Steve Biko: Murder, Weapon
Leigh Matthews: Murder, Weapon
Sylvia Plath: Suicide, Asphyxiation
Helen Martins: Suicide, Poison
Ingrid Jonker: Suicide, Water
James Dean: Accident, Car
Ernest Hemingway: Suicide, Weapon
Michael Jackson: Accident, Drugs
Of course, some peculiar ways of dying are also revealed playing this fatal game of join-the-dots. Cross Murder and Weather: that could be interesting. Suicide and Freak Accident? Weapon and Illness: it’s a story waiting to be told.
It goes without saying that there are a lot of violent deaths in South Africa: a legacy of our fractured history. You won’t catch me bemoaning our crime rate at a dinner party (yawn!) but I’m not in denial either. It’s no secret that we have the highest rape stats in the world. It’s said that women born in SA have a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read. And those are only the reported attacks. Sure, the old joke goes that 99% of statistics are bullshit, but where there is smoke ... Or in this case, where there is blood, there will most likely be bodies.
So it would make sense to dress up the murder as an attempted hijacking. In a country where there are thirty-nine violent hijackings a day it would simply disappear. I am sure a lot of assassins use this cloak. South Africa could become a veritable knock-off travel destination for aggrieved spouses. Honeymoon Hits. Perhaps it is already. Hired guns and better halves are not to be put off by Dewani. But a bullet in Gugulethu doesn’t feel right, not for Eve. She is worthy of more.
All projects require a title, so I will name this ‘Eve’s Graceful Demise’. I write it in black koki in large letters. It takes up a whole sheet of paper.
It could be bloody (there is a satisfying symbolism in blood) but it shouldn’t be too messy. Of course there shouldn’t be any pain involved at all; I’ll be strict about that. But it should be passionate. She is, after all, my unrequited love. We can play the ‘If I can’t have her then no one will’ card.
A hit man (Mr. ‘Jones’ from Fochville: R12K a hit, R20K for two – almost makes you want to knock off another person just for the discount, like those three-for-two golf socks at the cash point you know you don’t need but you end up buying anyway) will probably be the safest option as far as not being caught is concerned but it doesn’t feel personal enough. No, I should be able to look her in the eyes as they close. I need to have courage. It should be a clear murder and should not be able to be construed as an accident. Henceforth I cross out the following on the list: hitting head on slippery bathtub; fingers mistakenly placed in electric socket; rotten oysters). It needs to be authentic. An overdose is tempting (mainlining heroin after drinking a bottle of Kristal might be the most delightful way to exit this world) but will most likely be construed as suicide.
Maybe something highly original, that no one else would think of. Could I create the circumstances for a freak accident? Flood? Earthquake? Lightning? African killer bee attack? I could be creative and have her die from eating rhubarb leaves (too old-fashioned) or moonflower seeds (too obscure), or give her a rare tropical disease (not practical. Also: contagious.). Or, I could distract her on a bird-watching trip in the Waterberg and push her off the edge of a cliff, but that seems a little underhanded.
A fire! A fire is very glamorous. Of course she would be dead beforehand, I wouldn’t make her suffocate or burn, it would just be a way to get rid of her body. If we were at the coast I could put her on a boat and explode it. In South America I could sell her organs and leave her empty carcass in a refrigerated truck. If we were in Greenland I could drive an icicle through her heart and never have to worry about the cops finding the murder weapon. Then there’s the old Roald Dahl favourite: braining someone with a frozen leg of lamb, roasting it with some carrots and spuds and serving it to the cops who come to investigate. There is, of course, the method used famously by the Turkish nobility who served chopped-up tiger whiskers to their enemies. The legend has it that the barbs on the whiskers stick in your intestines and cause you to leisurely bleed to death.
I also cross the following off the list: death by nicotine or Mr Muscle Window injection; hit-and-run; ricin-laced umbrella stab; silver body paint; gas leak; butterfly punch; arsenic-in-soup; puffer fish in the shower; strangulation; pillow-smothering. I find pillow-smothering such an interesting one. It’s a pillow, for Christ’s sake. Pillows are clean and soft and are associated with dreams and comfort and sex. In my opinion only Very Bad People would turn that into a murder weapon. A gunshot is so quick and can take place with half an intention. Pillow smothering requires a full two minutes of heavy-handedness and a sense of commitment I just don’t think I have.
After hours of throwing a paper ball against the wall I realise that the answer may not be in my brain and that I need some outside help.
11
DON’T ACT CREEPY, OR,
PINK STRYCHNINE
On the way to the library I feel fit. I haven’t felt this good in seasons. I feel so good that I stop at the carwash to have the Jag given the platinum treatment. What it really needs is a good service, a new tail light and a bit of a panel beating but I haven’t been able to afford that for a while. The sorrowful glances which come my way for having a dirty, dinged sports car is enough to drive anyone off the edge. Even taxi drivers shake their heads at me. But today money is no object for my beautiful baby. As long as they don’t cut up the credit card. It occurs to me that I am spending money I don’t have on a car I don’t own. Ah, credit is a beautiful thing! I watch the attendant swipe the card and wait. Three, two, one – and yes! – the payment goes through. I turn the key and the nice carwash man waves me off. He may as well be waving a chequered flag. I pop the car into first, rev a little to warm her up, and accelerate in a wide arc onto the main road.
God, Jo’burg is beautiful in summer. Everything is so green. I can’t help feeling optimistic. I love going to the library. Especially nowadays when no one really needs a library because of Kindle and Google. It’s like having a huge revolving bookcase all to oneself. I walk up the corkscrew staircase with a bounce in my step.
My mother introduced me to libraries. It was ‘our thing’: books and reading. Emily would use her books to make stables for her fragrant pastelplastic ponies while Mom and I smirked at her.
If we had been good children during the day, she would let us climb into bed with her and read to us. One child on either side, with the book balanced on the incline of her warm, slanted thighs. I would edge nearer and nearer as the story progressed so that my whole body was in contact with hers. She would fidget and tell me to move over. ‘Claustrophobic’ was one of the first words I learnt. I craved proximity to her as if I had some kind of prescience of her leaving us. As if I knew that one day she would just vanish, and take colour with her.
But I still have those memories; she couldn’t take those away, those golden hours. I still have Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Sometimes I wonder if I truly did love books as much as I remember, or if I was so desperate for her attention that I just grabbed on to the only thing that she would – with reluctance – offer me. In true Oedipal fashion I guess I had a love/hate relationship with my mother’s world of fiction. It erratically offered me the bliss of library trips and bedtime stories, but more often it took our mother away from us.
At first I didn’t understand the lucky logic of libraries. Books for free? As often as you wanted? It defied all I had learnt in my five years of being. Amazed at my appetite for words, my mother coerced some friends into registering for library cards and then handing them over to us, so that we could borrow thirty books at a time. She would wink at me if the librarian seemed sniffy, then we’d giggle to our ‘getaway car’, clutching our precious plunder.