Bloodlines (35 page)

That was the day he offered—almost insisted—on giving me a ride. He said that his chauffeur would drop him at home, and then take me wherever I needed to go. When we went outside, his car was waiting, and leaning against the door, in a khaki uniform, was his chauffeur. It was Khabazela, whom I hadn’t seen since I dropped him at the Rhodesian border. I began to realize then that the idea of serendipity is appealing, but in life there are few coincidences. And no mistakes.

Almost six years had passed since that last meeting with Uncle Tony, and the landscape of all our lives was changed beyond recognition. You and Lenny were gone; we were living in Zululand, fugitives from the law. Uncle Tony had morphed from one of the most respected liberal attorneys in the country into a man suspected, at best, of harboring antigovernment sentiments, and at worst, of treason and sedition. The fact that we had to meet on a train, and that we had to so carefully arrange the meeting, would have been unthinkable a few years earlier.

Once the train was on its way and the conductor had come by to stamp tickets, there was a knock on the door. Uncle Tony came in. He took one look at me, apologized, and swiveled on his heel as if to leave, convinced that he had the wrong compartment. I giggled at his embarrassment and he stopped, turned and looked at me, speechless.

“Hello,” I said, grinning at him. “Aren’t you going to give me a hug?”

In answer he pulled the shade down over the door and turned back to me. “Good God,” he said, “I would have sworn that nobody I know could possibly look like you. Thank goodness you have such a distinctive laugh.”

He looked weary, but he was unchanged—mostly imperturbable, impeccably dressed, wearing a dark blue suit and a bright yellow bow-tie. I stood up and we hugged each other. And to my surprise, I began to cry. I hadn’t cried in the almost twelve months we spent in Zululand; didn’t remember crying when my father died and I was taken to prison. But now, despite my best efforts, in Uncle Tony’s familiar, cologned embrace, I wept like a little girl. He was the last link to my parents, to predictability, and to the stability my life once had. As he held me in his arms I was overcome by a sense of relief and safety. I thought it was the last time in my life I would feel safe—but I also knew that it was an illusion.

By the time we reached Johannesburg, having already said our good-byes, I had memorized the name and address of the bank in Zurich, and in my cosmetics case was the tube of Colgate toothpaste Tony had given me. He had unrolled the bottom and inserted the deposit box key inside, re-rolling it with meticulous care, and it looked like any half-used toothpaste tube, bent and squeezed in the middle. I took a taxi to a shabby hotel not far from the station, and at the registration desk, with my heart in my mouth, managed to identify myself for the first time as Grace Michaels. My hand shook as I signed the name.

I thought of my mother and smiled through the fog of urine as I climbed the hotel stairway. She would have understood and perhaps even envied my living in a hut in Zululand, without a proper bed or a bathroom, but she would have been horrified to see me, dressed like a cheap tart, entering this seedy Johannesburg hotel. For my part, I had forgotten what it was like to sleep on a proper bed with a soft mattress, and I looked forward to the luxury, even in this place. But when I reached my room all I could do was lie on the bed, shivering, as alone as I had ever felt in my life.

Switzerland, 1964

The next day I made my way to the airport. Using my new passport and the ticket provided by the ANC, I boarded the plane to Switzerland. By the time I arrived in Zurich, I had settled into being Grace Michaels. I was a young woman excited to be in Europe for the first time, anonymous, liberated from my history, and about to have the means to reinvent myself. Zululand receded into the distance.

I registered at a hotel my mother would have approved of, took a lengthy bath, and treated myself to an elegant dinner in the hotel dining room. I ordered a half-bottle of French burgundy, and as I put my nose to the glass, I gagged—at the richness of the wine, and at its power to evoke the past. It had been a long time since my last meal in such an environment, and I began to realize that traveling back and forth between two worlds was more complex than it seemed. I had roast duck, served with tender potatoes, salad, and a delicious chocolate mousse for dessert. I watched myself remembering how to use the right knife and fork, to sit up straight, to avoid warming the wine by cupping the base of the wine glass, and to balance it instead by holding the stem. But I also knew how to eat
mielie
porridge with three fingers, and all these rules seemed like simpering trivialities.

The next morning I removed the key from the toothpaste tube and washed it. The metal retained the minty scent of toothpaste, and at the bank I was suffused with the smell of Colgate as I handed the key to the bank clerk. He ushered me through the barred gate and into a small, locked cubicle, and I found myself sitting in an armchair, staring into the lockbox.

I opened it and looked in. It contained several brown currency envelopes, and a letter in my father’s hand.

I unfolded the letter and smelled my father’s pipe tobacco; ran my thumb over the texture of the paper and remembered the solid, warm feel of his forearm, covered in wiry grey hair. As I read his handwriting I heard his voice, saw the expression in his eyes as if we were face to face, engaged in one of our discussions—he, loving, logical, patient, trying to hide the degree of his concern for me; and I, defiant, self-righteous, and furious that as my role model and greatest supporter, he was unable to see that my way was the right way.

His letter was undated, but I knew that Uncle Tony had made a trip to Switzerland the year before my father died, and he must have visited the bank and left my father’s letter there for me. At that time, my mother was already gone, and you had not yet been conceived. My father had made no comment about my subversive activity, and I thought he knew nothing. How wrong I was.

My Dear Daughter,

If you are reading this, both your mother and I are at rest. We have done our best by you—but in some ways, it has not been good enough. We would have taught you differently had we been prescient enough to foresee the deterioration of our country into a rabid police state. For better or worse, how you respond to it will define your life’s direction. Based on who you have become, I suspect that it will be for the worse.

Never doubt that I admire—even envy—your commitment. But I fear that your unwillingness to compromise will lead to personal choices that are unwise and painful. It is a relief to me, and it will be to you, too, that neither your mother nor I will be there to witness the hardships this will cause you.

You are always against those in power, constitutionally unable to walk away from defending the defenseless. As a result you are always in the line of fire. But even now, you have choices. Your best chance for a peaceful life is for you to take your family and move elsewhere, far from conflict. That is what your mother and I wish for you, if you can find such a place.

The money we have saved is now accessible to you; it will give you the means to make a new start. Some of it is in a form that you may find unusual for a dentist with no financial acumen—but I have had some interesting patients over the years. Be careful not to convert these assets into cash until you understand their full value.

I have no wish to dictate from the grave, and I have full confidence that whatever decisions you make will be for the greater good, although I might wish that your own personal welfare and comfort were higher on your priority list. The future is yours, Michaela; you have proven that you have courage enough for us all.

With my love

Papa

There were four currency envelopes. The first three contained banknotes in English pounds, South African rand, and U.S. dollars. It seemed that my father was keeping all his travel options open, and there was enough cash—several thousand pounds sterling—to get me comfortably wherever I wanted to go, and to keep me there for at least awhile before generating some other means of support. In the last currency envelope there was another lockbox key, this one different in appearance from the first, and detailed directions to another bank.

That afternoon I followed the directions and made my way to the second bank, which turned out to be several blocks away, and sat again in a cubicle before another closed lockbox. This one held only a single item: a small, black leather purse. I untied the purse-strings, drew it open, and looked inside. It was lined with purple velvet, and at the bottom there was a nest of small, rounded stones. I poured them out onto the padded black velvet mat on the desk and counted them. Seventeen. Several were yellowish, a few had red or blue tones, but they were all dull, and they looked like cheap glass pebbles.

I imagined my father receiving the stones from patients who had little else to give, and smuggling them one or two at a time across the ocean with great care and much anxiety. I couldn’t imagine how much money and effort he had wasted on them, and I was saddened for him, and angry, and then disappointed. But he was a dentist, after all, a trusting man who sometimes took sacks of coal, or chickens or bushels of fruit as payment for his services. What could he have known of precious stones?

But my father was wiser than he seemed. I had never seen uncut diamonds before, and I should have had more confidence in who he was. I took the stones to three appraisers recommended by the bank, and despite small differences in their valuations, all three men assured me that my father’s rough stones were high grade uncut diamonds. Several were flawless, and although some were small, others weighed in at more than three carats.

I went into a little café to absorb my good fortune over a coffee and a chocolate Swiss pastry. The numbers were so far beyond what I had anticipated that I didn’t quite know what to think. The appraisers estimated that I could sell the rough stones for three hundred thousand dollars. That translated to about two hundred and fifteen thousand rand. To give you an idea of how much money that was, after my father’s death my parents’ home in Cyrildene sold for eight thousand rand. In 1964, you could buy good farmland for a hundred rand a hectare—which meant I could afford to buy a medium sized farm and still have most of my money left.

I sold eight of the stones and transferred funds to the account of Grace Michaels at Barclay’s Bank in Durban. When I departed Zurich, there were nine uncut diamonds left in the safe deposit box. I liked the idea of keeping my options open.