LITMIR.BIZ

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TWO

      The frogs and toads were making music like an underwater marimba band. There’s a spring near the Swartberge, the Black Mountains behind my house, and a stream with little pools, where the frogs sing love songs to their mates.

      The potjie was delicious. The meat and onions at the bottom were sticky and brown, and the layers of vegetables had that fire flavour.

      ‘Leave some room for pudding,’ I said. ‘I have a special chocolate cake, and botterkluitjies with brandy sauce.’

      ‘Jinne, I haven’t eaten those butter dumplings since I was a boy. My brother gave me a black eye once, fighting over the last kluitjie.’

      We sat side by side on the stoep, listening to the frogs, holding hands and looking out across the veld. His hand was warm, and wrapped all the way around mine. The moon was not yet up, so the burning stars filled the sky.

      ‘The sky gets so big at night,’ I said.

      ‘It’s big in the day too.’

      ‘Ja,’ I agreed. ‘But I don’t notice it so much. Now it’s so full and busy. All those stars. And planets.’

      ‘Look there, on the hilltop. That’s Venus rising.’

      ‘So that one’s Venus. When I can’t sleep, I sit and watch it setting, early in the morning.’

      Henk’s lamb butted at his thigh with its little horns, and he fed it a piece of rocket. He wasn’t bottle-feeding Kosie any more.

      ‘You still having nightmares, Maria?’

      ‘I’ll go make the coffee.’

      ‘What that man did to you . . .’

      ‘Ja,’ I said, thinking of Fanie. But Henk was talking about the murderer who’d tried to kill me. Henk and I had first met when we were investigating a murder, a few months ago. He didn’t know the whole story about Fanie.

      ‘You can get help, you know,’ Henk said. ‘Counselling or something.’

      The problems I had were bigger than Henk Kannemeyer knew about. The kind of problems no one else could help me with.

      ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

      ‘But sometimes—’ His phone rang. ‘Sorry,’ he said, answering it.

      I went to the kitchen, to prepare the dumplings and brandy sauce. I could hear him talking on the stoep.

      ‘Sjoe . . . They got her? . . . She didn’t run? . . . Ja, they’ll keep her in Swellendam now. Maybe send her off for psychological assessment . . .’

      When I came back with the kluitjies, he was looking out into the darkness.

      ‘What happened?’ I asked.

      Henk shook his head again. He didn’t like to discuss work with me.

      ‘Was it that woman?’ I asked. ‘Who stabbed her boyfriend in the heart?’

      Jessie’d written about it in our Klein Karoo Gazette. I did the ‘Love Advice and Recipe Column’, and she wrote the big stories. The woman was from our town, Ladismith, but the murder had happened in Barrydale. The man had been eating supper in the Barrydale Hotel with a friend, and his girlfriend had walked up to him and stabbed him in the heart. While they were trying to save the man’s life, the woman had just walked out.

      ‘They’ve caught her?’ I said.

      ‘Ja. She went back to the Barrydale Hotel, had supper at the same table . . .’ He shook his head.

      ‘You think she wanted to get caught?’

      ‘She must be mad,’ he said. ‘Stabbing him like that, in front of all those people . . .’

      ‘I wonder—’ I said.

      ‘And then going back . . .’

      ‘I wonder what he did to her,’ I said to the pudding, as I dished it onto our plates.

      ‘I’m sure her lawyers will have a story,’ he said. ‘But it’s over now. The Swellendam police cover Barrydale. Let’s not talk about it on a night like this.’ He swept his hand out, to show the flowers on my dress and the stars scattered across the soft dark sky.

      The botterkluitjies put an end to the conversation anyway, because all that you can say when eating those cinnamon brandy dumplings is ‘mm mmm’. Then there was the cake. I didn’t think my buttermilk chocolate cake could be improved, but then I invented another version with a cup of coffee in the dough, a layer of peanut butter and apricot jam in the middle, and an icing of melted coffee-chocolate. It was so amazing you would think it had come from another planet.

      ‘Jirre,’ said Henk, after a long time of speechlessness. ‘What kind of cake is this?’

      ‘A Venus Cake,’ I said, wiping a little icing from his lip with my finger. Henk licked my fingertip.

      ‘Kosie,’ Henk said. The lamb was now lying under the table, resting its head on his foot. ‘It’s time for you to go to bed.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      Kosie was lying on his blanket in the chicken hok, and I sat on the edge of my bed, my feet on the floor. Henk knelt in front of me, ran his hand through my untidy brown curls and kissed me softly on the lips. Then he kissed harder. He looked into my eyes and smiled as he undid the top button of my dress. That smile that turns my heart upside down. Those eyes that are blue and grey like the sea on a rainy day. They made me forget about the dead man, and the woman locked up in prison. They even made me forget about my own problems, locked inside of me.

      ‘Wait,’ I said, and got up to switch off the bedroom light.

      There was pale starlight coming in through the sash window.

      ‘I want to see you,’ he said, standing up to turn on a bedside light. ‘There, that’s not so bright.’

      He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, then put his big arms around me and held me against his warm furry chest. He smelt like spice cake and nutmeg. His waist pressed against my belly, and I could tell he was ready. I felt ready too, but not ready to be seen. Parts of me needed to stay in the shadows.

      ‘I’m a bit shy,’ I said. ‘The light . . .’

      ‘I just want to see your face,’ he said.

      ‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘it’s the rest of me that’s shy.’

      ‘Hmm,’ he said, leaning down to kiss my ear. ‘How about . . .’ His hands travelled down the back of my dress and onto my round bottom. It was a bit too round, but his hands didn’t seem to think so. ‘How about we keep your dress on?’

      His hands moved down a little further, and he edged the skirt up a little. Then a little more. His fingers followed the edge of my white lace panties.

      I made some noises that I didn’t really mean to make; they just came out.

      ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he said, his finger hooking into my panties, pulling them down.

      We heard Kosie bleating, a lonely sound. Henk undid the leather belt on his jeans. It was a big belt, with stuff attached to it, including a gun holster. Everything about Henk was big; I tried not to stare as he took off his jeans.

      Kosie bleated again. And again. Baaa. Baaaa. Baaaaaaa!

      ‘Sorry,’ said Henk. ‘He sometimes does that, even in the kitchen. Just a second. Or else he will get worse.’

      I sat down on the bed, and he walked to the sash window and shouted, ‘Kosie! Go to sleep, little lammetjie. Lamtietie damtietie. Doe-doe doe-doe.’

      Kosie went quiet. Henk came back to me, and I got a front-row view of him putting on a condom. Then he stood me up again, kissed the top of my head

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