The Gooseberry Fool (10 page)

That was a dangerous remark, but McDonald was now very worked up. There was ash all over his nice silk shirt and his bow tie banked to the left. “It’s all right, Mr. McDonald. Nothing of this will get back to Mrs. Wallace if, as you say, her husband’s death was aboveboard.”

“I have your word?”

“Yes. Now the name of this lady, please.”

McDonald stood up, decisive.

“I don’t know it,” he said defiantly. “I don’t know where she lives or what she does. You’re the detective; you find out.”

“Right,” said Kramer, knowing the man was lying. “I will.”

Just for the hell of it.

6

J
ABULA IS A
word with more than one meaning in colloquial Zulu: it is used for happiness, and for beer. Now it was also the name of the settlement on the plain below Zondi, and he, for one, was very happy to be there.

From what he could see through the heat shimmer, Jabula was an area of exposed ground marked off into plots by white flags, with a few rows of tin huts and many makeshift dwellings that reminded him of something much neater but the comparison eluded him. He could see very few people moving about on the wind-patterned sand, although a few children played beneath the motionless windmill. The priest must have gone, which would make things easier.

He had decided to repeat his idea of going in on foot, for a car arriving in such a remote place could cause an unhelpful stir. Its tail feather of dust would also be visible for a good mile (he still thought in the old measurements before metrication). So the Anglia was parked out of sight behind him, and everything he needed was about his person: the automatic in its holster, with the safety off; the cuffs hidden in his waistband under his jersey sleeves—he had knotted it around him like an apron reversed; and the long torch, such as travelers commonly carried, in his right hand. He was sure that his clothes, filthy from the journey, would pass muster as cast-offs.

Zondi gave his mental picture of the lieutenant a mocking salute, then began the descent. He was careful not to move briskly, but dragged his feet along, keeping his eyes downcast. This meant he let himself in for a small surprise when he reached the first flag marker.

Lifting his gaze, he saw there were, in fact, very many people resident in Jabula—at a guess, well over three hundred, with the only males being either the very old or the very young. He had not spotted the inhabitants before because they were seated in the shade of their homes, silent, motionless in different attitudes. His immediate reaction was instinctive: a prickling along the spine, a tightening of sinew that halted him in his tracks. Then he realized there was nothing ominous in this, for not a head turned to inspect him. These were people lost in themselves and totally listless. He had once seen something of the kind after a whirlwind flattened a township near Kokstad—but that had nothing to do with anything.

“Greetings, my mother.”

Zondi had addressed the person closest to him, an old crone squatting beside an iron bed that lay in pieces. She turned toward him. Her pupils were pale blue; she was blind. What a start.

“Greetings. Who speaks?”

“A traveler, mother, Matthew Shabalala. I go to seek work on the farms to the west.”

The crone cackled and staggered to her feet. She reached out and caught Zondi’s arm before he thought better of it.

“Then your travels will be long and hard, my son. What men there were with us have already left for those parts.”

“Perhaps I have good fortune.”

“Huh! If so, then I will live to see it!”

When she laughed she showed three teeth and no more. Zondi, who felt good manners had their defined limit, pulled away. But she clung fiercely.

“Tell me,” she said, “tell me what you see about you—you will not lie like my children!”

At this a bedraggled woman, with breasts like saddlebags, emerged from a hut. She waved a fist.

“Be quiet, you old devil! Would you bring shame on us in front of a stranger?”

“You be quiet, Dora Dhlamini—you who would lie to her mother in her old age! You who would say there is no room for her bed in the house, that she must sleep on the floor with the children! What nonsense is this? I know, I know—you wish for her to die out here like a dog in the grass!”

“Just you look at my house,” Dora demanded of Zondi, who was sick to the stomach at having attracted so much unwelcome attention. Now other people had gathered, so there was no escape—except through being obliging.

He looked at the hut, past the snot-nosed kids in the doorway, and calculated it was twelve feet deep by nine feet wide. It had an earth floor and a tin roof.

“How many, stranger?” asked Dora Dhlamini.

“Inside this place?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe four—five,” Zondi said, shrugging.

“There is ten!”

“Hau, then you are a liar, my sister!”

The crowd growled angrily.

“Ten because I have no man and cannot pay rent. I must look after these children, these orphans, and for that the GG will let me stay. Now you tell her what you see—there is no room for a bed.”

There was no need; the old woman’s grip had slackened.

“But I heard the GG say that we will like this place,” she said. “We are not forced, we come because it is better for us. Nobody forces us yet.… Over there, what do you see, Shabalala?”

Crafty, suspecting a trick, she dragged Zondi around.

“Much furniture, my mother—like your bed, in the grass.”

“There!” Dora Dhlamini laughed and the onlookers guffawed at Zondi’s discomfiture. He jerked himself free, annoyed that he could not reveal the real reason for it. Then he wiped a hand over his mouth.

“Some water?” he asked.

Again the onlookers enjoyed themselves at his expense.

“This is Jabula,” one said. “There is no water.”

Zondi pointed his torch at the windmill.

“Tomorrow,” an old man in the crowd went on. “Tomorrow they bring water on a lorry—that stupid thing cannot work”

“Tomorrow?” echoed another.

While a third scoffed, “Tomorrow tomorrow, you mean, Bobesi.”

Zondi refused to be delayed by a tedious argument over the ways of the GG—a slang expression for officialdom taken from trucks with Government Garage registration plates. So he tried a joke of his own.

“Hau,” he said. “Can a man not get drunk in Jabula?”

This time the laughter was on his side. He took advantage of it to ask if perhaps any of his kinsfolk were in the settlement, and was told that some Shabalalas had arrived the day before; they were across the other side where the tents stood.

So that was what the makeshifts were; plainly none of their occupants had the faintest idea how to erect one. An assumption fully substantiated when he reached the Shabalalas’, which was propped up by everything but the pole.

There a neighbor informed him that Wilhemena Shabalala was away, having gone to buy food.

“So soon?” he queried casually, aware the state provided all voluntary emigrants to the homelands with rations.

“They give us three pounds of mealie meal for three days.”

“And?”

“The family is big.”

“Where is the store she buys from?”

The neighbor, a sour-faced frump, puffed the flies from her nostrils and pointed vaguely.

“But that is a great distance!” Zondi exclaimed, recalling how long it was since he had noticed the hole in the water tank.

“Where else? If you wait for her, you will wait till the moon comes. But what do you want with her, traveler?”

“Family matters.”

He turned his back on her and made a show of viewing the landscape. His attention was suddenly drawn to a baffling pattern of hundreds of holes on a slight rise to the east.

“What is that?” he asked.

“The GG,” the woman replied. “First people die but we cannot dig down. The GG come and then the soldiers; with big bangs they made plenty of graves.”

Zondi stamped a foot experimentally and felt the shock of bedrock reach his hip. He wondered what the people planned to plant there. He wondered how long Shabalala’s wife would take to get home—and whether the wait was going to be really worth it.

Another neighbor had taken over at the Wallace household in Chestnut Road; it amused Kramer to find the idle rich reduced to shift work. Not rich, exactly, nor idle, but certainly more comfortably inactive than he had been all his life.

“Gee, but I don’t know,” this new neighbor said, her American accent requiring an adjustment, when he asked to see Mrs. Wallace. I don’t know what the doctor wanted me to do in this respect. But you step inside a minute and I’ll call him.”

“He’s here?”

“I mean on the telephone. He said Paula was to have no visitors, that I had to pull the drapes in her room and let her be.”

“Pills?”

“Sedation. Only a half hour back, too.”

She closed the door behind him.

If you’re wondering why the maid didn’t answer your knock, it’s because she’s upset that I—”

“Not to worry.”

“Come right on through.”

Kramer found the living room in much the state he had left it—paper chains hung forlorn from the picture rail and the tree in the corner needed a bigger bucket. Someone had, however, made a pleasing arrangement of plastic holly and greeting cards along the mantelpiece. He remarked upon it.

“Oh, that? It was me. Guess I just can’t stand having nothing to occupy my hands.”

“Very nice. And very nice of you to be here by her side at a time like this.”

“Who? Paula? She’d do the same for me. I mean me and Steve haven’t been neighbors all that long, we came in the fall—our fall, that is—but we’ve formed a real good relationship that I’m going to miss. Steve’s on a sabbatical.”

Sabbatical? She did not look Jewish.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, and we’ve got to take in a few months at the Cape, so it’s pack up and go again pretty soon.”

Kramer cruised the bookshelves and found what he wanted: a volume with library codes on the spine.

“Mr. Wallace was a big reader?”

“Phenomenal.”

“One a day?”

“Easily; the poor guy had chronic insomnia.”

Tinkle went a fragile theory or two.

“So you knew both the Wallaces well, lady?”

“Please, I’m Alicia, Alicia Brown. Yes, all four of us were in and out of each other’s homes without knocking most of the time.”

“Then is it all right if I ask you a couple of questions—save Mrs. Wallace the trouble?”

“Hey, wait a minute. Depends what kind of questions. Our cops don’t go through all this for a car smash.”

“Maybe not, Mrs. Brown, but we have our own ways of doing things in the Republic. But relax, please; only routine. For a survey we’re doing, if you must know—state of mind, et cetera.”

“That sounds okay.”

“How was he then, yesterday—Mr. Wallace?”

She frowned but stayed pretty, taking it all very seriously. Kramer, who had ignored blond hair on principle since Lisbet, was weakening rapidly. He also liked her smell.

“Now you mention it, not quite himself, I guess.”

Poor bastard. Kramer knew the feeling.

“What did you put this down to?”

“His not sleeping, the goddamn awful heat. I was over just after breakfast with the mail, you see; one of theirs landed in our box by mistake. Just a card, so I could have waited, but that’s how things were between us. Mark was going through the pile, opening envelopes, and Paula was reading out names, y’know. I kind of busted it up for them, I guess. Still, Paula didn’t seem to mind. Went out back to the kitchen to see the cook fixed another coffee for me, and Mark just sat there.”

“Oh?”

“Not saying anything, staring. I had to kid him a little before he snapped out of it.”

“And then?”

“Made some joke, I forget. He left for the office pretty soon afterwards. Is that what you wanted? Doesn’t seem a big deal to me.”

It was Kramer’s turn to become lost in thought—only he came around on his own.

“And Mrs. Wallace?”

“As always, a honey; chirpy as a chipmunk. Say, would you like some coffee—oops, tea?”

“Coffee’s my people’s drink, same as yours,” Kramer replied, smiling. This was ideal; he wanted her out of the room for a minute. “But the servants are off, you said?”

“It won’t bother me, Lieutenant.”

Kramer took in all he could of the swing of the fine-pleated skirt and then moved quickly. He took out the library book, artfully eliminated the gap in the row, and pushed his loot into the waistband of his trousers around the back. It was all over in seconds and his posture much improved.

Then he continued around the room, exhibiting the polite curiosity of a visitor admiring good taste, but finding none of the brittle ornaments to his liking. Out of sheer habit, he lifted the top crumpling of paper from the waste bin by the desk—and then hoisted an eyebrow. A Christmas card, torn into many small pieces, lay at the bottom. He had it out and luckily in his pocket just as Alicia Brown entered silently with the tray.