that people know me for … the big events of my life. If I am to be remembered, I want to be remembered for the quieter … truer … moments of my life. I don’t need a story for those … I need someone.’
Saskia Hargrave smiled at him encouragingly, clearly misreading the situation.
‘Luckily for me, I already have someone who retains those moments,’ Emil said, walking away from the window and making his way back to his desk.
‘Your wife?’ Saskia Hargrave asked, prying in order to mask her dis-appointment.
Emil merely smiled in response, aware that his smile did not encourage further inquiry.
As soon as Emil sat down at his desk he noticed that one of the azure-coloured notes was missing and that the folded letter was no longer under the paperweight and was now half-opened.
‘Did you take one of the notes on my desk?’ Emil asked as a courtesy. There was no other way to explain its disappearance. ‘Miss Hargrave?’ Emil asked, making sure that she felt that those two words had been spoken not by the middle-aged man she had been trying, unsuccessfully, to flirt with and seduce, but by Emil Coetzee, The Head of The Organisation of Domestic Affairs and one of the most powerful men in the country.
Saskia Hargrave tried to dissemble by smiling coquettishly as she retrieved an azure-coloured piece of paper from her notebook.
‘It is such a pretty colour … I was just admiring it … forgot it was there. I was so absorbed by our conversation.’
Emil made it a point to stare at her discoloured tooth as she spoke. He did so until it became clear to her that there was nothing to be gained by not leaving immediately.
Once Saskia Hargrave was gone, Emil gazed down at the note.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
– Zora Neale Hurston
Emil put the note in its rightful place. He read all the notes over again and then placed them carefully, like perfect treasures, in his wallet.
He examined the half-opened letter and delicately folded it before placing it back under the paperweight.
His story, if it were ever told, would have to contain the lows of the letter and the highs of the notes. It would have to be told chronologically in a linear fashion, with a definite beginning, middle and end – none of that starting-in-the-middle- or -end modern nonsense. It would have to be told in this fashion because that was the only way to make any sense of the dark, cold, grey, concrete room with its naked lightbulb, forever drip, drip, dripping tap and the man with blood on his hands.
CHAPTER 1
Like most people who have truly loved, Emil Coetzee knew the exact moment that he fell in love for the first time and would remember it always. He was standing outside the government-issued, bungalow-style house with whitewashed walls and no veranda that he called home. His back was against the wall and his eyes were surveying the vast veld – this beautiful and golden great expanse – that lay before him.
It was a windy day that promised rain and the clouds were gathering grey in anticipation of the coming downpour. He peered up at the sky in time to see the clouds part and let the sun shine through brightly. God’s visit. That was what his mother called this phenomenon. The sun had been there the entire time, hidden by the clouds. Emil marvelled at this always-being-thereness of the sun and then reached his hand up to the sun as if to touch it. The sun disappeared behind the clouds again, but now Emil knew that it was there and felt comforted.
He gazed out at the veld and took in its vastness. The wild wind made the elephant grass sing and swoon before it came and kissed his face. Emil closed his eyes, placed the palms of both his hands against the whitewashed walls, took a deep breath and let the beauty of all that surrounded him enter his body. As that beauty travelled through his body, it turned into something else, and he knew that this thing that he felt in every fibre of his being, this wondrous and rarefied thing, this thing called love, was something that he would cherish all the days of his life.
Emil was six years old when he, at that moment master of all that he surveyed, beheld the veld and fell in love with it. This was to be his first concrete and complete memory. There would be other memories too, of the British South Africa Police outpost at the foot of the Matopos Hills, which was where the government-issued, bungalow-style house with whitewashed walls and no veranda that he called home was situated.
He remembered the sundowners that his parents, Johan and Gemma Coetzee, hosted every Friday evening and how his mother, in her black drop-waist dress and red cloche hat, would frenetically flap and flail the Charleston before his father joined her for a foxtrot promenade, while Emil, wrapped and rapt in admiration, happily sipped on lukewarm lime cordial.
He remembered walking into the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it, all the while knowing that he had found his true self, that this was his natural habitat. He remembered his black shadow travelling the most beautiful land ever created as he explored the environs of the Matopos Hills. It was at this site that he could find all the heroes he had learnt about in school: Cecil John Rhodes, Leander Starr Jameson, Charles Coghlan, Allan Wilson and the brave members of the Shangani Patrol. It was here at ‘World’s View’ that they were buried or memorialised. The Matopos Hills was also the place where the god of the Matabele resided and where, accordingly, they came to ask for blessings, which for them always came in the form of rain. Proud men in loincloths and regal women in beads – rain dancers – would ascend the hills, then for hours there would be the sounds of drumming, stomping, ululating and shrieking, followed by an absolute silence that came before the rain dancers would descend the hills, looking, to Emil, as he watched in wonderment, as if they were carrying the solemn-looking clouds on their heads, shoulders and backs.
But probably the most magnificent of all the things at the site were the San cave paintings that told the intricate story of the hunt, that is, the story of how man and animal moved towards and away from one another in a rhythm that became a dance of respect, honour, love and ultimately death. His father would take him to the Bambata, Nswatugi and Silozwane caves, hoist him on his broad shoulders and together they would decipher the paintings – writing, really – on the wall. The narratives were realistic and fair: sometimes man outmanoeuvred animal, sometimes animal overpowered man. Emil always imagined himself to be part of the hunt; of all the things in the world, this was what he desired most, to test his might and mettle against that of an animal.
In his dreams, he was something beautifully wild and ferocious. He ran barefoot through the grasslands, carrying an assegai in his hand and knowing exactly when to strike at the heart of the dark, looming creature in his environment. He was a hero and the creature was something out of a fable. When he awoke his heart would be pounding with an excitement that made him jump out of bed and run around the small patch of land that constituted their front yard, yowling and brandishing an imagined weapon as he prepared himself to vanquish the creature of his dreams.
What Emil did not recollect of his childhood, his parents told him. According to them, he had been born, after a somewhat lengthy courtship and hasty marriage on their part, at the Sandhurst Private Hospital in Durban on 18 April 1927. Six months later he was baptised and christened Emil Coetzee. Possibly hoping to have the relationship with his son that he had not had with his father, Johan had proudly named his son Emil after his father. While this would prove to be a rather damning inheritance in many ways, none of those ways were apparent at the moment of christening.
Although his name was Afrikaans, and his father’s name, Johan Coetzee, was also Afrikaans, Emil had in fact, for all intents and purposes, been born into an English family. This was because Johan was the product of a relatively short-lived and ill-fated union between a rambling ne’er-do-well called Emil Coetzee and a dancer named Bethany Miller. When he was still in his swaddling clothes, Johan’s mother had taken him to a home for orphans, waifs and strays that was run by the Pioneer Benevolence Society of the City of Kings. Her name was registered as Bethany Miller and her occupation listed as ‘dancer’, which, as Johan grew older, he began to appreciate