We Are Not Such Things (60 page)

“Daniel, he’s got hair like a colored. When you look at him, you know something’s not right. He could never get a girlfriend ’cause he had hair like steel wool and he had a complex about himself. ’Cause he knew where he came from.”

“Where did he come from?”

Gareth lit up. “My father, François, was the brother of Jacques de Villiers. Jacques had a wife and a daughter. Now, Jacques molested the daughter, and the daughter had Daniel. And it was a whole big scandal and they covered it up, and we only figured it out years later.”

And with that, Gareth, who had gone from zip-lipped to confessional in under three minutes, started to tell a story of a man of tragic origins.

Let’s go back to the 1940s. The de Villiers family were “poor whites,” a sort of variation on the American term “white trash,” except that over time the South African poor whites have had their many champions, including a number of Afrikaner nationalists who wished to protect them and raise them up. The de Villierses were descendants of the cast-off French Huguenots. Jacques de Villiers was a sadistic dockworker who lived in a damp wood house on Ebenezer Street by the port. Today, the port has been remodeled into the opulent Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, with a Gucci boutique and an artisanal food market, but back then the white dockworkers lived there in working-class squalor and were paid by the government. It was by those docks that Jacques raped his daughter for years. In her teens, the girl gave birth to a child. She continued to live in her parents’ house and her parents raised the child as their own, pretending that he was just her little brother and not also her son. That child was Daniel de Villiers.

Eventually, the abused daughter married a widower. The widower had three kids of his own, and Daniel and the woman he believed was his sister moved into the widower’s home. One day, the widower fell ill, and on his deathbed he uttered what Daniel had always suspected: that Daniel was the product of incest and abuse. Confronted, the woman confessed.

After the widower died, Daniel’s mother-sister met with tough times. Gareth recalled that a few years earlier, she had been profiled in the Afrikaans daily
Die Son
, talking about all her problems, minus the incest bit, and asking for financial help from readers.

Gareth pulled himself up and plucked an old snapshot out of the corner of a larger frame: six skinny little girls in various states of dishevelment, and one baby boy shaped like a potato, in the short shorts and the high striped sports socks of the 1970s. They were leaning back against an old rusted car. He pointed out his sisters. I had talked to nearly all of these women, each one claiming not to know where Gareth was.

“Daniel had the most terrible hair you ever saw in the world,” he said happily. “Like a Brillo pad!”

He noted that he and his family had spent some time with Daniel, but after the deathbed revelation, the family split apart. Nobody wanted much to do with the boy after that.

“Sorry, but why don’t your sisters or your mother want to see Daniel anymore?”

“How can you ask?” Gareth said, aghast. “Now you know why!”

“But it’s not Daniel’s fault if his grandfather abused his mother. It doesn’t mean anything about him.”

Gareth considered this. “That’s true,” he said, thoughtfully.

Then he continued on about Daniel. In apartheid South Africa, Gareth had been drafted in the army, like all white men of a certain age. He’d shot Cuban commies over on the Angola border. When Gareth was discharged, and before he knew Daniel’s terrible secret, the two were pals. Daniel got him a gig at the dockside store, selling parts. But how long could that last when Gareth was not exactly a model employee? He had long hair and wore bell-bottoms and was terribly fond of drugs. Meanwhile, Daniel was straitlaced and diligent. For a while, he worked fixing the lights down at the docks.

“So Daniel
was
a municipal employee,” I said. “This is him. Your cousin is the man I’m looking for.”

“Who says he’s alive?” Gareth asked. “Last time I see him, he’s thin. And if he died, no one’s gonna know.”

I thought someone would have heard, I said. If Daniel had died, the news would have made its way down the grapevine of the big, fractured de Villiers family, I felt certain of it. And now I knew for sure that he had lived through the beating in Gugulethu, if Gareth had recently seen him over at the Shoprite in Kraaifontein. So who’s to say he hadn’t survived a further three years? What else could Gareth remember about Daniel?

“Well, let’s see,” Gareth said, walking to the kitchen and opening a fresh tall bottle of beer. “He fell in love with a whore and he bought her a ring and everything. They were busy jolling”—a casual South African term for having fun—“but meanwhile she was busy with the Japs and Chinese with the docks. He bought her an expensive ring but nobody liked him because of how he looked, and he wasn’t a nice build. Daniel, he liked his cakes and cookies and chocolates. He was round. Did I mention his hair and how it was the wildest hair you ever seen? He had to spend money to get girls and I had to go along also. He was very helpful and he had a very good heart. He don’t drink, he don’t smoke, he used to buy alcohol for us all just for the company.”

“But you were his friend?”

“Nah, man, I was using him, too!” Gareth said. “You know, I think his mom was colored and so he was part colored. He had some relatives who looked like coloreds. And you see his mom, you’ll see she doesn’t look white. And Daniel, he couldn’t get friends on his own on account of his hair, I telling you.”

“Maybe they
were
part colored,” I suggested.

“Any fool can see they’re colored! Maybe it’s in their genes, even though they mostly have straight hair, maybe the colored hair is in their genes and so he got it.” Gareth had a crude bicycle tattooed on his hand, a spider tattooed behind his ear, and a long left thumbnail.

“The whole family is alcoholics. They drink and drink. I mean, I drink, too.”

“Are you an alcoholic?”

Gareth gave me a knowing look. “No alcoholic is gonna say he is an alcoholic.”

“So are you an alcoholic?”

“Nah,” he said, sipping his beer. “And Daniel, he was no alcoholic, just sweets. He was a very scared guy, who carried a big .38. He was so, so scared. We would sometimes go to spend time with coloreds and he looked so scared and I said, ‘Why you scared?’ And he said, ‘We are white people,’ and I said, ‘Don’t worry, these are our friends.’

“Once, he got a flat on his truck. Usually you have a colored guy to help you change it. But the guy was sick so Daniel did it himself. There was a spring he didn’t know about so it came out from the tire and hit him smack in the face, and it scarred him. After that, he was depressed and wanted to take his own life. You know, if Daniel is dead—and he may be dead—he can die in his house and nobody will know. He is going to leave a will and he said he’d leave it to me, but I don’t even want his money. And he has money! He retired, good pension. Poor Daniel, he found out he’s a bastard, you see? He’s very heartsore. People always used to laugh at his hair. They asked me, ‘Is that your cousin? He looks like a colored!’ He’s a lonely guy, Daniel. He had one friend and that guy is probably dead.”

“What was that friend called?” I asked.

“A long time ago, I was smoking drugs, so I don’t remember much,” Gareth said.

“Somebody must know,” I said. “Nobody has his number?”

“Let me see the phone book!” Gareth hollered. From behind a door, somebody tossed the white pages out onto the couch. I tried to peer around into the hallway, but Gareth continued on. “I did see him at the Shoprite in Kraaifontein a few years ago. I said, ‘Hi, how are you? Where are you staying?’ He says he stayed in Kraaifontein, over the bridge, toward Brighton, and then he just runs off, never told me more. He did have a red Ford, which means he has a license. Maybe he stayed with his mother. Maybe he was supporting his mother. He had money, see?” Gareth flipped through the book. “
Ach
, he had his phone number in the book and then he unlisted it.”

A heavyset colored woman emerged from a back room, bright lipstick slicked on, her hair combed back.

“This is my wife,” Gareth said. “Sarah.”

Sarah smiled. She was a nurse at a local hospital, and Ruben’s sister, and the thrower of the phone book.

“You could look for him around Kraaifontein,” she suggested. “I remember Daniel.” She put a dish in the microwave.

“Ja, ja,” Gareth said. “You know, when I got older, everyone used to lie to me about that side of the family. They sure looked colored but everyone said ‘No, no, they’re white, white, white, white, white.’ ”

Gareth walked over to the empty wooden bookshelf and picked up a photo of his son, Alfred. The boy had pale chocolate-tinted skin, corkscrew curls, and freckles. Gareth shoved it into my hands.

“My son asks me, ‘Dad, what am I?’ And I say, ‘Son, you’re white!’ He’s white. His ID book says he’s white.”

I smiled dumbly, holding the frame.

“Alfie!” Gareth shouted. “Come out here!”

Nobody emerged, and Gareth went to fetch him. A few moments later, a bare-chested teenager, all sinew, with a head of wild black ringlets, emerged.

“Alfie, this is Justine,” Gareth said.

“We met on Facebook,” I explained.

“Ja, we did,” said Alfred.

“You asked me who I was and how I found you,” I said.

“Did he? He asked who you was?” Gareth asked. “That’s my boy! Good boy! Always find out!”

Then Gareth turned to me, and motioned to Alfred. “So what is my boy? What is he? White or colored?”

“What does he think he is?” I asked.

Alfred stood before us, bored. Sarah was milling around the kitchen.

“He thinks he’s white!” Gareth shouted happily.

Alfred smiled and wiped some toothpaste from his mouth.

“Nice to meet you, Justine,” he said as he turned back to his room.

“You, too.”

“White, white, white,” Gareth said.

“So, Daniel—” I said.

“So, Daniel—” Gareth perked up, took another glass of beer. “It’s funny, after all these years no one ever came to ask me about Daniel, and then you come as a stranger and ask me.”

“So Daniel never got attacked?”

“No, no, I don’t think so. Anyway, twenty years ago, the townships weren’t so bad.”

“Twenty years ago? That was the end of apartheid.”

“Oh, right, there were the riots! But not Daniel. Daniel was boarded because of the tire spring scarring him, and he had a lot of policies, a lot of money from them. They boarded him because of how the spring hit his head and then he was rich. Six or seven policies!”

“I’d like to find him,” I said. “I have to find him.”

“Maybe we can go looking,” Gareth suggested hopefully.

“You want to come look for Daniel with me?”

“Well, ja, if you free. I know Kraaifontein. He always does the same thing so I bet we find him at that same Shoprite. I bet he slips in and runs out. He’s a real scared guy. Or maybe he’s sitting alone at the pubs or the brothels. You free tomorrow?” Gareth asked.

Sarah was sitting at the counter, looking at us. She took a bite of her lunch. Her shift at the hospital started in an hour.

“Sure, what time?”

“Real early,” Gareth said. “He’ll come in before the crowds and run out. Ja, ja, and we’ll track down Daniel,” Gareth said excitedly. “Over by Brighton, Belmont Park. There are lots of pubs there, lots of whorehouses. He’s gonna need company somehow.”

That night, I met up with my Canadian friend Aimee-Noel, who had settled in South Africa with her Xhosa husband and their young daughter. I’d been intermittently updating her on the progress of the story, and over dinner I told her about the day’s discoveries and our plans for finding Daniel. I didn’t really know Gareth, nor did I trust him entirely, so Aimee-Noel offered to accompany me on our outing.

It was August 23, 2013. In forty-eight hours, it would be the twentieth anniversary of Amy Biehl’s death. Linda was in town for the memorial, though I had not seen her much. When I had met up with her, she’d greeted me with tepid enthusiasm. Neither of us mentioned that I’d made her cry and lose her temper, but something between us had shifted. During her previous trip, I hadn’t left her side, but now I was distracted, and so was she. The foundation still wasn’t giving up Amy’s name, and Linda was at a loss; she was considering getting a lawyer involved. She had recently screamed, “You have no respect for me or my family!” at Kevin, before storming out of a meeting.

“I can only think this is twenty years of pent-up grief making its way out,” Kevin told a California reporter who had been trailing Linda and had thus witnessed the blowup.

People kept writing to Linda about Amy as August 25 edged nearer. A few days earlier, she had read me some emails aloud, her voice shaky.

“Now, this person wrote me such a long email. It says:
Amy’s death shook the ground
.” She let out a heavy sigh.

“Does it annoy you?” I asked. I found her opaque; I could never figure out what touched her and what irritated her.

“I don’t know what it does,” she said. “You know, there is no such thing as real closure.”