But they never knew about his passion, his dreams and fantasies. Lara did.
He felt Hanna Nortiers eyes on him. Then he heard her voice, soft, almost inaudible, deeply comprehending. You dont want to discuss her. It was a question and a statement, a form of sympathy offered and a challenge.
He was touched by the emotion in her voice. He felt the weight of the memory of Lara that lay on his mind. His mind was shouting: Tell her, Mat Joubert. Throw off the black ballast that forces the prow of your soul to meet every gray breaker head-on. Open the hatches. Toss it overboard.
He cant tell her everything.
He shook his head back and forth. No. He didn't want to talk about Lara.
We can do it slowly. Her voice still filled with comprehension.
He looked up at her. He wanted to hug the frail body of Hanna Nortier with great gentleness, cover the etched shoulders with his big hands so that she didn't look so vulnerable. He wanted to hold her against him with sympathy and care, like a bulwark, a lifebelt. He was filled with emotion.
How did you meet her? The words were barely loud enough to reach his ears.
He was quiet for a long time. At first to get his emotions under control. Then he cat-footed through his memory banks, as if too heavy a tread would trigger the wrong recollection. The emotion was like a magnifying glass, an acoustic booster, multiplying the clarity of his memory. He saw the image in his minds eye, heard the sounds as if he were there. At first he had to draw back, then inch forward. Laras face in front of him, that first time. She opening the door, her short straight black hair, her black eyes, which blazed like searchlights with her lust for life, her smiling mouth, one eyetooth slightly askew, her body so lithe, so lively under the bright red dress. She had looked him up and down and said, I didn't order an extra large, closed the door, then flung it open again with the laugh that flowed over him like music. Then she put out her hand and said: Im Lara du Toit.
It was a . . . Joubert searched for a more dignified word, found none. It was a blind date.
He was looking at Hanna Nortier now, at her eyes, her nose, her mouth his toehold in the precipice of memory.
Hans van Rensburg arranged it. He was a sergeant at Murder and Robbery. They shot him at a roadblock on the N1 in 1992. She was still a uniform then, at the Sea Point station, but Hans was investigating a murder there and met her. He said hed seen just the right girl for me. One who would do all the talking. Because I was too useless and too scared of women to get anywhere, ever, he said. He phoned her and talked her into it. And so I drove to her flat. She shared a one-bedroom flat on Kloofnek with a girlfriend because they were both so poor. Lara slept in the sitting room, the other one in the bedroom, and men were only allowed in the kitchen. Then she opened the door and she was beautiful. Then she said we must walk to the flicks because it was a lovely evening. Walk, the whole way down Kloofnek to the Foreshore. We hadn't even reached the street when she took my hand and said she liked being touched and people might think I was her brother if we didn't hold hands. She laughed at my shyness and at the way I blushed. Then she became serious, because a man who could blush was a marrying man, and then she laughed again.
He heard the laughter of his dead wife, the laugh of that first day, and he remembered how they had walked back later that evening up the first rise of the mountain, the Cape night windless about them. Lara du Toit had spoken to him as if he mattered, as if it was worthwhile sharing her secrets with him. He feasted on her laughter, on the touch of her hand, which like some small animal was never still in his, on her eyes, her mouth, her deeply tanned skin, unblemished, shining like polished copper.
He remembered how hed climbed into his ancient Datsun SSS and later hadn't been able to recall the trip home. How he, in the tree-lined street in Wynberg where he rented a room behind the main house, had lifted his head to the heavens and given one mighty shout because the joy in him was too much to contain.
And then Mat Joubert wept for the first time in seventeen years a wordless, soundless emotion, only the wetness dripping out of his eyes betraying it. He turned away from Hanna Nortier and wondered when the humiliation would end.
18.
Benny Griessel was shaking. His hands, his arms, his shoulders, his legs. I know, Mat. Thats the worst. I know. I know whats coming. It scares me so badly.
Joubert sat on the single chair in the small room, Griessel on the bed with its gray blanket. The walls were bare, plastered and painted white up to head height, then brown brick to the ceiling. Next to the bed stood a wooden table without a drawer. A red Gideon Bible lay on it. A cupboard stood against the wall next to the washbasin and lavatory.
He looked for the old Benny Griessel, the witty, cynical man with the slight liquor breath. This ones face was drawn with fear, his skin gray, his lips blue.
Tonight the demons will come, Mat, the voices and the faces. They tell me theyre hallucinations but I dont know the difference when they come. I can hear them calling and I can feel their fingers and you can never get away because youre too slow and there are too many of them.
Benny Griessel doubled over and a spasm shook his body.
Ill find you another blanket, Benny.
Blankets wont stop them, Mat. Blankets wont stop them.
He telephoned Gerrit Snyman when he got home.
Nothing, Captain. There are some that are so rusted that theyll never shoot again. And the guy who lives in Table View has a helluva collection of weapons, Captain. His Mauser looks as if it was made yesterday. Oiled and polished. Almost too much, as if it couldve been the murder weapon. But the man has an alibi for both murders.
Joubert said that he had found nothing either, thanked Snyman for his work, and said good-bye.
He walked to the living room with a few pieces of fruit, a knife, and a plate and sat down in his reading chair. He quartered an apple, carefully cut out the cores.
Two days, he thought. For two days the Benny-Griessel-coitus-interruptus had been his number-one humiliation. Now it had been supplanted. By his stupid blubbering in front of Hanna Nortier.
Shes a psychologist, he told himself. Shes used to it.
But he wasn't. He wasn't used to the humiliation.
She had handled it well. She hadn't said anything. She had stood up and walked around the desk, crossing the invisible divide between psychologist and patient, and come to stand next to him. She had put her hand on his shoulder. She stood like that until he, his head still turned away from her, had with one angry movement wiped the wetness off his face with the sleeve of his jacket. Then she had walked back, sat down, and waited until he was in control.
Well talk some more next time, she had said softly. He had got up and walked to the door, forcing himself not to run.
And now, with a quarter of an apple in his hand, he knew the humiliation in front of her was the greater of the two. Because if he placed Dr. Hanna Nortier and Yvonne Stoffberg next to each other on the scale of femininity, he was stunned. How could he have been so aroused? Now, compared with Hanna Nortiers, Yvonne Stoffbergs beauty had become shallow, her sensuality diminished.