The Gooseberry Fool Read online

  She yapped on, unheeded by Kramer, as they moved out, with their drinks, to the patio and the swimming pool, where Scott was tightening the cord of a borrowed pair of trunks. Good thinking.

  “Hello there, Tromp, old mate. Coming in?”

  “Not today.”

  “Hell, it’s hot enough for you, isn’t it?” said the Colonel.

  “Yes, sir, but I’ve got work to do.”

  “What work?”

  “My report on the Wallace case. You said you wanted it—”

  “Ach, that was yesterday, man! Things were different.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “Well, the Swart case was still open, for a start. It had me really worried, I can tell you, specially when Sergeant Zondi didn’t report back. I was all nervy last night in the hotel. Don’t you remember?”

  Kramer’s recollection was that the Colonel had been anything but.

  “Well, old son?”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “See what I mean about the lieutenant, Popsie? Dedication. A hard worker—and a hard, hard man.”

  “Are you, Lieutenant?” she asked naughtily.

  “So you’re satisfied that the Swart case is complete, sir?”

  “Naturally! Didn’t Zondi get his man? Of course he did! Makes me ashamed I ever had a worry in my head. But of course you never doubted it for a second. Am I right?”

  “Well, sir—”

  “As if you would. As if you’d think twice about it. I know how long you’ve worked with that Bantu, Tromp, and I know you trust him. From now on, I do, too.”

  Kramer raised his glass and drank slowly. He needed a moment or two to catch up with this astonishing about-face on the part of one of Zondi’s natural enemies. Then he realized such talk came cheap when a man lay dying.

  “Even so, sir, I thought we should have more proof than a dead coon.”

  “You can carry things too far, Tromp! Shabalala was handcuffed, right? Would Zondi do that to a witness?”

  “Depends on how much the witness wanted to give evidence, sir.”

  “Rubbish! Anyway, we have what he said to John here.”

  But Scott was already running along the springboard. He went up and came down like a champion, entering the water with barely a splash. Then he surfaced and churned rapidly to the far end, where he ducked under and began swimming underwater.

  “Not bad,” said Kramer. “Didn’t know our blokes got swimming baths in the desert.”

  “Ha! That’ll be the day, Tromp! No, he tells me that they use the one belonging to the diamond company. In there all the time; nothing else to do.”

  Which was a plausible answer, but not an explanation for what had actually attracted Kramer’s attention: the fact that Lieutenant John Scott did not have the sort of tan, even for such pink skin, that a desert sun would give.

  “But as I was saying, Tromp, our friend John in there is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Zondi got our murderer for us and that’s enough for me. What more can I ask?”

  “Sir?”

  “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Sorry, sir. Go on.”

  “Ach, in this heat? I’ve had enough. Let me put it this way: both cases are closed, you can forget all about them, and you can go off duty until Colonel Muller gets back. Okay?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. My Christmas present to you. Take it—and that’s an order!”

  “And what’s Zondi getting, Colonel? A Christmas Box?”

  Popsie Du Plessis drew back, startled by the audacity of Kramer’s words, however lightly spoken. That “Box” pun had barbs. She glanced apprehensively at her husband, but he merely closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Only God can answer you that.…” he began, found nothing to add, and finished up with his mouth in a pious pout.

  Interesting. Remarkable, in fact, for the Colonel had built his reputation almost exclusively upon a terrifying lack of selfcontrol. His normal response to a joke at his expense was bad enough. Add to this the humiliation of his wife being present, and you had the total abandon of manhood outraged. And yet, under severe test conditions, the reading was nil—the Colonel had done nothing. Correction: he had behaved with discretion, and this registered on another dial as Condition Abnormal. Kramer had suspected as much, and taken a calculated risk in verifying it. Now that he had the result of his experiment, however, he was damned if he understood its significance—except that the Colonel was up to something, and that something was so important it made restraint worthwhile.

  “Another little drinkie, Lieutenant?” asked his hostess.

  “What? No; no, thanks, Mrs. Du Plessis. Ta for the hospitality, and for asking me along, sir. I think I’ll start my little holiday now.”

  “Good lad,” said the Colonel, smiling. “Don’t wait. I’ll say good-bye to John for you.”

  When Kramer arrived back at the flat, all he wanted was a quiet talk with the Widow Fourie about the Colonel and his guest. But the children were rushing in and out, which made this difficult, to say the least.

  “No, not there! I told you: over there, by the bread tin. What was that, Trompie?”

  “The Colonel, him shutting up like that”

  “Sure you’re not imagining it?”

  “Look, my girl, I know how to get that bastard going. Haven’t I done it before, deliberately?”

  “No.”

  “Hey?”

  “I meant no to—Oh, for goodness’ sake, boys! Can’t you be more careful? I nearly had milk—What was that? Yes, you have, but it’s a long time since Colonel Dupe was around.”

  “He can’t have changed that much.”

  “Just a sec. Listen, you lot, if you can’t do what I ask you properly, then I might as well—”

  “Shut up!” shouted Kramer.

  Everyone froze.

  “Now finish your sentence,” he said.

  “All I was going to say was that it’s very simple. You’ve said what a fuss you were going to make about writing up the Wallace business, and how Colonel Muller would go mad when he saw it. Maybe Du Plessis has realized what a fool you could make him look.”

  “And the Shabalala case?”

  “Well it does sound wrapped up, doesn’t it? Have a heart, Trompie. Deep inside, Du Plessis may himself feel bad about Zondi. That’s why you didn’t get your reaction.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Can we go now, please, Mum?”

  “Shhh! Uncle Trompie’s in charge.”

  “Yes, you go,” he muttered and they stampeded out.

  “Then there’s the little matter of Scott’s skin,” Kramer said.

  “Since when were you an expert on suntan?”

  “Ach, I know what I saw!”

  “Scott’s an English name even if he says he’s Afrikaner; the English have pink skins that don’t go brown, don’t they?”

  “Maybe some.”

  “Then what you are—Hey, be careful with that box! Haven’t I told you three times already?”

  One of the boys sheepishly picked up a carton dropped in the hall and tiptoed past his mother into the kitchen. There a considerable collection of foodstuffs, toys, and clothes was piling up on all available surfaces.

  “Do you mind telling me what the hell’s going on?” Kramer demanded.

  “I’m being practical.”

  “Oh, yes? Storing up for the winter?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  He was puzzled by her evasiveness. The Widow Fourie had been jumpy ever since he got home.

  “Where’s it all coming from?”

  “Oh, here and there—people in the other flats. People I knew before to talk to.”

  “They’ve taken pity on you?”

  “Really, Trompie, that’s not a very nice thing to say!”

  “It’s for the natives,” said the eldest girl.

  “For Zombie!” added the one who read all the comics.

  “Or at least for Zondi’s wife,” said t
he Widow Fourie, with a self-conscious grimace. “I went round the flats and told them what had happened, how he’d caught a European’s killer and had the accident. They had so much stuff, it being Christmas, it was easy to find things they didn’t want. That’s what the kids have been doing, collecting it up.”

  “Hell, what gave you this idea?”

  The Widow Fourie shrugged, blinked as though her eyes were stinging.

  “You forget, Trompie.”

  “What?”

  “I know what that woman’s got to go through—it happened to me once.”

  That came in under the belt, but Kramer had asked for it. So he shrugged, too, and went over to get his cigarettes from his jacket.

  “Now I suppose I—ll have to lug this lot out there?”

  “Nobody’s making you.”

  “I didn’t say that”

  “Mummy says we can go with you, Uncle Trompie. Can we?”

  “Please let us!”

  “Come on!”

  “But you know they’re not allowed in Kwela Village, my girl. You shouldn’t have said.”

  “If they go with you? A policeman?”

  “That’s not the point. Or is the point, if you like. I can’t break bylaws just to please your brood.”

  “Surely, Trompie.…”

  “What if we put shoe polish on, Mum? Can we go in then?”

  This got a hearty laugh, and Kramer raised his hands in defeat.

  There was still this gnawing in his stomach—the gnawing of not a mouse, but a rat. He knew for certain now because not an hour before he had smelled it. Picked it out of the perfumed breeze coming off the field of flowers onto the Colonel’s patio.

  Kramer was quite firm about one thing: the children were not to leave the car while it was in Kwela Village. They agreed to obey him implicitly.

  “This is exciting, Uncle Trompie,” the eldest girl said as they approached the gate to the municipal township. And she pointed to the high wire fence around it, topped with barbed wire, and to the Bantu guards with their knobkerries.

  “Ach, rubbish,” he muttered.

  When the guards recognized the Chevrolet, they snapped off salutes, then almost fell over each other getting the gate swung wide open. They saluted again as the Chevrolet passed through.

  “What’s that, Uncle?”

  “The school.”

  “Isn’t very big.”

  “Ah, but you see they have school twice a day.”

  “I’m glad I don’t go there!”

  “Uncle Trompie means two different lots of piccanins have school, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes. Now a bit of quiet, please.”

  He drove slowly down the uneven dirt surface, wary of what a careless move could do to his crankcase. He also had to count the roads going off to the left, for eight hundred identical houses made it easy to waste time going down the wrong one, and he had never seen a street sign in Kwela.

  “Twenty-one, twenty-two!”

  “Is this it, Uncle Trompie?”

  “Look out for a path made with rusty condensed-milk tins, on your right.”

  The children commented on the insolence of those who idled in the path of the car. One old man deliberately walked in front of them, making Kramer brake to a standstill.

  “Cheeky Kaffir,” he said, hitting the horn.

  His passengers took this up as a chant until rebuked for the noise they were making.

  “It’s just they aren’t used to cars down this way,” Kramer explained.

  “Never, ever, Uncle Trompie?”

  “Well, maybe a few taxis—and there’s a bloke over there with an old crate.”

  “It’s a 1940 Dodge,” said the eldest boy, who knew about cars.

  He was wrong, 1945, in fact, but Kramer had this gnawing to distract him.

  “There’s some tins! Over there! Look!”

  And so there were. Kramer pulled the Chevrolet over to the side and cut the engine. Almost immediately Miriam Zondi came out of the house, apron held up to her mouth in both hands, and she looked at him with dread, fearing bad news. So he jumped out with a wave, and told the children to wave, too.

  “Hau, Boss Kramer. I was thinking—”

  “Last I heard, Mickey was fast asleep and getting better every minute, Miriam. But he’ll have to stay in Peacevale a few days at least, so I’ve just brought you a little something.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Christ, of course: if anything would come as a sign of Zondi’s ultimate sacrifice, it was the bounty of white strangers piled in the Chev’s trunk. While the little bugger’s heart still beat, she was entitled to be without it.

  “Boss Kramer?”

  “I’ve got Mickey’s pay.”

  “He left that here before he went in the car.”

  “Oh, did he? But I mean his Christmas bonus. Here, I borrowed some so it’s not in its packet.”

  He handed over two one-rand notes.

  Miriam took them with hardly a glance.

  “Not much, but the first Christmas bonus the police ever paid,” Kramer added, fairly certain the payment would remain unique—it was his own money.

  “You come inside, Boss Kramer?”

  “Why not? Just for a minute.”

  It was the other unique occasion, in its way, for although Kramer had entered hundreds of homes exactly like it, so that he knew the size of the two rooms almost down to the statutory inch, he had never been into the one rented by Zondi.

  This particular house was distinguished by its consummate neatness, and the fact that Miriam, who had once been maid to a very rich lady, was not without taste. Kramer was very taken by the newspaper pattern she had scissored to fringe the shelves of her sideboard, and by the lines she had scored to simulate planking in the stamped earth floor.

  “Very nice,” he said, being offered the steadier of two chairs. “Mickey has a good woman. Where are the youngsters?”

  “By the river.”

  “Very nice, too.”

  Miriam, who felt it proper to remain standing, curled one large toe over the other. She looked across at the Primus stove.

  “The boss would like some tea?”

  “Don’t bother, thanks, Miriam.”

  “I can do it quickly.”

  “Fine. Yes, please.”

  Kramer suspected that by now the Widow Fourie’s kids would have slit open his seats, and might even be trying to drive themselves away. He was mad to accept the tea, but it was not an easy thing to just walk out.

  “Tell you what, Miriam,” he said. “I’m just going out to the car for a minute; won’t be long.”

  He had remembered that among the gifts to the Zondi family was a large packet of hard candies. He distributed these among his entourage, received promises of good behavior to be rewarded by a trip to the bird sanctuary, and went back to the house.

  Miriam, true to her word, had a large cup waiting for him on the table. She had not poured one for herself, so he was glad to have acted as he did.

  “They were kind to you this morning, I hear.”

  “Who, boss?”

  “The officers at Peacevale—gave you a ride in a van back here.”

  “Hau!”

  “What’s the matter, Miriam?”

  “It is nothing, boss.”

  “You tell me.”

  Her bitterness had come as a complete surprise.

  “Is it kind for a woman to be told she must go, leave her husband who is dying?”

  “Someone said this?”

  “They said I must leave Mickey, go in the van.”

  “When?”

  “Just after you come to the hospital, Boss Kramer. I hear your voice.”

  “My voice?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Kramer noticed that his hand, the one taking a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk from the can for his tea, was shaking. He quickly got the creamy dollop into his cup and stirred. He stirred and stirred.

  “So you thought it was me who sent yo
u away?”

  “Oh, no, boss! Never!”

  “Uh huh. Let’s get one thing straight from the start: Mickey is not certain to die, this I know. The doctor, Mtembu, told me this.”

  Miriam leaned against the sideboard, her head down.

  “He is an African?”

  “Yes, but a good doctor. I know this also.”

  “He did not say the same to me.”

  “No?”

  “He said that Mickey will die, just as surely as the ox must die when the butcher hits its head with a club.”

  “Jesus!”

  “That is why I must speak with my husband, he says; I must speak with him because never again will I hear his words.”

  The cup shook all the way to Kramer’s lips, frightening him more than anything he had ever experienced. But Miriam kept her eyes to the ground.

  “What—what did Mickey say?”

  “I had to ask if he had any message for you.”

  “Me?”

  “They said he would not talk to the policemen that were there. Only a little—only that he’d caught this man in Jabula.”

  “Shabalala?”

  “Him, that one. But why do you ask this, Boss Kramer? They wrote down the message for you.”

  “Who did?”

  “The other lieutenant, he who sat behind the curtains by Mickey’s bed.”

  She saw her reply in Kramer’s face before he had time to make up one.

  “Boss? What is the meaning of these things that are happening?”

  “Sit down, Miriam. Please, I want you to. Then tell me my message once more so that I can remember it.”

  She sat, that wide pelvis, the joy of Zondi’s life, sinking slowly down on the rickety chair so its legs creaked and stiffened at different angles. To be heavy with grief could be a very literal thing.

  “I forget, boss,” she whispered.

  Kramer waited a little while before prompting her.

  “Shabalala—did Mickey speak more of him?”

  “Yes. Said that you must not blame him for the death of that man.”

  “You’re sure he said that?”

  “Shabalala just run away when his wife is taken to a new place.”

  Kramer fought the cup back into its saucer, using every muscle of his arm to keep the bloody thing from wobbling. It clattered home. Then he stood up.

  “What else, Miriam?”

  She was weeping, pressing her eyes into the crook of her arm and rocking back and forward. He stretched out a hand to steady her, whipping it back just in time.