version of the truth, a truth among many. Bernard’s truth would be different, but he can’t speak. Sam’s truth would be different still, and he may yet speak. If you refuse to absolve me, will you also refuse to judge me, or does judgement belong to a different order of ethics?
Come back. Come back that I may say it all to your face, that I may rethink my ethics, beg for absolution from you, prostrate myself in the name of reconciliation and love. You are all that I love now. I want only you.
*
As the earth spun you out of the eye of the sun, Lionel directed you to a point he recognized in a folded shadow of the Nuweveld Mountains. The clinic was a long low building in a tiny settlement of whitewashed plaster houses surrounded by a grove of acacia. Lights were on inside and a radio played. Timothy knocked at the largest of the houses, and his mother opened the door. She was a much older woman than you were expecting, short, in a neat smock dress. She kissed her son on both cheeks, then turned to Lionel with the same greeting.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘this is Lamia and Sam. They gave us a ride.’
‘And they’ve come all this way with you? Shame! Are you sick, my dear?’
Inside, the house was bright and incongruously modern. Timothy’s mother, Gloria, poured you tea and said that you could sleep in the clinic. ‘There are no patients now, and plenty of beds. You’re welcome here for as long as you need.’
‘Perhaps a night. Just to rest. I can pay,’ you offered.
‘That isn’t necessary. You’ve given the boys a ride. That’s payment enough. Won’t you have another slice of malva pudding? It’s always nicer the next day, I find.’
‘We won’t stay long. I’m taking Sam to Beaufort West tomorrow. To his aunt.’
‘Of course,’ Gloria said, as if Beaufort West were a town peopled solely by aunts awaiting the delivery of prodigal nephews.
Like Gloria’s house, the clinic’s rustic façade masked an up-to-the-minute interior equipped with consulting and waiting rooms, an operating theatre, and a dormitory with sixteen single beds. Gloria and Timothy helped you make up two of the beds, showed you the toilets and showers, the kitchen with facilities to make tea and coffee, and invited you to return to Gloria’s house for breakfast in the morning. Left alone, you put Sam to bed and looked at him square in the eyes.
‘Perhaps we should have a talk,’ you said. ‘Do you know where your aunt lives in Beaufort West?’
‘If I saw it. I don’t know the name of the street, but I’ve been there before. I know the way.’
‘And you’re sure she’s still living there?’
‘I think so.’
‘When I take you to your aunt, I’m going to leave you with her. And after that I’m going away. I’m leaving the country.’ Sam screwed up his face and kicked his feet against the bed. ‘People will ask you questions about what happened to Bernard. You must tell them what I did to him, the way I killed him. Only give me perhaps three days after I leave you, before you say anything.’ Sam looked up at you again. ‘Do you understand?’
The next morning, you left your notebooks and the last letter, every document important to you, in Timothy and Lionel’s care, telling the young men, these strangers you trusted, to deliver the papers to me in person when they could.
*
Between the clinic and Beaufort West there was only a dirt track that twisted through hills the colour of dead skin. It stopped a kilometre from town, north of the national route, so no one who did not know what to look for would ever find it. It appears on no map and does not exist today.
From the clinic approach, the white spire of the church appeared first, rising in defiance above the dusty trees. You arrived in town on a street of depressed storefronts and a petrol station where you parked alongside other rigs, glinting bright and aggressive in the summer heat. At a phone booth across the street you paged through the slim Beaufort West directory, looking for the name Sam gave you. When you found it, you phoned the number and after a single ring a woman answered.
‘Yeeees. Who’s this?’ The woman sounded suspicious.
‘Do you have a nephew named Sam or Samuel?’
‘Yes. What is this about exactly? Who is this?’ It was not a voice that seemed to care about a nephew.
‘Sam is with me. I wondered if I could bring him to you. His guardian is dead. Bernard — he’s dead. We’re here in town.’
‘No kidding,’ the woman said, with a flatness that surprised you.
‘May I bring him to you?’ You looked down at Sam, who had wedged himself into the phone booth next to you. He was playing with the cord, twisting it into an unnatural shape, and staring across the street at a fruit and vegetable vendor.
‘Who are you? Who is this?’ the woman snapped.
‘We’ll be there now.’
Sam’s aunt lived in a single-storey house with a broad covered veranda. She was standing on the steps as the two of you approached eating peaches, juice dripping down your arms. You hoped the woman would run out to embrace Sam, but instead she just stood waiting under the canopy, slouching in a pair of blue jeans and a dirty white shirt, arms crossed over her breasts. She had Sam’s sharp features, the same peaked nose and narrow eyes, but with a shock of ginger hair.
‘Sam? Is this your aunt? Is this the house?’
Sam looked at you and looked at the house and looked at the woman.
‘Don’t you know your auntie, Sam?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you want to come see your auntie?’
You watched Sam climb up the three shallow steps and stand in front of his aunt, one hand holding the peach to his mouth as he sucked the flesh from an exposed hemisphere of pit, the other dangling at his side. The woman put a hand on his head, smoothing his unruly hair. ‘Are you his guardian now?’ she asked, squinting. ‘Are you some kind of friend of my sister?’
‘No. I happened to find him. He said his parents were dead. He said you were his only relative.’
‘I guess that’s right. How do you know that bastard Bernard is dead anyway?’