*
While filling up in Harrismith, Karl phones the Josias fellow. A young child answers. Where’s your father, where’s Josias? Karl asks. But only the child’s breathing is audible at the other end.
In Ladybrand he phones again. Josias Brandt does not answer his phone. (Here he and Juliana overnighted once on their way to Cape Town. They stayed in an A-frame house among pine trees. It was cold. The duvets in the place were made of a thin, synthetic material.)
In the café where they had supper that evening, Juliana told him about the autopsy she attended at school with some of her classmates. It was the first time that she’d seen a dead person, and the first time that she’d seen a naked man. They went there that day for a biology lesson, a small group of children, five boys and five girls. The body was kept in a room behind the police station. On going into the room, the first thing that struck her was the smell. It was not a smell that one could get rid of. It seeped into everything. (She made vigorous rubbing motions with her arms, as if trying to get rid of something sticky.) You couldn’t wash off the smell, she said. Not for days. It was concealed inside other smells. In the smell of cooked food. There was first the smell, then the body. The body was lying on a table in the centre of the room. It was covered. Not one of them said anything. When the cover was taken off (she made a plucking motion in the air), the naked body of a black man was exposed. Everybody’s eyes immediately focused on the sexual organ. Crinkly pubic hair and all, she said, with a slight laugh (half-embarrassed, half-apologetic).
The body had already been opened up. A long incision (Juliana demonstrated on her own body) from the top of the sternum to above the pubic bone. The skin and muscles of the chest cavity had been pulled apart to reveal the internal organs. The sound of blood and body fluids, Juliana said, was like when an animal is slaughtered. She had seen it as a child on the farm. A wet, squishy sound. It’s the same as raw liver, she said, raw liver is never dead; it always keeps quivering slightly. The internal organs were like that. The doctor removed the heart and showed it to them. (She opened up the palm of her hand to demonstrate how the man had held up the heart to their scrutiny.) He pointed out the arteries, the veins, the ventricles. They all nodded to show their interest, observed politely. He replaced the heart. Then the lungs were pointed out to them. They lay splayed open, like a butterfly. (She demonstrated the position of the lungs with her hands, bent at the wrists, the open palms angled towards her chest.) This was a good man, the doctor said, he didn’t smoke. The lungs were pink. But when the doctor removed a thin slice from one of the lungs, there were little black dots visible on it, like small, black roses. When you heat the point of a pin over a flame, Juliana said, and you prick a piece of paper with it, it leaves a small, round scorch mark. (She stabbed the table with her finger.) That’s what the spots on the lungs looked like. The doctor said it had been caused by pollution in the location. That was what you were exposed to when you lived in the location, he said. The intestines were pale. A blue-green colour. The doctor explained that it hadn’t been necessary to open up the man’s head. The injury was confined to his body. He had been run over by a tractor. His spleen and liver had been ruptured.
After that the dead man was sewn up, Juliana said. The skin and muscles of the breast cavity were drawn together again and he was stitched up. With a big needle, she said. (With two fingers she demonstrated how big.) The needle had a big eye, a rounded tip. (She pressed her finger on the table so hard that the tip flexed.) The doctor used thick thread and big stitches. The man was stitched up roughly with blanket stitch because (she hunched her shoulders apologetically) he was dead. The body was ready to be buried. There was no need for fancy stitching. Then it was over. She remembers that her mouth was very dry, Juliana said. We said goodbye to one another: See you at school tomorrow. Sheepishly. We couldn’t look each other in the eye. Three taboos violated in one go: we had seen a dead person, we had seen a naked, black man, we had seen it as girls and boys together.
What was the exact colour of the organs? Karl asked her. Pink, she replied. Pink, and looked around for a matching pink. By chance the colour of the chairs on which they were sitting. The organs were light against the man’s dark skin, she said.
*
In Smithfield he once again phones Josias Brandt. Again a child at the other end, with the gabbling of birds in the background. Geese or something. Once again the child doesn’t react, just breathes.
Karl has a pub lunch in the bar. The bar counter, when he places his order, seems reasonably clean. At the table next to him are four men. He can hear scraps of their conversation. As far as Karl can make out, they’re talking about people shot in an ambush. (He can’t remember reading about something like that in the paper recently.) It’s a fucking disgrace, says one (a big, solid man with shaggy sideburns). Just for that, says one of the others (with bushy, white moustache), just for fucking that. They were fucking cretins, says number three (with gold neck chain). I wouldn’t have let myself be caught like that. They should have known they could never pull it off that way. Were fucking not thinking straight from the start. Which still doesn’t mean it was okay, says Sideburns, not the hell. Shows you the savagery. Godalmighty, says Bushymouth, if I could climb in there, jesus, I would go ballistic mowing down that lot of pissheads. It was a ballsup, says Chainman, they should have moved in from the Bosfontein direction, around, they should have crossed the border further along, but then they went and fucked across at Witwater. Shit move, says Bushymouth. Shit. Old Nick was never one of the brightest. Not crafty enough. Crafty, that’s what you have to be. Crafty as a crocodile. I know him, he was my cousin. They all thought it was fun and games. (They order more beer.) We saw it all. On television, says Bushymouth. Fuck, says Sideburns, I couldn’t believe my eyes. That’s no way for a Christian to go. Fucking blood everywhere. Old Nick was shot in the chest. He didn’t die straightaway. As he was sliding down like that you know, half-slipping out of the car seat, his fucking hands in the air, they say he was still saying the Lord’s Prayer. But no, those people don’t understand Afrikaans do they, never mind the Bible. So-called police. Give him a gun, and he shoots anything that moves. Barbaric. No mercy. Pot him just like that while he’s praying. Blood everywhere. I’ll pot the lot of them in the trot, says Sideburns. (They laugh.) Blood everywhere, Bushymouth says again. The car’s a write-off. Merc 310 Diesel. Old Nakkie, reckon, bought it second-hand from the garage in Ventersdorp, so then he lent it to them for the occasion. Good condition it was in. Only seventy-six thousand on the clock. No, man, says Sideburns, it was also a blue Merc, but it wasn’t that one. So which one was it? asks Chainman. Which what? asks Sideburns. Which garage? asks Chainman. Man, that garage on the corner opposite the church. Oh yes, but that man went bankrupt, didn’t he? No man, that was the garage at the far end of town. Only seventy-six k’s on the clock. Yes, says Sideburns, but in any case, who wants to buy a car full of fucking bullet holes? And that blood smell you’ll never get out of the seats, you can have it valet serviced till you’re blue in the face, says Chainman. Fucking disgrace, says Bushymouth. Fucking disgrace, don’t think we’ve forgotten. We’re biding our time. Those buggers will never ever again get away with such a thing. Let one, let just fucking one put as much as the tip of a shoe over the border. Not that they wear shoes with their loincloths (Karl doesn’t hear very well). Laughter. They’re talking about something else. Karl can no longer hear very well, their heads together. He thinks they sometimes look in his direction.