Again he lowers his eyes. The pious, sensitive tremor around the mouth. The sincere, heartfelt poet’s gaze when he looks at her again. ‘To the very last she took me into her confidence.’
‘Now I suppose you’re going to tell me you were aware of her most intimate thoughts,’ she says caustically. (She realises this is no way to achieve anything.)
‘We had no secrets from each other,’ he says. (What a lie, she wants to cry out, I don’t believe a word of it!)
‘So you knew?’ she asks.
He changes colour slightly. ‘Sofie lost the battle,’ he says.
‘You’re not answering my question,’ she says.
He looks at her. The heartfelt gaze yields to something more inimical.
‘There is no more to be said,’ he said. ‘Sofie made a choice, and we must respect it.’ (Granted. But what gave rise to Sofie’s making the choice? Maria had after all hoped the man would be able to tell her something.)
So they part — stalemate reached.
*
That afternoon Maria Volschenk lunches with the female director of one of the companies she has to audit. A company manufacturing packaging materials — not very big, but extremely successfuclass="underline" a profitable financial empire built on packaging materials — sheets of corrugated cardboard and cardboard boxes.
The woman, Christina Groenewald, is a surprise — at least as far as appearance is concerned. Maria guesses her to be about her own age — early to mid fifties — but it’s hard to tell, because with a blonde (butter-blonde) ponytail, very prominent pout (Botox?) and an almightily impressive set of eyelashes (implants? extensions?) she looks deceptively youthful at a distance. If the American has a Daisy Duck upper lip (and Maria becomes progressively doubtful if that is an appropriate description), then this woman is Daisy Duck incarnate. The duck-bill pout and the flirtatious sideways glance. Except where Daisy Duck has three eyelashes, this woman has a dense fringe, and as far as length is concerned, they don’t fall a centimetre short of Daisy’s. (What is the cosmos trying to tell her? Maria thinks. What’s her case with Daisy Duck of late — is there something in the animal kingdom she’s supposed to take cognisance of?)
Furthermore the director wears Jimmy Choo shoes (and why shouldn’t she abundantly avail herself of the financial benefits of her position?), a pair of close-fitting jeans and an expensive sweater with an inappropriate frilly bow; her conspicuously firm breasts seem to be bolstered either by silicone implants or by a bra of the type Madonna wears onstage. Iron Maiden.
Throughout the meal Christina chatters animatedly, she expounds on the best gym in town, the best eating places in the vicinity. She eats fast and a mite messily (gluttonously) and talks with her mouth full. Lots of money clearly does not guarantee good table manners, but she is sharp and well-informed, she has a wide range of interests, a robust self-regard, and an ability to pick and savour without scruple the fruits of her success (the Jimmy Choo shoes, the Botox, the designer clothes).
She gives a frank account of her life. She was born in Viljoenskroon in the maize triangle. A bit of a neglected childhood there among the mealies, she says. Grew up poor. Her father was a miner first, then a foreman on somebody’s farm. Cheerless winters, everything the same colour. Mealies and mealie products she left behind her for good the day she got onto the plane. Did well at school and university. Got bursaries. Then an extended stay overseas: worked in London for the last fifteen years. Married, divorced. Recently returned to South Africa, appointed as director of the company. Did well for myself, she says with evident satisfaction, and she flutters her long eyelashes, she pouts her lips, she laughs boisterously, with winsome dimples in her cheeks, she crosses her legs, she displays exuberantly and skittishly her lovely, exorbitantly expensive shoes. But she has knock-knees and girlish wrists, and in her eyes linger the faint remains of a fear of penury, of a lack of opportunity.
For some reason Maria likes the woman. It could be the Daisy Duck lashes, it could be the knock-knees, it could be her dismal childhood in the maize triangle. She feels an urgent need to talk to somebody about Sofie, the more so after the unsettling meeting with Tobie Fouché. Surprised that she should want to open her heart to this unlikely woman — this cardboard-box tycoon.
‘My sister spent the last few years of her life here in this town,’ she says. ‘She committed suicide nine months ago.’
‘Oh dearie dear,’ says the woman, pouts her mouth and puts down her knife and fork. ‘Why did she do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Maria. ‘We didn’t have all that much contact before her death. I thought … I don’t know what I thought.’
‘What did she … how did she …?’ asks the woman.
‘She slit her wrists.’ (The most ritualistic, the most primitive form of suicide — the closest to self-slaughter, self-mutilation, to ritual sacrifice.)
‘Oh dearie dear,’ says Christina Groenewald once more, bats her lashed eyelids, pouts her mouth and knocks back a huge gulp of the expensive wine. ‘Did she have a husband, kids?’
‘She was divorced from her husband. Two children. She said to me once that it was immoral on her part to bring two innocent children into the world, because it’s better never to be born.’
‘Oh dear,’ says the woman, ‘how terribly sad.’ (Maria last saw the children briefly at Sofia’s memorial service. The son works in Australia, the daughter in the Eastern Cape. For searching conversations there was no opportunity on the day of the service. Both children took off again shortly afterwards.)
‘Yesterday I saw the man with whom she had a relationship for the last few years. A pain in the arse. He’s decided her unpublished work must be placed under embargo. She was a poet. My sister.’
‘A poet,’ says Christina, and puts down her knife and fork reverentially. Looks down, reflects, delicately picks between two upper molars with the manicured nail of her little finger. ‘A poet,’ she repeats, almost with awe.
‘Yes,’ says Maria. ‘A very, very good poet. A hundred, a thousand times better than the stupid man with whom she had the relationship. Also a poet. I don’t think she loved him. He won her over through sheer perseverance. A poseur and a chancer.’
‘Sheer perseverance,’ says Christina in wonderment, as if hearing the words again for the first time in a very long time. It seems to remind her of something, because she pouts her mouth (a nervous tic?), keeps pensively gazing in front of her, her chin now supported with her thumb, index finger on the upper lip.
‘My sister never wanted to discuss the relationship with me,’ says Maria. ‘Perhaps that was already the start of a kind of estrangement between us. I don’t know, perhaps it wasn’t even something like a personal estrangement, just my sister who had started to withdraw more and more from contact with people. She needed to shut herself off, I thought at times — perhaps that is what being a poet demands.’
‘What was her name?’ asks the woman.
‘Her name was Sofie,’ says Maria, ‘Sofia Steenkamp.’
*
She receives a text message from the man, the agricultural economist. He is back from his conferences in Malawi and Mozambique. Does she feel like going to Jacobsbaai with him? He’s in the Cape only for the weekend, the following week he’ll be on his way to Maputo again. Of course she feels like it. Let him tell her about food shortages and economic policy, about cosmic catastrophes. Let him tell her about the errant ways of the nation from which she sprang, their sustained unethical campaign of destabilisation against neighbouring states, which still has economic consequences for those countries. She likes listening (though sometimes somewhat distractedly). The moon will most certainly rise over the bay. There will be a fire in the hearth. It’s Thursday. He will come to pick her up the following afternoon.