Henning Mankell - The White Lioness

He sat in the darkness thinking about each of these men in turn, dredging his memory for clues; but he found none.

He worked from a mixture of intuition, facts, and elimination. He asked himself who had anything to gain by exposing him, who disliked him so much that revenge could be worth the risk of being found out. He reduced the group of possibilities from sixteen to eight. Then he started all over again, and every time there were fewer and fewer possible candidates left.

In the end, there was nobody. His question remained unanswered.

That was when he thought for the first time it might be Miranda. Only when there was no other possible culprit was he forced to accept that she too was a possibility. The very thought worried him. It was forbidden, impossible. Nevertheless, the suspicion was there, and he had no choice but to confront her with it. He assumed the suspicion was unjustified. As he was certain she could not lie to him without him noticing, it would be resolved the moment he spoke to her. He must shake off his shadows within the next few days and visit her and Matilda in Bezuidenhout. The answer was to be found among the people on the list he had just worked through. The problem was that he still had not found an answer. He put both his thoughts and his papers on one side, and devoted himself instead to his coin collection. Observing the beauty of the various coins and imagining their value always gave him a feeling of calm. He picked up an old, shiny, gold coin. It was an early Kruger rand, and had the same kind of timeless durability as the Afrikaner traditions. He held it up against the desk lamp and saw it had acquired a small, almost invisible stain. He took out his carefully folded polishing cloth and rubbed the golden surface carefully until the coin started to shine once again.

Three days later, late on Wednesday afternoon, he visited Miranda and Matilda in Bezuidenhout. As he did not want his shadows to follow him even as far as Johannesburg, he had decided to lose them while he was still in central Pretoria. A few simple maneuvers were sufficient to shake off Scheepers’s men. Even though he had got rid of the shadows, he kept a close eye on the rearview mirror on the freeway to Johannesburg. He also did a few circuits of the business center in Johannesburg, just to make certain he was not mistaken. Only when he was sure did he turn into the streets that would take him to Bezuidenhout. It was very unusual for him to visit them in the middle of the week, and in addition, he had not given advance notice. It would be a surprise for them. Just before he got there, he stopped at a grocer’s and bought food for a communal dinner. It was about half past five by the time he turned into the street where the house was situated.

At first he thought his eyes were deceiving him.

Then he saw the man who just came out onto the sidewalk had emerged from Miranda’s and Matilda’s gate.

A black man.

He stopped by the curb and watched the man walking towards him, but on the other side of the road. He lowered the sun visor on each side of the windshield so that he could not be seen. Then he observed him.

He suddenly recognized him. It was a man he had been keeping under observation for a long time. Although they had never managed to prove it, BOSS had no doubt he belonged to a group in the most radical faction of the ANC that was thought to be behind a number of bomb attacks on stores and restaurants. He used the aliases of Martin, Steve, or Richard.

Jan Kleyn watched the man walk past, then disappear.

He froze. His mind was in turmoil, and it took some time to recover. But there was no getting away from it: the suspicions he had refused to take seriously were now real. When he eliminated one after the other of his suspects and ended up with none at all, he had been on the right track. The only other possibility was Miranda. It was both true and inconceivable at the same time. For a brief moment he was overcome by sorrow. Then he turned ice-cold. The temperature inside him fell as his fury grew, or so it seemed. In the twinkling of an eye, love turned to hate. It was aimed at Miranda, not Matilda: he regarded her as innocent, another victim of her mother’s treachery. He gripped the wheel tightly. He controlled his urge to drive up to the house, beat down the door, and look Miranda in the eye for the last time. He would not approach the house until he was completely calm. Uncontrolled anger was a sign of weakness. That was something he had no desire to display in front of Miranda or her daughter.

Jan Kleyn could not understand. What he did understand made him angry. He had dedicated his life to the fight against disorder. For him, disorder included everything that was unclear. What he did not understand must be fought against, just as all other causes of society’s increasing confusion and decay must be fought.

He remained sitting in his car for a long time. Darkness fell. Only when he felt totally calm did he drive up to the front door. He noticed a slight movement behind the drapes in the big living room window. He picked up the bags of supplies, and opened the gate.

He smiled at her when she opened the door. There were moments, so short that he barely managed to notice them, when he wished it was all in the imagination. But now he knew what was true, and he wanted to know what lay behind it.

The darkness in the room made it difficult to distinguish her dark features.

“I’ve come to visit you,” he said. “I thought I’d surprise you.”

“You’ve never done this before,” she said.

It seemed to him her voice was rough and strange. He wished he could see her more clearly. Did she suspect he had seen the guy leaving the house?

At that moment Matilda came out of her room. She looked at him without saying a word. She knows, he thought. She knows her mother has betrayed me. How will she be able to protect her except by staying silent?

He put down the bags of food and took off his jacket.

“I want you to leave,” Miranda said.

At first he thought he had misheard her. He turned around, his jacket still in his hand.

“Are you asking me to go?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He contemplated his jacket for a moment before letting it drop to the floor. Then he hit her, as hard as he could, right in the face. She lost her balance but not her consciousness. Before she could manage to scramble up off the floor, he grabbed her blouse and dragged her up on her feet.

“You are asking me to leave,” he said breathing heavily. “If anybody is going to leave, it’s you. But you aren’t going anyplace.”

He dragged her into the living room and flung her down onto the sofa. Matilda moved to help her mother, but he yelled at her to stay back.

He sat down on a chair right in front of her. The darkness in the room suddenly made him furious. He leapt to his feet and switched on every light he could find. Then he saw she was bleeding from both her nose and her mouth. He sat down again and stared at her.

“A man came out of your house,” he said. “A black man. What was he doing here?”

She did not answer. She was not even looking at him. Nor did she pay any attention to the blood dripping from her face.

It all seemed to him a waste of time. Whatever she said or did, she had betrayed him. That was the end of the road. There was no going on. He did not know what he would do with her. He could not imagine a form of revenge that was harsh enough. He looked at Matilda. She still had not moved. Her face bore an expression he had never seen before. He could not say what it was. That made him insecure as well. Then he saw Miranda was looking at him.

“I want you to go now,” she said. “And I don’t want you ever to come and visit me again. This is your house. You can stay, and we’ll move out.”