Slowly they withdrew and, like crows, stood waiting.
I had to empty my bladder. Yielding, I urinated where I lay. Thank God for the cold, I thought, thank God for the numbness: all things work together toward an easy birth.
The boys came closer again. I awaited the prying of their hands, not caring. The roar of wheels lulled me; like a grub in a hive, I was absorbed into the hum of the spinning world. The air dense with noise. Thousands of wings passing and repassing without touching. How was there space for them all? How is there space in the skies for the souls of all the departed? Because, says Marcus Aurelius, they fuse one with another: they burn and fuse and so are returned to the great cycle.
Death after death. Bee-ash.
The flap of the quilt was drawn back. I felt light on my eyelids, coldness too on my cheeks where the tears had run.
Something pressed between my lips, was forced between my gums. I gagged and pulled away. All three children were clustered over me now in the gloom; there may have been others too, behind them. What were they doing? I tried to push the hand away but it pressed all the harder. An ugly noise came from my throat, a dry rasp like wood splitting. The hand withdrew. 'Don't -' I said; but my palate was sore, it was hard to form words.
What did I want to say? Don't do that!? Don't you see I have nothing?? Don't you have any mercy?? What nonsense. Why should there be mercy in the world? I thought of beetles, those big black beetles with the humped backs, dying, waving their legs feebly, and ants pouring over them, gnawing at the soft places, the joints, the eyes, tearing away the beetle-flesh.
It was a stick, nothing more, a stick a few inches long that he had forced into my mouth. I could taste the grains of dirt it left behind.
With the tip of the stick he lifted my upper lip. I pulled back and tried to spit. Impassively he stood up. With a bare foot he kicked, and a little rain of dust and pebbles struck my face.
A car passed, outlining the children in its headlights. They began to move off down Buitenkant Street. Darkness returned.
Did these things really happen? Yes, these things happened. There is no more to be said about it. They happened a stone's throw from Breda Street and Schoonder Street and Vrede Street, where a century ago the patricians of Cape Town gave orders that there be erected spacious homes for themselves and their descendants in perpetuity, foreseeing nothing of the day when, in their shadows, the chickens would come home to roost.
There was a fog in my head, a grey confusion. I shivered; paroxysms of yawning passed over me. For a while I was nowhere.
Then something was sniffing at my face: a dog. I tried to ward it off but it found a way past my fingers. So I yielded, thinking, there are worse things than a dog's wet nose, its eager breath. I let it lick my face, lick my lips, lick up the salt of my tears. Kisses, if one wanted to look at them that way.
Someone was with the dog. Did I recognize the smell? Was it Vereueil, or did all street-wanderers smell of mouldering leaves, of underwear rotting in the ash-heap? 'Mr Vereueil?' I croaked, and the dog whined with excitement, giving a great sneeze straight into my face.
A match flared. Yes, it was Vercueil, hat and all. 'Who put you here?' he asked. 'Myself,' I said, past the raw place on my palate. The match died. Tears came again, which the dog eagerly consumed.
With his high shoulderblades and his chest narrow as a gull's, I would not have guessed that Vereueil could be so strong. But he lifted me, wet patch and all, and carried me. I thought: forty years since I was last carried by a man. The misfortune of a tall woman. Will this be how the story ends: with being carried in strong arms across the sands, through the shallows, past the breakers, into the darker depths?
We were away from the flyover, in blessed stillness. How much more bearable everything was suddenly becoming! Where was the pain? Was the pain in a better humour too? 'Don't go back to Schoonder Street,' I ordered.
We passed under a streetlight. I saw the strain in the muscles of his neck, heard his breath coming fast. 'Put me down for a minute,' I said. He put me down and rested. When would the time come when the jacket fell away and great wings sprouted from his shoulders?
Up Buitenkant Street he bore me, across Vrede Street, street of peace, and, treading more slowly, groping before each step, into a dark wooded space. Through branches I glimpsed the stars.
He set me down.
'I am so happy to see you,' I said, the words coming from my heart, heartfelt. And then: 'I was attacked by some children before you came. Attacked or violated or explored, I don't know which. That is why I talk so strangely. They pushed a stick into my mouth, I still don't understand why. What pleasure could it have given them?'
'They wanted your gold teeth,' he said. 'They get money for gold from the pawnshops.'
'Gold teeth? How strange. I haven't any gold teeth. I took my teeth out anyway. Here they are.'
From somewhere in the dark he fetched, cardboard, a carton box folded flat. He spread it and helped me to Me down. Then without haste, without ceremony, he lay down too with his back to me. The dog settled between our legs.
'Do you want some of the quilt?' I said.
'I'm OK.'
Time passed.
'I'm sorry, but I'm terribly thirsty,' I whispered. 'Is there no water here?'
He got up and came back with a bottle. I smelled it: sweet wine, the bottle half full. 'It's all I've got,' he said. I drank it down. It did nothing for my thirst, but in the sky the stars began to swim. Everything grew remote: the smell of damp earth, the cold, the man beside me, my own body. Like a crab after a long day, tired, folding its claws, even the pain went to sleep. I swooped back into darkness.
When I awoke he had turned and flung an arm across my neck. I could have freed myself, but preferred not to disturb him. So while by slow degrees the new day broke, I lay face to face with him, not stirring. His eyes opened once, alert, like an animal's. 'I am not gone,' I murmured. The eyes closed.
The thought came: Whom, of all beings on earth, do I know best at this hour? Him. Every hair of his beard, every crease of his forehead known to me. Him, not you. Because he is here, beside me, now.
Forgive me. Time is short, I must trust my heart and tell the truth. Sightless, ignorant, I follow where the truth takes me.
'Are you awake?' I murmured.
'Yes.'
'Both those boys are dead now,' I said. 'They have killed them both. Did you know?'
'I know.'
'You know what happened at the house?'
'Yes.'
'Do you mind if I talk?'
'Talk.'
'Let me tell you: I met Florence 's brother the day Bheki died – brother or cousin or whatever. An educated man. I told him how I wished Bheki had never got involved in -what shall I call it? – the struggle. 'He is just a child,' I said: 'He isn't ready. But for that friend of his, he would never have been drawn in.'
'Later I spoke to him again on the telephone. I told him frankly what I thought of the comradeship for which both those children have now died. A mystique of death, I called it. I blamed people like Florence and him for doing nothing to discourage it.
'He heard me out civilly. I was entitled to my opinions, he said. I did not change his mind.
'But now I ask myself: What right have I to opinions about comradeship or anything else? What right have I to wish Bheki and his friend had kept out of trouble? To have opinions in a vacuum, opinions that touch no one, is, it seems to me, nothing. Opinions must be heard by others, heard and weighed, not merely listened to out of politeness. And to be weighed they must have weight. Mr Thabane does not weigh what I say. It has no weight to him. Florence does not even hear me. To Florence what goes on in my head is a matter of complete indifference, I know that.'