Dead Before Dying

“I didn't become a cop because my father was one.”

“Oh?”

She was so clever. She had caught him out. But not again. He said nothing. He dug his hand into his jacket pocket looking for his cigarettes. No, it was too soon. He took his hand out, folded his arms across his chest again.

“Was he a good policeman?”

Why this obsession with his father?

“I don’t know. Yes. He was of another era. His people— the uniforms, white and brown— were fond of him.”

He hadn't even discussed his father with Lara.

“But I think they were scared of him.”

He had never spoken about his father to Blackie Swart. Or to his mother or his sister. Did he want to talk about him with anyone?

“He had a racial slur for every hue, for every racial classification in the crazy country. The Malay people were not coloreds to him. He called them hotnots. To their faces. His hotnots. ‘Come along, my hotnot.’ And Xhosas and Zulus were not blacks. They were kaffers. Never ‘my kaffers.’ Always ‘bloody kaffers.’ In his time there were no black constables, only black criminals. More and more as they moved in from the Eastern Cape looking for work. He hated them.”

He saw himself in the black armchair, the big man with the folded arms, bowed head, and somewhat untidy hair, the brown jacket and trousers, the unpolished brown shoes, the tie. He heard himself speaking. As if he stood outside his body. Talk, Mat Joubert, talk. That’s what she wants. Give her the skeletons. Let her dissect the remains of your life with her learning. Bleed out the filth.

“I also did at first, because he did. Before I started to read and had friends whose parents had different views. And then I simply . . . despised my father, his narrow, simplistic point of view, his useless hate. It was part of a . . . process.”

For a moment it was quiet in the dungeons of his mind.

The pain pressed down on his shoulders. He was at his father’s grave and he knew he’d hated the man. And no one knew it. But his father had suspected it.

“I hated him . . . Doctor.” He deliberately added her title, creating a distance. She wanted to know. She wanted to hear what specters were wandering about in his head. He would tell her. He would fucking tell her. Before her techniques and her voice and her greater knowledge winkled it out of him . . . “I hated him because he was what I could never be. And because he resented it and threw it back in my face. He was so strong and . . . fleet-footed. On a Friday evening he would make the brown constables line up in the street behind the station. ‘Come, my hotnots, the one who reaches the lamppost before I do can go fuck this weekend.’ He was in his fifties and he always beat them. And I was slow. He said I was merely lazy. He said I must play rugby because that would make a man of me. I started swimming. I swam as if my life depended on it. In the water I wasn'’t big and clumsy and ugly. He said swimming was for girls. ‘Girls swim. Men play rugby. It gives you balls.’ He didn't smoke. He said it affected your wind. I started smoking. He didn't read because life was the only book one needed. Reading was for girls. I started reading. He was abusive. To my mother, my sister. I spoke softly to them. He said ‘hotnot’ and ‘kaffer’ and ‘coolie.’ I addressed them all as ‘mister.’ And then he went and died on me.”

Emotions expanded from the inside, in his chest. His body shook, independently, so that his elbows landed on his knees, his head between his hands. He wondered how she, when he . . .

Suddenly he wanted to tell her about death. The longing to do so spread through him like a fever. He could taste it, the relief. Speak about it, Mat Joubert, and you’ll be free . . .

He straightened and put his hand in his pocket. He took out the cigarettes. His hands were shaking. He lit one. He knew she would say something to break the silence. It was her job.

“Why did you choose the same career?”

“The detectives were separate from the uniforms at Goodwood. There was a Lieutenant Coombes. He wore a hat, a black hat. And he spoke softly. To everyone. And smoked Mills out of a tin. And always wore a vest and drove a Ford Fairlane. Everyone knew about Coombes. He was mentioned in the newspapers several times, murders he’d solved. We lived next to the station. I was on the stoop, reading, when he came past from the detectives’ office on Voortrekker Road, probably on his way to see my father. He stopped at our gate and looked at me. Out of the blue he said, ‘You must become a detective.’ I asked him why. ‘We need clever people in the force.’ Then he left. He never spoke to me again. I don’t even know what became of him.”

Joubert killed the cigarette. It was half-smoked.

“My father said no child of his would ever work for the force. Coombes told me to become a detective. He was everything I wanted my father to be.”

Tell her she’s looking in the wrong place. This track leads nowhere. It wasn'’t his father who’d fucked him up. It was death. The death of Lara Joubert.

“Do you enjoy your work?”

Now you’re getting warm, Doctor.

“It’s a job. Sometimes it’s pleasant, sometimes not.”

“When is it pleasant?”

When death is clothed in dignity, Doctor. Or when it’s completely absent.

“Success is pleasant.”

“When is it unpleasant?”

Ding! You’ve just hit the jackpot, Doctor. But she wouldn't get the prize today.

“When they get away.”

Did she realize that he was hedging? That he was concealing, that he was too frightened now to open the sluice gates because he’d forgotten how much water had been dammed up behind them?

“How do you relax?”

“I read.” She waited. “Science fiction, mostly.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“You live alone?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t been here long,” she said and he noticed her nose— long and slightly pointed. It seemed as if the elements of her face didn't belong together, but they formed a beautiful whole that began to fascinate him. Was it her fragility as well? He liked looking at her. And it gave him satisfaction that he found her attractive. Because she didn't know it. That was his advantage. “And there are many things I still want to arrange. But one thing that is taking shape already is a social group— if one can call it that. Some of the people who consult me . . .”

“No thank you, Doctor.”

“Why not?”

It could hardly be difficult to get a doctorate in psychology. All you had to know was how to turn all remarks into questions. Especially questions that started with

why.

“I see enough crazy policemen at work.”

“They’re not . . .” Then she smiled, slowly. “They’re not crazy and not all of them are men and not all of them are in the service.”

He didn't react. Because he’d seen her face before she smiled. You, Doctor, are human like the rest of us.

“I’ll let you know about our activities. Then you can decide. But only come along if you want to.”