XV

I e-mail him to discuss the divorce with him, seeing as though, her opinion does not seem to count as far as these decisions in her life go anyway. Its all his provocation, this is obvious, she is not that stupid. But she has no back-bone. No honour.

“You are a beurocrat!” I tell her on the phone. It’s the worst true insult I can think of.

He is the happiest and chattiest I have ever heard him at the prospect of the divorce. He wants to discuss every detail, even what to do with my football boots. It’s the longest conversation we have. He will send her uncle to fetch her stuff in a few days. “It must be in your way.”

He suggests that it is better if he and I handle the divorce instead of her, as then, he says, there will be no emotions to get in the way. He drags the word emotions out in a way to suggest that all emotions are somehow a lowly thing, and that this is somehow a manly deal anyway. I hold my tongue at the anger itching in my mouth.

I swallow, and say: “She can keep using the laptop until she can get a replacement so long as I receive the money she owes me for the consultant, the car and the deposit on the house rent.” He is happy with this. He wants to issue the divorce himself from his side. “Its easier that way.” Let him have his pleasure. It makes him feel like he has achieved something.

Her and I become friends again, now that divorce is on the cards. We have no more obligations, nor expectations. She never speaks against me, or says anything to suggest she wants the divorce. She is just towing the line. She is always still so happy to hear from me. It hurts to hear her happiness when I phone. Its all so crazy. I can hear the love in her voice. It is the most perfect thing to hear.

The sweetest goodbye fades slowly like a hot summer dream, glimpsing through your memory as it passes, surreal, vivid. Lost. And though I am very sad at losing her, I tried, and at least we loved a while. The months somehow pass and I receive no payment, nor does her uncle come to fetch her stuff.

Its been half a year since we saw each other. Three months since divorce was first agreed on. I say “You can come visit anytime you want. I can get the cash for the flight, so you can see the house. We can still get through this, and if we do get through this, then we can get through anything.”

Her reply is startling, but expected. “You can come back to New Zealand now. I know you just needed to see your family. Yes, if we get through this we will be able to get through anything.”

I respond “I know that the Universe needs you in New Zealand right now. It must be lonely for your father, not knowing anyone. It was hell for me, its probably worse for him, given his legal situation, and I suppose you are the only person he has left. Especially as he has nearly been divorced from his new wife three times already.”

Her reply: “You know. I think we really are going to get through this.” Sounds like promises of sweet-nothing to me. What makes her think he is going to suddenly stop interfering in her life? Its only going well between us as friends because he has the divorce he wanted.

The end of the year looms, she was supposed to sell a computer monitor of mine in June. To encourage the process of returning my belongings, I tell her she can buy a new cell-phone with whatever she can get for the monitor. It will depreciate in value soon, as a new range of LCD monitors are coming out, the old cathode-ray variety are becoming obsolete. She is so happy to hear this! She has her eye on a second hand Nokia. The tears are involuntarily flowing as we speak to each other as friends. I can hear she is crying at the joy of my gift. The friendliness is so pure. We speak over each other, laughing because we can’t hear each other because of the time delay on the phone line, but that it does not matter, we don’t know what to say anyway. Its love and tears, that’s all.

She is overjoyed at a new second hand phone.

That cuts me deep. He has reduced her to this. A waitress hoping for a new second hand phone. Just jealous because she could attain a Doctorate before she is thirty, and he did not complete first year University. Because he had to bring her up. No doubt that is the guilt trip he spins at her ‘I gave everything up for you.’ Like hell. Her grandparents brought her up. She could already have her doctorate by now if it was not for his interfering.

He just has to hold her back. Keep her down. He always ridiculed Anthropology. Never celebrated her distinction. He resented it, which is why he wanted me to pay for it. Why does she let him do it?

“How is the new job going?”

“What job?”

“You were supposed to start a month ago you said. The job next door to the ex-immigration official.”

Her response: “I say nothing.”

XVI

I e-mail her: Either your father bought the new job, and you have been found out, or something else really big is going on that you are not telling me. I get no answer. “Its so big I can poke it with a stick” I say, several times in SMS and e-mail.

Now I am getting worried. Its been nearly half a year since our anniversary disaster, nine months since I have seen her. And still nothing from immigration? Her conversations become routine. Devoid of anything. Its been four months since her father told me my money would be returned in a few days. They have not even mentioned it since then, despite me asking several times what is happening. I can sense he is telling her not to return a thing to me. Even now, he has to hurt us more. Can’t he just let us say goodbye decently?

Her belongings haunt my house. Boxes and boxes, full of photographs and old family albums, many of them of her grandparents in pre-war sepia print. Loads of books and multimedia CD’s on family heritage and ancestral trees. “How to trace your kin.” She had mapped my entire family tree as well. She was quite obsessed with her ancestors. Anthropology.

I remember her saying “Nobody in my family ever spoke about my great grandfather. Not hardly ever. Even when I begged them. No-one would say how he died.” I had asked her grandfather on her behalf, and got a few inklings of story from him when he was still alive. She was very happy when I had managed to find out about his war days. He never told her about them. He cut off the past. Now I had been cut off. Cornered into cutting my own arm off.

Mid-October I send an identical e-mail message to both of them:

“If I don’t get a positive response or some of my cash returned to me by 1st November, I will assume you have no intention of ever doing so, and I will have no choice, but to take drastic action.”

When the divorce clouds first loomed, I had said “If you divorce me, and try to steal my laptop, I’ll get you deported.” I had repeated this to her several times. The laptop had great sentimental value. It was the cornerstone of our I.T. venture, and it was purchased with the money from which I had sold our first car. And that money, the exact eight grand, was the first real money I had earned working as a software programmer. Work is scarce in Africa, the university town we lived in, Grahamstown, was renowned for its 80% unemployment figure. So it had meant a great deal to me.

The added significance is that a previous girlfriend had stolen my previous laptop, and disappeared with it to London. Ironically, this was the girl who we had gone out with together when I bumped into my wife many years ago in Cape Town. It was a sore point with me, and she knew it. I had muttered a lot about laptop thieves in the past, as someone else had nearly stolen my first laptop on several occasions, before it did finally get stolen. What is it with girls and laptops?

On 1 November they both send an identical message back to me to say they have just received the ‘drastic action’ message, as they were away on a long weekend together. I return a message saying ‘fine.’ Please make positive response by 8 November. Nothing.

I wait one more week.

I had at that time lost over 20 kilograms (that’s over 50 pounds) since my return from New Zealand. I had used my www noodle and visited Doctor www.google.com and searched for my symptoms. Thousands of doctors opinions, and medical advice from all over the world made it very easy for self-diagnosis. I am astounded at how easy it is to put myself back into perfect shape in just a few months.

The cause of the obesity was a fungus infection that lives in your veins and makes you crave sugar and yeast. No matter how much you exercise, you just get fatter. Craving anything from sweets to bread to starch and even fruit juice. Anything vegetable that is vaguely sweet, it feeds on.

I had also contracted good old athlete’s foot and a nasty groin infection just for luck. The Athletes foot was easily remedied at the very fair prices of South African medicine. The other two infections are very similar. In fact all three infections were actually listed on the internet together. They all appeared almost as soon as I arrived in New Zealand. Two of them had the same cure. A very strict diet called the Aitkensen Diet. Thus you eat everything that the parasite does not. Basically meat, fish, and eggs.

The combination of similar fungal infections had left me physically drained, and involuntarily overweight. The photographs of the final stages of the various infections, that I had found on the internet, were chilling. A natural death could happen in a few years, from a variety of symptoms, heart attack was common. There are various types of the common fungal and yeast infections, many with varyingly deadly results. Even the killer spores: Anthrax, a famous weapon used by terrorists were listed in this range of infections.

There are numerous ways to kill a person with infections, any medic knows this, and many of them cause an enlarged heart, and heart attack. Hookworm disease, Secondary amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, Coxsackie B, HIV, heptitus C, Chagas disease. The www is great. God bless Google. But perhaps I'm being a bit paranoid. Perhaps up until now, I have not been paranoid enough.

XVII

I had been pondering my life intensely. When had the marriage gone wrong? It seemed a clear degeneration that had taken place, as we changed cars from the old Jetta, to the Newer Corsa. I had been annoyed that she was much more irritable and more dissatisfied than ever before, after having acquired the new car, she had so desperately felt she needed. But it couldn’t have been the car. It so had happened that the change of cars, had actually coincided to the day with the news of her grandfather’s death.

That made much more sense. It was after the death of her grandfather that her sense of ethics had begun to decay. Freud tells us that the Superego is the moral guidance in our lives. Normally it is imposed by the parental figure. It was as if her Father had deposed her Grandfather’s virtues and instead imposed a material viewpoint of the world on her. She was suddenly much more money-grabbing.

She even tried to steal an extra entry form for a newspaper competition to win an even newer car. The cashier had caught her out. Why had she even tried to do it? She never even entered the competition with the one entry anyway? At the time I had thought she had acted on a silly impulse because she had been upset by the deaths and was not thinking clearly. Definitely that was the point it had begun to go wrong. For whatever reason.

As my weight had started dropping off, so I naturally felt like exercising more and more. I had been bowling an old cricket-ball at the wall for a couple of hours without any effort. A year ago, it would have been a massive struggle to bowl one ball. But now I was working up some great pace with the ball. It had felt, while in the grips of the fungal infections, as if I would never be able to play sport again. I had felt so old and tired.

All was not lost. Just last week I had e-mailed her, saying I understood that the universe just needed to have her there, and that it must be very difficult for her father to have no-one else but her out there, as his new wife had threatened to divorce him three times. She owned his construction company. Probably because of his previous tax record. Even though she technically works as a part time pre-school teacher, she drove around in the latest silver four-wheel-drive, owning her husband’s company, his life. The height of status for a South African - a shiny new four-wheel-drive. They had three of them now. A red one, a blue one, and a new silver one.

So I reasoned, perhaps she just wanted to make her father happy, by doing as he wished and divorcing me to get her New Zealand citizenship. That was his plan all along, when they first mentioned her signing a legal document to say she had no connection with her real mother. There was no other reason to even mention such a thing, unless I was to be gotten rid of.

He had sounded so excited on the phone, discussing in depth what was to be done with my football boots. His happy voice, gloated at his victory. She was ruining our marriage because her father had decided it. Not because of the racism she had suddenly started sprouting. That was just a convenient excuse. No doubt part of his diatribe that he just droned into her on those long phone conversations when she said nothing. She was not allowed to talk until he had finished. She had echoed this tyranny to me many times. Not allowing me even chance to say anything. Your opinions don’t count.

What an asshole. He was obviously the one who had told her she could not have the ‘new’ second-hand Nokia cell-phone I had wanted to give her as a divorce present. So she would be assured of still talking to me. But her messages had become very strange. I had invited her to join me in writing educational software together - an online collaboration. An old dream the two of us had shared for years. Her answer? I have to think about it. Then days later. I am still thinking about it. That had sounded like she had to consult with him about any such arrangements at all.

Before that she had responded less and less. Like the friendship was being choked. I had also said: Maybe the best reason to get divorced is to save the friendship, as I felt that I could not trust anything she promised me any longer as my wife. Every major decision we had made together as a married couple for the last two years, she had callously broken, without much regard for me or any logical explanation. But it had all been her father’s doing. His authoritarian instructions. But she has such a strong personality, and is so much smarter than him.

But no, she had to listen to his militaristic orders. He was a medic in the South African Defence Force. She had been brought up military style by him on his own mostly, until school going age. Even his own parents had not known about her. He had complete control over her. And he was obviously jealous enough to do this. Her point of view had become totally unreasonable just after I bought the house.

That explained why the family photographs on display in the lounge consisted of his new wife’s family; and, the photograph from our wedding, was a photograph of him and her. It had puzzled me at the time. A bit thoughtless towards me, I had thought. But he was meticulous to the point of psychosis, what with complaining that I moved the couches out by an inch and everything. That picture was carefully placed. No doubt very thoughtfully. The whole divorce had been orchestrated by him, taking advantage of every opportunity to make us fight about our plans. That was why I had phoned him, and discussed the divorce with him. I wanted to hear myself if it was what he had really wanted. He made no attempt at all to patch things up.

Now I know its him. Now I have to go back to her. Even though, there is no future in it. I cannot leave her, knowing that she needs and wants me, but it is him that is the problem. Funny how it is ok for her, so long as I go back there.

As I ran up to bowl the ball at the wall, metamorphosing my frustration into good health, I grit my teeth and a rage builds in me as I think to myself: I wish I could just put him out of his misery.

XVIII

My running stops. My own thoughts echo, spinning through my mind: I wish I could just put him out of his misery.

He had said something similar about his own father. Do me a favour, if I ever get like those two, put me put of my misery.

But his father was fine. A bit overweight was all. A real pot belly. And her father had not even seen them in a year or more. I had been prompted to ask him about them, and that was when he had said: Do me a favour, if I ever get like those two, put me put of my misery.

He was a medic. Surely he would try and see if he could do something, especially if they were as bad as he had suggested? He had actually smiled when I spoke to him of his mother’s illness. He had not even seen them in a year when he said that. How could he have known?

Neither were they allowed to come to my wedding. It was ok to give them an invitation as they could not come. My wife had said that more than once.

He hated them because they had defended his youngest brother, Reigh, in the tax issue. He was about to lose everything, at that point. Then the inheritance went missing. He had always hidden his address, and telephone number, I was not even allowed to give his New Zealand address to my own parents when we arrived. Because of the tax, was the excuse.

Is it actually possible that he murdered his own parents for the inheritance, in revenge for losing everything in the tax issue? She had said they were being murdered while they were still alive. She had blamed Reigh, the one who had turned her father into the tax-man. She could not blame her own father, but Reigh had no motive to kill Charles. It was him that had not spoken to his parents since the tax incident. Then he claimed he had visited them, but then no-one knew about it. So he had lied there too. He had looked at me when he made that comment, like the lie was to cover up that he had not been there.

You don’t know who you’re dealing with.

People just die. That was the reason she gave me why she could not disobey him. That was literally the death-stare he gave me at dinner. He had assault charges against him for at least half a dozen people. She had been taken away from him at age 5. She often seemed to regress to a 5-year old, needing to be ‘tucked’ into bed when she went to sleep before I did. His personality had fixated on that of a young man in the army. His development had never gone past that point.

She had said to me a 100 times, after we arrived: We need a joint bank account for your inheritance. They had tried to get me to do that immediately after arriving, the first week. They had tried everything to get me to do it for months on end, but because they were trying to tell me that the South African currency was depreciating when in fact it wasn’t, I had told myself not to do it, as their intentions were based on an obvious lie. I opened the account, but never put more than a small deposit in it. They had insisted this over and over and over again. This had been a large part of the racist hate speech directed at me by her father and his new wife. The new wife and I had a particularly bad argument one day where she had tried to break me down, but I had ended up telling her off. I was under a constant barrage, especially in the first few months.

I remember this: I had read out in a newspaper that there was an investigation into ‘another death on a construction site.’ I had asked her father if such deaths happened often. “Oh yes, people die on construction sites all the time. Quite common.”

The fear and trepidation that had been so clear in the tone of her voice, when he and I were about to work together on his construction site, positioned itself next to the piece of the puzzle that said:

just in case one of you dies, then there are no legal problems with the money…

And that piece positioned itself alongside the immigration law that gives her immediate citizenship if she signs that document to say she has never met her mother. So long as either we are divorced… or I am dead.

And that piece sits next to the piece that insisted that the invitation was to both of us. She would no leave without me. And he clearly did not like me.

Oh my…

I run to the toilet as the vomit escapes from my insides involuntarily.

Another memory comes flashing through my mind, and places itself alongside those others. While I am retching I can feel the tears streaming down my face.

David Mendez, or Miendez was the foreman on his work site when she was little. He was a Zulu, and her best friend. They always had a great time together. One day David Miendez just never returned to work again. This was unusual as he was of the longest and most loyal workers on the site. When she asked where he was, her father had replied: “He probably just died in the Transkei.” She was never allowed to mention him ever again. She pronounced his name in full, both words, the second name being said : Mee-en-dez. She told me this story so many times that the name has stuck quite clearly. Over and over again David Mendez. David Mendez. David Mendez.

Him too?

He probably just died in the Transkei.

I remember my wife’s father telling a story of seeing two young Zulu boys throwing stones onto the highway. He had stopped his car and gave chase, all the time firing at them with live ammunition from his revolver. “Its fair”, he had said, “They were trying to kill me.” He had not been allowed to own a weapon in New Zealand.

The images and memories come flashing through my head. I spend all afternoon in deep thought pondering over and over again. That is why he so desperately wanted nothing to do with Africa, why he had to cut it off completely. My job, is working with billions in financial software. No wonder I was “the only boyfriend he has not called ‘a piece of shit’ and physically beat up and thrown out of the house.”

He found everything out about you before we were married.

She new that her grandparents were being murdered, even knew that someone in the family was doing it, that was why she blamed Reigh, her father’s enemy, because she was too terrified to blame him. I cry all the rest of the day. I am overwhelmed at first by the deaths, the despair, the myopic mind of the man, but then I am left gasping for breath as I recall all those clenched teeth moments. Why won’t anyone believe me?

Her loss was bad enough, and knowing they were being murdered in front of her eyes would break anyone. But the loneliness afterwards, no-one even believing you. She must have thought I had even played a hand in it, and especially because of that condescending comment of mine, I had said it several times, and she had said it back to me when I had asked why she was allowing him to destroy our marriage:

Because People just die.

And it all explains his complete obsession with my inheritance. He wanted that too. He liked the game of bumping people off for their money. The houses he was building were completed many months after they were supposed to. He was just doing it as a cover. Even his wife’s preschool teaching was a cover. The rent on their house could have covered the bond to buy three large family houses in South Africa.

3 degrees, 3 degrees 3 degrees

He had also told me:

Any other money you can, should be put into the new joint account. But my wife had opened another account for her earnings. The joint account for my money, but not hers? And he had been happy to risk her legal status to get her to smuggle that money in when we first arrived.

His nickname for his 17 year old step-daughter was sour-puss. He had insisted that there was nothing derogatory about this. He had beaten up the stepson and thrown him out the house for asking him not to use language like that on his sister. The stepson had to apologise to be allowed back in the house. This was before we arrived, but he had insisted he was allowed to call her what he liked because he “paid the rent.” Then, when I am asked if i think the term ‘sourpuss’ is appropriate for a seventeen year old stepdaughter, he walks out of the house quickly, but casually, not waiting for my obvious response, and saying he is going to go and ‘fuck the little whores’ at some or other brothel.

No-one was ever allowed to use his computer. Girly pictures and stuff I had thought. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Except he was quite open about sex, joking about blow-jobs and such with his daughter and step-daughter, even. So what was he hiding…?

Another time I was prompted to watch the end of one of his crime programs. I hate crime programs, they are contrived, and fake, the story always stops when the crime is solved. Real life goes on. So it takes a big effort to get me to “just watch the end with him.” Both my wife and his wife, again in unison prompting me. Like before. They know.

The last scene of the T.V. program involves a paedophile mass-murderer getting caught out, burying his victims on his building site. Everyone had tried to stop him from watching the end of this program as it was during his ‘civilised’ dinner time. A ritual that he normally stuck to with military zest. But he had to see the end of this crime program. And i am prompted tosee his reaction.

In a soft tone he says “What a bastard hey”, then he notices we are all watching him. He looks at each of us in turn. “What?”

At the time I did not know what they were trying to imply. There was nothing in his demeanour that suggested anything untoward. But, why had they been so intent on getting me to watch his response to the end of that particular program? That was certainly untoward.

He had raised her on his own, without anyone knowing, after he had divorced her mother and he had won custody of her. Her mother had been an exotic dancer, and in conservative apartheid South Africa, he had labelled her as a whore and won the custody battle, but a few years later she went to live with the grandparents. On their demand. Or was that the court's decision? I'm not sure.

I cannot take this anymore. It all makes too much sense. Everything from her scars, to his personality, to her total fear of him. She could never do anything against him ever. She had always been powerless against him. That’s why she always told me she loved me before wrecking our agreements. The only way she could counter him… was to marry me. Or were they both in it together? With me the sheep to the slaughter. Bleating about how its unethical to rob even large institutions…

XIX

I can see, in my minds eye, the image of her grandfather looking at me. And yet. How can I know for sure? For absolute sure?

I phone her. No answer. Try again. “Leave a message” says her phone…

“I know your father killed your grandfather.”

Why did I say that? I need her response. What if he is somehow listening to her messages? She always said that he snoops around everyone and always seems to know everything about her. Even if he had not gone that far this time, she was so used to him doing that sort of thing, that she was unlikely to respond, in case he knew. Then she would be in grave danger! What have I done?

I wait 24 painful hours.

No response.

Surely if I was wrong then she would have told me so by now?

Surely she would contact me back and say something like “Stop being ridiculous.”

I have no more choice. That evening I log on to the tax website and submit his address in New Zealand. The one I must never give out. I tell them about his tax story, and that he murdered his own parents. I have to. It all makes so much sense. That is why he never had a worry when his business was floundering. Everything was already organised. I e-mail him: “All right, have it your way then, but remember, you brought this on yourself.”

Years of confusion lift from my mind, yet now I worry. He has escaped everyone so far. He may have heard the message. He may go after her. He may be a member of the Afrikaner right wing. They may come after me. He must come for me instead. He must know its me and not her that has nailed him. He cannot hurt her again.

I leave another message on her phone:

“I’ve turned you all in for everything.”

I wait. Not long. The phone rings. Its her…

She sounds very upset. She does not mention the murder, just says “You can’t just take drastic action like that…” She is crying little girl tears.

Its all so terrible. The quaking voice, I can sense that her father’s presence is behind her frightened voice. I do not know what to do or say.

“You tried to rob me” or some such thing, is all that comes out my mouth, and my hand involuntarily puts the phone down quickly. Now I’m grinding my teeth. I make a conscious effort not to do it. I feel trapped. Claustrophobic tears have been pouring for days. I can hardly breathe.

The phone rings.

I pick it up, and put it down again, I am hyperventilating now.

It rings again. I just lose control, I imagine her as being the one to blame somehow. I cannot remember what she says to me I just say “Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou” I am hysterical with fear and confusion and trauma.

I wait quite a while before fourth ring. The fourth one is him. I knew it would be. I put the phone down immediately. It rings a fifth time. I must hear what he has to say. I want to just hear his voice, if it has any empathy in it. Any understanding, or human feeling.

I barely manage to grunt “Ja.”

He answers “What’s with this ‘ja’?” He sneers at me. His voice is condescending, and without any sympathy or consideration for what is happening. He knows what he has caused. All he can do is try and belittle me because I am upset. I put down the phone.

Sixth ring.

I answer it with: “Its been done. There’s no going back.” and put down the phone.

It does not ring again.

A day or so later the Sheriff of the court delivers the divorce papers to me from them. When I first see the police vehicle, I panic. Perhaps it is his right wing cronies, racist South African Policemen? But my fear cools to relief, when I see a friendly black man get out of the car.

I cannot help but tell the sheriff everything that has happened. He is very understanding and listens to me for some time. He seems interested and genuinely sympathetic. But I am living in fear. What if her father has connections here and knows that I know what he has done, and is going to axe me next? The only way to stop that is to make as much noise as possible so that he will implicate himself if I ‘have an accident’ old South African style. The Sheriff’s beautiful black face is unbelievably calming: “God won’t let that happen.” I am instantly at ease.

Nonetheless I have ten days to respond or the divorce goes through. Everyone tells me that nearly all such attempts to refuse a divorce are ignored, as we have no children and are not married in community of property.

She wants nothing of her stuff, and I am expected to leave her with what she has. The selfish git won’t even bother sending for her stuff. He’ll most likely get it insured and then stolen, as usual. He will pay 35 grand for a bogus course to extend her visa, even if she does not even attend the course, but won’t pay a fraction of that for her personal belongings. He wants me to destroy them. It will cut the ties even more.

There is no way that I can leave her under his influence, even though she will do everything he says, even divorce me out of pure fear at his unfeeling nature. But I cannot let it happen like this. I spend the next eight days writing my response to her: