Florence 's glasses flashed, she had something to say, but I cut her short. 'Please! They are not going to stay.'
Though I flushed the toilet several times, a smell lingered, both sickly sweet and foul. I tossed the floor-mat out in the rain.
Later, when the children were in the kitchen with Florence having breakfast, I came downstairs again. Without preamble I addressed Bheki,
'I hear you and your friend have been sleeping in my car. Why didn't you ask my permission?'
Silence fell. Bheki did not look up. Florence went on cutting bread.
'Why didn't you ask my permission? Answer me!'
The little girl, stopped chewing, stared at me.
Why was I behaving in this ridiculous fashion? Because I was irritated. Because I was tired of being used. Because it was my car they were sleeping in. My car, my house: mine: I was not yet gone.
Then, fortunately, Vercueil made his appearance and the tension was broken. He passed through the kitchen, glancing neither left nor right, and out on to the veranda. I followed. The dog was leaping up at him, bounding, frisking, full of joy. It leapt at me too, streaking my skirt with its wet paws. How silly one looks fending off a dog!
'Will you, get your friend out of the house, please,' I said to him.
Staring up into an overcast sky, he made no reply.
'Get her out at once or I will get her out!' I shouted in a fury.
He ignored me.
'Help me,' I ordered Florence.
The woman lay face down on her bed of cushions, a patch of wetness at the corner of her mouth. Florence tugged her by the arm. Groggily she stood up. Half guiding, half pushing, Florence propelled her out of the house. On the pathway Vercueil caught up with us. 'This is too much!' I snapped at him.
The two boys were already out on the street with, their bicycle. Pretending not to notice our squabble, they set off up Schoonder Street, Bheki hunched on the crossbar, his friend pedalling.
In a hoarse voice, in a rambling stream of obscenity, the woman began to curse Florence. Florence gave me a malicious look. 'Rubbish person,' she said, and stamped off.
'I don't ever want to see this woman again,' I said to Vercueil.
The bicycle with the two boys on it reappeared over the crest of Schoonder Street and raced towards us, Bheki's friend pedalling hard. On their heels followed the yellow police van from yesterday.
A light truck stood parked at the curbside, with pipes and rods in the back, plumbing materials. There was room enough for the bicycle to pass. But as the yellow van drew level with the boys, the near-side door swung open and slapped them sideways. The bicycle wobbled and went out of control. I had a glimpse of Bheki sliding down, his arms above his head, of the other boy standing on the pedals, averting his face, stretching out a hand, in a warding gesture. Above the sound of the traffic from Mill Street I heard quite clearly the thud of a body stopped In mid-flight, a deep, surprised 'Ah!' of exhaled breath, the crash of the bicycle colliding with the plumber's truck. 'God!' I screamed in a shrill voice that, hanging In the air, I did not recognize as my own. Time seemed to stop and then resume, leaving a gap: in one instant the boy put out a hand to save himself, in the next he was part of a tangle in the gutter. Then the echo of my scream, dwindled and the scene reassembled itself in all its familiarity: Schoonder Street on a quiet weekday morning, with a canary-yellow van just turning the corner.
A dog, a retriever, came trotting up to investigate. Vercueil's dog sniffed the retriever, while the retriever, ignoring him, sniffed at the pavement, then began to lick it. I wanted to move but could not. There was a coldness In me, my limbs felt distant, the word fainting occurred to me, though I have never fainted in my life. This country!, I thought. And then: Thank God she is out!
A gate opened and a man in blue work-clothes appeared. He kicked at the retriever, which sprang away in hurt surprise. 'Jesus!' said the man. He bent down and began to thread, limbs through the frame of the bicycle.
I approached, shaking. ' Florence!' I called. But there was no sign of Florence.
Straddling the bodies, the man lifted the bicycle aside.
Bheki lay under the other boy. There was a deep frown on his face; he wet his lips with his tongue over and over; his eyes were closed. Vercueil's dog tried to lick him. 'Go away!' I whispered, and gave it a push with my foot. It wagged its tail.
A woman appeared at my elbow, drying her hands on a towel. 'Are they newspaper boys?' she said. 'Are they newspaper boys, do you know?' I shook my head.
With an uncertain air, the man in blue straddled the bodies again. What he should have done was to lift the dead weight of the other boy, who lay face down across Bheki. But he did not want to, nor did I want him to. There was something wrong, something unnatural in the way the boy lay.
'I'll go and phone for an ambulance, ' said the woman.
I bent and raised the boy's limp arm. 'Wait!' said the man. 'Let's be careful'
Coming erect, I was overtaken with such dizziness that I had to close my eyes.
Clasping him under the shoulders, he dragged the boy off Bheki and laid him out on the pavement. Bheki opened his eyes.
'Bheki,' I said. Bheki gave me a calm, incurious look.
'Everything is all right,' I said. From entirely peaceful eyes he continued to regard, me, accepting the lie, letting it pass. 'The ambulance is on its way,' I said.
Then Florence was there, kneeling beside her son, speaking to him urgently, stroking his head. He began to reply: slow, mumbled words. Her hand paused as she listened. 'They crashed into the back of this truck,' I explained. 'It's my truck,' said the man in blue. 'The police pushed them,' I said: 'it's appalling, quite appalling. It was those same two policemen who were here yesterday, I am sure.'
Florence slid a hand under Bheki's head. Slowly he sat up. One shoe was off; a trouser-leg was torn open and wet with blood. Gingerly he held aside the torn material and peered at the wound. His palms were raw, the skin hung in strips.
'The ambulance is on its way,' I said. 'We do not need the ambulance,' said Florence.
She was wrong. The other boy lay sprawled on his back now. With his jacket the plumber was trying to staunch the blood that streamed down his face. But the flow would not stop. He lifted the wadded jacket and for an instant, before it darkened with blood again, I saw that the flesh across the forehead hung open in a loose flap as if sliced with a butcher's knife. Blood flowed in a sheet into the boy's eyes and made his hair glisten; it dripped on to the pavement; it: was everywhere. I did not know blood could be so dark, so thick, so heavy. What a heart he must have, I thought, to pump that blood and go on pumping!
'Is the ambulance coming?' said the plumber. 'Because I don't know how to stop this.' He was sweating; he changed position and his shoe, soggy with blood, squelched.
You were eleven, I remember, when you sliced your thumb in the bread machine. I rushed you to the emergency section at Groote Schuur. We sat on a bench waiting our turn, you with your thumb wrapped in lint, pressing it to stop the bleeding. 'What's going to happen to me?' you whispered. 'They will, give you an injection and put in stitches,' I whispered back. 'Just a few stitches, just a few pricks.'
It was early on a Saturday evening, but already the casualties were trickling in. A man in white shoes and a rumpled black suit spat blood steadily into a dish. A youth on a stretcher, naked to the waist, his belt open, held a wad of sodden cloth to his belly. Blood on the floor, blood on the benches. What did our timid thimbleful count for beside this torrent of black blood? Child Snowdrop lost in the cavern of blood, and her mother lost too. A country prodigal of blood. Florence 's husband in yellow oilskins and boots, wading through blood. Oxen keeling over, their throats slit, hurling last jets into the air like whales. The dry earth soaking up the blood of its creatures. A land that drinks rivers of blood and is never sated.