a strange expression in the eyes,’ she says, dreamily. ‘Now that I think of it, he looks like you.’
‘What sort of expression?’
‘Strange, Lucas. Oh, I don’t know. Kind of still. Not peaceful though, more like shocked.’
I hear Díaz’s high-pitched, rusty voice over the pain of the needle: ‘That is how we found the youths in Cholula. We broke open the cages and let them go, but still they looked like this.’
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Where did you say?’
‘Keep still,’ he said. ‘Nothing will ever change it. Even now, in paradise or hell, they will bear that look.’
I left it there. I was concentrating too hard on the needle to think about anything else.
She brings me a glass of whisky. It helps to ease the discomfort. In that release, briefly, I trust her enough to talk about my motive.
‘I can’t see colour properly,’ I explain to Ana. ‘I’m colour-blind.’
‘Is that true? Are you really colour-blind?’
‘Yes. No. Not really.’
Her ears and scalp twitch, like an animal’s. ‘What do you mean, Luke?’
‘I’m blind to my own colour,’ I reply. ‘I don’t know what it is.’
‘You bloody South Africans,’ she says, shaking her head. Then she gets up and pours us another round of cheap whisky.
* * *
There is nothing crude about Bettina Moore, though her jaw is too big. She wears very large glasses, and her hair is cut straight and even, not far below her ears. I believe the word is ‘bobbed’. It lends her an androgynous aspect, though she is strongly female. She is ash-blonde and naturally pale, about my own age, younger than Ana. She is tall and rangy, and has a Bishopscourt accent. She doesn’t smoke, her breath is sweet.
This is how we meet. I stand behind her in a library queue, slightly to the side. I notice a sculpted quality about her hand. In this diffused light, it is made of fine white marble, bearing a naked quality that shines out beyond the obvious fact of its nakedness, speaking of pathos.
Naked sculpture can be more interesting than the human original. Some emotion of the subject is singled out, made evident. It becomes unbearable that she is both at once, model and carving, united in one shape. I need to touch her hand. I need to trace its length with my fingertips, plumb its meaning, taste its narcissistic sorrow.
The library queue is slow. The air is sleepy, smelling of dust and books, a blank page in its own right, offering time and opportunity to rupture the membrane of public order that isolates us all so terribly. I am about to reach out and touch her, then stop, suddenly aware that the book she holds was written by my grandfather. Everything changes. Given such good reason, my action will seem less outrageous, even legitimate.
I touch her hand. She turns round, and the world changes again; she absorbs my image, and is not indignant. Her face slips out of control, melts into surprise, pleasure, and finally embarrassment. I find this tedious as always, and yet gratifying.
She struggles to suppress that expression before the moment washes out of her control entirely.
‘Arthur Turner,’ I say. ‘My grandfather.’
‘Who?’ she asks. ‘Pardon me? Oh, you say – Arthur Turner is your grandfather?’
She holds the book at a distance, and studies the cover.
Not long before he died, my grandfather managed to publish a treatise on the philosophy and advantages of alcoholism. To his surprise, Sweet Logos was fairly successful. It’s out of print now, but I know that there are copies in one or two libraries.
‘Do you know his work?’ I ask. It’s a dishonest question. He only published that one book, apart from a couple of academic papers.
She shakes her head, ruefully. ‘I should, I suppose. But I’m afraid that this is the first time I’ve seen his name.’
‘It’s a good book.’
That, too, is a lie. In my view, Sweet Logos is rambling and precious.
She bows her head slightly, and turns away, signalling the end of the conversation. Her neck arches, its length exposed. My interest in her pricks up. Actually, I salivate. It is a pale column, with the finest blonde hairs stirring on the surface.
‘It’s more than a good book to me,’ I continue, suddenly unwilling to fade back into the queue. ‘It’s autobiographical. I’m in it.’
She turns back again, and looks at me cautiously from beneath her pale brows, her elegantly curved forehead. Her blue eyes flicker, small rapid movements of the iris, as she reads the planes of my face.
‘I’m the little boy in the second part, where he describes his relationship with his daughter.’
I don’t know why the transition from first contact to bed has always been so easy for me. I have the natural advantage of good timing, an exact sense of leverage. I know when to apply pressure, when to yield. In Bettina’s case, the turning point is her responsive smile, so legible, so quickly suppressed. I make her see me as that little boy in his grandfather’s book, a creature she can manage more easily than my adult self. A child can possess another child with less effort.
I’ve already learnt by now that when Bettina is disconcerted, her resolve shatters, everything gives way at once. A single tap in the right place will do it.
‘Here,’ I say, taking the book from her hands. ‘Let me show you, allow me to read you a certain description.’
Club Foot
He watches his mother as she works. Her hands are chapped, the flesh pale. The light coming in through the window is stark, and bleaches her face and arms almost the colour of milk. She is cleaning a galjoen, scraping off the scales with her old sharp knife. They spring into the air, rasping off in silver-grey showers. The kitchen stinks of fish blood.
He longs to talk to his mother. He knows she won’t answer. Her mouth is a healed gash. She is a creased milky body that breathes and moves and speaks only when necessary. He closes his eyes and tries to enter her flesh. He wants to move her arms, see through her pale eyes. He wants to live inside her where, perhaps, it is warmer. But she remains impervious and distant, and he remains where he is on the kitchen chair, kicking his heels softly against its wooden legs. He can taste the whiteness; it is like eating chalk or sand.
The sounds coming from outside – the teasing wind, the screaming gulls, the sea – combine with the scraping of his mother’s blade. They twist together into lines of music, briefly caught, something he might sing; then they are simply sounds and noises again. The scraping stops altogether. The fish slaps onto the board, he hears the cold tap running. He knows it is the cold tap because it sounds different to the hot one. Then comes the paddling of her hands and the smell of Sunlight soap.
He opens his eyes again. His mother is watching him. As usual, he cannot read the expression in her eyes. He looks away.
‘It’s cooler outside,’ she says. ‘Come, we’ll walk down the beach.’
Silently, he shifts off his chair and limps to the door. They step down onto the white sand, the scraggy grass. Light knifes into his eyes, and his foot hurts more than usual. He sits down on the step.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he says.
The flesh around her eyes seems to soften. She says, ‘I’ll carry you the first bit.’
She kneels down, turning her back to him. He climbs onto her back and wraps his arms around her broad shoulders, his legs about her hips. With a grunt of pain, or weariness, she straightens up and walks down to the sea.
He presses his face into the back of her neck. There is the jogging of her stride and the