James Mcclure - Snake

Gardiner dropped the statement and picked up another signed by Gilbert Edward Littlemore. One by one the pennies began to drop, making an interesting sound.

The silence was almost more stifling than the foul air he breathed.

Chainpuller Mabatso had listened to it for more than half the night, by his reckoning. Once or twice he had thought he heard a baby bawling, and there had been strange sounds like a club hitting a metal pipe. That he could not understand.

Nor could he understand the flatness of the surface upon which he was lying. He had not been on anything so hard and smooth since the concrete bunk he had slept in at the penal colony. It was this sensation, above all, that had kept him motionless so long. Ever since he had awakened from a sleep with a headache and a pain in his stomach. He felt as though he had kneed himself because his knee hurt also.

He thought back. He had been in his hut with the new woman. The one who wanted to put her mouth on his mouth like a European. Then, while he was telling her of his disgust, there had been the clunk of one of his tins arriving. He had gone out and bent down and…

Surely he was not dead.

Mabatso tried to move and found the cord that bound him had been loosely tied. He worked his hands free and tried to get them to his mouth to take out a piece of rag he had first imagined the laying-out woman had put there. But the shroudlike wrapping was on too tight. He tried rolling on his side, and then the other way, and this worked. He sat up and looked around him.

The hut had flat, flat walls, narrow planks of wood nailed along near the top where the roof was even flat, and a window made of one big piece of glass. And a door.

He had never seen anything like it.

Yes, he had: the police station where he had been taken as a youth. Only that had been full of tables and chairs and other things that showed its purpose. This place had none.

A giddiness made him rock for a moment, then it passed.

Mabatso undid the bow tied in the cord around his ankles and then, stiffly and cautiously, moved onto his feet. He wobbled, holding his arms out at his sides, and then shuffled forward in a crouch.

He heard a car in the distance. And saw moonlight.

Moving like a river crab, he made his way toward the window, careful not to make a sound, and slid his fingertips up the wall to the window ledge. He had to know what kind of place lay outside.

Very, very warily, he moved his whole body up from the floor until his eyes cleared the sill tiles.

Then Chainpuller Mabatso sobbed and drew himself into a tight ball, rolling over and hiding his face in his hands, keeping his sobs silent.

There was nothing outside. The hut hung in the sky.

Kramer would not have continued up the drive if a light hadn’t come on in the living room. The curtains were wrong, so he saw quite clearly that the Widow Fourie had gone to read a book in the corner. He deliberately made a slightly noisy arrival, and waved to her when she hurried to the window.

“Oh, Trompie, Trompie,” she said, embracing him as he stepped onto the veranda-which was not like her.

“What’s the matter, hey? Is it Piet?”

“Man, I’ve been so worried. He was so happy today, you should have seen him, exploring and making the others play his games, and then just now he starts…”

Kramer led her back into the living room and made her settle back in her chair. Then he poured two brandies from the bottle she had waiting for him and clinked his glass against hers.

“Blue Haze,” he said.

“Trompie…”

“Piet’s not good tonight?”

“I thought at first it was having a room all to himself. And the move-that always upsets some kids, doesn’t it? Of course, the others settled down like lambs, except I had to go in and kiss them about four hundred times. And oh, the two smallest have stayed together. But Piet! He suddenly woke up and started screaming and he won’t tell me why. I’ve been trying to look it up.”

Kramer took the book from her and saw it was The Rib Cage: A Study in Child Development and Certain Problems. It was the same one he had quoted from most extensively, and yet she had been foolish enough to go out and buy her own copy.

“ Ach, but this is bullsugar!” he said, hoping for an easy laugh.

“What’s so wrong with it?”

“I can’t even understand the bloody title for a bloody start, so what chances do I stand with the rest of it?”

“You know-Adam’s rib, women, the cages that mothers make for their children, imprisoning them in their own whatsits.”

“Ja, exactly!” Kramer retorted. “Whatsits. Thingummies. All these big new words. And how’s old He’s-a-poof?”

“There’s nothing the matter with the Oedipus complex,” the Widow Fourie said crossly. “All it means is a boy gets jealous of his dad and this makes him feel afraid he’s having such thoughts. Piet isn’t the only kid who’s ever said to his mum that she’s the one girl he likes. And when he says that, he doesn’t say it the way you might do.”

“Have I ever?” he asked.

“True enough!” she replied, and could not help a twinkle “But the doctors didn’t say Piet had that anyway.”

“I should bloody hope not! You know what this book alleges? It alleges that is how psychopaths are made.”

The Widow Fourie set down her brandy. Her day had been a long one, too.

“Listen, before you start telling me everything, why don’t you take the trouble to read it up properly? Oedipus is only part of psychopathetics, and it’s to do with their consciences. They don’t feel guilty and they don’t feel sorry for others-why? Because they don’t have a mum’s care and attention when they are small-say, until so high. I’ve got the place right here-it’s in the beginning. Now listen. ‘If early rearing is unstable and transi-transient, then empathy fails to’- hey! ”

Kramer, who already had one leg in the corridor, and a lot else still to do that night, said, “Just hang on a sec while I go and chuck him some bananas.”

The book just missed.

Mabatso had drunk very nearly a gallon of maize beer before being spirited away. He was now acutely uncomfortable and knew something would have to be done about it.

So he made his second move, less afraid now because of various ideas he had slowly assembled. But he crawled all the way to the window, and didn’t open his eyes until he was standing before it.

Then he saw the houses down below and the streetlights and the milk trolley’s lantern, and swayed. It was the first time he had ever been higher off the ground than the roof of his hut when it needed mending, and this took some adjustment. After a time, he stopped swaying.

And turned to explore the room with the hope of finding somewhere he could do it. He had learned in the colony what happened to men who relieved themselves on a white man’s floor.

But the only thing in the room which resembled an outlet was a flat plate, with three small holes in it, screwed so low on the wall he could not get near it.

So finally he was forced to take hold of the door handle and, with a shuddering breath, turn it. Nothing happened as he opened the door a little way… He opened his eyes again and breathed out. It was another empty room, only there were four doors opening off it, two of which stood ajar.

Mabatso scurried across into the nearest of these, saw it was for cooking and that there were taps. The sink was reached just in time.

Now he felt able to think properly.

He looked in through the other open doorway, recognized the shower-the colony had had several-and felt confident enough to try the other doors. One wouldn’t open, and one led into a third room, as large as the first, with glass right down to the floor on the far side.