'Tell this to your daughter,' said Vercueil quietly. 'She will come.'
'No.'
'Tell her right now. Phone her in. America. Tell her you need her here.'
'No.'
'Then don't tell her afterwards, when it is too late. She won't forgive you.'
The rebuke was like a slap in the face.
'There are things you don't understand,' I said. '1 have no intention of summoning my daughter back. I may long for her but I don't want her here. That is why it is called longing. It has to go a long way. To the ends of the earth.'
To his credit, he was not deflected by this nonsense. 'You have to choose,' he said. 'Tell her or don't tell her.'
'I won't tell her, you can be sure,' I said (what a liar I am!). Something was rising in my voice, a tone I could not control. 'Let me remind you, this is not a normal country. People can't just come and go as they wish.'
He did nothing to help me.
'My daughter will not come back till things have changed here. She has made a vow. She will not come back to South Africa as you and she and I know it. She will certainly not apply to – what can I call them? – those people for permission to come. She will come back when they are hanging by their heels from the lamp-posts, she says. She will come back then to throw stones at their bodies and dance in the streets.'
Vercueil showed his teeth in a broad grin. Yellow horse-teeth. An old horse.
'You don't believe me,' I said, 'but perhaps one day you will meet her, and then you will see. She is like iron. I am not going to ask her to go back on her vows.'
'You are like iron too,' he said, to me.
A silence fell Between us. Inside me something broke.
'Something broke inside me when you said that,' I said, the words just coming. I did not know how to go on. 'If I were made of iron, surely I would not break so easily,' I said.
The four women we had met in the lift crossed the lot, escorted by a little man in a blue suit and white skullcap. He ushered them into a car and drove them off.
'Did your daughter do something, that she had to leave?' said Vercueil.
'No, she didn't do anything. She had simply had enough. She went away; she didn't come back. She made another life for herself. She got married and started a family. It was the best thing to do, the sensible thing. '
'But she hasn't forgotten. '
'No, she hasn't forgotten. Though who am I to say? Perhaps one does forget, slowly. I can't imagine it, but perhaps it does happen. She says, 'I was born in Africa, in South Africa.' I have heard her use that phrase in conversation. It sounds to me like the first half of a sentence. There ought to be a second half, but it never comes. So it hangs in the air like a lost twin. 'I was born in South Africa and will never see it again.' 'I was born in South Africa and will one day return.' Which is the lost twin?'
'So she is an exile?'
'No, she is not an exile. I am the exile.'
He was learning to talk to me. He was learning to lead me on. I felt an urge to interrupt: 'It is such a pleasure!' I wanted to say. After long silence it is such a pleasure: tears come to the eyes.
'I don't know whether you have children. I don't even know whether it is the same for a man. But when you bear a child from your own body you give your life to that child. Above all to the first child, the firstborn. Your life is no longer with you, it is no longer yours, it is with the child. That is why we do not really die: we simply pass on our life, the life that was for a while in us, and are left behind. I am just a shell, as you can see, the shell my child has left behind. It doesn't t matter what happens to me. It doesn't matter what happens' to old people. Still – I say the words, I cannot expect you to understand, but never mind – it is frightening to be on the edge of leaving. Even if it is only the touch of fingertip to fingertip: one does not want to let go.'
Florence and her son were crossing the car-park now, walking swiftly towards us.
'You should have gone to stay with her,' said Vercueil.
I smiled. 'I can't afford to die in America,' I said. 'No one can, except Americans.'
Florence got vehemently into the back seat; the car rocked as she settled down.
'Did you find him?' I asked.
'Yes,' she replied. Her face was like thunder. Bheki got in beside her.
'And?' I said.
'Yes, we found him, he is in this hospital,' said Florence.
'And he is well?'
'Yes, he is well'
'Good,' I snapped. 'Thank you for telling me.'
We drove off in silence. Only when we got home did Florence have her say. 'They have put him with the old men in the hospital. It is too terrible. There is one who is mad, who is shouting; and swearing all the time, the nurses are afraid to go near him. They should not put a child in a room like that. It is not a hospital where he is, it is a waiting-room for the funeral.'
A waiting-room for the funeraclass="underline" I could not get the words out of my mind. I tried to eat but had no appetite.
I found Vercueil In the woodshed doing something to a shoe by candlelight. 'I am going back to the hospital,' I said: 'Will you come with me?'
The ward Florence had described was at the far end of the old building, reached by going down to the basement, past the kitchens, then up again.
It was true. A man with a shaven skull, thin as a rake, was sitting up in bed, beating his palms on his thighs and chanting In a loud voice. A broad black strap passed around his middle and under the bed. What was he singing? The words belonged to no tongue I knew of. I stood in the doorway unable to enter, fearing that at any moment he would fix me with his gaze, stop singing, raise one of those skeletal black arms and point.
'DTs,' said Vercueil. 'He's got the DTs.'
'No, It's worse than that,' I whispered.
Vercueil took my elbow. I let him lead me in.
There was a long table down the middle of the ward with a jumble of trays on it. Someone was coughing soggily as though his lungs were full of milk. 'In the corner,' said Vercueil.
He did not know who we were, nor did I easily recognize the boy whose blood had stuck my fingers together. His head was bandaged, his face puffy, his left arm strapped against his chest. He wore pale blue hospital pyjamas.
'Don't talk,' I said. 'We have just come to make sure you are all right.'
He opened the swollen lips and closed them again.
'Do you remember me? I am the woman Bheki's mother works for. I was watching this morning: I saw everything that happened. You must get well quickly. I have brought you some fruit.' On the cabinet I placed the fruit: an apple, a pear.
His expression did not change.
I did not like him. I do not like him. I look into my heart and nowhere do I find any trace of feeling for him. As there are people to whom one spontaneously warms, so there are people to whom one Is, from, the first, cold. That is all. This boy is not like Bheki. He has no charm. There is something stupid about him, something deliberately stupid, obstructive, intractable. He is one of those boys whose voices deepen too early, who by the age of twelve have left childhood behind and turned brutal, knowing. A simplified person, simplified in every way: swifter, nimbler, more tireless than real people without doubts or scruples, without humour, ruthless, innocent. While he lay in the street, while I thought he was dying, I did what I could for him. But, to be candid, I would rather I had spent myself on someone else.
I remember a cat I once nursed, an old ginger torn whose jaw was locked shut by an abscess. I took him in when he was too weak to resist, fed him milk through a tube, dosed him with antibiotics. When he got back his strength I set him free, but continued to put out food for him. For a year, on and off, I saw him in the neighbourhood; for a year the food was taken. Then he vanished, for good. In all this time he treated me without compromise as one of the enemy. Even when he was at his weakest his body was hard, tense, resistant under my hand. Around this boy I now felt the same wall of resistance. Though his eyes were open, he did not see; what I said he did not hear.