'Mr Vercueil takes care of me. Mr Vercueil is my right-hand man. Come here, Mr Vercueil.'
I reached out and found Vercueil's trouser-leg, then his hand, the bad hand with the curled fingers. With the numb, clawlike grip of the old I clung to it.
'In Godsnaam,' said the detective somewhere far away. In God's name: mere fulmination, or a curse on the pair of us? My grip broke, I began to slide away.
A word appeared before me: Thabanchu, Thaba Nchu. I tried to concentrate. Nine letters, anagram for what? With a great effort I placed the b first. Then I was gone.
I awoke thirsty, groggy, full of pain. The clockface stared at me but I could make no sense of the hands. The house was silent with the silence of deserted houses.
Thabanchu: banch? bath? With stupid hands I unwrapped the sheet from around me. Must I have a bath?
But my feet did not take me to the bathroom. Holding to the rail, bent over, groaning, I went: downstairs and dialled the Guguletu number. On and on the phone rang. Then at last someone answered, a child, a girl. 'Is Mr Thabane there?' I asked. 'No.' 'Then can I speak to Mrs Mkubuleki – no, not Mrs Mkubuleki, Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Mrs Mkubukeli does not live here.' 'But do you know Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Yes, I know him.' 'Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Yes,' 'Who are you?' 'I am Lily.' Lee-lee. 'Are you the only one at home?' 'There is my sister too.' 'How old is your sister?' 'She is six.' 'And you – how old are you?' 'Ten.' 'Can you take a message to Mrs Mkubukeli, Lily?' 'Yes.' 'It is about her brother Mr Thabane. She must tell Mr Thabane to be careful. Say it is very important. Mr Thabane must be careful. My name is Mrs Curren. Can you write that down? And this is my number. ' I read out the number, spelled my name. Mrs Curren: nine letters, anagram for what?
Vercueil knocked and came in. 'Do you want something to eat?' he said.
'I am not hungry. But help yourself to anything you can find.'
I wanted to be left alone. But he lingered, eyeing me curiously. I was sitting up in bed, gloves on my hands, the writing-pad on my knees. For half an hour I had sat with the page blank before me.
'I am just: waiting for my hands to warm up,' I said.
But it was not cold fingers that kept me from writing. It was the pills, which I take more of now, and more often.
They are like smoke-flares. I swallow them and they release a fog inside me, a fog of extinction. I cannot take the pills and go on with the writing. So without pain no writing: a new and terrible rule. Except that, when I have taken the pills, nothing is terrible any more, everything is indifferent, everything is the same.
Nevertheless I do write. In the dead of night, with Vercueil asleep downstairs, I take up this letter to tell you one more thing about that 'John,' that sullen boy I never took to. I want to tell you that, despite my dislike of him, he is with me more clearly, more piercingly than Bheki has ever been. He is with me or I am with him: him or the trace of him. It is the middle of the night but it is the grey of his last morning too. I am here in my bed but I am there in Florence 's room too, with its one window and one door and no other way out. Outside the door men are waiting, crouched like hunters, to present the boy with bis death. In his lap he holds the pistol that, for this interval, keeps the hunters at bay, that was his and Bheki's great secret, that was going to make men of them; and beside him I stand or hover. The barrel of the pistol is between his knees; he strokes it up and down. He is listening to the murmur of voices outside, and I listen with him. He is readying himself for the smoke that will, choke his lungs, the kick that will burst the door open, the torrent of fire that will sweep him away. He is readying himself to raise the pistol in that instant: and fire the one shot he will have time to fire into the heart of the light.
His eyes are unblinking, fixed on the door through which he is going to leave the world. His mouth is dry but he is not afraid. His heart: beats steadily like a fist in his chest clenching and unclenching.
His eyes are open and mine, though I write, are shut. My eyes are shut in order to see.
Within this interval there is no time, though his heart beats time. I am here in my room in the night but I am also with him, all the time, as I am with you across the seas, hovering. A hovering time, but not eternity. A time being, a suspension, before the return of the time in which the door bursts open and we face, first he, then I, the great white glare.
IV
I have had a dream, of Florence, a dream or vision. In the dream I see her striding again down Government Avenue holding Hope by the hand and carrying Beauty on her back. All three of them wear masks.
I am there too, with a crowd of people of all kinds and conditions gathered around me. The air is festive. I am to provide a show.
But Florence does not stop to watch. Gaze fixed ahead, she passes as if through a congregation of wraiths.
The eyes of her mask are like eyes in pictures from the ancient Mediterranean: large, oval, with the pupil in the centre: the almond eyes of a goddess.
I stand in the middle of the avenue opposite the Parliament buildings, circled by people, doing my tricks with fire. Over me tower great oaks. But my mind is not on my tricks. I am intent on Florence. Her dark coat, her dull dress have fallen away. In a white slip ruffled by the wind, her feet bare, her head bare, her right breast bare, she strides past, the one child, masked, naked, trotting quickly beside her, the other stretching an arm out over her shoulder, pointing.
Who is this goddess who comes in a vision with uncovered breast cutting the air? It is Aphrodite, but not smile-loving Aphrodite, patroness of pleasures: an older figure, a figure of urgency, of cries in the dark, short and sharp, of blood and earth, emerging for an instant, showing herself, passing.
From the goddess conies no call, no signal. Her eye is open and is blank. She sees and does not see.
Burning, doing my show, I stand transfixed. The flames flowing from me are blue as ice. I feel no pain.
It is a vision from last night's dream-time but also from outside time. Forever the goddess is passing, forever, caught in a posture of surprise and regret, I do not follow. Though I peer and peer into the vortex from which visions come, the wake of the goddess and her god-children remains empty, the woman who should follow behind not there, the woman with serpents of name in her hair who beats her arms and cries and dances.
I related the dream to Vercueil.
'Is it real?' he asked,
'Real? Of course not. It isn't even authentic. Florence has nothing to do with Greece. Figures in dreams have another kind of import. They are signs, signs of other things.'
'Were they real? Was she real?' he repeated, bringing me up short, refusing to be deflected. 'What else did you see?'
'What else? Is there more? Do you know?' I said more softly, feeling my way after him now.
He shook his head, baffled.
'All the days you have known me,' I said, 'I have been standing on the river-bank awaiting my turn. I am waiting for someone to show me the way across. Every minute of every day I am here, waiting. That is what else I see. Do you see it too?'
He said nothing.
'The reason I fight against going back to hospital is that in hospital they will put me to sleep. That is the expression they use for animals, as a kindness, but they may as well use it for people. They will put me into a sleep without dreams. They will feed me mandragora till I grow drowsy and fall, into the river and am drowned and washed away. That way I will never cross. I cannot allow it to happen. I have come too far. I cannot have my eyes closed.'