NOVELIST FISHER'S FACES in A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA (Amazon's Kindle Library, 2013) PART FOUR

NOVELIST FISHER’S FACES in A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA (Amazon’s Kindle Library, 2013)

PART FOUR

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© August 26, 2014

Nina in the dark

Devlin could hardly see her in the darkness but he could smell her like animals smell each other.  It was the aroma of sex and love making with the pungent fishy odor and stinging sensation of ammonia.  

Nature was, indeed, in the room.  He touched her profile like a blind man and ran his hand over the contours of her face.  If he were blind, he would know she was beautiful for the hand sees and the touch discerns.  

Her hair was wet and felt like strings of satin.  Her ears close to her head felt satin like, too, shaped like tiny symmetrical seashells.  Her eyes, as only a blind man could imagine, were luminescent orbs that sparkled in the night like black diamonds.  Her nose, his touch told him, was long, straight, thin, with a slight aristocratic curve at its peak with the smoothness of porcelain China.  Her lips had the feel of fullness and delicate design.  To the touch, they seemed serene and soft as velvet but pouting to suggest a strong will.  

The topographical examination concluded, Devlin listened to Nina’s quiet breathing in sleep.  She took his hand, awakened to his touch, and kissed his clammy palm. “We have little choice,” she said in a whisper.

He kissed her open hand with many kisses, exploring its palm, knuckles, fingers, then settled his lips on her pulsing veins, “About what?” he asked.

“About everything.  Everything is out of control, you say that yourself.  Control is a perversion of nature, and you are one of its acolytes.  Admit it.  Society is the face of taboo.  Illiterate Bantus are converted to Christianity, and what does that get them?  It gets them SOWETO!”  She paused, wiped her eyes with his wet palm.  “SOWETO is the face of apartheid not intended, the face of South Africa today.”

Sarah’s ordeal

Sarah got up to get a glass of water, couldn’t go into Gabriel’s precious kitchen but had to get it in the bathroom.  She never knew when he would be up.  

It was past 2 a.m.  She went into the study to find Dirk stretched out on the sofa, book in his lap, the fireplace filled with cold damp ashes, with him in his damn suit as par for the course.  

Despite herself, she went to the hall closet, bringing back a blanket and pulling it up to the big bastard’s neck.

A chill was in the air along with the putrid smell of moist ashes and spent logs in the fireplace.  It matched the chilly toxicity of her rage.  

She knew she couldn’t sleep now.  Look at him, a smile on his face, the book open on his lap to a highlighted caption.  She wished she were a reader and could escape into books as he did.  It was his fantasy land.

By nature a fastidious person, she picked the book off his lap, and looked at the title, “Inside Apartheid,” placing it back on the bookshelf.  God, what a boring title!  It was beyond her how he could read that stuff.

He’s one of Catholicism’s walking wounded, an expatriate angry with God, reciting boring “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” to her as if biblical text.  Ugh!  

She couldn’t get past the third page in “Ulysses,” but did read the raunchy parts where Molly Bloom watched the swimmers in the quarry, naked young boys with their lovely cocks dangling delightfully.

Well, Sarah, you’ve got him where you wanted him, so how does it feel now?  

She started to cry.  The crying turned into sobs, then uncontrollable wailing to the empty darkness.  Dirk stirred in his sleep but didn’t wake.  She looked at him.  She could kill him now in his sleep and he would go peacefully at the ripe old age of nearly 31.  

Would she want that even if she could get away with it?  Good question.  The thought frightened her as sometimes she wished him dead.  She wondered if other wives had such terrible thoughts when their high achieving husbands paid them no mind.

Josiah, the gardener, and the policeman

Josiah was pruning an ungodly plant as Devlin approached.  

Devlin bit his lip from asking about it.  He would be given a botany lesson of some length.  He was not in a mood for that, hoping to keep his throbbing head free of minutiae today.  He came to the wrong place.

Josiah looked at him as he approached without smiling.

"My man, why the long face?” Devlin asked with false bluster thinking Josiah looked like how he felt.

“There was a white police officer here again yesterday questioning me, the third time this month.”  

He noted the puzzled expression on Devlin’s face.  “He’s sweet on Asabi,” as if that explained everything. 

Asabi was the pretty young Bantu maid of the Devlin’s.  “The police officer is jealous of her giving attention to anyone.”

Devlin knew that meant Josiah, “So?”  As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t.  It was the headache speaking.

“She doesn’t seem to care for him, but is interested in what she can get out of him.”  Devlin raised a questioning eyebrow.  “The policeman discovered her green card was delinquent, which is serious.  Now, he controls her.”

Devlin waited, “And?”

“He told her if she was nice to him he would let it go.  She could go to jail, master Devlin.”  He stopped pruning the plant, stood up and looked Devlin hard in the eye.  “She can be quite reckless.”

”And you’re telling me this . . .why?”

Josiah turned away, squirmed, took out a cloth and cleaned his trough to Devlin’s back, then dropped down, and resumed his pruning.

Devlin dropped down, too.  “You resent this, am I right?”  

The gardener looked at the roots of the plant as if a metaphysical mystery, dug deep around it viciously, and said nothing.  

“Oh, I see.  You’re sweet on Asabi.”  It was the wrong thing to say.

Josiah rose abruptly from the ground to his full height with defiance in his eyes.  “Josiah has no such interest.  Quite the opposite.  That child is always pestering Josiah.  She gets in the way of Josiah’s work.  Josiah doesn’t know what to do about it!"  Then forgetting himself, wiping his brow with the dirty rag, leaving a clump of mud on his face.  "Now this!”

“Now what?" Devlin asked confused.  "Do you fear the police officer?  Has he threatened you?  What?”  Then Devlin added, "Is there something you want me to do?"

A broad seemingly painful grimace creased the gardener’s handsome face.  He took off his large brim hat, remembered his red handkerchief in his bib overalls, wiped his brow and face, and said, "Terror is a heavy shadow a policeman carries with his badge.  It keeps Josiah alert.  Do you understand master Devlin?”

“Josiah, how many times have I told you I am not your master?  I am your friend.”

“That is not possible, but I understand.  We are in prison here, master, sire, and the policeman guards that prison.  Asabi has forgotten that.  Now, she puts others in danger.”

“Meaning you?”

“Meaning anyone who fails to understand.”

“Surely, if you discouraged her advances that should put you out of danger.”

“Sire, do you know the wrath of a woman?  It is in your Shakespeare.  She lies to the policeman about me, tells him the opposite of how I behave towards her.”  Josiah paused to see if Devlin understood.  

“Sire, have you not been jealous?  Have you not been its victim?”

Oh, brother, how well he knew this animus.  But he said only, “Yes, I suppose I have, but no, I’ve not known anyone insanely jealous to the point of putting me in physical danger.”

“But you admit such jealousy exists?”  Devlin nodded.  “I’ve watched the policeman look at Asabi when she looks at me.  It is like tiny moths gnawing at his jacket, consuming it and then him.  I sense danger, sire, it is that danger that I am telling you now.”

To lessen the pathos of the moment, Devlin asked, “Describe the policeman.  Have I seen him?”

“He does not come around when you or the madam are at home.  You met him when you first came to Rose Garden Manor.  He verified your papers and residence status.”

“Oh!”  Devlin sighed, “That one.”  He remembered the incident and the man whom he took an immediate dislike to, and he suppose, visa-versa.  He was an arrogant bastard, if he remembered him correctly, so full of himself.  Devlin had to smile in reflection.  He probably saw me in similar terms.

Josiah continued. “He appears out of nowhere when Asabi comes into the garden.  She tries to get my attention.” 

And a lot more, it seemed to Devlin.  “Compare him to me.”

“He is not as tall, heavier, some might say, fleshy, about your age with red hair, wears aviator sunglasses with a pink tint, hiding a mean smile, always in civilian clothes.”

“Josiah, if you were in the States, I’d hire you.  That is quite a description!  Yes, I remember him now.  Recently, I came home early and he was just leaving, slipped away in the shadows, but I saw him.  Yes, sneaky devil I should wonder.  

"Perhaps he’ll show up today not realizing I am here, thinking Sarah is out as well.”

This didn’t track with Josiah.  “My daughter, Ruthie, mentioned her mother was going to be out with friends today.  If that is the case, Asabi would know that, thinking I would be gone as well.”

Josiah clearly didn’t relish that prospect.  

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“I don’t like or dislike him.  I fear him.”

“Because you think he is jealous of your relationship with Asabi?”

“I have no relationship with Asabi.  Because Asabi is living dangerously.”

“Has he ever threatened you?”

“Describe what you mean by that.”

“I mean has he threatened to hurt you.”

“No, he has walked into my garden and over my new plants just planted destroying them, then turned back, smiled and walked away."

“That is not only terrible; it is juvenile!  Anything else?”

“Called me a kaffir and told me to watch my step.”

“Kaffir?”

“That is like calling your American Negro a nigger.  I told him I had nothing to do with Asabi.  He said, ‘who said anything about that kaffir?’  I knew he was baiting me to see if I would tell Asabi what he had said, but I didn’t.  I told him I just wanted to be left alone to do my work.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He got angry.  He picked up a lump of dirt, and crushed it in his fist, and said, 'do you think I’d care about a kaffir girl?'  He then took my spade, drove it hard into the soft ground and said it was dangerous to imply that of a white man.  With that, he threw the spade into a newly pruned flower bed, and added, ‘do we understand each other?’”

“My God, Josiah, I’m sorry.  I can imagine how you felt.”

“No you cannot know, sire.  Asabi could if she were a little older but now she feels safe.  I stood there as he trampled on my flowers as he left, charging through my garden, helpless to do anything about it.  

"My eyes felt like clay marbles, my lungs like heavy mud, my arms and legs as if buried in cement.  He destroyed my garden because he could.  

"There was nothing I could do about it, nothing, sire, nothing at all.”  He stared coldly at the ground, angry and defeated.

Devlin pondered the situation.  He believed Josiah.  How could anyone trained to serve and protect act so cowardly?  “Has he left you alone since then?”

“No, sire.  The other day he came into the garden and sneaked up on me, and then yelled in my ear.  'What makes you such a high and mighty kaffir that you have your own house?'

“I explained to him that it was because I worked long hours, often late into the night during the different seasons to protect the plants.  I told him that the gardener always has had a house on the manor for that reason.  He tried to stop me talking putting his hand hard against my chest, but I could not stop.  I told him the manor’s garden was a community treasure ever since the Mayor of Johannesburg resided here.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He turned his back on me, and walked away.  I could tell he was looking for Asabi, but I knew she was hiding behind the curtains in the house.  He looked around, took off his sunglasses, and then came back my way, stopped, and stared at me, then left. 

“I could see his pupils were dilated and his eyes were green.  He was angry.  I don’t know if he was angry with Asabi or me, or with us both.

“I only know that later I found a Bantu male doll on my doorstep with pins stuck through the doll’s heart.  I can’t prove it was the policeman, but it happened that same day.  My terror felt like a serpent was coiled around my heard squeezing my life away.”

Josiah had never been so animatedly talkative.  Devlin felt powerless.  “A voodoo doll?  That’s cruel, but, Josiah, you don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”

“No, but the policeman must think all Bantu are voodoo worshipers.”

“Come on, Josiah, you can’t think the policeman believes that!”

“But I do.  Whites think we’re all the same.  Afrikaners read about religious practices in Haiti and think that applies to all dark skinned people, why not?”

“Even so, Josiah that is clearly bizarre behavior.  It seems too subtle for the policeman you have described.  Could it be someone more cunning?”

“I don’t know.  It could be Bahari, Asabi’s friend down the road on another estate, a boy who is sweet on Asabi.”

“Are you suggesting Asabi collects admirers?”

“Asabi lives dangerously and I think she is without morals.”

“Josiah that is a serious accusation.”

“I know.”

“Do you have any evidence?”

“I see things hear things mind my own business sometimes people forget I am always in the garden.”

“When we started this conversation, I asked you what you wanted me to do.  I ask it again now.  Should I confront this police officer, this boy, what’s his name again?”

“Bahari.  No.  It would be of no use.  The policeman is part of the government.  You have no power.  You are a guest of this country.  Stay clear of the government, and you will be fine.  

"Bahari is reckless like Asabi.  They are young and don’t sense the danger.  Bahari is no concern of yours.  I only wanted you to listen to me.  There is terror in my heart, sire.  I needed to talk to someone, someone I could trust, someone who would not judge me.  I knew you would listen, listen in a way to ease my pain.”

Devlin ignored the compliment.  “Tell me, Josiah, do you think you are in immediate danger, I mean, life threatening danger?”

“But of course.”  He said this without another word, returning to his garden, ignoring Devlin as he stood there for several moments like a statue.  It was clear the conversation was over.

*      *      *