Talion Read online

  ‘Maybe. If I hadn’t seen him do it, if I hadn’t seen his face, if I didn’t have that image playing over and over in my head, maybe. If my last memory of Ben was something else, maybe.’

  ‘You would still have wanted to know who did it, to know why.’

  ‘Why? I don’t want to know why.’

  Ash doesn’t reply; instead she wipes the tears from her eyes, a piece of tissue sticking to her cheek. Freya looks out at the jacaranda, and beyond it towards the fragments of city hidden behind the foliage of the tree, cracked and mysterious. ‘Do you think it’s possible those old women from the Amazon are here now? That they came all this way with their trees? Do you think that their spirits are still sitting under the jacarandas making sure things are fair, that everyone pays for their sins?’

  ‘I think it’s interesting that you’re asking that kind of a question,’ Ash says.

  ‘Well, they are!’ Freya shouts, speeding again. ‘I think when people travel, they take their stories with them. And I think underneath the streets and on the walls and in the trees of this city there are ghosts and gods and kings that were brought here by all the people who have lived here and believed in something. Like a river flowing all around us. A river of stories.’

  ‘That isn’t the real world, Freya.’

  ‘Who are you to say that? Who says your world is real? Who says the world of McDonald’s and grocery shopping and iPhones is more real than my world?’

  ‘Because it is,’ Ash says, her voice annoyingly calm. ‘Because this world is the truth. It isn’t just happening in your head.’

  ‘Well, maybe the world in my head is better.’

  Ash is quiet. She lets Freya’s echo fade and die, and then, only when Freya isn’t entirely sure anything was said at all, Ash speaks: ‘This world you’re describing, Freya, it sounds like a dangerous place. A place to get lost in.’

  ‘Good,’ Freya says. ‘Good. I want to be lost.’

  10

  Mr October always makes sure he is the last person to sit down before the service starts. Which is the reason he volunteers to hand out the hymn books and Bibles to those too careless to bring their own. The books have to be handed out at the beginning of the service and then collected again at the end, to avoid theft. Being stationed at the door gives him an opportunity to see who is coming to church and, more importantly, who isn’t. People in the community who are being neglectful of their spiritual well-being are of grave concern to Mr October. Especially those who have children. It is a sin to neglect your duty to raise your child in the house of God.

  And he makes lists. He makes lists all the time. A list of people who aren’t in church this morning: Marina Freyhans and both her children, the Februarie twins, Mrs Kruiman, Mr Handel, Ms Hendricks-the-English-­teacher.

  His whole first-team rugby squad arrived early and helped him set up the projector. The team is now sitting quietly in the front pew. All except young Mr Tshabalala, who is late. As usual. But stragglers are still rushing into the building, smiling nervously at him as they hurry past.

  It is a small church. One room. The pews are old and worn. The carpet is stained. There are few windows. A squeaky ceiling fan stirs the stale air. Flies buzz.

  When Reverend Booysen walks in, his purple robe preceding him into the room, and takes his place at the lectern, he gives Mr October a nod. Mr October closes the doors. Then, sweeping his gaze across the assembled congregation, he walks slowly down the aisle. He watches for people who are slouching or have their phones out, and he gives a small but forceful cough as a warning to anyone who is not paying enough attention. The cough is always obeyed.

  His daughter is sitting in the second row, her white sundress immaculate. She is whispering softly to her best friend, Frennie; they are giggling. When she sees him looking, she stops mid-sentence. And her face hardens. Frennie gives him a nervous glance.

  A list of lies his daughter has told him recently: that the marijuana cigarette beneath her windowsill isn’t hers; that she is a virgin; that she is going to school every day; that she hasn’t been hanging around with The Boy; that she loves him; that she knows he loves her, too.

  He takes his seat in the front row. Reverend Booysen waits for his reciprocal nod before starting. Reverend Booysen clears his throat. The first hymn is projected onto the wall, signalling that the congregation should rise. With this one act, the atmosphere changes. It stiffens. The lazy casualness of moments before vanishes in the presence of worship.

  When the final notes of the hymn fade, everyone remains standing. The first hymn is always followed by The Lord’s Prayer: Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .

  They are seated.

  ‘Justice,’ Reverend Booysen begins, ‘justice. Today I want to talk about justice. And revenge.’ Reverend Booysen is prone to pausing for dramatic effect, but Mr October is willing to forgive this one tick. When he is not giving a sermon, Reverend Booysen is practical and grounded. ‘Today is a sad day for our congregation. We have lost one of our own.’ A pause. ‘We all know about Annette Niebenhamer’s terrible tragedy. About her son who has died.’ A pause. ‘What can we say to Annette Niebenhamer, who is here with us today.’

  Annette Niebenhamer is sitting underneath a large black hat, and despite the fact that Mr October likes neither her nor her dead son, he admires her for being here today, so soon after losing a child. He knows what it means to experience that. That kind of loss is so visceral, so raw, that it envelops your whole being: you taste it, like blood on your tongue. You see it on the periphery, a spectre so tangible that it pulls you to your knees. And you hear the sound of it – the terrible, terrible sound of it. At night, he can still hear the echo of that loss, see the shadow of it standing over him, like a gaoler. To survive, you need strength and faith.

  ‘What should we say to Auntie Niebenhamer about how she is supposed to feel? Should we tell her to want revenge?’ Pause. ‘Should we tell her to ask for the death of those men who murdered her son? Should she be allowed to ask God for that, for vengeance? Doesn’t it say in Leviticus, “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth”? What can we say to her to stop the darkness in her heart, to make sure that she doesn’t become angry, like so many other people here who are angry?’

  Mr October has had his fair share of vengeance, in a past life. A life so distant from his current one that he hardly remembers it, and the little he does remember, he doesn’t recognise.

  And more recent vengeance, blooming deep inside him: it’s come back, the violence. The violence he thought he’d conquered. It’s been unearthed by that boy – The Boy – and the threat he posed to his daughter. It was right there, inside his muscles, inside his heart only a few days ago, when he suddenly had his gun in his hand, when—

  ‘“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” Genesis nine, verse six!’ The reverend’s voice crashes back over Mr October, a roar, a wave. ‘It is natural, perhaps, to want to see the person who hurt you be hurt in the exact same way. The modern justice system may not seem, at times, like justice at all. The punishment may not seem to fit the crime.

  ‘Brothers and sisters! It is not us who must decide how we must punish these evil-doers. It is not us, it is not Annette Niebenhamer, and it is not even the judges of this country who sit on their hill so far away from us who must decide. Your pain cannot sit in judgement, nor your grief. Only God can sit in judgement. He is the only judge who matters; it is His wrath that will find the perpetrators and punish them, and it is from His heaven that they will be denied. Take solace in that. Vengeance, state sanctioned or personal, is never the answer. Revenge damages everyone involved. Only He can decide how to punish the sinners. God will punish the wicked. Your job is to forgive, brothers and sisters. Forgive those who have sinned against you. As Doctor Martin Luther King Junior told us, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

  ‘Let us pray.’

  Mr October dutifully closes his eyes, an
d he prays: Please, God, forgive me. Please, God, haven’t I been punished enough?

  Monday

  11

  Slick watches the mighty city – sprawling, dull, indefinable – slip past his window. The sun rising, the city filling with light. The trains travel mainly through those areas that can’t afford to be beautiful. Dank, industrial areas, large stretches of barren ground, the edges of slums.

  All those people, all that pain.

  He always travels by train: it is convenient and cheap. And he isn’t able to buy a car; legally, he barely exists. But more importantly, trains force you to be part of the crowd, the throng. Another face among many. The thought of always being on the move settles Slick. Even though he isn’t running from anything, it’s nice to know that if he were they couldn’t catch him.

  The plastic seats in the train carriage are hot from the sun, and wet from the sweat of whoever sat there before him. The whole interior of the carriage is covered in graffiti – gang tags, secret messages.

  His first customer will appear shortly.

  He glances around the carriage; it is always good to know where the security guards are, although these days there hardly ever seem to be any. Luckily. He shifts his blue cap up and down as the carriage fills with commuters – his blue cap is his advertisement, how his customers will recognise him.

  It’s been almost three years since Mama Africa vanished, on the eve of his seventeenth birthday, and so far he’s managed to keep himself alive, to avoid prison. He is still living in the inner city, renting a small flat from a big white woman with big red hair who doesn’t ask questions. Armed with contacts Mama Africa left him and a list of customers who needed their supply reinstated, Slick has begun a small but lucrative trade. And he has hit on a new and ingenious way of selling drugs to the good people of Pretoria – the trains. The trains wind through the city almost undetected by the people who live in it, but nevertheless service most of the city: from its very heart out to its furthest reaches like so many blood vessels – poisonous, diseased blood vessels.

  He begins each day on the trains, taking a different route every day, stopping at each station in the city at least once a week. He makes sure not to have a routine in this; he alters the routes over different days of the week, different times. There is no pattern to it, no way of tracking his movements. That is vital. He cannot be detectable.

  It is simple: customers get on the train with money and leave with drugs. The exchange happens in transit, quietly, beneath the seats. He is proud of the simplicity of the system. The – dare he say it? – genius of it.

  He is flourishing.

  At least he was, until about a month ago, when everything started going wrong. Caving in.

  Outside, through dirty, alcohol-stained windows, the city rages on.

  The Hatfield station is nothing more than a platform, brown and broken. It is hidden behind big concrete walls, and he has to descend a flight of stairs to get to street level. From this vantage point, Slick is in sight of the south-western corner of the university campus, ivory buildings behind blue iron fences. Right across the street from the station, he can see the back end of a school; a school he knows is about to be let out for the day. One of the most moneyed schools in the city. Soon, these pavements will be overflowing with pupils making their way south and east by car or bus or foot, into the comforts of golden suburbia.

  He turns right at the station entrance, walking slowly. Few other commuters get off here. Why would they? This is the old suburban heartland of the city – privileged and protected. It is where Slick makes most of his money these days, where the children of the rich attend school and university. Hatfield, a wonderland, a place where special rules apply. It is a small sliver of territory he has dug out for himself, targeting the campus and richer neighbourhoods around it, finding and training runners in these areas: middle-class boys who can move through that space without detection.

  But today he is leaving Hatfield and the campus behind him. He is heading upwards instead, towards the large, quiet houses, the silver shopping centres, the parks.

  One park, in particular.

  Magnolia Dell, a green oasis in a knot of streets. Famous for its tranquillity, famous for its crime rates. Bordered by large, lush beds of intricate hedges, which provide the perfect sleeping spot for the homeless and the desperate. These borders give way to rolling green lawns that unite in the centre of the park, where a narrow stream flows into a small lake. Next to the stream large willow trees stand in the sunlight, emitting a green glow. On the opposite side of the park there is a small restaurant. Slick can hear the clinking of cutlery and the laughter of ice-cream-fed children. On the lawns, jungle gyms are overrun; parents and young couples sit on picnic blankets. If you look closely – Slick always does – you notice how no one sits alone, no one strays too close to those edges where poverty and desperation lurk. The restaurant is guarded by a red-faced manager and casual security guards, and any corner of the park out of view of these guardians is deserted.

  Slick takes a seat on one of the park’s many benches, looking down into the swift, icy stream. A young boy wanders over and begins poking a stick into the water. His mother comes to fetch him, giving Slick a nervous glance, clutching her handbag to her side. Don’t stray too far away from others, she warns her son. Slick gives a quick wave; it is not returned. He sits back and closes his eyes, drifting away from wakefulness, clearing his mind. It’s been a difficult few months: a bad harvest, a few employee problems, the unwanted attention of the police.

  Today is Mama Africa’s birthday. It was on her birthday that she would bring him here, a special treat for the two of them. She would buy them both an ice cream and they would sit on this exact bench and they would talk. Not about the things they usually spoke about: she wasn’t teaching English or giving him an assignment. About other, more personal things. Does he miss his parents? What does he want to be when he grows up? What does he think of the other children in the house?

  It was on one of Mama Africa’s birthdays that he was given his first weapon. He was twelve, and had already spent four birthdays on this park bench with Mama Africa and her smile. But on that day she handed him a wrapped package. He said, ‘But it’s your birthday, not mine,’ and she said, ‘Just open it.’ Inside there lay a beautiful knife with a sharp blade and a waxy wooden handle.

  And Mama Africa had looked around the late-afternoon park and tilted her head at him and asked, ‘Do you like it, impundulu?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

  ‘Good.’ She pointed towards the edge of the park where a lonely figure was walking. ‘Now go use it.’

  When he came back to the bench, handing Mama Africa a wallet and a watch, she shaded her eyes with her hand, and said, ‘Good.’ She gave him some of the money in the wallet – a crisp twenty-rand note – and said, ‘Keep the knife; you’ll be using it from now on.’ He had passed the test.

  As they left the park, she said, ‘Ngiyakuthanda.’

  ‘I love you, too,’ he said, because she had forbidden him from speaking Zulu and he sensed that maybe this was another test. She merely looked down at him and smiled.

  That was the first and only time he had ever heard those words, or said them.

  Slick opens his eyes when he is joined on the bench by a schoolboy with a bright smile and cocky shoulders. His uniform is ugly and brown, but he wears it with obvious pride. There are pupils everywhere across the park. School is out. ‘Haven’t you been warned not to walk through this park by yourself after school?’ he asks the boy.

  ‘I’m going to be late for rugby practice. Just give me the goods.’ He has an accent, an accent that tells a story of money and privilege.

  ‘Money first,’ Slick says. The boy sighs and digs through his backpack for a big envelope. Slick does the same. They exchange envelopes. ‘Do I need to count this?’ he asks.

  ‘Where’s the regular guy?’ the boy asks, instead.

  Slick slips a thin,
short blade from beneath his clothes, quick and quiet, and nestles it against the boy’s abdomen. ‘Listen to me, Lucky. Umtho­ndo. It’s not your job to ask questions. It’s your job to sell the drugs I give you, you understand?’ The boy’s shoulders slump, his brow breaking into a small pattern of sweat. He nods. ‘If you cheat me, or tell anyone, or ask questions, I’ll cut your stomach open so that your intestines fall out of your body, and I will leave you here to die. And no one will know it was me, and no one will ever find me.’

  Slick can feel the fear coming off the boy now like a red fog. He withdraws his knife. ‘Get out of here. Same time, same place next month.’

  The boy leaves quickly.

  Slick takes one more look around the green, green park. He begins to make his way back to the train station slowly, taking his time, enjoying the smell of cold pond water that drifts across the lawns, mossy and crisp. Around him, people are covering themselves with raincoats and umbrellas, but Slick doesn’t feel the cold.

  You never do, when you had to live on the streets for as long as he did.

  12

  Nolwazi has an uncleaned milk stain in her fridge that is exactly the same colour as the walls in this room. But the smell here is worse; it’s a burning, metallic assault. The bodies lie exposed on the steel slabs. Three of them in a row. Nolwazi takes a step back.

  She recognises Benjamin Rust because he is the least damaged. Just a gunshot. The body next to his no longer has flesh; instead, the brown slime it has become is slipping off the skeleton. Advanced decomposition. And the final corpse has been squashed, completely compressed. A train, Nolwazi guesses. A suicide.

  She is first in line this morning.

  Benjamin’s hair has been shaved off. She can see a bag of his brown curls on a tray. The rest of the body has been shaved clean too.

  Her scrubs are itchy; the mask over her face does nothing to block the smell. Her eyes sweep over him – over it – and she angles herself away, making sure his penis is out of her sight. Seeing someone this exposed always feels voyeuristic; the fact that they are naked makes it worse. His wound no longer looks like a wound. Just a perfect circle with a black edge, like a worm’s burrow, like a hole made by a machine.