'Truth & Reconciliation' - new horror story - by Michael Botur

‘Truth & Reconciliation’

by Michael Botur

Therapy is just what the doctor ordered for Bay of Islands couple Serena - who longs for her South African homeland - and Vaughn, the loyal husband who can no longer handle the violent mood swings when Serena’s homesickness becomes toxic.

The problem is that what emerges during tense sessions with their counsellor will change Serena’s and Vaughn’s lives forever…

1. Take time to get curious

‘Vaughn.’

You’re shaking. Gulping. Hating this.

Looking at the counsellor like, Please. Can’t we, y’know… abort?

The problem is you booked this whole thing, whatever it is. Intervention. You wanted outside help.

Cause you’re a softcock. That’s what the boys at work reckon. You can’t man up and tell your wife you’re scared of her. You’re a five-out-of-ten sweaty computer tech with flabby skin like wet bread who’s landed a nine-out-of-ten blonde Dutchie babe everyone says is too good for you, too perky, bubbly, tall, a head-turner. The sparkly-eyed pixie-ish 45-year-old cuddling a cushion you’re trying to keep a whole couch seat apart from.

Counsellor Kim’s eyes are searching for which one of you is the dick.

This is ridiculous, all of this. You’re a grown-up with your own IT business. 46 years old, for God’s sake. You fix computers for powerful people. Shouldn’t be feeling so tense.

You look out the window. Peaceful Paihia outside. gentle-looking tourists pushing prams, pulling cameras from their fanny packs so they can snap the sea, still and flat as greenstone.

‘You were saying you feel afraid, Vaughn,’ Counsellor Kim goes, using a long safety match to light something labelled a Couple’s Candle in a dish, on the coffee table, and tapping potpourri oil on a burner. ‘Every relationship has ripples.’

‘Not like this,’ you tell her. Hard to explain why your wife scares you, but considering this shit’s $140 an hour, you’d better crack into it.

There’s a newspaper on the table. Something peeks out from the World section in the back. Something about a peace vigil for some ugly activist murder in the Cape Flats. South Africa being all fucked-up, as usual.

The women are waiting.

‘Know what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is?’ you go. ‘The tribunal? Established by the new South African government in ‘95 to help heal the country, to reconcile… unearth buried shit?’

‘Vaughn.’ Her smile kills your momentum. ‘Let’s stick to what’s in this room, darling.’

She is in the room, Counsellor.

‘Things are a little… volatile at home, Serena was telling us? You really upset her last week. Disappeared, is that right?’

Loaded up your boot with everything you needed for a new life. Drove out to the 100-kay zone. Slowed, hovered. Stopped. Left your balls on the edge of town.

U-turned. Limped back home and hid behind popcorn and pizza and pudding.

Serena reaches over and squeezes your dead-fish hand.

‘He’s roit to be afraid,’ Serena goes. ‘I admit, sometimes I wear the pants and I can be a little froitening.’

That Afrikaner accent you used to think was spicy and exciting. No doubt about it, she’s cute, she’s a novelty. Those dimpled cheeks, the nerd glasses, the funky hair.

‘It’s perfectly normal for refugees from traumatised countries to carry trauma with them,’ the counsellor goes. ‘Tell us how you got to be here today, honey.’

‘I miss my country very much,’Serena says, ‘I’m not sure Vaughn understands what it’s like to be me.’

A story rolls out of her mouth about your marriage, the honeymoon, how you slow-danced on your wedding night, before the music stopped and the Cold War began. Serena fled here suddenly at 26 and she’s been sweet-talking people since. Playing the easy-to-like immigrant. That’s how she got you, in the first place. Fluttering those ‘Help-me-I’m-lost’ lashes. Corny accent. You, total klutz, knocking her handbag everywhere in your haste to fix the gorgeous geek’s computer. Serena is speccy and bookish and everyone loves her. She dives into subcultures and fits instantly in. Serena shops at TradeAid and recycles and goes to drum circles and pottery classes and people consider the chirpy Afrikaner a delight to play chess with in the cafe as camp waiters lean in going ‘Sup, girl! to the bubbly Capetonian who raised all that money for Hospice braai-ing boerewors outside Bunnings except—

Except, Serena has been locking herself in the study and there’ve been screams leaking under the door at 3 in the morning and, and, and this isn’t fixing it, this fragrant fucking office, these comfy neck-cushions, Serena’s barely admitting anything is wrong, she’s listing the things she loves about her ‘Skattie’ in this little love-language, praising all the computers you fix for all the old ladies, recounting how you welcomed her to sunny Northland, how you tolerate her dorkish accent, how you used to kiss the melted-looking skin around her elbow and shoulder, the tubes of ugly fistula at the top of her arm that almost look like letters spelling–

‘Before we arrive at the end of today’s exploration,’ Counsellor Kim goes. ‘Tell us what you think of when you think of your wife.’

You think horror films on grainy tape. Bricks and bloody faces and Serena standing in a street of smoke, hyena-grin.

‘This was a mistake, this whole thing,’ Serena goes, her white teeth wet, ‘Isn’t that roit, Vaughn?’

Yep, sorry. Big silly misunderstanding. Everyone can see how sweet this woman is.

You get up to leave– .

‘Trust,’ Kim says loudly, ‘T-R-U-S-T.’

She puts a leaflet in the space between you and Serena.

‘I’m going to introduce you to the TRUST Technique.’

She speaks mostly towards you.

‘The first T means taking time to get curious about your partner; the R is because you must REFLECT that you’ve come from different places; the U is for Understanding you both want changes. The S is for Stop criticising.’

The final T? That’s for Two to Tango. Means you should do passionate things together. Bring the spark back.

‘...If it’s literally a tango class, go for it, guys! Like you did on your wedding night, mm? Didn’t you say you have your anniversary coming up?’

You go to the door as soon as you can.

‘I see nothing to worry about, Vaughn. If anything, I’m excited about your possibilities.’ She beams. Lights another god damn fruity candle.

‘Hear that, skattie?’ Serena says, her breath on your neck, ‘No need to be afraid.’

*

You drive home in silence. Serena watches the Bay of Islands jade water, watches couples peer at the menu of Zane Grey’s Bistro by the Bay, wearing that store-bought smile. Hands primly laced in her lap. Her posture perfect.

You eat dinner, heads down. Quick conversation about the firmness of the asparagus. Tracey rings on FaceTime, breaking the ice. Dungeons & Dragons at her place on Thursday, awesome.

Wordless dishes, silent recycling, then you settle in front of Netflix. Serena guffaws as she binges some Afrikaans thing you can’t even understand, wiping the last vanilla ice cream out of her bowl with a finger. Every time she chortles, she grips your upper arm. Your flesh like a log of uncooked sausage roll. Seems to find the blubber comforting. Half-a-memory plays. Snuggling Mum on the couch. Mum all Clozapined and Zopicloned and zombified. Mum squeezing.

There just wasn’t the chance, today, to tell Counsellor Kim how Serena’s been staring at you hard when she crawls back into bed in the blue horror of the dawn, trying to sense whether you’re going to tell the Serena Fan Club that she’s got these secret ugly tastes, cause you’ve been pretending to sleep but you can’t, you’re awake in a nightmare, six months ago she started reading those godforsaken news stories every night before lights-out, about people being molotov’d and necklaced, blistered skin falling onto hot pavements, and soon she was joining those revolutionary groups on Facebook. Playing videos in the middle of the night. Sneaking into the study, sliding thick headphones on. Rubbing deep inside her dressing gown, slouching back on her computer chair and moaning, bathed in screenglow, wet fingers on the mouse as, on the computer screen, brilliantly white and red, Africans danced the Dubul’ibhunu chanting Amandla? AWETHU!, waving placards and banners and fists, stomping and dancing Toyi-toyi and it’s hard to see at first, looks like they’re dancing round some curled-up dog, but a dog with long yellow hair streaked with black blood, it’s that American activist being dragged through the streets, dust black with blood, and Serena’s orgasm hits exactly when the second brick juices the girl’s coconut skull as the dance crescendoes and the headphones rattle Amandla, AWETHU and–

And tonight you can’t hold that pillow over your ears anymore. Tonight you’re scampering to the kitchen, finding your phone, shuffling out in your pyjamas barefoot in the silver grass. Crouching in the moonlit bushes.

Finding the phone number. Apologising for messaging so late, it’s just that you’re always watched. Serena doesn’t tolerate traitors, you explain, promising Kim that tomorrow, if she can please meet, you’ll reveal what this thing is you think is such a threat, explain what you found in Serena’s journals and why you’re pretty sure it’s coming back.

2. REFLECT on where you’ve come from

Sparkling windshield glass in the streets, barricades of smouldering tyres. Askies, verskoon - what’s the English? - Sorry for only writing this in my journal a month after. It’s been a crazy 30 days. I’ll try to remember these things duidelik. Clearly; uncoloured.

Not that anything in this country is uncoloured.

Cape Town’s hectic this week. Reporters have come all the way from Jo’burg, bustling to report on today’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings, though mostly they’ve gone to the high courts to hear the Not Guilty pleas, the highly-contested jury cases that could reignite our powderkeg country.

Me, I’m heading to the Yibambe People’s Centre.

Oupa Hendrik, my supervisor, guides me by the elbow like an old-fashioned gent, a short scuttle across from the university interrupted with ducking and darting behind an armoured personnel carrier as someone throws beer bottles at a Sikh bureaucrat holding his briefcase over his head.

In exchange for rotten avocados and pinecones and stones, security guards shoot the odd rubber bullet or smoke grenade, though half the security are ANC sympathisers. A lot of people too exhausted to blink at violence anymore.

A bag of flour explodes against the wall and stains his face white (White-er) as my professor wishes me luck. They’d probably throw something harder if they knew that Oupa voted for de Klerk and the Nationals. That stuff could get you killed, in the good old days before Mandela. Still can, actually, if you come across those who acquired a taste for killing.

‘The war is over!’ I squawk as a dirty diaper splatters, ‘Don’t these protestors want closure?!’

‘Kleinie,’ he says, calling me that cute word for granddaughter, ‘That’s for you to tell me in your dissertation.’

He sees I’m hesitating.

‘Hey - weren’t you saying you hated hockey and horses and quilting and all that girly stuff your mum made you do, ja?’

He winks. Shoos me inside. ‘Maybe this can be your new hobby.’

I sign in as Serena van der Sloot, Student Reporter. Took three years to get my Bachelor degree before getting accepted onto my current Masters in Journalism programme to actually be allowed in the room as my country commits to umoja. Brotherhood. Unity.

I put on a brave face. Tell myself I’m grateful to be here.

People are saying Mandela has told these tribunals to go easy on Blacks who admit dragging Boers off their farms and raping them, paranoid Whites are saying the Truth & Reconciliation Commission whitewashes genocide so long as you say your party ordered you to, while the Blacks and Coloureds reckon what’s really going on is the system is using the TRC to close the case on murders of activists so police can never be sued. Each race has a different truth.

I’m expecting my notepad and Dictaphone to fill up with powerful stuff, at today’s hearing– more powerful than the cardboard-thin tables up front, the dodgy microphones, everything done on a shoestring, so zef, so Suid-Afrikaanse styl. Cables are taped to the carpet and carafes filled and tea poured and foldable tables unfolded and the new rainbow flag rolled down to hisses and boos and clapping and after opening prayers in Khoikhoi and Zulu and Sotho and Xhosa and finally, my language, today’s hearings begin.

30 minutes for each murderer, mugger, rapist and arsonist to plead their case to a palette of different-coloured judges. Two Tsonga guerillas weep as they remember what they did to the Coloured mayor’s daughter in that vineyard at Blikkiesdorp. A family of rooineks wipe their brows and blush as they justify hanging Black boys caught drinking from their cattle trough. A Jewish communist student apologises for holding his chancellor hostage at gunpoint.

I chronicle the contagious violence in my journal while people confess and weep and stutter Sorry and the judges nod knowingly. Xolela kwaye uMandela ukuxolele, I hear one judge say. Murmurs from the Black audience around me. Then, Yenza ngathi uyaxolisa, uMandela uthi kulungile.

Snickers, titters.

I ask a mixed-race teen to translate.

The first proverb means “Say you’re sorry, Mandela forgive you,” she explains.

The second means “Pretend you’re sorry, Mandela says even better.”

She giggles. IsiXhosa humour. Deeply ironic. Two standards at once.

I circle the words. Tap my pen. I need to understand these people. Need to go deep to build some powerful stories that’ll earn me honours with Oupa.

But I need an original aspect to write about. I’ve been hoarding research without settling on an argument, so far, snapping photos and camcorder fragments, marching with Zulus (much to the disgust of Mamie and Papa), sharing chai with retired activists who accomplished REAL things with boycotts and flower power and chaining themselves to Oupa Hendrik’s building, except peaceful revolution just won’t cut it, the radicals have told me, Baader-Meinhof, IRA, Maumau– that’s where the cause needs to head, the hardliners say. Peace is for sellouts.

I only know two things, really: One, my redneck mother and lecturers and binman and postie tell me there’s something sick about you if you march with these kaffirs, and two: the Blacks have a special affection for Umlungu umncedi – the self-hating White idiots. Useful drivers, conspirators, sweet-talkers, infiltrators. Ideal domkops to distract parking wardens and witnesses while bombs are planted, fuses lit. Derailing trains, castrating cops. Glass and nails and bolts blown into skin at four hundred miles an hour, shredding scalps and killing kids.

August 26, the panel forgives a White security guard who killed a Girl Scout because she handed out Spear of the Nation leaflets in the mall.

August 27, forgiveness for a pair of Inkatha Freedom Party sisters who set fire to the Cecil Rhodes Memorial Library in ‘88, killing ten.

Outside, summer cooks the city. Everyone fanning themselves, cranky. We can feel the fire.

I’m starting to think I should pack up and join the press gallery at the High Court when a big Black woman comes waddling in on the 29th, wiping her sweaty brow with her summons papers, strutting wide, tits out ahead, trailed by five women and three males, like a shark with those little fish hanging off.

I find today’s run-sheet and learn the name of the bow-legged, wide-nostrilled, sneering-faced woman who plops a tub of Nando’s chicken on the table as her deposition begins.

‘Margo Nomzamo Zanyiwe Madikizela?’ the chairman asks into his microphone. ‘Thank you for coming today.’

‘Maamie Margo, the people they are call me,’ she explains. Thick arrogant Xhosa accent. Fanning herself with her greasy papers.

I listen as the judges run through establishing questions.

They ask this Maamie Margo her day job.

‘Skelm,’ she replies, laughing in a thick accent, chewing on a drumstick. Thirty people perched in the public gallery gasp. Nobody freely admits to being skelm…?

‘If you are need this in the English: Police informant. Snitch.’ Patting her belly proudly.

Her troupe or harem or entourage or whatever the followers are shush the crowd, clearing silence for their master. I stick my head closer. Listen as the Pandit and Rabbi and elders on high ask her if she agrees why she’s been summonsed.

‘I am taxing the impimpi, the sellout, the traitor, thees why,’ Maamie Margo says in a booming voice. ‘Redistribution of the wealth. Rebalancing.’

‘And you’re asking amnesty for… ’ imam Abdullah Haron begins, scanning her application. ‘Oh dear. This is more than… this is rather a lot, ma’am.’

The TRC Commissioners murmur darkly as the Imam reads aloud the schedule of what Maamie Margo’s asking forgiveness for. When they’re done, Maamie Margo takes the microphone and puts on a show for the court, confessing freely the happy havoc, almost bragging, her jewelled wrists wobbling like udders. Her supporters, enjoying a picnic on the floor, whistle and whoop.

She says the ransackings, the filling-cars-with-paintings, carving MK into the cheeks of shivering, squealing, tied-up women, sticking the head of the Teacher’s League for Justice upside down in a bucket of dirty cooking oil behind a Chinese shop, and crushing those Nurses Against Apartheid with a bulldozer, and the necklacing of some ten-year-old for being an iihaug impimpi informant-pig-traitor—- these were all political incidents.

‘And how do you plead, madam?’

‘Geelty.’ A heavy pause.

‘We’re lucky that people like you haven’t made this country into the next Congo,’ warns a stern-nosed English woman-judge with a screwed-up brow, fingering a tower of amnesty applications. ‘So you’ll tell us about - what’s the victim’s name here - Templeton Seipei. Says he was necklaced. Why on earth should you not serve a sentence for thees?’

Necklace?

Judge English looks queasy. ‘We’re to understand, your “political movement,” as it were, tied the boy up, put a rubber tyre filled with petrol around his neck and set it alight?’

‘We treat all the people equal,’ Maamie Margo responds, smirking. ‘No reason a man should not wear the necklace.’

Maamie’s freakish family explode in laughter.

BLAP-BLAP-BLAP of the gavel.

‘HE WAS JUST A CHILD.’

The justices are shaking their heads and typing notes when Margo launches into a long explanation of how she became askari, slipping into Afrikaans or English or isiZulu when it suits her. Pregnant, poor; husband away working in the diamond mines. She was an accounting at a panelbeating shop by day, and when the uMkhonto weSizwe - the MKs, the Spear of the Nation - spread the word they were looking for enforcers for 40 rand a day, men, teens, schoolkids, everyone desperate stepped up. Even women. Even mums.

‘You know why thee so-called non-violent group, they subcontract Maamie? Because soon as de killing stop, the Apartheid, it is come back.’ She shrugs, checks her gold Rolex like she’s got somewhere to be. ‘You should be grateful there are people like Maamie out in this world. Now, I am take my family and we go.’

Her tribe rises.

‘We do have our next scheduled hearing,’ the Imam wearily concludes. ‘You are hereby granted amnesty. Barak Allahu feeki, madam. Thank you for attending.’

Margo snatches her official amnesty certificate off a turban’d clerk.

Turns and waddles out.

Before I can understand why, I hurry after.

The late afternoon sun is a glowing tyre, burning down the edge of the sky.

I find the posse in the parking lot – the harem, the troupe. They’re using mirrors glued to the ends of golf clubs, probing under a Jeep and a Humvee.

Oupa Hendrik told me the hardline activists are a dying breed. The ones that Mandela’s peacekeepers don’t pay to put their weapons down are eventually bundled into paddywagons and die of “natural causes” at the police station.

‘What did you mean in there, Ms Madikizela, I don’t understand,’ I plead, ‘I need original oral history for my assignment, I’m a komrad, you MUST tell me about the struggle, you already have amnesty, do you not?!’

I’m squawking desperately, breathlessly, chasing the Humvee through the parking lot.

When it hits Proorie Avenue, the Humvee suddenly stops.

A door opens.

She wipes her lips with the amnesty certificate, and tells me to get in.

*

We wind up the switchbacks. A lighthouse winks at us from the Cape of Good Hope.

Hope is something I do not have. God knows where Maamie’s family are taking me. All I can do right now is press Record and dream of my posthumous Pulitzer.

We’re heading east out of the city, winding through the finest White suburbs. Seafood restaurants twinkling beside the bay. Smoke from the townships blackening the purple sky.

Gordon’s Bay disappears, then Rooi-Els, Pringle Bay. Soon it’s all gated palaces clinging to cliffs.

I’m in a convoy. Each armoured vehicle driven by a young black teen with shiny muscle. There’s a skinny Coloured girl in the backseat beside me. Demented. Singing revolution-songs to herself.

A tattooed Shona tsotsi in the front, his neck dripping with mismatched chains and pearls, passing a smoky pipe of Tik and bottle of rum around the Jeep’s occupants: one coloured, one Muslim, the Margo-woman, a pretty Black sixteen-year-old skoolie in her kilt and blazer, and Little White Me, toeing the empty bottles of liquor and lubricant and the condoms under the seat and wondering what the fok.

Finally, we arrive high above a glittering canyon. Warm whispering wind. You can see all of Africa up here through the wind turbines and power pylons.

We’ve settled in front of – God – how do I even describe this place in writing?

A clifftop castle-fortress-chateau. A herehuis. Millions of rand’s worth of architecture.

Gates to conquer. Rugs slung over the barbed wire. Rope ladders to pull Maamie’s little army over.

Security cameras smashed, cables cut as we scurry up for a quick team meeting in front of two low, modern buildings with panels of glass so huge I have to turn my head to see where they begin and end.

A fat heavy bronze Buddha sits in a fountain trickling by the door.

‘This … this is your house?’ I ask Maamie, sounding stupid, ‘Your mates?’

Maamie Margo tosses her rum bottle in a bromeliad bush.

Security lights switch on. Sensing something.

‘Come, my children,’ she says. Not even whispering. Her fanged grin splits her ears. ‘We feast.’

The predators spread out.

I snap photos on a Kodak disposable. Flashes capture shiny eyes, hungry tongues. I jot notes. Take out my Dictaphone. Record the patter of feet.

Our nimblest, Skoolie, darts up to the door. Knocks the big metal ring.

Then a hand, grabbing my jacket and a hunk of bra, between the shoulders and twisting.

‘You’re up, white girl,’ the voice growls, ‘Get us in.’

‘What? I-I cannot- ’

A Black woman opens the door before I can turn and leave. A nanny-maid.

‘Yes?’ Nanny is asking, ‘What is it you want?’

I’m standing alone, speechless, till I finally come up with, ‘I’m… I’m a journalism student? I’m just observing… .’

The man of the house comes up behind. He’s one of the nouveau riche Blacks, wearing suit-pants under a hooded sweatshirt with Witwatersrand First XV Rugby on it. He barks something in Bantu. Scans me from head to toe.

I look White. I look safe.

‘Youuuur car is broken down?’ he says. Then his mouth puckers, and he shifts his legs, puts two hands on the door and starts closing it. ‘How did you get past thee gate?’

He almost gets the door shut–

But there’s a crowbar in the gap, suddenly. Holding the crowbar, the jiggling thick forearms of Maamie Margo twisting the door open. Gums wet, licking her lips.

Someone picks up the doormat and jams it in the gap, then another minion shoves the Buddha in.

Eight against one.

‘I AM CALLING THEE POH-LEES.’

But his hold weakens. The big man retreats. Then he turns and runs.

Invaders pour inside his home.

The shrieks begin. Three clonks of the crowbar quieten the nanny. Bloody bubbles coming from her lips every time she breathes. Skinny Coloured jumps on Nanny’s right elbow until the arm cracks, then starts tugging Nanny’s fingers. Three rings come off, then Skinny Coloured strides, leisurely, to the kitchen, pulls a drawer out, upends silverware across two rooms, finds kitchen shears, applies them to the nanny’s finger and twists till the last ring slips off with half a finger, its bone staring in white accusation.

Huge portraits in the parlour of the people who live here. Children with designer glasses and good teeth. The father, in his hunting vest, kneeling by a rhino, rifle on his knee. And a magnificent Black woman in royal blue wearing pearls and lipstick.

No sign of her. Yet.

But I recognise the portrait of Mister Nouveau Black riche. The kind of politician promoted up the chain as the ANC has come in.

‘Oh God,’ I tell Maamie Margo, tugging at her arm-fat as she fills a bag with statuettes and fine china and good fruit and brandy, ‘That’s David Masondo, he’s - he’s on the city council, for Pete’s sake, I-I-I tutored his daughter once and– .’

A henchman throws me off her arm.

‘You do not touch Maamie.’

Maamie barks an order, then two of the mob empty the fridge, gobbling salmon and blue cheese and dressing up in fancy hats and fur coats, staining it all, the men pissing in the fireplace, the women shitting on the floor, the kids rolling up the rugs and loading the Jeep, while the men ransack every door and cabinet and cupboard.

David Masondo, once so strong on the election billboards, is pulled out from the linen closet, kicking and gnashing and throwing piles of towels. He’s wrestling with three of our jongens, barely older than his children, as they batter his slippery wet skull with a chopping board and a pool cue and an antelope head pulled down from the wall.

‘You’ll have a crack, ja?’ Skinny Coloured asks me, hands on her knees while she pants, as if bashing this man’s head has been exercise. ‘Come on, it’s fun.’

I don’t hurt the poor man squirming in his red puddle.

I just record.

Record while the women rub hot sauce in Masondo’s eyes while he squeals.

Record while the family tear bunches of springy black hair from Masondo’s scalp while he screams for someone called Tannis to run, RUN, TANNIS.

The wife. She’s been hiding in the bathtub under a mountain of trembling towels. They drag her out by her hair, duct-tape her wrists to the arms of a dining chair. I snap a perfect photo. Her gnashing mouth, eyes melting.

Then they turn the dining room upside down and duct-tape everyone, arms on armrests. They bring cases of useful tools they’ve found in all corners of the mansion, singing gwijo and chanting tunes of delight. They raid the garage, return with tools. The whirr of a cordless drill, the whine of an electric toothbrush, the churn of a blender. Skoolie skips past me in her buckled shoes, humming, puts the drill into Mr Masondo’s ear, spinning till grey goo sprays her blazer while she frolics in the fountain of brains.

Amazing photograph, that one. A real keeper.

Finally, the wicker basket in the hallway wobbles and a boy bursts out, his face shiny with frightened tears. Thirteen, maybe. Wearing a Toy Story t-shirt.

I’m stunned - but not so stunned that I can’t stick my foot out as he tries to run.

Three of Maamie’s family pounce on the boy while he gives me a look asking Why?

I get a great shot of him, then, on his back. Pinned like a dying frog. Beautifully framed.

Two thumps with the heavy bronze Buddha. One to detach his nose, one to smash it off. The centre of his face a black hole bubbling froth.

Maamie’s family standing round, panting and smiling like they’ve just come off a rollercoaster. Looking surprised, impressed. Wiping sweat and juices off their faces with fine napkins.

‘Sorry,’ I tell the boy, ‘I’m- it’s for my… my research?’

Then, as if it helps, ‘I really need this.’

3 Understand you both want different things at different times.

You read Serena’s journal entries to Counsellor Kim every secret time you meet. Sometimes you hold sixty-minute sessions over the phone. There’ve been three long, deep calls with her over the month. Always on burner phones so Serena can’t check. Often in those quiet moments when you’re on your lunch break, surrounded by Microsoft manuals. Once, Kim got all fixated and nosy about how it made you feel when you were growing up and your old man insisted you were his best mate. How he took you to the dump every Sunday, found old computers, opened them up. Ripped out the motherboards. Showed you how orderly everything is inside a computer, how straight and normal. Loaded you up with ice cream and popcorn and soda at the movies while your mates and their dates looked back at you and sniggered. Screened your mail for you, in case there were any handwritten letters from Sunnyside that had to be binned.

‘Vaughn,’ she tells you in the Paihia Community Gardens fifty metres from her office. Lilting palm fronds. Tourists in sandals, sniffing hibiscus flowers while you squeeze the neck-cushion she’s brought from her office, the embarassing foamy one that wraps around your throat and clips shut like a necklace.

‘You know you’re safe, right, honey?’

‘SHE’S SICK, MAN,’ you erupt, ‘I’m calling the cops on her, swear to God. You trust someone that writes shit like that in their– ’

‘STOP.’ She’s not even shouting. ‘Vaughn: just stop. Remember the mantra we practised?’

You lasso your breath. I am water. I am the Bay. I’m calm, I’m present, I’m serene.

Except Counsellor Kim hasn’t seen. She wasn’t in the room last night after you botched some recipe called Chakalaka with Potjiekos (‘It’s foine, Skattie - thank you for troi-ing’) and watched BBC Summer Murders then, three hours after a cold kiss and lights-out you awoke in the blue, tiptoed into the hall, following muffled squawks, burst into the study, found Serena with some old handicam plugged in watching black-on-cream skin grinding, a circle of naked soldiers standing round watching billowing black breasts envelope a pink woman with steamed-up pixie glasses pashing and stroking and panting as Maamie and Serena’s hips grinded till the women bellowed as they climaxed and she spun round and ripped the video out and shrieked HOW DARE YOU and held the letter opener against your chins till you dribbled down the wall YOU GONNA SKELM ON ME, IMPIMPI, YOU KNOW WHAT WE DO TO INFORMANTS—

‘Come back, Vaughn.’

You blink. What day is it? Fuck.

Losing sleep. Can’t think straight. This has to end.

‘I’m going to leave you with the only question that matters. Do either of you really want to be alone?’

You sink your head into your fatty chins. No response necessary. Of course you can be alone. Three of the lads at work are alone, for fuck’s sake. It’s no biggie. Independent. Just like Dad.

‘And in the nicest possible way: there’s no one else out there for you. Stop me if I’m wrong.’

You look away. Squint till the tears are crushed and you put on a man’s face again.

But you tell her there’s more.

Worse things.

*

I always take my tools when I do my field research. Vingers on the Record button, a notaboek and pen tucked in my fanny pack, and handicam smacking against my bors.

I carry my tools as Maamie’s family Rebalance a boy scout barbecue because of some insult to the Party; as we pile tyres outside a church service of mine-owners’ families and set it alight because of… it’s never clear. If there’s an order from the MK Executive to smoke those mzungus out, I never hear of it. We’re doing work Winnie Mandela would approve of, but never Nelson, we joke in the Jeep, passing the hooch and listening to Bob Marley and sharing smoke. It’s weird that there’s no praise, on the revolutionary grapevine, for Maamie’s Rebalancings. Almost like our political actions aren’t political at all.

There’s frost, in August, up near Klapmuts, in the Stellenbosch winelands. The air is crisp and clear, away from the Cape Town smog. Nice golf club, too. Ostensibly it’s not Whites Only - nothing’s supposed to be Whites Only these days, my people’s dwindling dreams of purity twinkled out as we wake up in the 21st century - except they’re not my people any more. I have a new people.

When we come to Val de Vie, chopping an ear off the security boy before we smash through the gates and turn the mile of palm-lined driveway to dust, we’re expecting an easy mission.

The Jeep crashes through the glass of reception and porters and caddies. Business Baases in golf shirts with big barbecue bellies hide behind overturned tables.

We hop out of our vehicles and start hacking, ransacking. While Skoolie and Skinny and Jean-Paul tear down the Rolls of Honour and plaques and photographs of thick Rooinek boss-men posing with Gary Player and Retief Goosen, I’m filling a pillowcase in the Trophy Room.

Then cars backfiring - no, it’s my family, shooting - and Tsotsi bursts into my room and the wall puffs and pops beside him, and he shakes me and says, ‘Girl? RUN.’

He touches his head, then drops. Ten pea-sized holes in his left cheek smoking.

I watch the Jeep swirl around in the parking lot, drive hard towards five crouching golfers, hit a limousine then stop, steaming.

The golfers are reaching for their clubs inside the limo – no– wait– they’re not golf clubs, they’re shotguns - and the White men are pumping round after round into the Jeep and I’m being lifted and tossed into the Humvee and Skoolie is the last to get in, the door hanging open as she sprints after it in her clumsy buckled shoes, dropping all the diamond rings and chequebooks and wallets and bottles of Karoo and stickers and postcards and candy and we’re careening across the veldt, crushing cacti, spooking rabbits and flocks of parakeets and it’s two hours of driving hard to escape the sirens and the gunshots and the red-and-blue lights the Tik meth has us convinced we see in the rearview till we come the long way round to Cape Flats and pull into a warehouse and Maamie falls out of the Humvee, hits the ground and begins roaring.

Maamie blames everyone for today’s fok-op, as two of her kwedinis pick metal out of her bleeding fat with tweezers. Two of the family dead. No tax collected. Nothing rebalanced.

Skoolie is the last to hop out. She closes the door on her seatbelt buckle, denting the Humvee, wincing sorry.

Maamie looks at her. Swings her machete.

Skoolie has a slice of juicy red watermelon missing from her head. She clutches where her half-a-face used to be. Then she collapses, gurgling, trying to pick up a severed plait.

‘VOETSEK,’ Maamie barks at me. ‘Shut the bitch up.’

Someone shoves a cricket bat into my hands.

They’re all staring. Maamie waggles her blade between my eyes.

‘I-I-i - No, I-I-I can’t –

The jackals advance. My back hits hard wall.

‘I-I-I’ll get you someone better.’

*

Campus says it’s the end of the academic year. Holidays coming soon. Wet flyers for gigs and plays and comedy shows rotting in puddles. Drifts of leaves. A few last coffee-coloured boys tossing rugby balls as they jog between classes. Three or four girls in jerseys and scarves, puffing hot breath in their knuckles. Hardly anyone around.

Amazing that the Masters office is open, actually.

The Family huddle close. The new driver, some blue-eyed boy who can’t stop looking at me, keeps his shoulders hunched, his fists inside his jacket to hide his knuckledusters, his blade, his pepper spray.

Maamie is amused. She keeps pointing out ‘Skatties’ on campus. Little neat, clean, innocent-looking treasures. Perfect people for knocking on doors. She’ll fuck them, too. Maamie fucks everyone.

It’s not good to be a skattie-treasure. When the heat is on, treasures get dropped. Dumped.

Dr Hendrik Koornhof is behind his desk when we march in. Four black men, three Coloureds, the new White and me.

‘Kleinie,’ he says, standing. ‘What a pleasant… .’ He stops. ‘You did say you were going to show me your… .’ He gulps. ‘I wasn’t expecting… .’

His left hand is on his telephone, finger on the speed dial button marked red.

His right arm is extended, looking to shake hands with whoever’s in charge - the large woman with the machete?

‘Serena,’ he gasps, ‘Wh-what the fok is this?

Maamie’s machete whirls.

A hand thunks onto his keyboard, spattering white papers red.

Hendrik’s forearm is a dogroll with a white centre of chopped bone.

He takes his finger off the phone’s Security speed-dial. Picks up his rubbery, twitching hand and, for a second, presses it against his spurting stump.

Before he falls back in his chair and Maamie’s family feasts, he stammers, ‘They’re going to come for you, Kleinie.’

And then, ‘Run.’

*

You slap the journal shut.

Back on the garden bench. Warm and smelly and buzzing with bees. Tourist couples sharing gelato.

‘Y’know I asked, her, Counsellor, I was like, “You wouldn’t actually hurt anyone here, would you?” And you know what she said? “Not on my own.” Fuck kind of answer is that?’

‘So this makes our fifteenth session, Vaughn. I counted.’

You’ve been counting too. Three thousand bucks, so far.

‘It’s time we talked hard truths, darling.’

Thank Christ. Answers at last.

‘These so-called diaries, darling- it’s creative writing, that’s all. You wouldn’t deny her some comfort, considering all her country’s been through?’

Fuck.

‘Now, you said in your message you want me to put Serena on anti-psychotics, yes? But I don’t think the problem’s with her, darling.’

Here we go.

‘I’m going to prescribe three things for you. I’m prescribing a holiday. Get out of town. Work on your T-R-U-S-T. And the second thing I’m prescribing. These things are like a crutch, mmkay? You can’t lean on them forever. But for now, you’ll really benefit from them.’

You read the scrip while she waffles about moving up to ‘the Second Tier plan’ how you’ll ‘Really get to the next level with exclusive sessions’ or some shit.

Clozapine, she’s written. To stop hallucinations.

You? YOU?! Hallucinations?

Cool. Fine. Whatever.

‘Most important of all: Zane Grey’s. The seafood place. On the waterfront.’

Why the fuck not? A public place will do it.

Maybe she won’t attack, out in the open, when you tell her you’ve drafted an email, and you’re going to send it to a shitload of media and you’re going to shout until the world knows a two-faced monster who helped with mass murders has been trying to settle down here, as if we should just forgive and forget.

You say none of this out loud, of course.

Zane Grey’s, on the pier. Cool, Kim. You’ll book it today.

November Fourth. The big wedding anniversary.

You can out her in the restaurant, then you can run for your life.

4. Stop criticising

It’s five minutes from the car park to the jolly chatter and garlicy buttery grilled fishy smells and plonking piano on the pier, the restaurant rising up till you’re at the entrance and you’re actually doing this. Starting over.

You look around at the happy couples clinking champagne flutes, feeling like the only shitty husband here.

You pretend to study the dinner specials chalked on the board.

‘So um, we can do an evening healing session after dinner. With Kim. 8 o’clock. I mean, I’ve already booked it. Assuming you wanted that.’

Kim described it as “An acceptance session” on the phone. For you, it’s a safe place to finally end this, with witnesses.

Serena nods sadly.

There’s no fire in her, now. This isn’t Scary Serena who - for your own safety - deserves to be dumped.

‘You two together?’ the Maitre D’ asks.

Neither of you responds.

Hard to talk, tonight. It’s been bad enough, listening to the podcast in the car. The one about the T.R.U.S.T. method.

If you Stop Criticising and listen to your lover without judgement, they’ll tell you where they’re coming from.

The Maitre D’ guides you to your table.

You pull out a seat, scan the menu for a decent burger with a hash brown and bacon to munch while you put a separation in front of her. A divorce, possibly. Probably. Definitely.

Finally, Serena sits.

‘You don’t want to be with me anymore. That’s what we’re talking about tonight. Eh.’

You order your burger and beer and tell Serena to grab anything, trying to avoid her eyes.

Come on, Vaughn. Man the fuck up. Know what Aaron Alsop did at work after he gave his missus the old heave-ho? Built himself a man-cave, that’s what.

‘There’s a Riesling from Stellenbosch on the wine list there, if you want.’

‘It’s a hundred and thirty dollars, Vaughn.’

The ocean breathes in, breathes out, stirring shells.

‘I should take you there,’ she adds.

You run out of tech news to read on your phone. The piano player takes a break.

‘Can I ask you something? How did they stop that Maamie chick, in the end?’

‘Maamie never stopped.’ Then her brain finishes computing. ‘You read my journals.’

Her eyes are wet jellyfish. ‘What did you tell her?’

Just as you’re waiting for some scolding, some rage-threat, begging for it, actually, you need that excuse to just END this thing, Serena gets up and slams into the waiter and whirls round, looking for anyone that’ll take her on, scaring a path of pale people.

When no one’ll fight her, she marches out.

You’re calling Serena! as you sprint the main road, past Mövenpick and the yacht club and a Tesla honks for ten long seconds as you bolt madly up the street, and there she is, ahead, up Koru Road, past Cedar Lodge and the Hilton then she’s on Bayview and you almost catch her, ‘STOP’ then she’s bursting into 1078 Baysview Rise and you freeze in the driveway.

Serena’s silhouette. Light in the office of Counsellor Kim.

Thum-thum-thum.

You hunch in the garden, watching the woman-shapes through the window.

Serena, knocking on the door, asks to be let in.

Kim opens up.

Something about ‘Where’s your husband, darling?’

Caring conversation, at first. Serena jittery. Her face flitting from apologetic smile to wild storytelling to biting down and wiping her steamed-up glasses.

Kim tidies her office, stacking magazines, making her bookshelf even, pouring scented oil into the little burner and lighting a tealight, offering Serena a long matchbox.

You stand there, crushing the lobelias, as Serena paces the room one way, then comes back. Then shakes Kim’s shoulders.

Kim scribbles something on a pad. Tears the page off, holds it out.

Serena reads what’s written.

Her face screws up as she screws up the paper. Biffs it at Kim.

Smacks the prescription pad out of her hands.

Then Serena is biffing a ball of knuckles.

Kim cups her lips. Looks down at the tooth in her hands.

You’re stroking the window, now– but doing nothing to stop this.

Serena batters her. A hurricane of fists smash Counsellor Kim into the hatstand, a hatstand the little old woman is trying to pick up and wield, swinging, whacking manuals and books and vases of potpourri while Serena ducks and darts, playful, till the base of the hatstand, with a puff of plaster dust, gets stuck in the wall as Serena buries her thumbs in the woman’s neck.

You race around to the front door. Burst in.

Your wife doesn’t flinch or release or look up, even when you wrench her hands and pull her hair then finally shut the door so you can bellow SERENA!

She lets you pull her up. Rip her away.

You hover. Catch up breaths.

But you let her go.

Now you just watch. Watch as your wife tips the candles over, onto the Paihia Paradise Community News.

You take a safety match from Kim’s matchbox. Spark it up. Admire the flame.

Serena inhales the sulphur like she’s enjoying a sauna. Wide twitching rabbit-nostrils and the tiniest smile.

You give your wife the match. Spark-spark-sizzle. First, the candle catches alight. The newspaper follows, then the tissues, the magazines.

The room thickens with smoke.

Serena starts for the door.

You seize her arm.

‘Babe.’

You push the pillow into her hand.

She puts it round Kim’s neck.

Takes a bottle of scented oil, pours it on the pillow, lights up the necklace.

You leave Counsellor Kim on the couch, head tipped back. Looking like some sleepy nana who’s dozed off with candles burning - except this nana’s hair is melting and curling into smoke. Her eyes steaming.

The hatstand in the wall can’t be explained, so it has to burn. The prescription, too. Kim’s computer and files. Everything.

*

You share gelato, down on the waterfront.

Watch the fire engines and ambulance come, watch the moon while the ocean licks the land and red/blue lights strobe the shops, your chin on her brow, hips rocking, her face in your chest, smelling her scalp, strawberry shampoo and sulphur.

Hips together, you sway.