LITMIR.BIZ

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band wreaking destruction as far as they go. Their headquarters are in a room behind a mortuary. The leader spends the nights lying behind a green plastic curtain separating his bed from the stockpiled coffins, and he schemes. He schemes till the cows come home. Brilliant! Internal monologue upon internal monologue! Brilliant! A portrait of a paranoid schizophrenic Dostoevsky would have been proud of! I’ve always thought that was one of the most astonishing parts of the novel.’

      (Nick remembered the scene vaguely. He’d never read The Shallows all the way to the end, he’d been too pissed off with Victor at the time.)

      ‘Doesn’t the man shoot the others and then himself?’ he asked. (He was impatient, he didn’t really want to be having this conversation. Kept his ears pricked up for any sound in the passage.)

      ‘Yes. Oh Lord. A scene that sort of reminded me of Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert. Static. Almost slow motion. But magisterial. Horrendously barbaric, the violence of it.’

      ‘Victor never shied away from the depiction of violence,’ said Nick drily.

      ‘No! He didn’t! Violence is his medium. It’s his natural language!’

      ‘You’d never say it, to look at him,’ said Nick. ‘However. I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that he looks like Willem Dafoe in some villainous role.’

      ‘Too true,’ said Marthinus. ‘David Lynch and Tarantino are also right up his alley.’

      ‘Blinky couldn’t stand him.’

      ‘Not?! Well, I never.’

      ‘He thought he was a poseur.’

      ‘A poseur, eh? Yes, he did have rather a penchant for the affected flourish. And do you know who his heroes were?’

      ‘No,’ said Nick.

      ‘Brigadier Theunis “Red Russian” Swanepoel, and the Dalai Lama.’ He lit another cigarette. His tea must have been ice cold by now, but he drank it with undiminished relish.

      ‘Be that as it may,’ said Marthinus, ‘I’m prepared to bet my bottom dollar that Victor is behind both the escape and the assassination attempt. It’s there, it’s all in his novels!’

      ‘So?!’ Nick exclaimed. ‘Surely his novels can’t form a basis for such an assumption!’ He was impatient. He was no longer in a mood for Marthinus’ far-fetched suspicions. It was ten o’clock already. Charelle never slept this late. Should he go and tell her it’s okay, she can come to the kitchen at any time, she must be wanting a cup of tea by now?

      ‘Wait and see,’ said Marthinus. ‘It’s one hundred per cent Victor’s kind of scenario.’

      ‘From where did the patients escape?’ asked Nick.

      ‘Some high-security psychiatric hospital in the Moorreesburg vicinity. Only the most extreme cases are to be found there. The really severely disturbed cases. Oh Lord, it’s right up Victor’s alley. The more deviant, the better.’

      Marthinus drank the last of his tea. Smoked another cigarette. Then (fortunately) he had to go and do something at home, attend to the pigs or whatever.

      What should he do? Nick wondered. To go and knock at Charelle’s door now might be taking it a bit far. She might emerge of her own accord as soon as she no longer heard voices in the kitchen.

      At eleven o’clock he knocked at her door gently. No response. He called her name and knocked louder. No response. Against his better judgement he opened the door gingerly. She wasn’t there. Her bathroom door was open. Nobody there. Her toothbrush was still there. Her room was tidy, as always, the bed made. Her weekend bag was on top of the wardrobe. He hadn’t heard her come in the previous night nor leave in the morning. Why should he be upset – she didn’t owe him an explanation of her comings and goings.

      He had an appointment in Woodstock to view a prospective different studio space. He’d shortly have to vacate the studio that he rented in Observatory. He’d put it off for too long. He hadn’t wanted to face the disruption. He had no all-consuming desire to go and have a look this morning. But good studio space was hard to come by.

      Reluctantly he went to inspect the place. (Where could Charelle have gone to so suddenly? She seldom went out.) The space looked fair enough. He’d take it. Today it didn’t matter that much to him where he worked. The work he was embarked upon was not yet substantial enough for his exhibition the following year. He’d have to work faster, produce faster. The move to Cape Town had been disruptive, had made him lose momentum. The pressure on any artist to remain on the radar was great. (He was substituting temporarily for somebody at the art school because the move had left him in financial difficulties.) In the meantime the art world was moving on. There were hundreds of young artists every day doing interesting and innovative stuff. All of them were driven and ambitious. Like Charelle. Perhaps not all of them as talented as she, but talent was no prerequisite nowadays. He would not be able to bank for very much longer on his name and his prior success.

      He read the newspaper while having coffee in a small coffee shop. He saw no report on either the assassination attempt or the fugitive psychiatric patients. Could the whole thing have been a figment of Marthinus’ lively imagination? He had at times suspected the chap went overboard with things (very much like his unrealistic cousin) – as with the talk about Chris Kestell.

      Late in the afternoon he arrived home. Once again there was no response at Charelle’s door.

      By Saturday evening she’d still not returned. Eventually it turned nine o’clock, ten o’clock. She hadn’t said she was going away for the weekend. She usually did so. Not of course that she had to do it. She’d gone away the previous weekend with the woman in the turban. Desirée, not a particularly friendly woman. He didn’t want to phone Charelle. She’d think he was checking on her. Unforgivable. At eleven he went to bed. At first he dozed off lightly, listening for her footsteps. Somewhere in the early hours he half woke up, imagining he could hear voices on the pavement in front of the house, hoped, half-asleep, that it was Charelle, but didn’t hear her come in, and slept on restlessly.

      He woke up the next morning in a grumpy mood. He should have known he would scare her off sooner or later. A middle-aged white man suddenly starting to cook for her. Her landlord to boot. Much too close for comfort. He felt embarrassed and humiliated. What had he been thinking? Then he reconsidered: apart from their eating together regularly over the last few weeks, he’d done nothing that could in any way have given her the idea that he was in the least making up to her or intent upon a mission of seduction.

      By Sunday evening she had still not returned.

      Eight

      The trees are being stripped of their leaves. Every day it gets light a little later. In the mornings I have my tea in bed and look at the mountains. My gaze, I see in the mirror, is laconic. My spirit is refractory and troubled. The negotiations with Professor Marcus Olivier – professor emeritus in history – are not making headway. He is the father of the Olivier brothers, twins, on whom I’m writing the monograph. That such a father could beget such sons! I want to talk to him, though I’m still not sure what I’m hoping to learn from him. The more obstacles he places in my way, the more determined I am to gain access to him. I don’t negotiate directly with him – all communications (telephonic or by email) are channelled through his secretary-cum-housekeeper. I have no idea what she looks like, but I picture a curtly competent woman, dressed in a uniform, with sensible leather shoes with thick rubber soles.

      On cards I enter everything relating to the brothers and their work. Biographical information (the father, the absent mother, their youth in South Africa), their training (undergraduate as well as postgraduate), puppetry, literary influences (Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, etc.), surrealism (a vital component of their work), music, the technique of stop-action filming (their technique of choice and a field in which they are regarded as modern masters), the critical reception of their work (a lot has been written about them). Meanwhile I’m negotiating with the secretary-housekeeper. I intend to persist until I manage

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