Dead Before Dying

“You bastard.”

He recognized the voice.

Margaret Wallace walked purposefully toward him, taking no notice of the pistol. “You bastard.”

He walked to meet her. His mind was having trouble fitting her into the scheme of things. He saw she wasn'’t armed. Then she was on him, hitting his chest with both hands.

“You never told me.” She hit him again. He retreated, dumbfounded, the firearm in the way when he wanted to ward off her blows. Her hands were clenched, clumsy against his chest. “You never told me, you bastard.”

“What . . .” he said and tried to catch her hands, but they hammered on his chest. He saw her contorted face, the dignity gone, filled with hate and pain.

“I had a right to know. Who are you to keep it from me? Who are you?”

He managed to catch her right hand, then her left. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, you bastard.” She struggled to free herself, bit the hand holding hers. He dropped her hands with a cry of pain, tried to get away from her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The rest of the world does. The rest of the world knows. You tell the newspapers but you don’t tell me. What kind of a man are you?”

She hit him again. A blow caught him on the lip and he felt the warm blood running into his mouth.

“Please,” he said, a cry that stopped her. “Just tell me what you’re talking about.”

“You knew Jimmy was with another woman,” she said, and then she cried, her fists in front of her as if she wanted to defend herself. “You knew. You. You with your sad story of your wife. To think I felt sorry for you, you bastard. To think I felt pity for you. You don’t deserve it. What kind of a man are you?” Her fists dropped, hopelessly, exhausted. Her pain overwhelmed the words.

“I . . . I . . .”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I . . .”

“Why did you have to tell the newspapers?”

“I didn't tell the . . .”

“Don’t lie to me, you bastard.” She came at him again.

He yelled at her: “I didn't tell the newspapers. It was someone else, dammit. I didn't tell you because . . . because . . .” Jesus! Because he knew what it felt like and he had been sorry for her in her yellow pinafore and her grief. She didn't know what it was like— the messenger of Death, the bringer of the bad news . . .

“Because I didn't want to hurt you . . . more.”

“Hurt me? You didn't want to hurt me? And now? Now I’m

not

hurt, you stupid bastard? Do you know what it feels like? Do you know?” They were standing on the lawn, where the dew sparkled like diamonds in the streetlight. His house was dark, the street quiet. Her voice carried.

“Yes, I know,” he said softly.

“Rubbish,” she said with renewed anger.

“I know.” Softly, so softly.

“Rubbish, you bastard. You don’t know. You can’t know.”

It wasn'’t the long day, the exhaustion and his raw nerves after hope and the severe reprimand of the Brigadier and the murder and his painful session with Hanna Nortier. It was the yearning inside him to let it all out, twenty-six months’ worth of a witches’ brew that wanted to boil over, the pleading of his soul to be cleansed, to lance the abscess, filled with the pus that was straining against the septic skin. He made a cut with the scalpel with a light-headedness, an emotion between anger and panic, between relief and fear.

“I know!” he yelled. “I know.” He walked over to her, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. “I know, just as you do. More, much more. I know it all.” He leaned toward her, wanted to snarl at her, wanted to punish her. “I know it. I wanted to keep it from you. Did you say good-bye? When your husband left that morning. Did you say good-bye? I didn't. I never even said good-bye. She was simply gone. I woke up and she was gone. Simply gone.”

He heard his words echoing against the wall of his house, then heard only his breathing, too fast, in, out, gasping, and he saw ahead of him the abyss that he would have to cross now. He saw its deep darkness and he was frightened. God, he had to get across it like a high-wire artist, and there was no safety net. The fear began in a small way, somewhere in his belly, and then it increased, hugely. It drove him back. He closed his eyes. He knew his hands were shaking but he put out a tentative foot and felt for the wire that stretched ahead of him. He couldn't turn back now.

“She was just gone.” His voice was low but he knew she could hear the fear.

Breathe.

“Sometimes in the middle of the night I would reach out to touch her shoulder or her hip. It was always so warm.”

He sighed deeply.

“It was my . . . my . . . haven in the dark, to know that she was there. She could fall asleep so easily. I never knew. She worked for the drug squad. SANAB. I asked her what she did for them. Then she laughed and said she was undercover. But at what? She wasn'’t allowed to tell. Not even me. And then she slept like a child with a harmless secret. Maybe there was something I missed. If I’d paid more attention. If I’d only asked more questions, if I wasn'’t so busy scheming myself and hadn't been so deeply impressed with my own search.”

His derisory laugh was aimed at himself, a sob. It gave him the courage to take the next step even if the long, thin wire was swaying over the abyss.

“I thought that if I only played drug games for SANAB I would also be able to sleep. So superior. During the night, next to Lara, I tossed and turned and I was so superior.”

Margaret Wallace stretched out her hand to him, let it rest on his forearm. For a moment it was a lifebelt. Then he drew his arm away. He had to reach the other side on his own, that he knew. He suppressed the emotion, the self-pity, the weeping.

“I was so self-satisfied.” As if it explained why he didn't deserve her hand.

“It’s so strange,” he said, almost with amazement. “We only live inside our own heads. Like prisoners. Even if our eyes look outward, we live just here, inside this bony skull. We actually know nothing. We live with other people, every day, and we think we know because we can see. And we think they know, because they can see. But nobody knows. I was so satisfied, in my own head, with my own task, so important. So clean.”

He grimaced in the dark but he didn't realize it. His hands were still shaking, hanging next to his body, his eyes were still closed.

“That’s the problem, when you can’t get out of your own head. You think you’re so clean. Because Silva was so dirty. We think in terms of black and white. Silva was a killer, dirty and black as sin. And I was the clean, white light of justice. And they encouraged me. Get him. They made me even cleaner. Get Silva for the girls, the two women he had thrown away on a rubbish tip like so much human garbage. Get him for the cop of Murder and Robbery with the hole in the forehead. Get him for the drugs, for his invulnerability, for his dirty, black soul.”

Joubert looked back and saw that he had made progress on the thin wire.

He took a longer step.