There was traffic getting out of Cape Town and a backup in the Huguenot Tunnel. In the Hex River Valley a jack-knifed truck that had swerved to miss a herd of goats was blocking the road. In avoiding the animals the truck had hit their owner, who lay dead in the eastbound lane. With the delays it took them most of the day to drive the 450 kilometres to Beaufort West, the place that had never felt like home, but in which, according to the law, Sam now owned a house. Just before the turn-off to the Karoo National Park he took over the driving again, inching into town.
One kilometre over the limit and they’ll stop you, he said. If we’re going to get stopped I’d rather it was me.
The house looked just as it had a year earlier. Flocks of white pelargonium were blooming and the lawn had been recently mowed. Only the dust on the path, more dust and dead bougainvillea leaves on the veranda, and a film of dust on the windows and shutters betrayed less than a week of inattention. Sam ran his finger along the frame of the door and it came back with a yellow-brown mask of powder. Nature would take over with breathless speed. One had to be vigilant in all kinds of ways.
Opening the front door, the smell worked its way into his nostrils by degrees and then, once it had a firm grip, took hold of his entire body and squeezed in an awful embrace. Wait here, he said, panting and leaving Sarah in the front hall. It was the smell of blood overheated, faeces and urine and dust, gunpowder and drawers emptied out. At first he saw only components of disarray in Ellen’s bedroom, with a Rorschach stain of twin baying goats at the centre, marking the site of an explosion. If the police had come to take evidence there was no way of telling. All was disorder, objects shaken and mixed towards higher levels of entropy, chaos irreversible. He remembered the way his own house had looked after the police had disembowelled it.
He couldn’t help but see the situation through one of Clare’s recent books, in which a farmer returns home from a weekend away at an agricultural show to discover his wife’s dismembered body laid out on their bed, the limbs arranged in a question mark.
The Rorschach suddenly shifted, revealing itself as a three-headed dog in a lane between two houses. A window had been left open and the breeze was blowing dust and movement into the space. He picked his way across the room, put his hands on the burglar bars that were covered with a layer of grit, and looked out at the garden. The window closed with a sound like a stack of books falling to the floor as the dust along the sill shuddered and rearranged itself. Looking back at the stain he took a shallow breath and felt a twist of nausea. It would have to wait until the next day. He closed the door behind him. There’s no one here, he called to Sarah, and realized what a stupid thing it was to say.
Sam and Sarah’s number had been on a slip of paper taped to the refrigerator, the first on a list of emergency contacts, followed by Ellen Leroux’s doctor, colleagues at her school, a few friends, and women from the church. It was a short list. Sam was her only family, and as he looked at the other names, most of which meant little to him, he realized he was now completely alone in the world. There was no longer anyone to phone in the middle of the night, no one to go home to, no one who could be compelled under force of filiation if not of law to acknowledge a responsibility to him. Home had become a place he owned, emptied of people. The blood beat in his eardrums; to be without a home again filled Sam with a new kind of terror.
Why are there locks on the fridge and cupboards? Sarah stood in the middle of the kitchen looking hungry and scared. In his backpack Sam found a pouch containing half a dozen keys.
I don’t know which is which, he said. You’ll have to try them all. I think it’s the gold one for the fridge. Each of the cupboards has a different skeleton key.
They’re open, Sam. I just don’t understand why there are locks.
To keep your domestic from stealing food. It’s not unusual. I guess the locks on the cupboards are a little unusual, but you’d struggle to buy a fridge or freezer in this country without built-in locks on its doors. It’s just the way things are.
Was your aunt a racist?
Ellen Catharina Leroux, who only locked the refrigerator and freezer and cupboards when she went on holiday, who had a pillow in the lounge embroidered with a line of dancing Sambo figures, who had never employed a domestic because she thought it was demeaning to everyone concerned, who had started a programme tutoring township children on the weekends, would have been horrified by the suggestion that she was a racist.
On the kitchen counter were three red tins of Christmas cookies. There was a turkey in the freezer, and the pantry glowed with jars of home-made konfyt, palegreen jewels of melon rind suspended in syrup. Sam’s bedroom was already made up and in the closet he found wrapped gifts for him, as well as two small parcels for Sarah, left undisturbed by his aunt’s attackers. His grandmother’s jewellery box was still in its hiding place, the few small pieces untouched.
Sarah had a shower to cool off and Sam sat on his bed swallowing down the sobs as they came. When he heard Sarah getting out of the shower he went to the kitchen, splashed his face with cold water and dried it with a tea towel.
Even the shower door has locks inside, Sarah said, shivering now that the sun had gone down.
I never noticed.
Why would you want to lock yourself inside your shower?
In case someone breaks in. In case they get into the bathroom while you’re in the shower and you don’t know what else to do but lock yourself into an even smaller space and hope that whoever it is will just give up and go away. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers, Sarah.
Are you okay?
I was just washing my face. I’ll make us some dinner. Sit down. Wouldn’t you like to get us a drink? There’s wine in the pantry, and whisky, unless they’ve taken it. Glasses are in the cupboard next to the sink.
Although Ellen had a panic button in the kitchen, she did not have one in her bedroom. All the locks in the world hadn’t saved her. Whoever did it had forced the back door, shot her in her bed, taken her television, stereo, microwave oven, and a watch with no significant value, fleeing before the police or the security company’s guards could arrive. On Sam’s direction the company had replaced the door before he and Sarah arrived.
The police had assured Sam they were following up leads, but he was not hopeful; it was a town with a reputation for corruption and administrative sloth and there was little expectation that the culprit or culprits would ever be caught.
She wasn’t raped, he told Sarah the next day, after coming back from identifying the body. At least there’s that. Her face is terrible. She was probably pleading for her life and then he just got tired of it and shot her.