Деон Мейер - Cobra

Griessel felt the exploding pain of bullet wounds, the terrible violence of lead slamming, tearing into his body.

Nyathi lost control of the Ford, the vehicle zigzagged across the road, skidded, overturned, and rolled. Griessel tried to hold on. Airbags exploded. He had his seat belt fastened, that was his only thought, he had his seat belt fastened, now he could tell Fritz it was proof that that was the right thing to do.

Just before everything went black, he saw the body of Zola Nyathi, still buckled into his seat, but strangely uncontrolled. Only the laws of physics in charge of his body now, tugging it back and forth. And he thought: how fragile a person’s body is. Nyathi had always seemed so indestructible.

There was a moment when he recovered consciousness, as he was suspended upside down in the wreckage, watching his blood flow from his body and pooling on the roof of the Ford. A moment when he was aware of the man who rifled through his pockets, hastily and roughly, but thoroughly. The face was devoid of emotion. It was one of them, one of the men on the O. R. Tambo photos. The man’s hands searched through all his pockets, coated in his blood.

A shot cracked, one last time, in the shattered space.

Then everything went quiet.

62

He saw Alexa beside the hospital bed, in the middle of the night. She was sleeping awkwardly in the chair. He tried to say something to her, but he was so very tired, he could scarcely open his mouth. His parched mouth.

He was awake. He was at Alexa’s house, in the sitting room. His arm was gone. Completely. Alexa said don’t worry, there are bass guitar players with only one arm. She puffed on a cigarette.

He dimly realised someone else was here too. Strange, it was daytime now. He opened his eyes. It was his daughter, Carla. She sat hunched over, her elbows on the bed, her face close to his, her expression intense, as if willing him not to go. He saw her mouth move, forming the word ‘Papa’, but he didn’t hear it. He was drifting away from everything. But both his arms were here.

Fritz sat in the chair beside the hospital bed. His son, with a guitar. His son sang to him. It was so incredibly beautiful.

He had a conversation with Nyathi and Mbali. They spoke Zulu and Xhosa, and to his surprise so did he. Kaleni said, Isn’t it wonderful?

Yes, said Nyathi.

What? Asked Griessel.

There’s no corruption here, said Mbali. Look, Benny, none. It wasn’t for nothing after all.

Cupido and Bones and Mbali stood beside his bed, their faces grim.

‘Vaughn,’ said Griessel.

‘ Jissis ,’ said Cupido and stood up, looked at him.

‘This is a hospital. Watch your language,’ said Mbali.

‘Get a nurse, he’s awake,’ said Cupido.

And then Griessel was gone again.

They only told him Nyathi was dead after he had been awake for two days. Nyathi and David Adair.

‘They thought you weren’t going to make it, Benny,’ said Alexa, her tears dripping on the sheet. She held his left hand tightly, the one on the arm that was still reasonably whole. ‘They brought you back from the brink of death twice. They said you had no blood left. None.’

Two wounds in his right leg, one in his upper right arm, his right shoulder, his left wrist, two bullets through his ribs and his right lung. But everything would heal in time. There would be stiffness in the limbs, the surgeon said. For many years. He had been in a coma for sixteen days, they said. And he thought to himself, that was the easiest sixteen days off the bottle he had ever added to his tally.

Cloete came and sat with him. ‘CNN, the BBC, Sky News and the New York Times are all asking for interviews, Benny. Are you up to it?’

‘No.’

Superintendent Marie-Caroline Aubert phoned him from Lyon. She sympathised with the loss of his colleague. She congratulated him on the arrest of Curado. She said the one he shot dead was the only French citizen, one Romain Poite. The others that they identified were all Eastern Europeans, but also former members of the French Foreign Legion. ‘We are trying to track them down, thanks to your good work.’

Jeanette Louw, the owner of Body Armour, came to sit with him too. He told her everything.

Alexa was there every day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Carla came to visit. Fritz. His colleagues. Doc Barkhuizen. His fellow Rust band members. And Lize Beekman, once. ‘I’m sorry about your concert,’ he said.

‘It won’t be the last one,’ she said. ‘Just get better.’

He had done a lot of thinking, in the hospital. When Alexa came to fetch him and take him to her house, his words were ready.

Tired and weak, he climbed into the double bed in Alexa’s bedroom. Then he said,‘Come sit here, please. There is something I have to talk about.’

She sat down, concerned.

‘I love you very much,’ he said.

‘And I love you, Benny.’

‘Alexa, I didn’t know what to say, because it’s a difficult thing. But someone said: the truth makes us free . . .’

‘What truth, Benny?’

‘I can’t . . . you know . . .’ and all his planned words and phrases, practised in his mind, over and over, deserted him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Before this thing . . .’ And he indicated the last of the bandages. ‘I couldn’t keep up. With the . . . sex. I’m too old and too fucked-up, Alexa. I can’t do the thing every day any more. You are very sexy to me, my head wants to, but my . . .’ He pointed at his groin.

‘Your rascal,’ she said.

‘Yes. My rascal can’t keep up. Not every day. Maybe every second day. We can try.’

He saw how her face crumpled. He saw her begin to cry, and he thought, fok , that was the wrong thing to say.

‘I’ll see a doctor,’ he said.

She hugged him tightly. He felt the warmth of her breath, and her tears. ‘I was so scared, Benny. I was never enough for Adam. I thought that was why he strayed. I just wanted to be enough for you.’

Adam, her late husband.

‘You are more than enough for me,’ he said. ‘Just not every day.’

‘Thank God,’ she said.

And then he heard her vibrant, joyful laugh.

GLOSSARY

Ai – ah, oh; ow, ouch, mostly used a little despairingly.

Ag – Very similar to ‘ai’: ah!, oh!; alas, pooh!, mostly used with resignation.

Annerlike – Cape Flats Afrikaans for ‘a different kind of’ – often used in a negative way. (Cape Flats slang refers to the Afrikaans spoken on the Cape Flats, a vast area east of Cape Town, where the majority of ‘Cape Coloured’ people reside. ‘Coloured people’ refer to the descendants of Malaysian slaves in South Africa (forced migration by the Dutch East India Company), who intermarried with white farmers and local Khoi people – as opposed to Blacks (descendants of the Bantu people) and Whites (descendants of European settlers).

Appie – Diminutive of ‘apprentice’, someone who is learning a trade.

Baie – Afrikaans for ‘A lot’, or ‘very’.

Bergie - Cape Flats Afrikaans for a homeless person, often a vagrant, living on the side of Table Mountain (berg = mountain).

Blerrie – Cape Flats slan for ‘bloody’.

Bliksem – Mild profanity, used as an exclamation or adjective (‘Damn!’ or ‘damned’), a verb (I will ‘bliksem’ you = I will hit you hard).

Blougatte – When trainee constables attend police college, they wear blue uniforms, and are called ‘blue arses’, or ‘blougatte’. The nickname is also used to refer to lower, uniformed police ranks in uniform as a slightly derogatory term, as opposed to plain clothes police women and men.

Boetie – Diminutive of ‘broer’, which means ‘brother’.

Bok – Afrikaans for ‘goat’ or ‘deer’, but used much more widely. ‘Here’s a middle-aged bok with a pretty young thing’ refers to an Afrikaans idiom ‘an old goat likes green leaves’, meaning ‘an older man likes younger women’. ‘Bok’ or the diminutive ‘bokkie’ is also used an as endearment for men or women.