For a second consecutive day she pays a visit to the graves of her parents. Is a vigil by the grave of a deceased parent not the same as consulting an oracle? She doesn’t think so. As on the previous day it is dead quiet in the cemetery this morning. It is the end of February and hot.
She is sitting on the edge of her father’s grave, in the sparse shade of the tree. She is sitting here in the hope of making contact with something inside herself. A sense of loss perhaps? Remorse? Longing? But she can’t escape the feeling that it’s better for them to lie here than to be above-ground. In any case after what happened to Sofie.
She is so far lost in thought that at first she doesn’t notice that someone is standing next to her. A man with yellow eyes like a jackal. She thinks she may have smelled him before she saw him. How did he get here? She didn’t hear him approach.
‘Mevrou,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you. Denzil Hartzenberg.’ He extends his hand to her.
She hesitates a moment before shaking it. It is dry and callused — scaly. She murmurs her own name. He’s given her a fright. So nowadays it’s Mevrou, not Miesies. He’s wearing a cap, his clothes look tanned like leather, as if he sleeps in them. In his hand he has a largish bundle. She is on her guard. A risen Donny?
Behind him suddenly appears, from behind some tombstone or shrub, initially as if on all fours, a woman. She is small, a good head shorter than Denzil and quite a few years older than Donny’s murdered child bride. Her hair sticks up wildly, dusty, as if it’s recently been dragged through sand. She does not seem very friendly. Unlike her companion, she does not extend a hand to Maria. A faint miasma hovers about her — of bedding or liquor. Meths junky.
‘And how’s things this morning, Mrs Volstrek?’ Denzil asks.
‘Very well, thank you,’ Maria replies.
‘Is Mrs Volstrek here on visits?’ asks Denzil. He comes closer and reads out the inscription on the tombstone behind Maria.
‘These are my parents’ graves,’ she says.
‘Hey, shame, Mrs Volstrek,’ says Denzil, immediately doffing his cap and pressing it to his breast in an elaborately dramatic gesture.
Stuff off, she wants to say. Beat it. Two against one. If they’re harbouring evil intent, she thinks she has a chance against the two of them, except if they’re a practised pair, with a knife hidden somewhere in the baggy clothes. They’re standing much too close to her. She’s standing with her back to the first grave; cautiously takes a slight step to the left, away from them. She expects that they’ll come up with some story, culminating in a demand for money. ‘Excuse me,’ says Maria, ‘I have to go, I have an appointment in town.’
‘Is Mrs Volstrek from these parts?’ asks Denzil.
‘No,’ says Maria.
‘I can see Mrs Volstrek has something stranger-like. Something,’ and the man performs a sweeping elegant flourish of the hand, ‘something of the stranger in our midst.’
They both move slightly closer to Maria.
‘Excuse me please,’ says Maria, ‘I’m in a hurry,’ and she moves still further to the left. She has to get away from here. Turn around and run for it. Hardly dignified to take to her heels like that, but rather that now than regrets later. What are they standing so close to her for — for the quick assault: a blow to the head or a blade between the ribs? Nobody would even notice it here today. What made her think that cemeteries were safe?
‘Ag no what, Mrs Volstrek,’ says Denzil, ‘what’s the rush. Bide a while. This is hallowed ground, or what am I talking?’ He turns round making a wide hand gesture. ‘And the air here is as pure as water.’ He takes a deep breath.
The woman has said nothing yet. She is standing close to the man, slightly behind him. Maria glances around her surreptitiously. Nobody in the vicinity. Not a soul in the cemetery this morning — where is everybody to commemorate the deceased, put flowers on graves and that kind of thing? She tightens her grip on the handbag under her arm.
‘Do you sleep here in the cemetery?’ she asks.
The woman responds for the first time — she screeches in shrill denial, like a startled hadeda. ‘No, mevrou. Never on your life. We have our own plekkie there by the river.’
‘It’s like she says,’ Denzil confirms. ‘We’re nobody’s vagrants. We have a cosy nook over there, down by the riverside.’
‘So,’ Maria asks, ‘what brings you here so early in the morning?’
‘We have our own loved ones to ker-memmerate here,’ says Denzil, gently reproachful. Maria reflects that she’s wrongly assumed that this is a cemetery exclusively for whites. Things have changed here as well.
‘I must go,’ Maria says again. She starts moving away from the grave firmly, but the two move with her. One on each side now. Panicky, she steals a glance around her.
‘We won’t give Mrs Volstrek any grief,’ says Denzil. ‘No need to look so anxious. But we unnerstan Mrs Volstrek’s pur-turbation. These are troubled times. Better safe than sorry. Specially now if you’re an orphan, like Mrs Volstrek. So lacking in parental pro-teckshun, or what am I talking?’
The man is playing cat and mouse with her; first he softens her up, then he pounces. They’re one step ahead of her, this dancing, weathered couple.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Volstrek,’ he says, ‘Mrs Volstrek is in good hands, we show Mrs Volstrek the way, as they say: Go with the flow. Just surrender to the hallowed atmosphere.’
Maria starts walking, her handbag clutched tightly under her arm, her palms sweaty, with the couple now on each side of her, nuzzling up like two hyenas to a wounded buffalo. They’re craftily keeping track of her, she’s aware of that. They’re both talking now, when the one stops, the other takes over. They’re clearly used to operating as a couple. Two cemetery vagabonds. Never openly menacing or aggressive. On the face of it chatty. Mrs this and Mrs that. Lovely day, isn’t it, Mrs Volstrek. Clear as the first day of creation, not so, Mrs Volstrek? And both her parents lying here, hey shame, to face the world so as an orphan. Careful Mrs Volstrek, check the loose clods! How pretty that dove is calling, Mrs Volstrek, just lissen, high up in the tree, merrilee.
Maria stares straight ahead of her and keeps up a brisk pace. The ground is indeed uneven. Once she almost stumbles and Denzil grabs her firmly and supportively by the arm. So close to her she gets a whiff of his smell — the smell of someone who doesn’t bath regularly, a complex, caustic smell of something sweet, like mouldering grass or leaves, a smell of soil and saprophytes, of water in which plant material has decayed, blended with a sharper, spirits-like smell. A riverside dosser, that’s for sure.
At last the three of them reach her car. As Maria leans back in relief against the protection of the car door, the woman suddenly grabs her hand.
‘Let me read Mevrou’s hand, quick-quick,’ she says. Maria tries to snatch back her hand, but the woman has it clenched in a remarkably firm grip.
‘But my goodness, Mevrou, what has we here?!’ she exclaims. ‘Now this is a very special hand, this. Look at all the little lines criss-crossing here there and anywhere. But it’s defnitly defnit, this woman’s not happy. Not fulfilled at all.’ Maria looks down on the woman’s bent head, on her dusty, dishevelled head of hair. Maria tugs in an attempt to release her hand, but the woman hangs on, and she talks. ‘Mevrou needs guidance. Mevrou needs someone like Moses of old, to lead her from the desert with stick and with staff. To lead her to the green pastures beside the still waters.’
‘To the promised land,’ says the man.
Maria tugs. The woman clings. She now adopts a kind of sing-song rhythm.