The Shallows. Ingrid Winterbach
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often talked about art. It was going well for her at the art school. She was glad she was doing the course. It had been a good decision. She also liked her room very much. She’d never had so much space to herself, she said again. Sometimes she felt guilty about that, but she wasn’t complaining. She’d thought she’d outgrown her epilepsy – she’d stopped taking medication for it a long time ago. She’d been so ashamed, she said, after he’d come across her that day. No, he said, no, that she should never feel. He hesitated to ask her whether she’d ever been in a serious relationship. He was scared she’d take it the wrong way. But she did once volunteer the information that when she’d had a relationship with someone after school the guy who was stalking her now had been bitterly jealous.
She told him how miserable she’d been the first few weeks in Cape Town. How she’d missed her parents and the familiar surroundings of the village. Obs had felt dangerous, the little streets were so narrow. She’d never known from which direction she could expect danger. In Main Road and everywhere the non-stop hooting of taxis had rattled her. The mountain she’d only later started to find beautiful. But she still preferred the West Coast and surroundings.
Isabel was always present, when he and Charelle were having supper in the kitchen. Naggingly, under the surface – always just outside his field of vision, just beyond his sphere of consciousness. He considered making a statue, a kind of harpy-like figure, with the body of a bird and the head of a woman, balancing on the edge of a bowl, or a dish, in which his head, the size of a hen’s egg, was displayed.
Apart from his sketchbooks, in which he drew every day, he started working again on large sheets of paper of 150 x 110 cm each. In his drawing books he drew little elongated figures, figures on fire, figures with chopped-off limbs, with pig’s snouts, skull-like heads, comic-eyed heads and bulging cheeks, sideburns – all distorted in some way or other. He drew skulls and crosses, coffins, glowing coals, flames and demons – all the props and paraphernalia of hell – inspired by their medieval depictions. But on the large sheets of paper he did not distort the figures. On a large, barren plane he drew a multitude of male figures doing violence to one another in various ways: shooting, beating with sticks, burying, suffocating, torturing, hanging and sometimes even executing. Not a tree, shrub, plant or blade of grass on this vast plane, only the men violently harming one another, in every conceivable manner.
Sometimes in the late afternoon, after working in his studio all day, he had a beer with Marthinus. Marthinus often invited him to watch DVDs at his place in the evening, but Nick accepted only on those evenings he wasn’t cooking for himself and Charelle. He and Marthinus watched, among others, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (with crazy Klaus Kinski – evidently one of Marthinus’ heroes). They watched a few classic masterpieces of Japanese cinema. Woman in the Dunes and Ran made a great impression on him. The first of these he had seen before, but for some reason he found it painful to watch it now. It was something to do with the texture of the woman’s skin. For days he was still under the spell of the atmosphere of the two films. Afterwards Marthinus usually had a fair amount to say about the DVDs. An intense man, who reacted enthusiastically to everything that interested him.
The parents of Karlien, the student doing the satanism project, came to see him one morning. The mother was small, blonde, sexy, tanned, dressed in riding gear. Luxuriant eyelashes, lavish mascara. A trophy wife? The father looked familiar to Nick, some big-shot businessman. He was wearing a sports jacket and smelled of liquor, at eleven o’clock in the morning. The mother did the talking. The father looked bored, checked his watch every so often. They were concerned about Karlien. They did not like the idea that she was meddling with satanism for her project. They didn’t think it was a healthy interest. They thought it might lead her astray. Art was her life, it was her dream, the great interest in her life, apart from horse riding. And her little dogs. She was determined to make it in the world of art. (This was news to Nick.) They were concerned about her, because at home they could still keep an eye on her, but she’d moved into a flat in town with a friend a while ago. Nick didn’t know how to respond. The mother looked pleasant enough, but the father looked like a real bastard. The sort who thought art was a waste of time.
*
Charelle told him one evening about the first day she arrived in Cape Town two years ago. She’d got a lift from Veldenburg with somebody, it was cold in the early morning when he dropped her in Cape Town. She’d had bad period pain (Nick was wrong-footed by this intimate disclosure), and she was scared of the mountain. She didn’t want to look at it. The mountain was everywhere. She’d be staying temporarily in a friend’s room in a house, until she found her own place, while the friend was overseas. The domestic had let her in. She’d told her to wait in the kitchen. Later she’d heard someone come in. The person went into one of the front rooms, closed the door, and started crying bitterly. She’d remained sitting aghast at the kitchen table. Later the girl had come out and joined her in the kitchen. Her parents’ dog was dying, she said, and made them both tea.
Nick was cautious at all times. Not a word, not a gesture that could possibly give her the wrong impression. He was careful never to say too much about himself. He kept his distance. It was only in the kitchen that they were ever together – never in any other place in the house. The single exception was the day she had the epileptic seizure, when he’d gone into her room. Sometimes the woman with the turban came to pick her up for the weekend, and once or twice she visited her parents in Veldenburg. She always informed him when she was going away for the weekend.
*
One Saturday morning in mid-April Marthinus knocked at his door at the crack of dawn. He was wearing a woollen cap and an army overcoat. He blew on his hands and stamped his feet. It was a cold morning. Nick glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see a pig at Marthinus’ heels. Nick invited him in. They sat at the kitchen table. Nick made them some tea.
‘Did you see?’ asked Marthinus.
‘What?’
‘The news.’
‘No, what?’ He hadn’t watched television for a long time. (Of late too busy preparing food in the evenings.)
‘A failed assassination attempt on a businessman in the Moorreesburg vicinity. An unknown man and three other people are under suspicion. The police are searching for them.’
‘So? Nothing out of the ordinary there.’
Could he smoke?
Sure.
‘No, not at first sight!’ said Marthinus and blew out the match. (What an animated guy this was. He reminded Nick of a cousin of his, the son of his father’s eldest brother. Always full of bright ideas.) ‘No, but wait for it – the other three people are psychiatric patients on the run!’
‘So?’ said Nick.
‘I have a hunch Victor Schoeman has a hand in this – mark my words!’
‘How can you say that?’ asked Nick, astonished.
‘Not your common or garden businessman – he’s also an art collector. The plot thickens!’ exclaimed Marthinus.
‘In what way, Marthinus? I don’t see any plot here. I see only a couple of coincidences.’ (Would Charelle be up by now? He’d not heard anything. She might be shy to come into the kitchen if she heard there was somebody there. He’d not heard her come in the night before. But he’d also been out for a while.)
‘Victor left England under suspicious circumstances. An issue with a creditor or something of the kind. He’s in financial straits,’ said Marthinus, ‘and he has an art background.’
Nick wondered whether Marthinus hadn’t perhaps been watching too many DVDs. ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked. ‘Besides, Victor has always been in financial straits, ever since I’ve known him. That’s nothing new either.’
‘A friend of Alfons’ is in touch with someone who is in touch with Victor.’
‘That still doesn’t prove anything.’
‘Look,’ said Marthinus, ‘do you remember the part in The Shallows,’