So I think Bruns went out, got waylaid and beaten up as a lesson, and went back to his hut. I think the point of it was mainly just to humiliate him and mark him up. Of course, because of his beliefs, he would feel compelled just to endure the beating. He might try to shield his head or kidneys, but he couldn’t fight back. He would not be in the slightest doubt that it was Bakorwa doing it and that they had been commissioned by Du Toit. So he comes back messed up, and what is he supposed to do?
Even very nice people find it hard to resist paradox. For example, whenever somebody who knows anything about it tells the story of poor Bruns, they always begin with the end of the story, which is that he drowned, their little irony being that of course everybody knows Botswana is a desert and Keteng is a desert. So poor Bruns, his whole story and what he did is reduced to getting this cheap initial sensation out of other people.
As I reconstruct the second thing that happened, it went like this: Bruns wandered back from his beating and possibly went into his place with the idea of cleaning himself up. His state of mind would have to be fairly terrible at this point. He has been abused by the very people he is trying to champion. At the same time, he knows Du Toit is responsible and that he can never prove it. And also he is in the grip of the need to retaliate. And he is a pacifist. He gets an idea and slips out again into the dark.
They found Bruns the next morning, all beaten up, drowned, his head and shoulders submerged in the watering trough in Du Toit’s side yard. The police found Deon still in bed, in his clothes, hung over and incoherent. Marika was also still in bed, also under the weather, and she also was marked up and made a bad exhibit. They say Deon was struck dumb when they took him outside to show him the body.
Here’s what I see. Bruns goes to Deon’s, goes to the trough and plunges his head underwater and fills his lungs. I believe he could do it. It would be like he was beaten and pushed under. He was capable of this. He would see himself striking at the center of the web and convicting Du Toit for a thousand unrecorded crimes. It’s self-immolation. It’s nonviolent.
Deon protested that he was innocent, but he made some serious mistakes. He got panicky. He tried to contend he was with one of the other families that night, but that story collapsed when somebody else got panicky. Also it led to some perjury charges against the Vissers. Then Deon changed his story, saying how he remembered hearing some noises during the night, going out to see what they were, seeing nothing, and going back in and to bed. This could be the truth, but by the time he said it nobody believed him.
The ruin is absolute. It is a real Götterdämmerung. Deon is in jail, charged, and the least he can get is five years. He will have to eat out of a bucket. The chief is disgraced and they are discussing a regency. Bruns was under his protection, formally, and all the volunteer agencies are upset. In order to defend himself the chief is telling everything he can about how helpless he is in fact in Keteng, because the real power is with the seven families. He’s pouring out details, so there are going to be charges against the families on other grounds, mostly about bribery and taxes. Also, an election is coming, so the local Member of Parliament has a chance to be zealous about white citizens acting like they’re outside the law. Business licenses are getting suspended. Theunis Pieters is selling out. There’s a new police compound going up and more police coming in. They’re posting a magistrate.
There is ruin. It’s perfect.
NEAR PALA
Here the road was a soft red trough. In a Land-Rover laboring along it were four whites, the men in front, the women in back. The landscape was desolate but neat: dry plains, the grass cropped short, small and scattered thorn trees, no deadfall anywhere, late-afternoon light the color of glue.
The men had an acoustic advantage. In the front seat, especially when the Land-Rover was in first or second gear, they could, by leaning slightly forward, talk without being heard in the back. Or they could lean back and monitor or enter conversations proceeding behind them. They began discussing bonuses and leaned forward.
The woman seated behind the driver was discussing her pregnancy, wearily. “Tess, we must leave it,” she said. “I’m so tired of my pregnancies as a topic. I’ll tell you about Greece. I adored it, and he”—she gestured toward the driver—“loathed it.” She waited for something.
She said, “Gareth, did you not loathe Greece?”
“What?” he asked, and then, before she could repeat her question, said, “Yes, Nan.”
“There you have it. I adored it, he loathed it. For Gareth there is only one perfect spot: home — Sussex. So that all travel that is not Sussex is just willful. He hated things, Tess, that were so silly, like the Greeks hissing for taxis, which is simply their custom. And in Crete it was the hot-water schedule — an hour in the morning and another before supper, so we must always be poised to race back so as not to miss it. And the pillows were ‘sandbags.’ They were bad. There he had a point. I grant him that.”
“We never go to Greece,” Tess said.
“Well, you must. But what I truly think is, we should. I would rather not go with a man again, or at least not with Gareth, we are so ill-matched for that country. He agrees.” Again she listened toward the front. She went on, “I irritated him no end. Item: I thought it was clever to refer to tavernas, places you eat, as though the Greek letters should just be read right off as sort of English, so I called them ‘tabepnas.’ I had to stop. Not amusing after all. Well. But every time we would see two women traveling together — this was Crete — he would say, ‘Well, well, they must be on their way to Lesbos, where it all began.’ And I said nothing — not once. Then the fortresses, or ‘fortetsas.’ They are on headlands, very high, walled about, beautiful, overlooking the blue sea. There were sieges lasting generations. Cooped in, but they could look at the Aegean. So beautiful. But I was saying: On the top, there are date palms, old gardens still growing, graves, mosques. All these different conquerors left different artifacts, you see, and I just wanted to wander at will. But Gareth had it that straight off we must walk all round the perimeter to get a ‘sense,’ as he said, and only then could one wander at will. So it was. Placet. Drive gently, Gareth, we are tipping.”
“I adore Cape Town,” Tess said. “Botswana is so dry.”
“But Greece! We could organize it, Tess, and it is so much the reverse of life at the mine. I mean, the mine is all right. And Cape Town — All right, you go down there, I accept that it’s beautiful, but it’s far from one hundred per cent the reverse of the mine. I mean, everywhere in South Africa the whites are on compounds, too, but armed and that. One wants something totally unlike — not South Africa!”
“Greece sounds lovely. Would you take the new baby?”
“I forgot.”
Gareth said sharply to the women that someone should please hand the water bottle forward to Tom. It was done.
Nan said to Tess, “Truly, one comes to dislike the medical profession. Now I must deal with them again. Coming back here to Botswana from holiday, it was so strange and nice. We were in the plane, coming low over the land. I was happy to see Botswana again. It was so strange, Tess — the country seemed like a poor relation, someone nice who refuses gifts at first, someone you like. This country is so poor. We were flying low over it. And then all I could think of was our friend the peerless Dr. Hartogs, who said that from the air the country looks as if it has ringworm. He was saying that the brush fencing round the family rondavels and kraals looks like that. It spoiled it.”