Blue Sunday. Irma Venter
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BLUE SUNDAY
Irma Venter
Translated by Karin Schimke
Human & Rousseau
This one is for Jeanette C
And for Paula, Ammi and Hilda
One Mississippi becomes a study of how identity, in a family, is a group project – we often edit our loved ones into the people we want them to be.
– “Have You Heard the One About the Grieving Daughter”, James Poniewozik, New York Times, 8 September 2016
I did the calculations, they were wrong. They were wrong because life cannot be calculated. That’s the big mistake our civilisation made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation – it is part of the equation.
– Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods
We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us.
– Robert Coover
AJ
1
Wednesday, 7 February, 19:14
The front door swings open without a sound when I release the latch. I stop for a moment and listen to the weavers in the swaying leopard trees above, heavy with nests, complain as if I’m an intruder. As if they want to warn the family that lives here that an uninvited guest has arrived.
Too late for that now.
I kick off my comfortable black shoes, bend down and roll white protective shoe covers over my socks. Pull on latex gloves and get rid of my jacket. The evening offers little relief from the heat and there’s no one around to get jumpy when they see my police-issue Z88 pistol.
I tie my hair in a ponytail and step into the entrance hall of the spacious double-storey house in Brooklyn.
The weavers are screaming blue murder.
Inside the house there’s less dust than I would have imagined, considering the place has been closed up for six weeks. The smell also surprises me. Lemon and lavender. Not even a whiff of the sweat or blood I would have expected, the claustrophobic panic of people fleeing violence.
I switch on the living-room light and search for the source of the smell. Find it on the TV cabinet: an aerosol that intermittently pumps perfume into the air. Shhht, it says as I walk by, the scent sharp in my nose, the spray misting down on me.
I walk past the leather couch, the Christmas tree still flickering red-yellow-green. Past the kitchen. I step carefully over the blood – so much blood – on the stairs. Smeared on the walls.
Almost black now – it hasn’t been red for some time.
I head for the first floor, towards one of this case’s biggest mysteries. The one that struck me first when I received the dossier this morning.
First door on the left. Cath van Zyl’s room. I switch the light on, sit down on the unmade bed. The snow-white bedding still looks brand new.
On the wall opposite the bed are two framed black-and-white photographs of the American ballerina Misty Copeland, visible from every angle, whether you’re lying in bed or getting changed at the cupboard. The one in which she is looking directly at the camera is signed. Written on the other one in thick black letters are the words I CAN. A poster advertising a performance of Giselle in London hangs above the bed.
I get up and walk to the window. Open it. There’s no burglar-proofing in the wooden frame here on the first floor of the house. My one-bedroom flat on the tenth floor in Hatfield has Trellidors everywhere, even on the windows that don’t open. Probably a police thing. And maybe it’s necessary in Hatfield, but definitely not here in the Stables Estate with its 25 luxury houses on huge plots, and its 24-hour patrols.
I lean out, looking for signs that the Van Zyls’ only daughter escaped through this window during the attack. The three-car garage roof is just under the window, up against the house, two, three metres down.
Cath van Zyl is young and athletic – the jump would have been no effort.
That’s if she fled and wasn’t kidnapped, as the dossier suggests.
I look again but can’t make out anything unusual in the streetlamp’s dim light. No broken roof tiles or scraps of clothing.
I can’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t kidnapped. Someone would have heard something by now.
No, something else happened here.
The darkness surprises me. When did the sun go down? I look at my watch. It’s half past seven.
I yawn. Time to go home. I’ll come back tomorrow.
I pull the gloves off and push them into my jeans pocket as I walk downstairs. On the surface, everything is just as it was the Sunday night the Van Zyls disappeared.
No, the night Lafras van Zyl was left for dead and his family disappeared.
Katerien, Willem and Cath van Zyl. Vanished.
ALEX
1
Thursday, 8 February, 12:00
“She’s gone.”
Ivanka Babikova – Miss Behave – doesn’t waste time. I haven’t even touched the ice-cold Castle in front of me.
I pick up the photograph she pushes towards me across the table, sticky from years of spilled beer and half-hearted cleaning. Peer at it in the Midnight Club’s dim light. I turn the well-worn photo towards the stage where a redhead called Kitty is taking off her clothes. Not that there were a lot to begin with.
She’s pretty, but tired, the seduction stale and mechanical.
I’m trying to place the music crackling through the loudspeakers. Eventually I recognise it: a techno version of “You Can Leave Your Hat On”. It’s twelve o’clock on a weekday and Kitty is plying her trade in front of four men and a woman who is staring at us as if she’s wondering whether we could be police. The place smells of mould and old, deep-fried food.
I look at the photo again. The woman standing next to an ancient, pale-blue Renault Clio is young. A girl, really. Light-brown hair, not dyed, a pink T-shirt, denim shorts showing off a pair of tanned, athletic legs. It looks like she cut the shorts herself from a pair of jeans.
Ranna takes the picture, puts it down in front of her, wipes condensation off the bottle of Amstel, and takes a long drink. It’s 37 degrees in Joburg today.
“How old is she?” Ranna gives the photograph back to me.
Ivanka snorts. “She’s young. She’s beautiful. Isn’t that enough reason for any man to help?”
The brunette’s Russian accent sounds just like her name, exotic and sharp.
I wipe across the face on the photo with my thumb as if I could charm an answer out of the mute image. The girl looks worried, maybe even angry, but she’s trying to hide it by holding the car keys out towards the photographer in mock excitement.
Ranna brushes the long black curls from her face, her left arm heavy with silver bracelets. She looks pointedly at Ivanka, as she always does when someone’s ducking her questions. Her eyes are dark blue today, like the clouds brewing outside.
“I don’t know how old she is. Maybe Ruby knows.” Ivanka beckons to a woman behind the bar whose hair is a curtain of braids.
Ruby walks as though she’s having trouble with her left hip, even though she can’t be older than forty. She looks as tired and cranky as the Russian. I glance at Ranna. How on earth did she persuade this woman to pose for a photo essay? To trust her enough to tell her about this girl? To ask for help?
“How old was the little one?” Ivanka asks Ruby.
Ruby’s