Deon Meyer - Blood Safari

‘And the moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth. Everyone was unhappy, irrespective of race, colour or creed. Unhappy with the government, with each other, with themselves. Everyone pointing fingers, blaming, complaining.

‘I couldn’t understand it. The Russians and the Romanians and the Bosnians would collect their children after the evening karate class and they would say, “This is a wonderful country. This is the land of milk and honey.” But the South Africans complained. They drove smart cars, lived in big houses and seafront flats, they ate in restaurants and bought big flat-screen TVs and designer clothes, yet no one was happy and it was always someone else’s fault.

‘The whites complained about affirmative action and corruption, but they forget that they had benefited from the same for fifty or sixty years. The blacks blamed apartheid for everything. But it was already six years since it had been abolished.

‘The loneliness. In the evening I would walk down the passage in my block of flats to my door, following the pizza man, who was delivering boxes to lonely fat women who opened their doors with frightened eyes and who ate alone while looking for friends on TV. Or the Internet. In the morning a woman would occasionally invite me for coffee and then would sit and tell me how lonely her marriage was. Sometimes I was lonely enough to relieve their need. But then they would stop coming. That’s when I formulated Lemmer’s Law of Lonely Moms.

‘I knew something was going to happen. Not a conscious knowing, just a vague premonition. A city sucks you in systematically, changes you, squeezes and polishes you, so you become like the rest. Lonely, aggressive and selfish. Also, you are aware of who you are on a certain level, of the things that lie dormant inside. The things you are capable of, the things that being a state bodyguard had channelled and suppressed. But you don’t think about them or talk about them, you are just aware of the tension, a growing unease.

‘You must think I’m rationalising, Emma. You must think I’m making excuses. I did what I did; I can’t get away from that. I sat in front of my lawyer, a big man by the name of Gustav Kemp, and I tried to explain to him why it wasn’t my fault. He said, “Kak , man. You play the hand life deals you and you take your punishment like a man.” He gave me a day to think it over, and if I still thought I was innocent he would organise another lawyer to represent me.

‘He remained my lawyer.

‘So what happened had to happen. Sooner or later. In prison I thought about that day a lot, how I should have seen it coming, all the signs were there. In me. In other people’s eyes when they bump into you on the pavement or give you the finger in traffic.

‘But hindsight is always perfect vision. We are like the proverbial frog in water that keeps heating up.

‘That evening …

‘I had to go to Bellville for a JKA grading meeting. I was in a hurry after the karate class. I showered and changed and ran down the Virgin Active steps to my car. There were four of them busy with Demetru Niculescu, one of my students. He was a Romanian, fifteen years old with bad acne and a floppy fringe. The men were between twenty-two and twenty-five, that smartass age when you are nobody, but know everything. Four whites with gym-built muscles and a gang mentality who were taunting Demetru.

‘“Show us some moves, karate kid.”

‘“Hey, nice pimples, dude. Grow them in the dark like mushrooms?”

‘When Demetru opened his mouth they homed in on his accent.

‘“Where the fuck are you from?”’

‘“Seapoint.”

‘“Bullshit, dude. What’s your nationality?”

‘“South African.”

‘“Your daddy in the Russian mafia?”

‘That was all I heard. I said, “Leave the kid alone.”

‘“Whoo, it’s the karate master. Now I’m scared.”

‘“Go home, Demetru.”

‘He left, relieved.

‘The biggest one heard my accent. “Hey, Dutchman, are you going to show us some moves?”

‘I walked away. He followed me. “I’m talking to you, Dutchman.” The others shouted, “Chickening out? We won’t hurt you, Chop Suey.”

‘I heard the big one’s footsteps behind me. I knew if he touched me there would be trouble. He followed me right into the car park. I felt his hand on my shoulder and I turned and there he was up close, taller and bigger, and I was ready, really ready.

‘I said to him, “I will kill you,” and I knew and he knew it was the truth.

‘Something shifted in his eyes, I saw the flicker of fear. That’s what stopped me at that moment. I hadn’t expected that. But I suppose it was also what made him drive after me, that moment when he lost face.

‘So I turned away, got into my car and drove off. Never even looked back.

‘I wanted to go through the Waterfront to save time. There was traffic at the circle near the BMW Pavilion, a long queue. I felt another car bump me from behind. Not hard. A nudge. Then I saw them in the mirror, in a Volkswagen Golf GTi. They shouted and gestured. So I got out.

‘I should never have got out, Emma. I should have kept on driving.

‘They got out too.

‘“We’re talking to you, arsehole.”

‘“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

‘“Fucking hairy back cunt.”

‘The big guy was the driver of the Golf. Vincent Michael Kelly. Vince. Twenty-four years old, an articled clerk at KPMG. One point nine metres tall, ninety-five kilograms. I would learn all that in court.

‘I inspected the rear end of my car. There was no damage.

‘“Hey, he’s talking to you.”

‘All four approached. Vince came up to me. “Got a hearing problem, rock spider?” He shoved me in the chest. There was only bravado showing in his eyes now.

‘Steroids were mentioned during the court case, but we couldn’t prove anything. I think they did it because there were four of them, because they were young and strong. I was shorter and smaller than them. It creates a visual illusion. But I think it was because at the gym Vince was momentarily not the man he thought he was. He had come so that he wouldn’t have to live with that moment.

‘He pushed me and I hit him. Not hard. Just enough to bring him to his senses. But it didn’t. Then the others pitched in. I tried, Emma. Part of me knew what would happen if I let go. I tried. But we are what we are. That’s what I learnt, that night. It doesn’t matter what they say, it doesn’t matter how hard the prison psychologists try, we are what we are.

‘That’s why I moved to Loxton, Emma. That’s why I went looking for a tribe of my own. I had to avoid these situations. Try and avoid the possibility of trouble. If I had to stand in that street at the circle, if they came at me again, I would do exactly the same, go to that place, that other world.

‘If it had been just one guy, I wouldn’t have lost myself. Not even then. But there’s something about two or three or four that gives you new rights, at least in your own mind. Switches off the warning lights. And there was this frustration too, about who I am and where I came from and thirteen years of repression.

‘I let it all loose.

‘The big one, Vincent, he …’

Even though she could not hear, would not remember, I chose my words carefully. ‘He died,’ I said. ‘They charged me with manslaughter. With extenuating circumstances. A six-year sentence. I did four.’

For a long time I sat beside the bed without speaking. Ten, maybe twenty minutes.

Aware of what went unsaid.

Vince falling and hitting his head against the Golf. I had hit him, in rage and hate, with everything I had. Three, four, five times. He whiplashed backwards and the back of his head had connected with the right front corner of the car. I can still hear the sound, that hollow, hard, clear sound.