The book of happenstance. Ingrid Winterbach
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his brothers and sisters bullied him,” Sof remarks dryly. She takes two Panados, for she has a headache this morning. Smoked and drank a bit too much last night, she says, and laughs her small, exculpatory laugh.
Two women serve us. One is tall, with a small head and a broad behind. She is clad in shades of beige – from her tight-fitting stretch pants to the colour of her lipstick and powder base; the two spots on her cheekbones are a warm blush-pink beige. She has a small, resolute mouth and her hair, fringe flat on the forehead, is teased up behind her head in a seething, russet-red nest. The other woman is petite, a shy beauty, her skin of a yellowish hue, her features resembling the comely girl-women of hunter-gatherers.
I am nervous. Sof and I discuss our plan. It is a shot in the dark, but we are going to risk it.
“Maybe it’s crazy,” I say anxiously.
“Relax,” Sof says. “What could actually go wrong?’
“What if we end up in a den of thieves?”
“We first check out the scene before we move in,” Sof says, and gives a little cough.
The men are conversing with gusto. Every now and then they call out remarks to one another, from table to table – remarks like echoes that bounce lightly from cliff to cliff, with a densely forested valley between them. Against the wall hangs a copy of a Thomas Baines painting in a large, gilded frame. It is a depiction of Bloemfontein from Naval Hill. In the foreground a rocky hill offers a view of a sprawling plain and of a small town far in the background. Oh, says Sof, the charms of the metropolis. Sof, I say, I trust that you will support me today.
*
There is only one Steinmeier in Ladybrand. I looked up the address in the telephone directory. The house is on the boundary between the white and coloured neighbourhoods, a distinction that clearly still applies in this town. It is an old house, but well kept, with a wide red cement stoep and pillars supporting its roof. The house – like most of the houses in the more affluent white neighbourhood – is of an ochre-coloured sandstone. The front garden is small, but neat, the little lawn is withered, and to the side of the house are a number of bare fruit trees. On the stoep there are potted plants in tins.
I knock.
“Fu-uck,” Sof says softly behind me.
An elderly woman opens the door. I greet her with enthusiasm, but my heart is thumping fiercely. She regards me somewhat suspiciously. Would this be Patrick’s mother?
Behind her a young woman appears with a baby on her hip. She reminds me of Hazel, a young girl who worked for my parents more than twenty years ago.
Sof and I have decided to use false names. (That we have to deceive these people like this!) I introduce myself as Dolly Haze, and Sof introduces herself as Anna Livia. (Anna Livia Plurabelle. O / tell me all about / Anna Livia! I want to hear all about Anna Livia.)
I ask the older woman if she is Mrs Steinmeier and she says yes, she is Rosie Steinmeier and this is her daughter Alverine, and she gestures at the girl behind her, who transfers the baby to her other hip with the same movement Hazel would have used twenty years ago. I say that we are from the Durban Bible Society, that we were in the vicinity and that we have come to deliver the parcel that Patrick Steinmeier ordered from us. (At Cum Books in the large shopping mall near us I bought a Bible and two spiritual booklets. I had a great deal of difficulty with the choice of titles, for what would be suitable titles for the dead?) The parcel I made up neatly and pasted a label on it with Patrick’s name.
The two women exchange a quick, furtive glance.
“Patrick Steinmeier doesn’t live here any more,” Rosie Steinmeier says.
“That’s strange, for this is the address that he gave us,” I say.
Again the two women exchange a quick glance.
“Patrick died not long ago,” Alverine says, and her intonation is so much like that of Hazel twenty years ago that I experience a moment of total confusion. (Could it be her, unchanged, after twenty years?)
I say that I am truly sorry to hear that and respectfully ask the older woman if she is the mother of the deceased. Rosie Steinmeier brings her apron to her eyes and nods. I hear other voices in the house, behind them.
“Then I must let you have the parcel,” I say hesitantly, “with the compliments of the Bible Society.”
Suddenly I do not know how to proceed (that we have to deceive these poor innocent people like this), but over my shoulder Sof asks if we may come in for a moment.
The two women look at each other. The older woman moves aside and we enter. We step into a cool, dusky passage. My heart is beating violently. I have no idea what I can expect to encounter here. Four of my shells on the display cabinet? I may be wide of the mark; Patrick Steinmeier had probably long since stopped having any contact with his family. That we have to enter the house under such false pretences!
The lounge leads off the passage. The room is furnished with heavy ball-and-claw furniture, a lounge suite with a subdued floral pattern and a plethora of ornaments and little crocheted coasters and armchair protectors. The curtains are drawn. On the sofa and one of the easy chairs there are two large stuffed toy tigers. In the darkened room I back away – taking one of them to be a dog or something. Fright of my life. Heart thumping in my chest. Against the walls are prints, some in ornate frames. In one corner of the room is a shiny dark-wood display cabinet. I do not want to look around too much, but I can hardly help myself. Trying not to stare too openly, I take in every detail of the room with a burning gaze.
I sit on the edge of the sofa, next to the large stuffed tiger that keeps a fixed and glassy eye on me. Sof sits opposite me, prim and erect, her legs crossed at the ankles, under a large print of a landscape in glowing synthetic colours, framed in a gilded, excessively elaborate frame.
Rosie Steinmeier offers us a cup of tea and tells Alverine to go and make it.
I am completely flustered and can think of nothing to say except to compliment Mrs Steinmeier on the appearance of the room, although my enthusiasm sounds most insincere to me. At this point, however, Sof’s pastorie persona comes to our rescue. She leans forward in her chair, clears her throat and asks firmly, though sympathetically, like one accustomed to doing the rounds daily, if Patrick died after a long illness.
“No, mevrou,” his mother says, “the circumstances of his death are very sad.”
“How come?” Sof wants to know.
“He took his life by his own hand, mevrou,” the woman says.
Sof says that she is bitterly sorry to hear that; it must surely be a great shock and a time of trial and tribulation for the whole family.
“Just so, mevrou,” says Rosie Steinmeier.
At this point Hazel-Alverine enters the room with a tray, and behind her, without a doubt, the young man that we saw in the Red Lantern last night. Herr K., on his way to the castle. The unsettled young man with the evasive glance.
Sof and I exchange a brief, though urgent glance. The mother introduces him as Jaykie, her youngest child. “And this is now Miss Dolly and Miss Anna from the Bible Society in Durban,” she says. “What is the surname again, Miss Anna?” she asks Sof.
“Livia,” Sof says, and clears her throat slightly.
“Unusual, mevrou,” Alverine says (with Hazel’s intonation exactly – the first syllable of “mevrou” considerably higher than the last).
Jaykie’s hand is cool and damp and his handshake not very firm. For a brief moment our eyes meet. Unusual eyes. Dark-brown, cunning. Darker, almost blackish-brown around the outer rim of the iris and a somewhat warmer brown towards the centre. A slight, very slight squint. Curly eyelashes; dark, lush eyebrows. And he smells of aftershave. At half past ten in the morning in Ladybrand this young man smells of aftershave. Could it be he? If he smells of aftershave this morning, and the shells were found at the feet of his brother’s corpse – could it