Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

57

He was aware that he was alive long before he regained consciousness, floating between dream and hallucination. His father, lunch box in his hand, walking with him through Stilfontein, long conversations, his father’s voice low and sympathetic, his father’s smile indescribably happy. Hand in hand with his father until he drifted away again to a blackness without awareness, and out on the other side only to experience the blood and the death of Nagel and Brits and Steven Mzimkhulu and Tiny Mpayipheli and Hope Beneke, the shock and the horror, every time he hurled himself into the hail of bullets, every time it passed through him, every time he screamed uselessly, his cries disappearing into the mists. And then Wendy was there, Wendy and her two children and her husband – “Oh, Zet, you’re missing so much” – and his mother, he knew his mother was there, around him, with him. He heard her voice, heard her singing, it was like being in the womb again, and then he was awake and the sun shone and it was late afternoon and his mother was with him. She held his hand and the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Ma,” he said, but he could barely hear his own voice.

“I knew you were there somewhere,” she said.

And then he was gone again, to dark, peaceful depths. His mother was there, his mother was there, and then he came back slowly, up, up, up, a nurse bending over him, shifting the hanging drip. He smelled her faint perfume, saw the roundness of her breasts under the white uniform, and then he was there, awake, his chest hurting, his body heavy.

“Hallo,” said the nurse.

He made a noise that didn’t quite work.

“Welcome back. Your mother went to have breakfast. She’ll be back in a moment.”

He just looked at her, at the pretty lines of her hands, the fine blond hairs on her supple arms. He was alive, looking at the sunlight through the window.

“We were worried about you,” the nurse said. “But now you’re going to be okay.”

Be okay .

“Do you have any pain?”

He nodded slightly, his head heavy.

“I’ll get you something for it,” she said, and he closed his eyes and opened them and his mother was there again.

“My child,” she said, and he saw tears in her eyes. “Rest, everything is fine. All you have to do is rest.” And then he slept again.

♦

Wilna van As stood next to his mother. “I just want to say thank you. The doctor said I’m only allowed a few minutes – I only want to say thank you very much.” He could see she was uncomfortable, self-conscious. He tried to smile at her, hoped his face was cooperating, and then she repeated, “Thank you,” turned, took a step, turned back, came to the bed, and kissed him on the cheek and walked out quickly and there were uncontrollable tears in his eyes.

“I bought this for you,” his mother said softly. She had a portable CD player in her hands. “I know you’ll need it.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

He had to stop crying. Hell, what was it with all the crying?

“Never mind,” his mother said, “never mind.”

He wanted to raise his hand to wipe away the tears, but it was anchored somewhere under drip needles and blankets.

“And the CDs.” She had a handful. “I just grabbed some from your cupboard. I didn’t know what you’d want to listen to.”

“Agnus Dei,” he said.

She looked through the CDs, found the right one, slid it in, put the small earphones in his ears, and pressed the PLAY button. The music filled his ears, his head, his soul. He looked at his mother. “Thank you,” he mouthed, saw her reply, “It’s a pleasure,” and then she kissed his forehead and sat down and stared out of the window and he closed his eyes and drank in the music, every note, every single blessed note.

♦

In the late afternoon he woke again.

“There’s someone to see you,” his mother said.

He nodded. She walked to the door, spoke to someone there, then came in followed by Tiny Mpayipheli. A bandage round his head covered one entire ear and he walked somewhat stiffly in his dressing gown and hospital pajamas. Relief flowed through him when he saw that the big man was alive, but the bandage around his head, which looked like a turban set awry, as if he was doing an Arab parody, made him want to laugh. There was something about Tiny – an awareness that he looked absurd, a self-consciousness that deepened the humor – and the laughter welled up. He shook, the pain of his wounds sharp and urgent, but he couldn’t stop himself or the sounds emerging from his mouth. Mpayipheli stood there grinning in a sheepish way and then he laughed as well, holding his ribs where they hurt. They looked at each other, wounded and pathetic, and Joan van Heerden, standing at the door, was laughing, too.

“You don’t look so great yourself,” Tiny said.

The laughter stopped. “I dreamed you were dead.”

The black man sat down on a chair next to the bed, slowly, like an old man. “It was pretty close.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Yesterday you slept as you did on each of the previous six days. And I lay and felt sorry for myself and moaned at the nurses about the fact that this hospital’s affirmative action is so far behind schedule that there are only thin white nurses on duty with unpinchably flat bottoms.”

“Six days?”

“Today’s Thursday. You’ve been here a week.”

Amazement.

“What happened?”

“Bester Brits is alive – can you believe it? They say it’s a miracle. The bullet missed his brain stem and exited from the back of the neck, almost exactly like the bullet of twenty years ago. What do you think the chances are of that happening? And he’s going to make it. Only just, like you – evidently you whiteys are too soft.”

“And Hope?”

His mother replied: “She comes every day, twice, three times. She’ll probably come again a bit later.”

“She’s not…”

“She was very shocked. She spent a night here for observation.”

He digested the information.

“Vergottini?”

“In custody,” Tiny said. “And when Speckle Venter’s fractured skull and various other bits of bone have healed, he’ll be behind bars, too.”

He looked at Tiny, at the eyebrow ridges that were still swollen, at the lopsided bandage, at the unnaturally thick bundle under his arm. “And you?”

“Ear almost torn off, seven broken ribs, concussion,” Tiny said.

Van Heerden could only stare.

“He’s strong, that one. Strongest I’ve ever fought against. It was hell, I’ve got to hand it to him. Merciless, an animal, he has more hate than I have, he’s got murder in him. I was scared, I tell you. He had my head in a vise and he banged it against the wall and when I felt his strength and saw those crazy eyes I thought, This is how I’m going to die , but he’s slow, too many muscles, too many steroids, too little wind, but fuck, he’s strong,” and he touched the bandage round his head and looked round guiltily. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“You two talk,” she said smiling. “I’m going outside.” She closed the door softly behind her.

Mpayipheli looked at the door.

“And then?”

Tiny turned back, shifted something under the dressing gown, his mouth pursing with pain. “Strong. Held my head with one hand and with the other took hold of my ear and tore. God, Van Heerden, what kind of a human are you to want to tear off another’s ear? I kicked, because of the terrible fucking pain, I kicked him with my knee, with everything I had, and got loose somehow and knew that the only way to walk away alive was to stay clear of him. At some stage we went over the table and I grabbed one of the legs and I hit him against the head, hard enough to break the wood, and he bled like a pig and shook his whole body like a wet dog, and, when he came at me for more, I tell you, I was frightened because no one can keep standing after such a blow, but he wanted more, his hatred is so enormous, and then I had to dodge and hit and dodge and hit. I’ve never been so tired, Van Heerden, I tell you, he kept coming, his whole face a bloody mess. I hit him with everything I had and he would spit, teeth and red gob, and he would come…”