Forgive Me (16 page)

At the end of a long, wet hallway, Nadine saw someone slumped in a chair: George. His ponytail was loose, his eyes closed, mouth partway open. The floor had just been mopped; there was a pine cleanser stench.

George heard Nadine’s approach, and sat up, lifted his head. His hair hung crazily around his face. As soon as Nadine saw his expression, she knew.

“Maxim?” she said. She reached the doorway, and saw the empty bed.

“No,” said George.

Thirty-two

G
eorge stared intently at the road. The headlights swept across empty land until a sign came into view. It said,
ANDRE V. HEERDEN. POST CHALMERS. HOLIDAY FARM
.

“Maxim woke up, just once,” said George. “It was the middle of the night. I thought I was dreaming. But I wasn’t dreaming.”

“What did he say?” Nadine felt as if she were suffocating.

“He said, ‘Get Nadine. Where is Nadine?’”

She closed her eyes. “What did you tell him?”

George did not seem to hear her. “We’re here,” he said. His voice was low.

Barbed wire surrounded the property. George turned in and stopped the car. In the twin lights, a white building painted with red letters was illuminated:
POST CHALMERS HOLIDAY FARM
.

“It’s closed,” said Nadine. George rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. The air was warm and fragrant with sage. The rippling sound of cicadas rose from the trees and surrounded them.

“I thought you wanted to know what happened to Thola.”

“I do.” Nadine knew it was another story that would haunt her, but she listened.

“I had been trying to convince her to leave South Africa, for a while, anyway. You know that.”

“Yes.” Nadine clasped her hands, tried to appreciate this last moment, when any future for Thola was still possible in her mind: an apartment in San Francisco, a job with the London Ballet. Nadine had seen Thola dance only once, when she had waked in the middle of the night and walked by George’s room on her way to the kitchen. George’s door was open, and Thola was dancing in the soft light from the street lamps. Her movements were fluid and euphoric. It was the only time Nadine had seen Thola without her guard up. George was asleep and Thola danced for pure pleasure.

“Well, she wouldn’t leave this fucking country. You know Thola, she wanted to fight, she was all fight and no…love. I don’t know. Sometimes, I felt like the cause was more important to her than anything. More important…than me.”

Nadine was silent.

“One night,” said George. He paused, as if steeling himself, and went on. “One night—this was about a year after you’d left—she came over to the Waterfront, had a beer, but then told me she had to go. Her friend Botha was home. He had been away. I knew what
away
meant. I asked if I could come along. Of course, she said no.”

Nadine couldn’t seem to breathe deeply enough to fill her lungs.

George continued, “A white American was nobody’s idea of an impressive boyfriend, especially a Freedom Fighter. God knows…I would have been shot if I had gone to one of her meetings. Anyway, I can still see her, standing outside the bar. She was wearing a pink dress, it matched her shoes. She was all spiffed up, and I was jealous.” George took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t kiss her good-bye.”

He stared out the windshield. “In the morning,” he said harshly, “my new housemate—he was a journalist, too, called Trey—he told me there had been an explosion in Sunshine.”

“Oh, no,” said Nadine.

“Yes. And Maxim’s cameras were still lying around, so I had started taking pictures. I mean, how can you write a novel when right outside your door…well, anyway, I took a camera. I wanted to take pictures of the explosion. I guess I never figured anything would have happened to Thola. She was…I don’t know how to say it.”

“She was invincible,” said Nadine.

“As it turns out,” said George, “she wasn’t.”

Nadine struggled for air. “Just tell me,” she said.

“I went to Thola’s house, and Fikile answered the door.”

“So Fikile was all right. Thola’s house was all right.”

“Yes. If only Thola had been home, with me…”

“George, don’t.”

He swallowed. “I stood there, in that room. All the pictures of Thola on the wall in her leotards…” He stopped.

“Where was she?” said Nadine.

“Fikile’s sister September was there. She speaks English, remember? She told me Botha had been MK, which was no big shock. He’d gotten some package from Zambia: a Walkman. Lots of them had been exiled, so I guess he thought it was a message from comrades or something. When he put the headphones on and pushed
PLAY
, his head exploded.”

“And Thola was there?”

“She was still alive when the police came. They took her, neighbors saw them take her. Did I tell you she was wearing a pink dress? And those ballet flats, with the little bows. Did I say that already? She loved those fucking shoes.”

“George,” said Nadine.

“Fikile, she went to a witch doctor. She spent all this money, and the guy tells her Thola’s a zombie, not dead. I’m standing there in Thola’s living room, and Fikile’s asking me for more money to go back to the
sangoma.
”

Nadine shook her head.

“I gave her all the money in my wallet. And then—I don’t know—I asked to take her picture. Fikile. She let me. She stood there, not crying, not anything, blank. So I took her picture, and then I left. In the street, I…”

“What?”

George spoke evenly. “I found one of Thola’s shoes. I took a picture. A shoe in the yard of a burned-out house.” His eyes were fixed, as if the sight were still before him. “Thola never came back,” he said, finally. “I went wherever there was blood. Jerusalem, Croatia, Sudan.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s been a long time,” he said.

“I’ve seen them. Your photos. George, you’re gifted.”

“Ernest called me when Thola’s killer applied for amnesty. Hendricks. He’ll go before the TRC in Cradock next month.”

Nadine could not see George; the darkness was complete. She leaned toward the open window, trying to taste something clean. “So what are we doing here?”

George didn’t answer. “Can you sleep?” he said finally.

Nadine was curled in her seat, a velvet oblivion within reach. “Yes,” Nadine said.

“Sleep,” said George, and she did.

Thirty-three

N
adine woke early, the sun hot on her face. George was sitting on the hood of the car, staring at the dilapidated farm. It looked bucolic, peaceful. Nadine climbed out of the car and sat beside him.

“Post Chalmers,” she said.

“Yes.”

“This is where they took her.”

“That’s what Hendricks said in his application for amnesty. Yes.”

This was the place, this small farm in the middle of nowhere, this place that smelled sweetly of grass. The disappeared were brought here, then tortured by people like Gandersvoot. No prisoners left the Post Chalmers Holiday Farm alive.

“I try to get my mind around it,” said George. “But I just can’t…”

“We don’t have to,” Nadine said.

“Ah, America,” said George. He put a cigarette to his lips.

“Are you going in?” Nadine said.

“What, to see where they beat her to death?” said George. “To see the animal pen where they lit her on fire, or put the wet bag on her head and suffocated her?”

“Yes.”

His face was red. “To see where they put a condom on a metal pipe…,” he said. “Where they took electrical wires…” His voice broke. He turned to Nadine. “She could have spent the night at our house. In my bed.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Nadine.

“I can’t do it,” said George. “I can’t go in.”

“So don’t.”

“But this needs…,” said George. “Someone needs to take pictures of this. To prove it happened. Nadine, I need you. I can’t do it.”

“No,” said Nadine.

She looked at George. In the harsh sunlight, he looked a hundred years old. “You flew to Jo-burg,” said George. “And I stayed with Maxim.”

“What are you saying?”

George removed his camera from the case. He held it to the light. “I stayed with him,” said George, “and you went to the airport.”

Nadine closed her eyes. She opened them, and nodded. She took the camera.

S
omething happened to Nadine in the farmhouse. It wasn’t just good-bye to Thola; she had said that long ago. It was good-bye to all of it. She walked through the dim rooms, saw the rusty instruments of torture, the walls painted in blood. Even the camera didn’t protect her. There was a crack; she was broken. The echoing horror seeped inside her skin, inside her blood, inside her womb. She couldn’t do it anymore. Good-bye.

In the patchy field behind the farmhouse, Nadine vomited into the grass.

T
hey were silent on the drive back to Cape Town. Nadine drove, and George looked out the window. The placid landscape rolled by. Like Nadine, it said nothing of what it had seen.

At Jeffreys Bay, they stopped for gas. George took the wheel and drove to a beautiful beach, isolated at the end of a dirt road. “A swim,” he said. They climbed from the car and dove in the water. George swam naked, and Nadine wore her underwear. Cooled, they lay on the sand with their heads next to each other. “Now it’s your turn,” said George, taking a strand of Nadine’s hair and holding it in front of his eyes.

“I’m pregnant,” said Nadine.

“You’re not.”

“Right,” said Nadine, “I’m not.”

“Nadine,” said George, looking into her eyes.

“I’m not,” said Nadine. “It was a joke.”

George leaned over, his lips inches from Nadine’s. “You’re not the mothering type,” he said. He laughed. “I’ve never even seen you
look
at a baby,” he said.

“Right.” Nadine’s eyes filled with tears. She was suddenly jealous of Lily, who held her new baby with such easy authority.

George’s lips touched her neck. “Marry me,” he said, in her ear. “We’re the same. No children. No settling. A more important kind of life.”

“George,” said Nadine. She felt a physical longing, but did not turn toward him. She thought of Hank, of sitting on his couch in front of the fire, the fragrance of garlic mixing with butter in the kitchen. She thought of waking to bright sun and new snow, Hank’s dark hair on the pillow, his lips. The padded footsteps of a child in pajamas walking toward them.

“You don’t have to answer. Not yet,” said George.

A
s they drove, Nadine pictured Thola, the woman who should have been George’s wife. Nadine had seen Thola for the last time after Maxim’s funeral. Thola had not attended the funeral, of course: Maxim’s parents would have been horrified at the thought of an urban black woman graveside, and Thola herself decided to stay in the city. “I can mourn him in my own way,” she said. “I have no need to cause a spectacular.” Nadine almost corrected her English, but then acknowledged that perhaps Thola’s word choice was more apt than
spectacle
anyway.

Nadine and George had taken the Tercel from Cape Town to Maxim’s parents’ farm. Maxim’s belongings, save for a few things they had kept—two cameras, a shirt that held his scent—were piled in boxes in the backseat. It was a long drive to Johannesburg and then through the countryside. They had to stop once and wait for a herd of goats to cross in front of them.

A long, rutted road led past the workers’ quarters to the farm, a low-slung stucco home and several outbuildings. The death of Mrs. Robertson had not gone unheeded; Maxim’s father had erected an enormous fence around the property, topped with circles of barbed wire.

Maxim’s parents were polite but distant, gathering tightly around a blonde girl Maxim had dated in high school, before he had gone to Cape Town. The girl sobbed loudly though the prayers, which were in Afrikaans. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, Nadine’s eyes—covered by enormous sunglasses on loan from Thola—were dry.

After the burial, they gathered in a high-ceilinged family room. A huge wooden table was surrounded by ornate furniture, and the floor was lined with tile. A chandelier hung over a roast leg of lamb. Mounted heads of animals watched them from the walls. It was hard to imagine Maxim in this place.

Nadine drank two cups of sherry and turned to a young cousin. “What are those?” she asked.

He pointed to each, saying, “Kudu, nyala, warthog of course, duiker, steenbock…”

“Lion,” said Nadine, gazing at the snarling mouth. “Where do you even
get
such a thing?”

“Ja, you shoot it,” said the boy. His cream-colored hair reminded Nadine of Maxim’s. “You want to see the cool room?” asked the boy.

“What?”

“Where we keep the animal, skin it, you know.”

“Oh no,” said Nadine. “Thanks.”

“Did you have sex with Maxim?” asked the boy.

Nadine blinked. “Yes,” she said. She stood and added, “It was great.”

“I knew it,” said the boy.

Nadine walked outside with George and sat down on a step, staring at the rough grass leading to the fence. She balanced her plate of deviled eggs on her knees. “I’m moving,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m moving to Mexico City. The AP has an opening in the bureau office there.”

Outside the fence, three small girls played with a puppy. George sipped his sherry and lit a cigarette. An older woman approached the girls and hustled them down a path to a listing shack. The sun was setting, binding the sky in ribbons of purple and red.

“Well,” said George, “good luck to you.”

T
he next morning, Nadine was packing in her Nutthall Road bedroom when Thola burst in. “What’s this?” said Thola, gesturing to Nadine’s suitcases.

“I’m leaving. I got a job with the AP, in Mexico City.”

“You’re not finished here,” said Thola. “Sit down and listen to me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nadine. “I can’t stay here…in this house.”

“Get another place.”

Nadine looked at Thola. “No,” she said. She was suddenly very tired, and sat down on the bed. “I have to go where the job is,” she said lamely. “That’s what I do.”

“Is that right?” said Thola.

“Yes,” said Nadine.

Thola was silent. Finally she spoke, her voice bitter. “You cared so much about my sister, eh?” she said. “You promised my mother you would
change things
for Evelina. You were one with the struggle, right, Nadine? But now you don’t need my sister anymore.”

“That’s not how it is,” said Nadine.

“I know how it is,” said Thola, rising and putting her shoulders back. She threw a newspaper on the bed, the
Boston Tribune.
Before she walked away, Thola said, “I know how it is to be punched by a Boer. It is nothing new to me.”

Nadine picked up the paper, wondering where Thola would have gotten ahold of it, and saw the small story, tucked away in section three. The headline:
EVELINA MALEFANE
:
MURDERER OR MARTYR
? It was hardly the front-page exoneration Nadine had promised. She had hoped Thola would never see it. Nadine wanted to say something, to defend herself, but she didn’t know how.

“Please,” she said. “Thola, wait!”

Thola slammed the front door. From her bedroom window, Nadine watched Thola’s graceful carriage as she walked down their front path, the lift of her chin. “Please!” Nadine said to the windowpane. “Wait…talk to me!”

Thola looked both ways and crossed the street.

A
s they drove from Post Chalmers, George turned on the radio, which was playing a transcript of the TRC hearing of Winnie Mandela. “Did you know they called her ‘Mommy’? The kids she kept at the mansion?” said George, his hand on the steering wheel.

“Yes,” said Nadine.

“She refused to apply for amnesty. Claims she’s completely innocent.”

Nadine snorted. Her article, while the first proof of Winnie’s involvement in the Mandela United Football Club, had not been the last. As more boys disappeared, parents had begun to come forward. In 1991, Winnie had been found guilty of kidnapping four youths, and sent to jail.

“The parents of Lolo Sono testified before the TRC that a blue Kombi took their son away. They said that Winnie Mandela was in the car. Their son was never seen again,” said the announcer.

“Nicodemus Sono,” said Nadine. “That’s the man I tried to interview the night Maxim—”

“I want to hear this,” said George, turning the volume knob. Nicodemus’s voice filled the car.

“I am here today mainly to appeal to the commission,” he said, “that if they could please help me find my son or if he has been killed, as this paper says, let me find his remains and I will exhume and bury him decently. Because this does not give me rest in my life. When he left he was already twenty-one. He should have been thirty-one this year. I don’t know what to do. He is my only son.”

The reporter continued, “Carolyn Sono also testified before the TRC.” A woman’s quiet voice spoke: “We are still not at ease. I am having nightmares, dreams, sometimes I hear knocks on the door, thinking that it is Lolo. When I am sleeping, I can see him flying from the sky, coming home, saying that Mom, I am back home. Then I will open my arms and try to hug him, and say welcome home. I am pleading with Mrs. Mandela today, in front of the world, that please, Mrs. Mandela, please, give us our son back. Even if he is dead, let Mrs. Mandela give us the remains of our son, so that we must bury him decently.

“Thereafter maybe we can rest assured, knowing that Lolo is buried here. I am facing day and night the ordeal of Lolo. If I hear that somebody is dead, I think that maybe that person that is dead may be Lolo, they are bringing him home. I had hoped that by the time the government was inaugurated, I thought maybe Lolo will be amongst the crowd and will come back home. But to no avail. I am pleading, please.”

The announcer spoke, “Desmond Tutu, as well, appealed to Winnie Mandela.”

Tutu’s rich voice rang out in the stuffy car. “We are struggling to establish a different dispensation characterized by a new morality, integrity. Truthfulness. Accountability.”

“Amazing,” said George, gesturing to the radio. “The man is amazing. No one else could talk to her that way.”

“I acknowledge Madikizela-Mandela’s role in the history of our struggle. I speak to you as someone who loves you very deeply,” said Tutu. “I want you to stand up and say:
There are things that went wrong.
There are people out there who want to embrace you. I still embrace you, because I love you. If you were able to bring yourself to say:
Something went wrong,
and say,
I’m sorry, I’m sorry for my part in what went wrong,
I beg you, I beg you. You are a great person. And you don’t know how your greatness would be enhanced if you were to say,
I’m sorry…things went wrong. Forgive me.
I beg you.”

Winnie’s voice from the radio spoke: “I am saying it is true: things went horribly wrong and we were aware that there were factors that led to that. For that, I am deeply sorry.”

“Finally,” said George quietly. He pressed his eyes shut. The car swerved, and Nadine grabbed the steering wheel. George shook his head and opened his eyes. He slammed his palm on the dashboard and then took control of the car.

W
hen they reached the Victoria, it was already night. George took Nadine’s hand as they walked past the front desk. In the elevator, he said, “I’m on thirteen.”