The book of happenstance. Ingrid Winterbach
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the docket,” he says.
“They have not all been retrieved,” I say. “There are still twenty-three missing.”
“Eh heh,” Constable Modisane says, the last syllable ending low and melodiously. In the background I hear a terrific noise.
But I do not want to say goodbye! I do not want to let him go! I want to talk about the hanged man, I want to know exactly where they found the shells, I want to know all there is to know.
“Constable Modisane,” I say hesitantly, “I’m worried . . .”
The constable speaks in Zulu to someone over his shoulder.
“What is it that you’re worried about?” he asks patiently.
“I’m worried,” I say, “because I don’t know what happened precisely. Who came into my house. Who took the shells. What he was looking for. If there were more than one person. I would like to know all these things.”
“Yee-hes,” says the constable, not unsympathetically.
“I would like to know everything that happened,” I say.
“O-kay,” the constable concedes in his soothing bass.
“Are you sure you have no more information? Were there no other burglaries in the neighbourhood at the same time?”
“No,” the constable says. “Nothing else.” Again he calls out to someone in Zulu, and laughs heartily.
“Well, then,” I say. “Thank you.”
“O-kay,” he says jovially.
*
My heart remains heavy and it is not only about the loss and defilement of the shells. Ever since the burglary I have been finding it hard to fall asleep at night. I sleep with the bedside light on, for the moment I switch off the light the darkness comes to rest on my chest like a dead weight.
When I was five years old, the devil appeared to me in a dream one night. We had just moved into our new house, and the room I was sleeping in was painted blue. My bed stood against the wall, facing the window. The devil in his full demonic glory materialised full-length at the foot of my bed. I was panic-stricken and screamed so loudly that my father stubbed his toe badly against some obstacle in his haste to come to my aid. As a child I never doubted that I had indeed been visited by the devil.
The last time I gave credibility to the devil was when I was nine years old. One day I earnestly remarked to my father that from that day on I would never listen to the devil again. We were in the dining room, standing next to the tea trolley that my mother had inherited from her mother. This remark caused my father genuine mirth. He laughed silently. He laughed as he laughed only at someone else’s expense. In this case it was at my expense. I remember his face in profile as he laughed. When I laugh the corners of my mouth draw up in the same way. I was devastated. From that day on I banned the devil from my frame of reference and wrote off my father as a confidant.
After forty-odd years, one evening I suddenly have a strong awareness of the devil again. I find it surprising. He is neither evil nor threatening, but a melancholy character, who has come to the end of his road. Together this devil and I stand on the brink of an abyss. We have equally little say over our allotted fate. Moreover, in my current state I find his presence strangely reassuring.
Chapter four
I want to go to Ladybrand, I tell Sof, I want to pursue that link with my stolen shells. She asks if I would mind her coming along. I say: With pleasure! By all means! We decide to go over the weekend.
On Friday morning Theo and I listen to Cimarosa. Andrew Riddle is the conductor, Theo says. At first I suspect he is pulling my leg. Riddle, as in riddle? I ask. Yes, as in riddle. Riddle left the London Symphony Orchestra to join the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Theo says, and succeeded in getting it back on its feet again.
The music hardly speaks to me this morning. I bend over my cards. Where should I begin? I have urgent matters on my mind, urgent issues for which I cannot find suitable words.
For a while we work side by side in silence.
I am busy with the word dool (roam, rove or wander). Doolgang (labyrinth). The cavities in the inner ear, hollowed out of the substance of the bone, are called the osseous labyrinth. The figurative meaning of doolgang is an errant way: the labyrinths, warrens or networks of the criminal’s life. Error is from the Latin errare – to stray. Ronddool (rove, or roam about). Spiritually or morally on the wrong track; to deviate from the way of virtue.
“What do you understand by the virtuous way?” I ask Theo.
He raises his eyebrows enquiringly.
“Virtue is the tendency to what is good, and the virtuous way is a metaphor for a life in which the good is pursued,” he says. He has clear eyes. He is impeccably polite. His gaze rests on me evenly – without curiosity or demand. That does not prevent me from watching him closely, from pointedly focusing my attention on him. Do I wish to provoke him? Besides his interest in words, he has a great appreciation for music. I have no objection to listening to his music with him. Here, too, I can learn from him.
“Labyrinth, or maze, I find a beautiful word,” I say. “It speaks to my imagination. It is poetic, it has resonance, I can visualise it. But I have difficulty with the virtuous way – as a concept it means little to me.”
He nods politely. “As a concept and as an expression it has probably long since lost its validity,” he says. He gazes reflectively in front of him for a while, before returning to his work.
“How did virtue become deug?” I ask.
“Virtue comes via Latin to the Old French vertueux; deug is of Germanic origin,” he says (without looking up from his work), “from the Dutch deugen, from the Middle Dutch dogen.” He is also a discerning man, I have noticed. He likes beautiful things. I have seen him unobtrusively lift a cup to look at the name underneath, and turn a teaspoon to check the hallmark. I noticed that the day Sailor treated us to cake at teatime. Sailor had brought along his own tea service, teaspoons and cake forks. No half measures for Sailor – only the best for him, Sof remarked to me.
Doolhof, I read. Maze. Where one cannot find one’s way; place where one can easily get lost; bewildering network; labyrinth. The figurative meaning of the word is a complex situation or set of circumstances, in which it is difficult to follow the right way; a situation that makes no sense. Anatomically the word refers to the passages and spaces in the temporal bone of the skull, where the senses of balance and hearing are situated.
Deug and deugdelik. Virtue and virtuous. I see Theo Verwey as a virtuous man – a considerate husband and a loving father. He is reserved. He keeps things to himself. What he holds back, I do not know. I have my own assumptions about his inner life. I imagine it to be as ordered, as filed as his extended card system. I would be very surprised if I were to learn that he is given to excess. This is a man in whom the will – or the virtuous impulse – keeps the appetite, the pleasure-seeking instance, thoroughly under control. This is how I read him. I may be wrong.
*
On Friday afternoon Sof and I leave for Ladybrand. We travel through a landscape of uncommon beauty, but I am distracted and do not take in much. From the corner of my eye I see the wintry poplars, the muted, ochre fields and the misty dales flash by; I see the majestic cliffs of the mountains in shades of deep, pale and pink ochre, but the beauty leaves no lasting impression. I am nervous, for I have a plan and it may be a foolish one. I have the address of the only Steinmeiers in town, and I intend paying these people a visit tomorrow. I have no idea what I will encounter there.
We stay in a guesthouse in town – sumptuously fandangled, but fundamentally unattractive. That evening we eat in an Italian restaurant-pizzeria, décorated like a Roman villa – or the owner’s idea of such a villa. There are painted fountains, painted statues and a painted curtain, drawn to the side with a flourish to reveal the vista of an Italian garden with cypresses.
At