The Garden of Burning Sand (25 page)

“Stay down!”
Joseph yelled, giving the Land Rover gas.

They surged toward a cluster of buses parked in front of a warehouse. Suddenly, Joseph yanked the wheel to the left and sent them
down an alley flanking a dense network of shanty stalls. Zoe lost sight of Sisilu and felt a rush of relief. Then a boy wandered into the alley pushing a cart loaded with textiles. Joseph slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn, scattering people in every direction. The boy, however, struggled to move the cart out of the way.

Zoe looked back and saw Sisilu sprinting up the alley. For a man so large, he was surprisingly agile on his feet.

“Go!”
she cried.

At last the lane cleared, and Joseph punched the accelerator. The alley closed in on them, and time seemed to liquefy in Zoe’s mind, reducing the world to a jumble of impressions: the shouts of shoppers; the hard line of Joseph’s jaw; the glint of sunlight on Sisilu’s gun; Anna, hunched over, head in her lap.

Seconds later, they reached the end of the alley and Joseph made a hard right turn, sending them careening across an empty lot toward Lumumba Road. They shot through a gap in traffic and headed east toward the commercial center. Out the back window, Zoe saw Sisilu pull up short and watch them go. Then a tractor-trailer lumbered by and he was gone.

Zoe gripped Anna’s hand as they sped away from the market. “We made it,” she said softly, beginning to breathe again.

Joseph took a series of random turns, keeping his eyes on the rear-view mirror. After a while, he turned onto Great East Road and drove toward the suburbs. Zoe looked at Anna, a thousand questions rattling around in her mind. The housekeeper was staring at her hands, and she decided to ask only one of them.

“How long has he worked for Frederick?”

“Many years,” Anna said. “He is in charge of security.”

After passing the Chainama Hills Golf Club, Joseph turned south toward Kabulonga. In time, Zoe sighted the monolithic fortress
of the American Embassy towering over Ibex Hill. Their destination was an upscale bungalow situated in a forested grove well back from the main road. They were greeted at the gate by an armed guard.

“Are you certain you were not followed?” he asked in careful English, checking Joseph’s identification.

“As certain as I can be,” Joseph replied.

The guard spoke tersely into a handheld radio and admitted them to the property. They parked beneath the boughs of a jacaranda tree.

“The Thompsons have excellent security,” Zoe told Anna, “and Bernie is as tough as they come. He was in the Special Forces back home. As long as you stay behind these walls, you’ll be protected. Out there,” she said, waving at the gate, “is another story.”

She climbed out and greeted a blonde woman wearing a blouse and scarf and a muscular man in a golf shirt and chinos. “Carter, Bernie!” Zoe said, embracing them and introducing Anna. Like Carol Prentice, Carter Thompson knew how to make a person feel welcome. She took Anna’s hand and led her toward the house, chatting happily as if they were old friends.

“Eventful morning?” Bernie said, looking at Zoe and then at Joseph.

“You could say that,” Zoe replied and told him the story.

They waited for Anna on the Thompsons’ covered porch surrounded by flowering plants. Zoe sat in a wicker chair overlooking a grassy lawn, and Joseph took a seat beside her. Bernie served them mango juice in tumblers and then left them alone. Zoe saw the tension in Joseph’s face. He was scratching the stubble on his chin—a habit he took up when he was preoccupied.

“He’s not going to leave us alone, is he?” she asked quietly.

Joseph shook his head.

“Is there any way you can arrest him, put him in jail until the trial is over?”

He gave her a sideways glance. “What would I charge him with?”

“He assaulted me.”

Joseph shrugged. “He’d be out on bail in two days. You could press, but I doubt he’d ever be prosecuted. Not with the Nyambos behind him.”

They lapsed into silence. Zoe watched the Thompsons’ seven-year-old daughter, Emma, scamper across the lawn with a Labrador puppy. The innocence of the scene did little to ease her disquiet. She heard Sisilu’s voice like an echo in her brain:
“If you continue to meddle in matters that don’t concern you, someone will die.”

When Carter and Anna returned from their tour, Zoe took the housekeeper aside. “I have so many questions. The trial starts in five days.”

Anna nodded and sat down across from them. “How is Kuyeya?” she asked. “She was only a baby when I saw her last.”

Zoe stared her in amazement. “Do you know when she was born?”

“It was January, 1997,” Anna said. “An
nganga
was there and I was there. It was a hard birth, but Charity was strong. When Kuyeya came, I knew something was different. The
nganga
saw it, too. She said the child was cursed.”

Zoe traded a look with Joseph. “Tell me about Charity. How did she come to Lusaka?”

“Frederick went to Zimbabwe for a meeting,” Anna explained. “He got very sick. He heard about a white doctor in Livingstone, so he went there. Charity was at the hospital, and she nursed him.” Anna sighed. “I have thought many times about what would have happened if he’d had a different nurse. It would have been better if none of us had met her.”

“He fell in love with her?” Zoe asked, putting the pieces together.

“It was not love. It was obsession.”

“He offered her a job?”

“She came to Lusaka as his personal assistant. He paid for a nice flat and gave her a driver. I didn’t know about any of this at first. He kept it hidden. But when she got pregnant, he knew she would need help. He took me to meet her a month before Kuyeya was born.”

“Is Frederick the father?”

Anna shook her head slowly. “He thought he was. I did, too. But he was not. I don’t know who the father is.”

Zoe frowned, wondering at Anna’s certainty. “How do you know?”

Anna looked out at the yard. “It was Patricia who found out. Frederick had many girlfriends. Patricia knew this, but she tolerated his follies. Things changed when he met Charity. He began to treat Patricia badly. She is a proud woman from the family of a chief. She told me she knew about my trips to Woodlands. She demanded to know about Charity.”

Anna closed her eyes. “I took her there—to the flat. Kuyeya was two months old and very small. I have never seen Patricia so angry. She threatened Charity. She told her that she would ruin her if she didn’t leave Frederick alone. Charity was terrified. She didn’t know about Frederick’s family. Patricia took a book from her. I was nearby when she showed it to Frederick. She told him that Kuyeya was not his daughter.”

“The book,” Zoe asked in fascination, “what happened to it?”

Anna reached into her bag and removed a spiral-bound notebook. As soon as Zoe saw it, her heart began to race. She took the notebook and opened it. Unlike the journal Doris had given her, the inside cover was blank. But the salutation on the first page was the same: “Dear Jan …”

“This is the original volume,” Zoe said, showing it to Joseph. “How did you get this?” she asked Anna.

“Patricia kept it in the closet. I saw it every time I brought her laundry.”

“Did you read it?”

Anna looked ashamed. “I cannot read. I only completed the sixth standard.”

“But your English is so good.”

“Patricia hired a tutor to work with me. They spoke only English in the house.”

Zoe folded her hands. “I assume Frederick cut Charity off and left her with the baby.”

“Patricia threatened him with divorce. I never saw Charity again.”

“Did you know she had a relationship with Darious?”

Anna looked at her sharply. “When?”

“Sometime after 2004.”

Anna’s eyes lit up. “That is how he knew about Kuyeya.” She explained herself before Zoe could ask. “When I heard about the rape, I didn’t understand. He didn’t meet Charity when he was a boy. But I knew the crime could not be a coincidence.”

“Did he know about the book?” Zoe asked.

“Yes,” Anna said. “I once saw him with it in his parents’ bedroom.”

Suddenly, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Darious had learned about his father’s affair with Charity as a teenager, but when he met her in the flesh, years later, he knew her as Bella. She never told him her real name, and he probably never asked. However, the question remained unanswered: how did he make the connection?

She refocused on Anna. “Did you see anything on the night of the rape?”

Anna gave her a look tinged with remorse. “Frederick and Patricia were gone. He went away for a while in his truck. Then he came back and parked in the garage. I saw him walking around in the dark, behaving strangely. I didn’t know what he was doing.”

Zoe conjoured the layout of the property and recalled that the housekeeper’s cottage offered a direct line of sight to the garage. “Did he see you watching him?”

Anna began to fidget with her hands. “I don’t know.”

Zoe waited a beat, then asked the most delicate question of all: “Will you testify?”

Anna regarded her gravely. “If I do not disappear, they will kill me.” She gestured at the notebook. “The truth is there. Show it to the judge.”

Half an hour later, Zoe and Joseph returned to the Prentice bungalow. They greeted Carol, who was reading in the living room, and walked to the terrace, taking seats in the sunlight by the pool. Zoe removed Charity’s notebook from her backpack.

“Read it out loud,” Joseph said.

She nodded and opened to the first letter.

“You were right,” Joseph said. “They had a relationship.”

Zoe nodded and turned the page. She read the next letter, and the one after that, and then ten more letters scattered through the volume. Some shed light on the web of deceit and chaos that had defined Charity’s first year in Lusaka—Frederick’s temper, his sexual demands, and her confusion about it all. A few were touching explorations of motherhood. The rest, however, were letters to Jan inked in the pain of unrequited love.

After a while, Zoe found that she could stomach no more. She stared into the pool, knowing what she had to do. When she told Joseph, he regarded her thoughtfully.

“How long will you be gone?”

“I’ll be back by Wednesday, one way or another.”

Joseph nodded, his eyes catching the flame of the sun. “I’ll take you to the airport.”

Cape Town, South Africa
April, 2012

Zoe landed in Cape Town just before eleven in the evening. She rented a Kia crossover and drove into the night, heading west in the direction of Table Bay. She had packed her suitcase expecting autumn rain, but the Cape air was dry and cloudless, cleansed by a stiff wind blowing in from the sea.
The Southeaster
, Zoe thought, sighting the Southern Cross above the lights of the city.
If it holds, I’m in for a spectacular visit
.

And she was. The next morning, she awoke to sunlight streaming into her room at the Table Bay Hotel. She went to the window and looked across the harbor at the flat-topped massif of Table Mountain rising from the expanse of the city bowl. She remembered the first time her mother brought her here—to the cape Sir Francis Drake had called the fairest in the whole circumference of the earth.
“Drink it in, Zoe,”
Catherine had said.
“You will never feel more alive than in Cape Town
.”

After a quick breakfast, Zoe drove east through the clutch of metropolitan traffic and took the N2 across the coastal plain. Exiting onto the R102, she headed north across the fertile greenbelt of the
veld
to Stellenbosch. Bounded by the towering Hottentots Holland Mountains
to the east and the rocky peak of the Simonsberg to the north, the winelands of the Western Cape had splendor to spare. Her destination was the Kruger Estate, a boutique winery on the slopes of the Simonsberg dating back to the late nineteenth-century.

Zoe parked in the dirt lot at the entrance to the estate and walked down the forested path, following hand-carved signs to the wine shop. She entered the shop through a heavy wooden door. The tasting room had the cozy feel of a cellar, with flagstone floors, hardwood furniture, stone pillars and directional lighting. Since it was still fairly early, the shop was empty except for an old man behind the counter and a young couple flirting in a corner booth.

Zoe took a seat at one of the tables and examined the menu. The old man greeted her hospitably, his English inflected with a trace of Bavaria. Zoe noticed the resemblance immediately.
This is going to be easier than I imagined
, she thought.

“I’ll try the reds,” she said.

The old man retrieved a bottle of Merlot from the counter and poured a sample into her glass, describing the bouquet of flavors and their mineral origins like a master sommelier. After the Merlot, he brought her a Pinotage, then a Shiraz and a Cabernet Sauvignon, and finally a blend called the “Grand Reserve.” Zoe chatted with the wine-maker about his vintages and paid the bill. Only then did she broach the reason for her visit.

“You are Hendrik Kruger,” she said. “I know your son.”

The old man’s face brightened. “Ah, why did you not mention it before? I would have given you the tasting for free.”

She smiled. “No need. I’d be grateful for a favor, though.”

“For a friend of Jan, anything,” replied Hendrik.

“I need to find him. I spoke to the people at the University of Cape Town. They said you might know where he is.”

Hendrik’s expression turned opaque. “What is the concern?”

Zoe gave him a shaded version of the truth. “A friend of ours—a woman Jan was close to—died recently. She left something for him.”

The old man took a moment to make his decision. “There is a place near Hermanus,” he said. “It is called Vrede. People go there when they are seeking consolation. I’m not certain, but I think you may find him there.”

“Consolation?” she inquired.

“Peace,” Hendrik clarified. “You’ll see.”

He rummaged in a drawer for a piece of paper and wrote out directions.

Although the N2 over Sir Lowry’s Pass would have been faster, Zoe decided to take the coastal road to the seaside town of Hermanus. Like California’s Pacific Coast Highway, the route from Gordon’s Bay to Kleinmond was a stretch of tarmac that could turn anyone into a poet. Winding along precipitous cliffs and through picturesque beach communities, the R44 hugged the ragged edge of land that joined the Hottentots Holland Mountains with the eternal blue of the ocean.

Zoe reached Hermanus by early afternoon. Following Hendrik Kruger’s directions, she turned off the main road just before the town center and drove inland through the Hemel en Aarde Valley. The mountains of the Overberg rose up on all sides, blotting out the sky, but the slopes adjacent to the roadway were dotted with vineyards and Cape Dutch homesteads.

After a few miles, Zoe saw the sign for Vrede Retreat Center. The access road was bumpy and lined with tangled shrubs. Soon, however, the hilly terrain gave way to a vast meadow tucked in between rocky cliffs. Zoe parked in a gravel lot beside a white cinderblock building
with a hanging sign that read: “O
FFICE.”
She left the SUV unlocked and greeted a lanky silver-haired man sitting on a deckchair. The man stood and shook her hand.

“Welcome to Vrede,” he said in a polished voice. “I’m Robert Vorster.”

“Zoe Fleming,” she replied, looking around. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Heaven on earth,” he replied with a grin, and then explained himself.
“Hemel en Aarde
. It’s Afrikaans.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “I don’t believe we were expecting you.”

She shook her head. “I’m looking for someone—Dr. Jan Kruger. His father sent me.”

Vorster hesitated. “Do you have business with him?”

She chose her words carefully. “I suppose ‘business’ is an appropriate description.”

Vorster gestured toward a path that led into the trees. “Will you walk with me?”

Zoe nodded.
Another gatekeeper. Jan certainly knows how to protect himself
.

They strolled up the path beneath the boughs of evergreens and came upon a clearing at the foot of an old chapel. Beside the chapel was a fishpond surrounded by vegetation, and beyond the pond on the hillside was a cluster of whitewashed homes.

Vorster took a seat on a carved stone bench. “Have you been to Vrede before?”

“No,” she replied, sitting beside him.

“Many would say this is a holy place. We’ve hosted opponents of apartheid, members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, politicians, clergy, and cultural leaders, along with visitors from around the world. At Vrede everyone is the same. We are all people searching for peace in troubled times. There is only one rule: do no harm.” Vorster
gave Zoe a direct look. “Does your ‘business’ with Dr. Kruger meet that standard?”

Zoe watched a leaf tumble through the air and land in the pond. She knew she had to tell the truth. “I’m a lawyer,” she said. “I’m helping a child in Lusaka who was raped. The trial of her abuser starts in four days. Jan has information critical to the case. I need to talk to him.”

Vorster was silent for so long that Zoe thought she had lost him. Then, suddenly, he stood and faced her. “After lunch, he went on a walk. I suspect you will find him at the falls. The trail begins at the bridge across the meadow.”

“Thank you,” she said, offering her hand, which Vorster took.

“Jan is a good man,” he said. “I urge you to remember that.”

Zoe found the trailhead on the far side of a footbridge that spanned a highland stream. She took a slow breath, listening to the music of water dancing upon round stones, and then began to walk. Before long, the meadow gave way to more rugged terrain, dominated by shrub-like vegetation. Zoe followed the serpentine course of the stream, traversing groves of towering oaks and slowly trading distance for elevation.

Eventually, she reached a fork in the trail. The main path led through a tangle of trees, and a second path—much narrower—led upward along a rocky defile toward the crest of the mountain. She could hear the sound of falling water nearby, but she couldn’t see it. She ventured into the thicket, pushing branches out of the way and stepping around exposed roots. Soon, she emerged on a patch of grass at the edge of a muddy pool. She saw the waterfall and the bench at the same time. A man turned and looked at her.

It was Jan Kruger.

If he was shocked to see her, he didn’t show it. Instead—
paradoxically—he looked almost relieved. After a while, she sat down beside him and stared at the waterfall.

“Why are you here?” she asked at last.

He looked at her curiously. “If you don’t know, I should ask you the same question.”

“Is this some sort of penance?”

He angled his head thoughtfully. “Penance and peace are related but not the same.”

“Peace without reconciliation is a lie,” she rejoined, repeating the words she had delivered to Sylvia months ago. “You seem fond of lies.”

He waited a beat before responding: “I could say that we’re even.”

“You could say,
‘Voetsak
,’” she replied, pronouncing the expletive like an Afrikaner. “But we’re not even.”

Jan gave a short laugh. “A curious expression, hey? You’re right. Your lie to Dr. Luyt was selfless; mine the height of selfishness.” He scratched his chin. “How did you discover it?”

Zoe retrieved the first volume of Charity’s journal from her backpack. “She wrote about you,” she said, handing the notebook to him. “She loved you.”

He turned the journal over in his hands. “This isn’t the one you showed me before.”

“That was the third volume, written much later. This is the original one. She wrote her first letter soon after she left Livingstone.”

He played with the cover but didn’t open it. “What does she say?”

“That you were lovers. That you made love in your office late at night; that you were gifted, the most gifted doctor she had ever met; and that she wanted more than anything to be your wife. There was a time when she believed that was possible.”

He winced. “I suppose I let her believe that.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You suppose? She was your student. She
had lost most of her family to disease. She was in school so she could get a good job and take care of her grandmother and her cousins. I know Zambian women. They don’t make the first move.”

Jan examined the waterfall. “It was an intense year,” he said eventually. “My research in Livingstone was meaningful but not essential. I had applied for a position in Cape Town, but I didn’t know if they would offer it to me. Charity was … I don’t know. She had a glow about her, a gift of insight and intelligence that I found irresistible.”

He glanced up at a bird flying overhead. “When Godfrey got sick, we were with him all night. We were exhausted; the rainy season was miserable—so many malaria cases. And then, miraculously, he survived. Charity thought of him almost like a son. The next week she brought me a meal to thank me. We were alone in the hospital after hours. I made a mistake.”

“If it was a mistake, why did you keep sleeping with her?”

He shrugged. “I’d never met anyone like her. I was with her as long as I could be.”

“Why didn’t you marry her? You could have made a life together.”

“That would have been impossible.”

The truth suddenly dawned on her. “Your family wouldn’t have approved.”

He glanced at her obliquely. “My parents are not racists. But it was 1996. The tensions in the region were extraordinary. No one would have understood.”

“So you left her. You got the job in Cape Town and you walked away.”

He shook his head. “I did something worse than that. She went to Lusaka because of me.”

“What?”
Zoe demanded. “What do you mean? Frederick Nyambo took her.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “but I was the one who suggested it.”

All at once the whole story made sense. Everyone who knew Charity had been right and wrong at the same time. “How did it happen?” she asked.

“Frederick came to the hospital from Victoria Falls,” he explained. “He had an advanced case of leptospirosis—a severe bacterial infection. He’d seen an
nganga
and gotten some potions that did nothing. By the time I saw him, he was a mess. I managed his case, but Charity tended to him. He was there for ten days. I saw the way he looked at her. So I started talking to him about her. I told him about her family, about her grandmother’s stroke. I told him how bright she was. I thought if I got her a good job in Lusaka—something better than she could have gotten out of nursing school—she would go there and forget about me.”

“You did it so you could live with yourself,” Zoe said. “You bribed your conscience and then you broke her heart.”

“An elegant summary,” he replied, taking no offense. “Yes, I did it for selfish reasons. To be fair, she wasn’t guaranteed a job out of school. The economy in Zambia was turbulent in those years. But she was the best student in her class. She wouldn’t have starved.”

Zoe pictured Frederick Nyambo convalescing in a hospital bed and chatting with Jan Kruger about Charity’s future. “Did you convince him, or did he convince himself?”

“We convinced each other. He promised me that he would take care of her. I believed him. So I convinced her.” Jan’s voice trailed off, and he stared intently at the surface of the pool, as if the still water might conjure a reflection of Charity’s face.

“In case it matters to you, he
did
take care of her,” Zoe said. “He put her up in a nice flat, made her his personal assistant. Your plan might actually have worked.” She took a deep breath, bracing herself. “There was only one problem. She was carrying your child.”

Jan sat back against the bench and closed his eyes. In the silence that ensued, nature reasserted its dominance. Water trickled down the rock, clouds sailed the sky-sea overhead, and birds called to one another. At last he opened his eyes again. “How do you know?”

She pointed at the journal still in his hands. “Read it for yourself. I dog-eared the page.”

His fingers trembled as he opened the cover. He found the marked passage near the end of the volume and scanned the text. When he finished, his shoulders slumped. “It’s possible I am the father,” he said slowly. “But it’s also possible she was wrong.”

“There’s a way to be certain,” Zoe replied, and outlined her plan.

He looked toward the pond. “I need to think about this.”