Petina Gappah - The Book of Memory

I turned back to Lloyd’s face. With my eyes closed, so that I did not see the water, I pushed him. There was a heavy splash. It was immediately followed by a scream. It seemed as though the sound came from the body in the pool. There was another scream, and I realised that it came from behind me. In confusion, I whirled to face the veranda.

Alexandra looked at me, her eyes wide above the hand clasped over her mouth. The phone in her left hand fell to the ground with a clatter. As though in slow motion, I saw the battery go one way, the phone and SIM card another. Alexandra made a strangled sound.

Babbling and weeping, I made to move towards her, my hands turned to hers in supplication, pleading with her, willing her to understand. Now that she was here, I could let go of my preposterous plan, what I had planned to do. Now that she was here, I would tell her everything. She would help me, I thought; we would decide what to do, the two of us.

As I moved towards her, she backed away. I understood in that moment that she thought I had done this.

‘You have to believe me,’ I said. ‘I found him dead.’

But the words remained in my mind. I could not speak them.

‘Alexandra,’ I finally managed to say.

She backed away and went round to the side of the house where she normally parked her car. Overcome by the wild emotion and exhaustion, I sat down on a chair and closed my eyes. When I opened them a few seconds later, I heard the sound of heavy breathing and running feet followed by the sound of her engine starting and her car driving away from Summer Madness. From the veranda I saw the twinkling lights of her car winding down Umwinsidale Drive, headed towards Enterprise Road, towards my fate.

*

You will hear many stories about the inefficiency and corruption of the police, about impunity for sale. But, as I found out, in cases that have nothing to do with the poisoned politics of this country, the police are much more thorough. Perhaps they would have been more inclined to believe me if I had not moved his body. But I had moved his body — there was Alexandra’s statement of what she had seen.

There was the will. He left me the house.

They asked me how I came to live with him. I told them. They did not believe me. ‘We don’t sell children in this country,’ they said.

When they failed to believe that truth and cast it as a lie, it naturally followed that everything else I said was a lie. Even when I told them the truth, chokwadi chaicho , the real truth, as Officer Dimples called it, they exploded with laughter at the mere thought.

‘Whoever heard of such things?’ Officer Rollers said. ‘We know they are strange creatures, these whites, but really.’

‘Whoever heard of such a thing?’ echoed Officer Dimples.

As soon as Alexandra arrived back at Summer Madness with the police, they took me to Highlands police station. They left me alone in a room for more than an hour. Officer Dimples, the man who said my crime was no laughing matter as he laughed jovially, then came in to ask me what had happened.

I said nothing.

Then Officer Rollers came in and asked if I would like a drink: water, maybe, she suggested, or maybe Mazoe. The kindness in her voice disarmed me, but it was a short-lived relief. I was left alone for another hour.

Then Officer Dimples came back with the same questions. Officer Rollers followed him with offers of food and drink. This was not so much good cop, bad cop as it was bad cop, worse cop.

In my first week there, I did not talk. I had no lawyer. No one came to see me; no one knew where I was. I thought then about what it must have been like for Lloyd, alone in the cell for two weeks, with no one knowing where he was.

They finally charged me with murder two weeks after they arrested me. I have read different accounts of what they do in police cells here — the beatings on the soles of the feet, the twisted arms. Nothing like that happened to me.

They played a much subtler game that was, in the end, more terrifying than actual pain would have been. They removed me from the first cell, in which I had found myself with women arrested for prostitution, and moved me to an empty cell, a small windowless space filled with the smell of many bodies. When they first put me there, there had been a power cut, and all I got from my new surroundings was the smell, overpowering and fetid, of urine, sweat and faeces.

When the power came back, I wished the darkness had remained. There were stains that looked like blood had dried on the walls and floors. On the wall immediately opposite me were marks that looked like they might have been made by a bloody hand moving along the width of the wall. On other parts of the wall were traces of dried faeces, vomit and blood.

I felt then the terror that Lloyd must have felt. More than the discomfort of my surroundings, I felt an unshakeable guilt. I could not disconnect the act that had led to Lloyd’s death from my own actions all those years ago. That is wildly exaggerated — I see that now, of course — but I am telling where my frenzied reactions at the time sprang from, and not the reasoned conclusions that I have meditated over for the last two years.

So this is what was in my mind then. He had been in this very police station all those years ago when Alexandra found him. I had not killed him, but I had been cold and cruel to him. I had rejected him. I thought then about Lloyd, about why he had died the way he had. Was it because of me that he had rejected all human touch? Was it the fear of discovery? Or had it always been like this for him? What did I know about Lloyd beyond what I saw? What had I ever known? What did I know about the things he dreamt about, fantasised about?

After three days in that place, Officer Rollers made the threat that finally broke me. When she said it, it was not even a threat. She said it casually, as if it was the most reasonable solution to their administrative problem.

‘Now look here,’ she said. ‘Do you see all the women in the cell?’

They had committed minor crimes, these women, a bit of theft here, a bit of soliciting for prostitution there. They were not hardcore criminals but minor offenders — an admission of guilt and a fine in most cases would cover their offences. They had not committed serious crimes like I had. They had not killed anyone. My crime was far too serious for me to be with these other women.

But there was one problem now, she said. The only other serious criminals they had arrested were four men who were members of an armed gang that stole from the cars of female drivers after raping them. One of those victims had died, she said. They needed to put them somewhere, these men. And the only other place possible was the cell that I occupied. At the same time, they could not put me in the women’s cell, because my crime was too serious.

‘You see how it is,’ she said, and scratched her nose.

I signed the statement that Vernah Sithole may have shown you, the statement that sealed my guilt. The words were dictated to me. The statement was then read back to me and I signed it. I did not think it meant anything beyond an escape from my present hell. I would explain it all to the judge.

It occurred to me then that, even if Alexandra had not come to Summer Madness that night, my plan would never have succeeded. Now I pinned my hopes on the very things that I had hoped against. I became certain that there would be a post-mortem. There would be forensic evidence. It would become clear that Lloyd could not have been shot. The judge would see that he had been shot after his death. There would be technical and detailed reports about lividity and rigor mortis, gunshot wounds and the state of his blood. It would all come right at the trial.