Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

So the Ten Gates was probably what Sofie was working at, thinks Maria. And she was the only one to whom Sofie had entrusted this most indirect indication of her last preoccupation — in the red notebook.

‘What do you think?’ Tobie asks with a tearful face.

Now it’s her turn to be taken unawares.

‘Of what?’ she asks.

‘Of everything I’ve said. Of why she did it. Of what else I could’ve done?’

‘I don’t know, Tobie,’ says Maria. ‘You know that Sofie and I lost contact with each other quite a while before her death. That’s why I want to know from you how things were with her.’

‘I don’t know,’ he moans. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Tobie,’ Maria asks, ‘did you see it coming?’

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. He no longer knows. He no longer knew at the time either. She was in a place so far beyond his reach that he has absolutely no idea any more how things were with her.

Maria wants to talk to Tobie, she wants to hear it all, but not in the presence of this woman with the basilisk stare. This stranger. She does not want to defile Sofie by discussing personal details in front of the woman. Sofie’s life and death are in no way the business of this voyeuristic impostor. From time to time she darts icy looks in the woman’s direction, but Margaretha Engelen sits solidly and immovably on her chair like a clam on a rock. She has obviously claimed her place — ringside seat — for the evening.

‘Margaretha,’ says Tobie, and he turns a tearful but grateful regard to the woman, ‘was one of the few people with whom Sofie kept contact towards the end.’

Margaretha’s expression is both complacent as well as (is Maria imagining it?) gloating. Maria can’t believe her ears. She believes not a single word of this. At first glance the woman simply does not look like someone with whom Sofie would have had that much in common — she seems too stolid, even too brutal for that.

‘Margaretha is a dog breeder,’ says Tobie.

Oh, really now, Maria thinks, a dog breeder.

‘Sofie was fonder of cats,’ she says.

‘Sofie and Margaretha were like that ,’ and Tobie holds up his crossed index finger and middle finger to demonstrate how closely entwined they were.

The woman nods affirmatively. Oh, come on, thinks Maria.

‘Margaretha has been breeding dogs for years,’ says Tobie. ‘Sofie drove out to her place when —’

‘Just outside town,’ says the woman.

‘And apparently sat watching the dogs for hours. That’s true, isn’t it?’ he says, and snivels lugubriously.

The woman nods curtly. Has she said more than ten words by now? No. But she’s looking more pleased with herself by the half-minute.

‘Why did she do it?’ Maria asks, reluctantly.

The woman turns her pale, lightly freckled, expressionless, basilisk stare upon Maria. Brünhilde with breastwork, accoutred for the stage, for a Wagner aria, fortissimo.

‘She had her eye on a greyhound puppy. I’ve got a dog and a bitch there for breeding purposes.’

Tobie snivels. ‘Sofie had selected a puppy from the new litter. She was so enthusiastic at the prospect of the little thing. The first thing in months that she was enthusiastic about. But she … she died a day or two before she was due to collect the puppy.’

For the first time the woman shows any emotion: she shakes her head slowly from side to side. ‘A little grey one,’ she says. ‘A little bitch.’

(Tell our father his youngest daughter covets a greyhound, Sofie wrote.)

‘All her papers were in order,’ says the woman, and for a moment Maria realises she’s assumed the woman was referring to Sofie’s writings.

So a dog breeder was Sofie’s last companion. And not just any breeder, but this brusque, unattractive woman. This fucking voyeur.

Margaretha Engelen’s tongue has now come unstuck. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I told your wife (your wife, take note, not Sofie) your good family dog is the boxer, Dalmatian, golden retriever, Labrador retriever, poodle, Rhodesian ridgeback — personally my favourite breed. I tell you, no dog can beat it. Your high-energy dog is the beagle, the springer spaniel, Border collie, boxer, cocker spaniel, Dalmatian, Doberman, Alsatian, Jack Russell and Staffie. Your low-energy dog is the sausage dog, the poodle, the pug, the King Charles spaniel, the West Highland white terrier and the Rhodesian ridgeback. Your good watchdog is the Dalmatian, the Doberman, the Alsatian, Rottweiler, Schnauzer and the Rhodesian ridgeback — you see, tops in every category. But I tell you, she had her eye on the greyhound.’

Tobie snivels dismally all the while, but listens enraptured to the woman. His earlier peroration apparently forgotten.

‘Every time she came by my place, I told her about the dogs. She wanted to know everything. The lot. About the different breeds, about diets, about grooming, about training, about breeding, about hygiene and health care. I tell you, the lot .’

Christ, Maria thinks, now I’ve heard everything.

Tobie listens entranced, as if he actually believes this woman to possess the secret of Sofie’s last days.

While the woman — now in full spate — expatiates on everything she told Sofie, and Tobie is listening to her as if she can offer him the consolation that he’s been craving for so long, Maria steals a few glances around the room. Tobie has certainly moved on since Sofie’s death, she now notices. Here and there a detail that differs from Sofie’s time. A new fridge, an espresso machine, a few colourful blocked posters of paintings on the walls. Everything much more zooted up, yuppified. Despite his flood of tears and his immoderate self-reproach, he’s not lost any time appointing the kitchen to his taste.

Suddenly Maria has had her fill. At least for one evening. She gets to her feet. The woman is still immersed in her dog stories; Tobie looks surprised, as if he expected Maria also to be enthralled by Margaretha’s account.

I must go, she says. She greets the woman curtly. As she walks down the passage, she suddenly realises that she no longer needs to know about Sofie’s ashes. What does it really matter, after all? It’s only ashes. It’s just a few measly bits of cremated bone. What does it really matter in the end what Tobie did with them, or is planning to do with them if he hasn’t done anything with them yet? What does it matter if he and the woman go and scatter the ashes in the kennels at the stud? Or have already scattered. Or whether he wants to chuck them in the sea, or in the desert, or whatever place he deems appropriate. Or if they’re still stuck on a shelf somewhere. What does it matter ?

Tobie accompanies her to the door. He embraces her warmly in farewell. The man is truly far gone tonight.

‘I can see the woman means a lot to you,’ she tells him icily, as she disengages herself from his embrace.

‘Oh,’ he says, ‘she has helped me so much already to accept Sofie’s death.’

Maria feels irrationally irritated. ‘You may think she has the answer, but for all you know it was a strategy of Sofie’s to put everybody off her scent.’

‘Do you think so?’ says Tobie, tearfully bewildered all of a sudden.

‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but bear it in mind all the same when you allow yourself so readily to be consoled by that woman. To be sweet-talked.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Tobie, despondently, ‘I just don’t know. I thought Margaretha’s intentions were pure. I thought she cared about Sofie.’

‘All she cares about are her fucking dogs,’ says Maria, with unaccustomed vehemence, ‘fucking voyeur!’ Then she turns on her heel and walks to her car. Tobie calls after her, but she ignores him.