The book of happenstance. Ingrid Winterbach
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doodskopaap (death’s-head monkey), doodsvlek (any one of the coloured spots found on a body twelve or more hours after death), doodsvuur (ignis fatuus: foolish fire, because of its erratic movement).
“I clothe myself in my shroud, my shirt of death, lie down in the room of death at the appointed hour and hark the death knell tolling,” I say.
Theo Verwey smiles.
Doodsrilling (shudder as if caused by death; fear of death), doodsteken (sign of approaching death; in memoriam sign), doodvis (to fish to death). Doodtuur or doodstaar (gaze to death).
“Doodtuur,” I say. “A strange word.”
“To gaze yourself to death at what is inevitable, for example.”
“Like the hour of death,” I say.
“Like the hour of death,” he says.
“To fish to death I also find interesting. To think a stretch of water can be fished to death.”
“Yes,” he says. “A particularly effective combination.”
I ask about the origin of the word dood.
“Probably from the Middle High German Tod, the Old High German Tot, from the Gothic daupus, of which the letter p is pronounced like the English th—probably based on the Germanic dau,” he says. “Compare the Old Norse form deyja, to die.”
I would like to ask him how he feels about death, now that we are covering the terrain of death so intensively. But it is too intimate a question. Dead intimate. As intimate as death. Intimate to death. Highly improbable that we will ever know each other that well.
I continue looking through the cards. Dader and daderes (male and female doer, perpetrator). (Theo Verwey and I? And in what context would that be?) Dadedrang (the urge to do deeds). Daarstraks (obsolete for a moment ago), dampig (vaporous; steamy – after the joys of love?). Dries (archaic for audacious), dageraad (archaic for daybreak; Chrysoblephus cristiceps, daggerhead fish).
“Dactylomancy,” I say, “you probably know . . .”
“Divination from the fingers,” he says, “from daktilo, meaning finger or toe, as in dactyloscopy.”
“Looking at fingerprints,” I say.
“For purposes of identification,” he says. “Based on the fact that no two persons have the same skin patterning on their fingers – and that this pattern remains unchanged for life.”
*
I weep for my shells as Rachel weeps for her children. I am alternately murderously angry and depressed. I phone Constable Modisane regularly to enquire if anything has been found. What do I care if he thinks there is something amiss with me? A woman going on about shells as if she has nothing better to mourn. I have much to mourn, but at the moment I am mourning for the shells.
I have a child, a daughter, and I have a companion, someone with whom I have had a relationship for the past seven years. Although my daughter is already a young woman, with a life of her own, she is constantly in my thoughts. I often recall with painful intensity her form in all the phases of her life – as an infant, as a young girl, and now as a grown-up woman. The smell of her hair close to the scalp, the silky skin and barely noticeable transition from neck to jaw, the delicate meandering of veins in the area just below the collarbone, her particular tone of voice – when she is pleased, or anxious. The heat of her breath when she is feverish, or when she says something close to my ear. All this I recall clearly. I have great affection for Frans de Waard, the man with whom I have a relationship. He gives me much pleasure – edifying as well as erotic. He is a many-faceted man, solid as well as sexy, attractive, intelligent and virile. Prompt – receptive to the giving and taking of pleasure. But I have been less open to him over the past months. I have been more focused on my immediate circumstances – the project with which I am assisting Theo Verwey, the book that I have begun writing, and the recent loss of my thirty-two shells.
And now, out of the blue, when I am least expecting it, Marthinus Maritz insinuates himself into my thoughts – although I have little reason to believe that the impetus is coming from him. Freek van As (whom I still cannot remember clearly) reminded me of him. My most vivid and immediate recollections of Marthinus Maritz are of his sidelong glance, the powerful, somewhat fleshy torso, his emanation of both aggression and neediness, and a restless impatience that determined the pace of his physical movements as well as his mental activity.
I keep thinking about the dead – those who were close to me that I have lost, and a few others, like Marthinus Maritz. I keep communing with them in my thoughts. I think I see them with greater clarity – my mother, my father, my sister, Joets. I recognise more clearly the ways in which each of their lives was thwarted. All this I could have mourned, but I choose to focus my grief on the missing shells instead.
Her name is Judit, but I call her Joets. During the December holidays our family visit my aunt on their smallholding in the Orange Free State. I am nine, Joets is fifteen. By day we take long walks in the veld; sometimes we catch crabs in the dry banks of the spruit. In the afternoons I play by myself in the front garden. Everyone is sleeping and in the enclosed stoep behind me there is a constant low humming noise, like a whirligig moving very slowly. (At night this noise scares me.) I play in the shade on the grass, close to a small round rock garden. I play an imaginary game with a little celluloid doll. I am totally immersed in the game. At night Joets and I sleep in a room full of unpacked boxes – my aunt and her husband have only just moved in. These boxes are stacked all the way to the ceiling. There is no electricity yet. Joets wakes me up with a candle one night and threatens to burn my toes if I do not tell her what presents she will be getting for Christmas. The rooms have low hessian ceilings, there are always flies, the kitchen smells of milk, and during the long summer afternoons it is hot and dead quiet in the house.
*
Nine days after the burglary I get a call from Constable Modisane.
“Your stolen goods have been retrieved,” he says.
“Where?” I ask.
“In Ladybrand,” he says.
“Ladybrand in the Free State?” I ask.
“Yebo,” he says. “Ladybrand in the Free State.”
“Who took them?” I ask.
“A Mr Patrick Steinmeier,” he says. (He pronounces it Pah-trick.)
I hesitate for a moment before I ask if Mr Steinmeier is white.
Constable Modisane enquires over his shoulder. In the background a hubbub is audible.
“They don’t know,” he says.
“Where is Mr Steinmeier now?” I ask.
“Mr Steinmeier is dead,” he says.
“How did he die?” I ask.
“Mr Steinmeier hanged himself,” Constable Modisane says.
“I see,” I reply. “Where did he hang himself?”
“In Ladybrand. When can you come in to identify and claim your stolen goods?” he asks.
“I can come immediately,” I say.
“When you come, I will show you the photographs,” says the constable.
I am confused. Photographs of the shells? “What photographs?” I ask.
“The photographs that were taken of Mr Steinmeier when they found him,” he says.
“I don’t want to see them,” I say.
“Okay,” the constable says jovially. “I will show them.”
I report at the counter twenty minutes later with a thumping heart.
Constable Modisane is a genial fellow. He obviously does not hold my obsessive telephone calls over the past few days against me. I notice only now that his hair is cut in a kind