Bloodlines (46 page)

“Oh, God,” I said, “it went right through your arm. Did you get it properly treated?” Before he could answer I put a hand out to help him up. “Come into the bathroom so I can get this gauze off,” I said. “What was it, a bullet or a blade?”

He rose easily without assistance and smiled at me. “That’s the kind of attention I was hoping for,” he said, “instead of finding myself in the servants’ rooms tending my own wound.”

“You didn’t tend your wound very well, by the looks of it. But we can fix that.” I ushered him into the bathroom and sat him on the side of the tub, with his arm extended over the sink. “Khabazela,” I said, trying to distract myself as I worked on him, “there’s a very good reason why I don’t want to feel bad about my visit to Lungile, so be careful not to make me feel guilty.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. But when I got here and found you gone, I was shocked.” He stopped, watching as I gently wet and loosened the gauze.

“You were shocked that I was gone?” I asked. “Why? You go away all the time. I don’t like it when you’re away, but that’s part of the life we’ve agreed to live.” I was irritated, and allowed myself to tug too hard on the gauze. He grimaced as he felt the torn flesh pulling beneath my hands. “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

He watched me again for a moment, lowered his head and kissed my hand. His voice was quiet, and slow, as if the words were being manufactured as he spoke them. “I was not shocked to find you gone, Michaela. I was surprised by the intensity of my feelings. What shocked me was how deeply I felt your absence.” He paused again. “Don’t ever doubt that I love you,” he said.

I looked up at him and smiled and he grinned back at me, and I saw it in his eyes.

“I know,” I said. “Now tell me what went through your arm.”

“The local police were armed with outdated weapons,” he said. “British rifles. World War II Enfields, with attachments.” He paused. “Bayonets.”

When he explained what happened, he did so with the dispassionate precision and curiosity of a small boy describing how a live grasshopper came apart in his hands.

“The policeman holding the rifle was aiming the bayonet at my eyes,” he said, “but I was holding my arm in front of my face.” He showed me with his hands what he was describing. “When he jabbed the thing at me, the tip of the bayonet caught me on the inner side of my forearm, and the force of the thrust pushed it all the way through my arm. In the plane coming back, the medic said he thought the ulna might be cracked, so it should be splinted. But he didn’t have any splints. All he could do was disinfect it, sew me up, and give me a tetanus injection.”

I took the last of the gauze off, exposing his arm. The wounds were only an inch or two from the elbow, and they had been roughly stitched, but the flesh was badly bruised and discolored.

“We’re very lucky,” I said. “See how close it came to your brachial artery? You might have bled to death.”

“The bayonet was wedged between the bones,” he said quietly. “I had to grip the rifle stock between my boots in order to pull it out.”

Then, into the silence between my finishing with his wound and beginning to speak, there was a sound from the kitchen—the clicking of the lock turning, and the distinctive squeal of the ungreased door slowly opening.

I turned to him soundlessly, my eyes wide and alarmed.

“Did you lock the door?” I whispered.

He nodded his head and I responded by asking, “You didn’t leave the key in the lock, did you?”

“No,” he whispered. He inserted his uninjured hand into his pocket and withdrew the key.

Selina was the only other one with a key, I thought, but she never came into the house at night.

“Something must be wrong,” I said. “I have to go and see.”

I gestured with my hands that he should remain in seclusion in the bathroom. He agreed, sitting down on the lowered toilet seat and I left, turning out the bathroom light. As I reached the bedroom door I stopped and gasped, as into my narrow vertical view came a man’s boot. Shoulder. The side of his head. The face. Brian McWilliams’ face.

“How did you get into my house?” I asked, startled. “It’s after midnight. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” And then he said my other name. “Grace.”

It was wrong in his mouth; he was uncomfortable saying it, and it sounded awkward, but he said it because in the circumstance he had created for himself, he believed that calling me by my first name was an expression of the deep affection he felt for me, and for the attraction he was sure I must feel and could not help but acknowledge now that he was standing before me. He tried it again.

“Grace.”

Again it sounded clumsy in his mouth, a glove that didn’t fit, a pair of pants that hung down below his feet, ungainly and embarrassing, his father’s clothes, too big for him. But he pushed on.

“I had to come to you. I couldn’t stay away. And I know it’s the right thing to do, because you can’t be happy all alone here, a lovely woman like you.”

I ignored his comments. “How did you get in?” I asked again. “I know I locked all the doors tonight before I went to bed.”

He laughed softly at the question, and I realized that although he may not be drunk, neither was he completely sober.

“I stole it from Selina’s room while she was asleep,” he said proudly, “and I had a copy made. Otherwise I would’ve had no way of coming to you.”

“You have a wife and children,” I said. “I’ve told you before that I’m not interested. I’m perfectly happy living here on my own. Now go home.”

He ignored my words, stepped closer to me. I put my hands on his shoulders to stop him and when he kept coming I pushed on one shoulder and pulled on the other trying to turn him around, in the opposite direction, out of the bedroom and away from the bathroom where Khabazela watched.

But the moment I touched him I realized that I had made a huge mistake. He raised his arms, held his hands against mine, and pulled me toward him. His hands felt massive, and he crated mine up inside his big palms, hot and hard and rough against my skin, and at the same time clammy and unwholesome.

Holding my hands and bending them backwards as he lowered his head, he tried to place his mouth on mine. I stepped away in disgust, pulling one hand from him and pushing at his chin but he resisted, his mouth still on mine. Then with all my might I dug my fingernails into McWilliams face, drawing three lines of blood down one side of his nose and across his cheek.

He stumbled back with a cry, one hand to his face, and with the other he lashed out, catching me on the side of the head with his open palm.

Khabazela, already tensed to explode from the bathroom, was on his feet before the sound of the blow reached him. He hit the bathroom door with such force that it crashed open against the wall behind it with a noise like a detonation.

In that moment, McWilliams, cradling his wound, wore a look of such surprise that Khabazela, now in his stride, felt a grin taking shape on his face and the sound of a laugh forming in his throat. But after a delay I finally reacted to the blow and stumbled sideways into his path and he had to stop and catch me.

At that instant McWilliams stepped forward and we were all so close together that there was no room for action. Khabazela steadied me with his good hand while he automatically readjusted his feet so that he could move rapidly when he must, because now the worst had happened. We were discovered, and this man held our lives in his clumsy hands.

“Fuck,” muttered McWilliams, removing his hand from his face and forming fists before him. “Fuck, you bitch,” and his face screwed up and big tears fell from the corners of his eyes and dribbled down to merge with the blood trickling in three strands from his nose and cheek down to the corners of his mouth where it seeped in between his lips and colored his saliva and his teeth pink. He looked at me as I stood with a hand on my head where he hit me.

“So,” he spat, the words bubbling pinkish from his mouth, “you’re happy here on your own? Not interested in me?” He pointed a finger at me, still crying. “You’re a liar,” he says, “you’re not alone, you just prefer the company of this
kaffir
farmhand in your bed.” He looked with disbelief at the bathrobe Khabazela wore, the richly colored, luxurious robe I brought back from Europe for him. McWilliams laughed, a broken sob. “You think you can hide his stink and his filth with a white man’s clothes? You must be mad.”

Thinking and moving very fast but experiencing it all as if he was in perfect control, Khabazela knew that he was yet invisible to McWilliams. McWilliams’ fury was aimed at me, and if I could speak well, perhaps the worst could still be averted.

“You have it all wrong,” I said urgently. “Look at his arm—I was just bandaging it for him. He was hurt last night and came knocking at my window.”

“You’re a liar,” he said. “But you’re done now. I’m taking your boy here with me—and where I’m taking him he’s not coming back from. Starting tomorrow you’ll do whatever I want. If not, believe me I’ll make a police report and you’ll end up charged under the race laws.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand and swayed first to one side and then to the other. “You ready to lose your farm and go to jail because you were ready to drop your panties for Mandla Mkhize? For—” he gestured with contempt “—for this?”

The courage scotch that he drank just before coming into the house was taking effect and as he breathed a jagged sigh the smell of it surrounded us all. He reached out and grabbed Khabazela’s bandaged arm, holding it hard, the way you grip a thick tree branch before heaving it over the fence.

“Come on, you,” he said, expecting no resistance, and with his other hand he reached out to push me aside but I would not be pushed.

“Can’t we sit down and talk?” I said. “This is not what you think, Brian, and it really doesn’t have to be so dramatic.”

Our eyes met and Khabazela gave me an imperceptible nod—we agreed that I would try and talk my foreman out of his madness.

“So now I’m being dramatic,” McWilliams said. “Now you want to talk, now that you’re in trouble.”

He looked for the first time at Khabazela, standing frozen at his side, breathing slowly, barely aware of the tortuous grip on his wounded arm.

“Look at him,” said McWilliams, full of contempt. “Look what you took in your bed—he’s so shit-scared he can’t move. This is what I’ve been up against? You chose this over me? A filthy dumb
kaffir
? In his whole life he couldn’t have imagined such a thing—that he would have the chance to fuck such a gorgeous woman—even a beautiful one so damn stupid that she would want to sleep with him. Look at him now that the fucking is over—he’s too frightened to stand up for you. God damn it,” he shouted, enraged. “I could have stood it if I lost you to a decent man. But not this. Did you have to risk your life and your freedom and your farm—everything—on this garbage?”

No, thought Khabazela, don’t do it—but he knew by the look in my eyes that it was too late and I would not remain silent.

“He is a decent man,” I said quietly. “I love him. And if I risk my life I do it by choice.”

I could not help but speak; McWilliams could not contain his rage; and Khabazela would not stand by and watch this enraged man strike me. Before McWilliams could even clench his fist, Khabazela recognized that he was about to lash out at my face with his free hand, and he launched his left knee into McWilliams’ groin. As he felt it connect he put his left foot on the ground and catapulted his right knee upward. McWilliams doubled over, slamming his forehead into Khabazela’s jackhammer knee with a dull, blunted crack and the big man toppled to the floor like a piece of lumber and lay there, groaning.

And then, from being lost and wavering, I moved into the state Khabazela had spoken of, the slow motion of calm and absolute certainty that kept him safe when he was in the midst of violence and the only thing he could count on was the unexpected. I knew exactly what I must do and why. And I knew where my certainty came from. Lungile, who spoke of sweet potatoes and children, said, “each day will lead to the next; it is enough to know that you have planted a seed or that a child is coming. Make ready slowly. At each step the Shades will help you to know what to do next.”

Khabazela sat on the bed cradling his wounded arm, dazed and exhausted, watching me, wondering what to do as Brian McWilliams lay not a yard from his feet, groaning.

I rushed from the bedroom through the short hallway, and in the darkness of the kitchen I went straight to the metal hangers above the stove on which hung pots and pans. I reached up with both hands to unhook the big blackened cast iron frying pan that Selina used for browning meat and making gravy and fried chicken and her delicious crisp potatoes. It weighed about twenty pounds and was an awkward shape, but I returned to the bedroom, hefting it in front of me as it banged against my thighs, one hand on the long, thick handle and the other at the opposite side, holding onto the smaller wooden grip.

As I reentered the bedroom Khabazela looked at me quizzically and I saw his eyes travel from my face to the frying pan at my waist and back again.