The Shallows. Ingrid Winterbach
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people. This is a time of isolation. In the foreground: the mountains and I and the brothers. At times there is a zooming in the air. The mountains vibrate. In the background: the absent but urgent presence of the pig-headed old father and his sidekick-cum-housekeeper. Sometimes I meet up with you in town. Always we talk about him, because his death is still fresh in our minds. At times it’s better, at times it’s worse, you say, but the emptiness remains.
When I’m not occupied with the cards, I follow links on the internet. I read that Philip Roth says in an interview that he’s done with writing. He’s devoted the largest and best part of his life to the novel, but now he no longer feels the compulsion. There’s a photo of him: he looks like a disillusioned old man, but his gaze remains piercing. Done, presumably, with characters like Mickey Sabbath: panty-sniffing, outrageous Sabbath, singing a paean to the clitoris, masturbating on the grave of his lover with the short legs (or am I confusing her with another character – Winnie Verloc, perhaps, in The Secret Agent? Winnie, for whom life did not bear much looking into).
Then, one fine day, the secretary, a Miss De Jongh, phones. Professor Olivier is prepared to grant me an interview. But the interview is subject to strict conditions. It can’t be longer than half an hour, perhaps even shorter if the professor finds that it exhausts him too much. I will have to submit my questions in advance for the professor’s approval.
We make an appointment for the end of the week, at four o’clock in the afternoon.
Nine
When by Monday afternoon Charelle had still not returned, Nick called her on her cellphone. The subscriber you have dialled is not available, was the only message he got repeatedly. He went to check her bedroom again. Spacious, almost the size of two rooms. She’d said more than once that she’d never in her life had so much space to herself. Everything arranged in a very orderly fashion on the large worktable (which she’d been very pleased with). There were few of her own possessions in the room, apart from her crocheted spread on the bed. Everything painfully tidy. Not a frilly, girlish room. He looked in the wardrobe. All her clothes were still there, as far as he could tell. He’d so often been fascinated with her attire – everything seemed second-hand to him – not fashionably second-hand, poor second-hand. The worn boots and the home-knitted jerseys. He’d wondered whether he should take her to buy clothes – but that would probably have been outrageous and presumptuous on his part. He looked in the bathroom again. Toothpaste and toothbrush. Skin products (not very expensive, by his estimate). In a small make-up bag (soft material with an embroidered Chinese dragon motif on it, probably bought at some Chinese store) – mascara and lip gloss. Two flagons of nail polish. (Slender fingers, slender nails.) Nail scissors, nail file. Tampax in the cabinet under the washbasin. Toilet paper. Shampoo and conditioner in the shower, a shower cap. He couldn’t remember what she normally took with her in the morning. He vaguely recalled that she sometimes carried a rucksack. It was not there.
He sat down on her bed. He recalled that she’d told him she hadn’t known the girl very well in whose room she’d stayed when she first came to Cape Town. The room had been terribly untidy, and terribly cluttered. She couldn’t believe that anybody could have so many things – so many useless things. She’d tried to tidy up, but she hadn’t known where to put everything, and then she’d become discouraged. She’d felt completely alienated in that room. And she’d always been cold there. But she’d really liked the other girl who lived in the house. The one who’d cried so much that day about her parents’ dog.
On Tuesday he phoned again in the course of the day. Still the same message. He didn’t know where to get hold of the Desirée woman, he didn’t know her surname.
By Wednesday morning Charelle had still not returned. He reluctantly went to work. The students were back from their three-week-long Easter break. Thank God he didn’t have an appointment with the Karlien girl that day. At the end of the previous term she’d started dragging her feet on her satanism project (stillborn, Nick was starting to suspect). Possibly because her parents disapproved. (The father had looked like a bully. A brutal fellow, used to having his way.) He didn’t think he’d be able to be tactful with her today. He went home early. He phoned Marthinus and asked if he could drop in. There was something he urgently needed to discuss with him. Marthinus awaited him at the top of the stairs, mug of tea and cigarette in hand. Come in, come in, he said. A cordial kind of guy. Nick was grateful to see him.
He explained the situation to Marthinus. How long had she been gone? Marthinus asked. Ever since Saturday morning. That was to say four days. Should he go to the police? No, said Marthinus, forget the police. They weren’t interested. There were too many missing persons. He had a better idea. He’d take Nick to a place where the people had a very shrewd notion of everything that happened in the neighbourhood and down in the city – everywhere: under bridges, in tunnels and culverts, in every conceivable hideout. These guys had their fingers on the underground pulse of the city. Underground and above ground. He’d take him there this very afternoon.
‘Where does she work, who are her friends?’ asked Marthinus later that afternoon as they walked, first a few blocks towards the mountain, then turned right and walked another few blocks up a slope.
‘I don’t know. She has a friend, Desirée, a woman with a turban.’
‘That’s a start,’ said Marthinus, ‘there aren’t many women with turbans.’
‘Her name is Charelle Koopman,’ said Nick. ‘She’s studying at the Peninsula Academy of Art. She’s very serious about photography. She helps a friend twice a week at a hairdressing salon. She’s quiet, she doesn’t go out very often. She’s never really received friends at the house. I sometimes cook for us in the evening.’ (He feels a bit shit having to say this.)
‘Where does she come from?’ asked Marthinus. From Veldenburg, said Nick. And he was scared that the people who’d sworn at him, and the chap who’d threatened her a while ago, might have something to do with her disappearance.
What made Nick think that? (Any intrigue, and the man was all ears. The matter of Victor Schoeman and the escaped psychiatric patients a case in point.) A black car that he’d seen driving past his house once or twice after the swearing episode, he said, and if memory served, he’d also been sworn at from a black car, although he couldn’t say that with any certainty. She had, however, recently said that for a long time she hadn’t had grief from the man who’d threatened her. Apparently he hung out with bad company – tik-heads and the like.
‘Doesn’t sound good,’ said Marthinus. ‘There probably is something to your hunch.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Nick.
‘To a settlement here up against the mountainside,’ said Marthinus.
‘A settlement?’ asked Nick.
‘A friend of Alfons’ started it as a refuge for outcasts and rejects. You could say the man was a kind of founding father. He managed the place for years in a very unorthodox style. Then he handed it over recently to a younger chap – very idealistic – who’s in the process of as it were reforming the whole bunch,’ said Marthinus, uttering his abrupt little chuckle. ‘Oh Lord,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Nick, not entirely buying into Marthinus’ plan, but relieved that he was at least doing something, not just sitting around fretting and fiddling.
At the top of the steep hill they turned right again. A short distance along they came to a gate. There was a guard here. The gate was locked. Marthinus evidently knew him, he talked to him in Xhosa. The man let them in. As they followed the road up, Marthinus explained.
The first building on the right was the kitchen and recreation area. Here once a day a nutritious meal was prepared, sponsored by the Department of Welfare. On the left there were a few prefab buildings, where the permanent residents lived. It was still early, most of the people had probably not returned from work, said Marthinus.
Behind the kitchen was the vegetable garden. It covered a large area, everything here was planted in neat rows and clearly well maintained. The people worked in the gardens themselves