THE DAY THE SWALLOWs SPOKE
by
Dalene Matthee

Having always been interested in the history of South Africa, it was
inevitable that she should turn to writing historical novels, and ,
Mulberry Forest was a bestseller in South Africa, first in the original
Afrikaans editions and then in her own translations.

She has won the Afrikaans Language and Cultural Association's Literary
award three times, and has been honoured by the Universities of Pretoria
and Port Elizabeth.  She is the first and only woman who has ever been
awarded the Southern African Institute of Forestry Award 'in recognition
of exceptional service'.

ISBN 0-7181-3730-2 BOOK ONE

SHE NO LONGER ASKS, no longer argues, she knows: Africa does not want
white children.  If you have a white skin you can't take shelter
anywhere - not even in the south, at its feet.  Not any longer.  It's
best to pack up and find yourself somewhere else to live - before the
river bursts its banks.

WHEN SHE GETS BACK to her flat from work that afternoon, she takes the
six uncut diamonds from the pocket of her skirt and puts them on the
table at the window so that the mountain can see them too.  Six little
round-edged chips of waxen glass.

No, not glass.  Glass is not so alive.  The man and his wife had both
said that they were diamonds.

She tries to find a sense of guilt or wrongdoing within her, but does
not.  Only a feeling that the diamonds are not happy on the table.  She
picks them up and holds them against her cheek: cool, tiny stones.

She remains standing there, looking out over the roofs and treetops
towards the massive, towering mountain peak to the west of the town. Her
mountain.

Actually, it's part of a long range of mountains spanning the foot of
Africa from west to east, separating the coastal strip from the interior
of the country.

Two years ago, when the house agent brought her here to see this
bachelor flat on the second floor of the building, the mountain filled
the whole window.  She told the woman she would take the flat.  To the
mountain she said. "I won't be staying here long, but while I do, you
will be my only picture, and adornment."

She turns away from the window and puts the diamonds on the bed to make
a soft cushion for them.  They're strange little creatures and she likes
them.  No two of them are alike. Four are translucent, two are clouded.
They're neither round nor square, they seem to be made up of tiny
triangles with light inside ... Little shining stones.  Little stones
holier than stones from the veld.

It was an ordinary, middle-aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Shirley, who came
to Carr & Holtzman Real Estate that morning inquiring about houses in
George.  Decent people.

Elvin Carr, the senior partner, was out with a client and Bernard
Holtzman, the junior partner, was busy organizing the afternoon's golf
over the telephone.  One of the two typists, Christel, showed the couple
into her office.

The Shirleys wanted to get out of Zimbabwe, but they still wanted to
hold on to Africa, so they were trying to buy a house as far south as
possible.

Coincidence?  It did not matter.  She was under the impression that
everybody who wanted to get out from up north had done so long ago.

The fifth house she showed them invited them in and took them.  In the
back garden, the woman sat down on a rusty chair, her body saying. "This
is where I want to be, I go no further."

Mr. Shirley wanted to know if the owner would be prepared to lower the
price.

"It's most unlikely," she told him; 'he originally asked R10000 more."

"It's difficult to get money out of Zimbabwe, Miss Rossouw.  Especially
such a large amount.  In our case it has been a matter of waiting until
an insurance policy was paid out to me here in the Republic of South
Africa.  Now it seems that it is not going to be enough."

The woman who rented the house came to the back door and shouted. "It's
a rotten old shack, it will have to be rewired from top to bottom!"
"I've told them that."

"My contract says I must have three months' written notice.. "I've told
them that too."

They did not want to see any other houses.

She suggested that they go back to the office for tea.  They seemed
reluctant to give up the place, but at the same time they wouldn't
discuss arrangements for a mortgage.  While they were waiting for their
tea, she got a feeling that there was something they wanted to tell her.

Or ask her.  It was only later that she realized they had been weighing
her up.

"What did you say your name was?" the woman asked.

"Araminta.  Araminta Rossouw."

"I don't recall ever having heard the name before.  Is it a family
name?"

"Yes.  From a Scottish great-grandmother on my father's side." She is
used to questions about her name.  Sometimes, when the situation calls
for a bit of a laugh, she adds the story of the old man that was in the
church the morning her father baptized her, who went home afterwards and
gave his newborn calf the same name.

The Shirleys were ill-at-ease.

"Are you from George, Miss Rossouw?"

"No." In her heart she said: I'm actually a ghost, still looking for a
home.

"We're staying with friends on their farm outside the town," said the
man.. "We've looked at many places that are up for sale around here, but
we have found nothing we liked until now.  The last place you showed us
is what we've been looking for all along - but we're R15000 short on the
purchase price." The next moment he put the little stones on her desk..
"Perhaps you know someone who would be interested in buying these?"

"What are they?" She honestly didn't know.

"Diamonds."

Diamonds?  Diamonds are set in rings.  Diamonds are huge, brilliant
stones set in sceptres and crowns, and kept behind walls of thick glass
...

"Uncut diamonds," the woman whispered, nervously.. "A black man gave
them to my husband long ago in exchange for some tools."

Uncut diamonds?

"They should be worth more than R15000," the man said anxiously.. "But
we will accept fifteen."

"Well .  .  ." It was a rather startling situation - but interestingly
so.  A contract of sale usually read 'subject to obtaining a mortgage'.
This one would have to read 'subject to the sale of six uncut diamonds'.
"Well   She didn't quite know what to say.

"My wife and I are the last people to want to get you into trouble, Miss
Rossouw.  We only thought that, through your work, you must have
contacts with many people.  .

joop Lourens.

Everyone in the village where she had grown up said that the wealthy
joop Lourens had made his fortune from diamonds.  Even after he had
taken the deputy mayor of the village to court for defamation of
character and won the case, the rumours still persisted.. "I think I
know somebody who might buy them, but I'm not sure." A flicker of
movement, like hope, crossed the woman's face.. "Wait!" she cried,
'don't expect anything, because I can't promise anything."

"Can you trust this person?" the man asked.  He made it sound alarming
and hush-hush.  As it would have to be, but they had not stolen the
diamonds and joop Lourens could always say no.

"It's someone I've known since I was a child.  If you're prepared to
take the chance and leave them with me, I'll go and see him.. "Does he
live here in George?"

"No.  He lives in a village about an hour's drive from here." In her
heart she was starting to wonder if she had not perhaps spoken too
hastily.  joop Lourens was the last person in the world she would want
to upset.

The man said. "Whatever you can get above R15000, you can keep for
yourself, Miss Rossouw." Offering an incentive.

"If you buy the house, sir, I will be getting commission.

That's all I want.  And please remember I only said I know someone who
might buy them."

"Of course."

When Christel brought in the tea, the man quickly put his hand over the
diamonds.

She took an option on the house and went and told Elvin that she would
not be at the office the next day.  As she works for commission only,
she can more or less come and go as she pleases.  Not that it's a
privilege she exploits; each client, every potential transaction offers
the possibility of earning money, which is of the utmost importance at
this stage of her life.  As it is the property market is quiet, and
there are several estate agents in town competing for whatever business
there is.

It's not a nice occupation.  It's an almost daily intrusion into
people's lives, like peeping through keyholes, but it was the quickest
way out that she could find.

She has made an ark of her flat, to survive in until she reaches safe
ground.  No close friendships, no unnecessary explanations later on.  No
cat, no dog to get attached to, no tears.

Only the African violet a client had given her as a present.

And the mountain.

And one easy chair, one bed, a second-hand stove and a fridge; one
little table with an upright chair at the window, a chest of drawers
with a mirror, a bookshelf for her books and her great-grandmother's
little porcelain bowl.  Four cups and saucers, four plates, four knives
and forks.  Four.  In case her father and mother came to visit.  Or her
sister Marian.

After the first six months, she made one exception: she bought a
second-hand television set.  Weekends in an ark can be very lonely.

But she no longer watches the news or reads the news papers.  Right and
wrong, truth and untruth are streams that have run together, forming one
roaring, swelling river.  No matter where you put your bucket in, the
water you draw up is never pure.

And a mountain that looks through your window every day becomes more
than an adornment - it becomes a presence.  You learn to know every
cliff and gorge and prominence on it.  Its colours: changing shades of
blues and greens; grey rock-faces; its huge, bluish-black silhouette on
a moonlit night.

You get to know its moods.  Its gladness after the rain, when silver
cascades rush down the slopes like laughter.

Its bitterness when there is no rain, and thousands of pine trees in
orderly rows drive their tongues deep into the earth at its feet and
suck its springs dry.

She cannot go to the mountain.  They rape women that walk alone in the
mountains.

ioop Lourens.  There's a story that he and his brother both fell in love
with the same girl in their youth.  Magda was her name.  When Magda
chose Stefaans, joop moved away.  Presumably heartbroken.  After almost
thirty years, the long-lost joop came back a wealthy man, bringing with
him a wife, Sally, and an only child, Wilhelm.  They bought the house
below the rectory.  The day they moved in, she and her sister Marian had
had to take round a goodwill tray of tea and cake.  Their mother had
other things to do.  Marian had been at high school at the time, and she
was still at primary school.

Sally was a soft and tiny woman; if she had had feathers, she would have
been a turtle-dove.  joop was tall, with a big stomach, and spoke to you
as if you were a real person.

Wilhelm was the same age as Marian, a little girlish, but not silly or
shy at all.  He showed them how he could pull his father's wickedly
expensive car in and out of the garage.

Before long, the story began to go round that joop Lourens had made his
fortune out of 'you know what'.

SHE DOES NOT PHONE to say that she's coming.  She takes a chance and
starts off early the next morning.

Just outside the town, a small brown hawk sits on a telegraph pole and
she winks at it as she passes: a hawk or an eagle at the start of
journey is always a good omen.  They're lucky birds.  And she will need
luck, for somehow she is no longer sure that it's all right to approach
joop Lourens ...

Nevertheless, she is feeling excited.

When you've planned and calculated every step you have taken for the
past two years, six diamonds falling into your hands is something to
awaken your spirit of adventure.

The road is quiet.  The sky is clear and blue, her thoughts can go
wandering ...  If joop Lourens buys the diamonds and the Shirleys buy
the house, half of the commission is hers to take to the bank, to pay
off another slice of the loan on her car.  With the commission Carr &
Holtzman paid her the previous week she had paid off the last of her
student loan - that was over and above the R2500 she had had to repay to
her father, money which she had borrowed from him when she started work
at Carr & Holtzman.  And she has a little nest egg in her savings
account.

Would she have been able to do all that in two years on a teacher's
salary?  Never.

And with each rand that is added, her wings are growing.

The moment they're strong enough, she'll start to fly.  Far away.  Like
the birds in the sky, she'll be free to soar between heaven and earth,
while behind her South Africa can cry for peace and liberation until
Doomsday!  When she lands it will be gently, like a phoenix, so that she
crushes nothing under her feet, and she will live on the morning dew!

I'm making up fairy-tales now, she says to herself, smiling - perhaps
it's nectar a phoenix lives on?

It doesn't matter.

She will not be as stupid as the Shirleys, she'll go far across the sea.

She wouldn't have minded keeping the diamonds for herself and taking
them with her, though.  There is something magical about them.

Among the books on her shelf, only two had anything to say about
diamonds.  One was the dictionary. "Colourless or tinted precious stones
of pure carbon crystallized ... hardest naturally occurring substance
...  a rough diamond, person of intrinsic worth but rough manners .  .
." That's like Klaas Muller. His skull is unusually hard too; it took
her a long time to get it into his head that there could be nothing
between them.

The other book said a diamond is just a piece of charcoal with a finer
education.  No two are ever alike.  The rarest, most expensive ones are
the colour of clear water, or the palest blue, and without a speck of
dirt or a crack in them.  In the very next paragraph it said that in the
East a diamond with a speck of black in it is much sought after as a
talisman, because it represents a stone with a soul.

What if the biggest one of the six is a clear white and Joop Lourens
doesn't know it?  What if it's not true that he made his money from
diamonds?

She sees another hawk by the road.

It's October.  The earth is green.  After the harbour town of Mossel
Bay, 400 kilometres east of Cape Town, patches of wild flowers colour
the veld purple and pink and yellow and white.  Above everything,
surrounding everything, is an infinity of blue: the sea in the distance
to the south; the long range of mountains to the north; the sky from
horizon to horizon.  Blue.  The colour of tranquillity and harmony ...
and peace?

Always, when she drives round here, she weaves herself a dream.  She
pulls out the telegraph poles and electricity pylons, she sweeps away
the farmlands and the houses and the roads; she slips through time's
door and finds herself running across the field as a little yellow-brown
bushman girl.

She abandons herself to this dream on purpose, to feel what it must have
been like to be really free.  For the bushmen were the only children of
Africa who had ever lived free in the south of the country: they were
tough, wild, mystery children who had come from nowhere and lived in
harmony with nature and with each other for hundreds of thousands of
years.  Unencumbered by possessions.

When she dreams her dream and escapes from the present, she is a girl
with protruding buttocks in one of the little bands that roamed the
coastal strip between the sea and mountains, hunting and gathering,
migrating from one hunting area to another.  Seldom more than eighty to
a group.  Blissfully unaware that the earth beneath their feet is called
"Africa' - or of Moses in the far distant north between the bulrushes in
the land of Egypt ...

Time was light and dark.  From new moon to full moon.

Cold time.  Warm time.  When all had enough to eat they danced a happy
dance; a sad dance for hunger or death.

No one ruled.  The great Spirit that lived where the sun comes up sent
the rain that made the veld green and the game plentiful.  The same
Spirit sent the drought that prevented them from staying in one place
for ever, getting fat and lazy.  Hunger forced the bushmen to get up and
move on ...

She sees the truck with the trailer approaching the crossroads ahead ...
About two hundred metres before she reaches the junction, she realizes
that the truck is not going to stop, it is going to go straight across
without looking.  In the seconds that follow, her body obeys the orders
that her brain shouts and she starts slamming on the brakes: harder!
harder!  Brake!  The distance between the truck and the car gets smaller
and smaller ...  Then she begins to turn, missing the trailer by
centimetres.

It is not until after she has crossed the Gouritz River bridge that she
begins to recover from the shock.  She cannot find her way back to the
bushmen ...

About the time that the wise men from the East saw the Star rising over
Bethlehem, the first of the tall, thin, browner beings were entering the
toe of Africa from the north, invading the valleys of the south with
their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep.  This was game of a kind no
little yellow-brown hunter had ever seen before.  Game that did not flee
from bows and arrows ...

The cattle-owners.  People with possessions.  The Koikoi.

Tribe after tribe, for centuries, they kept on coming south.  Some of
the groups were hundreds of men and women and children and slaves
strong, their cattle and sheep numbering thousands.  Plus warriors with
bows and arrows and spears, because cattle and women were always prey to
looters.

The game fled 'n their path.  The bushmen too.  Like baboons, they found
shelter in the caves and gorges of the foothills of the mountains.  With
their twig paint brushes they spilled out their anger on the walls of
the caves.

End of the bushmen.

Gradually.  A thousand years would pass before the West started out in
search of a sea route to the East round the foot of Africa.  In every
bay along their way, they asked the natives where they could find the
land of the rich and mighty Prester John, hidden in Africa's darkness.

She thought it was a legend.

And she had thought that diamonds were pretty little dead stones.  But
they would not sleep in the drawer next to her bed.  Nor in the tissue
box.  Or on the window-sill in the moonlight.  Only after she had got up
for the fourth time and put them in the hollows of the African violet's
leaves did they settle down.

Maybe it was her imagination.  Maybe it meant something.

And always, when she went walking with the bushmen, she would be edgy
afterwards.  The air smelt dirty, the water in the taps tasted foul, her
feet wanted bare earth under them - and she is gripped by anguish
because she cannot move any faster!

In ancient times you could pack up your few possessions and start
walking; now you must have money first.  Enough money.

Four joop LOURENS HAD BEEN good to her.

Six years ago, when she and Frans de Villiers had scandalized the
village, it was his hand that lifted up her chin so that she could see
some light again.

She was in her second-last year in school.  Frans was the new history
teacher: tall, fair and sunburnt, as if he had come straight from the
sea on a surfboard.  When she looked him in the eyes for the first time
in class, she knew she had done so enticingly.  On purpose.  Perhaps she
really is the bitch her mother later made her out to be, because at that
moment the most wonderful desire had welled up in her to feel his touch
on her body.

At first she felt the most glorious happiness taking root in her.  After
a few weeks, when she was filled with it, it became an all-devouring and
restless doubt.  If he was feeling the same, why didn't he make an
opportunity to speak to her?  Was he afraid because it was so very
forbidden?  Was he unable to act because of the fact that her prison was
the rectory and his the house of old Miss Sara Saayman, of which he was
renting half?

Or was he waiting for her to make the first move ...

Did she dare to?

What else could she do?

It was April, the days were short, darkness came early.

She told her mother she had to go to Helga's with a maths problem after
supper.  She chose her streets carefully ...

she climbed over old Miss Sara's granadilla hedge at the back and
knocked on his door.

It's a brook of cool, clear water.  When you take off your shoes and
walk into it, you are still just a child-girl; on the other side you
have become a young woman.  You have discovered the secret of all life:
love.  You're with the most fabulous man, who tells you to go home, but
still holds you tight.

The year was almost out before they were caught - naked in bed, by old
Miss Sara herself - and the whole village went up in flames.

Her mother hit her again and again; she fell against the kitchen sink,
she called out to her father, but he just stood there in the doorway,
his face filled with rage and loathing.

He didn't lift a finger to stop her mother in her mad rage.

She will never forgive herself for angering them and humiliating them
like that.

She did not go back to school for a week.  Every morning she was called
to the study to kneel in prayer; first her father prayed and confessed
her sin, beseeching God's forgiveness for her.  Then her mother.  Then
she herself She will never forgive them, that they made her kneel before
God to pray a lie.

The rest of the day she lay on her bed, waiting for Frans.  Every car
that came past in the street, every knock on the door, every ring of the
telephone was him sweeping everything out of his way to get to her ...
Waiting.

Waiting.  Waiting.  Until everyone around her became ghosts and she
growled at them if they dared to come a step too close.

Only towards the end of the week did her mother have the courage to come
and ask if she could possibly be pregnant.  No.  Was she sure of that?
Yes.  Her mother did not ask how she could be sure.  She probably needed
to convince herself that they had not really slept together.

No one told her that he had left the village on the Friday, that a
temporary post had been found for him in Cape Town.  She had found it
out herself on the Monday morning when she went back to school.  It was
like standing stock-still while a rock slowly comes down on you,
crushing you into the ground.  She did not cry, she did not open her
mouth to say a word.  She simply stood there dying.

When the scandal in the village had burned itself out, when all the
mothers with daughters thanked God in the silence of their grateful
hearts that it had been the minister's daughter that had been shamed,
and not one of theirs, she became the ghost.  A ghost clinging to the
hope that he would send her a Christmas card explaining that he could
not say goodbye because they would not let him.  That he still loved
her.

The Christmas cards came and hung like gaping beaks over the string in
the dining-room - but there was none from him.  On the day after
Christmas Day, she had to take back Aunt Sally's dish and she found
Uncle joop alone in the kitchen when she got there.

"Is it no better yet, child?" he asked, without reproof? "No, it isn't."
She could admit it openly to someone.

"I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you, Araminta.. "If only I knew
why I haven't heard from him!. "Perhaps you'll understand if you let me
tell you how life works."

"Understand what?"

"When we are born, each of us are given a certain number of rivers to
cross during our lifetime, trials and tribulations to teach us about
living.  At this moment, you are crossing your first difficult river and
with it you are gaining years of experience.  I can see it in you."

"Don't say that, uncle.  All I want to know is, did he love me or didn't
he love me!"

"If you even have to ask the question, Araminta, the answer is no."

"I can't accept that."

"I know.  It's one of the hardest things in life to have to find out
that someone does not really want you.  It remains an open sore for a
very long time."

"It was the circumstances!. "Go on, shout.  Aunt Sally's gone round to
Aunt Martha's.. "He couldn't cope with the circumstances.. "You are a
very beautiful girl, Araminta.  You're a rare kind of girl.  I remember
the time when you and Wllhelm were holding hands; he came home from
school one day and asked his mother if she had noticed that all the
girls in the village with fair hair have blue eyes.  Except Araminta.
Her eyes, he said - and he really did say it - are deep and dark and
full of light.  When Frans de Villiers saw that light, it made the man
in him so reckless that, although it was forbidden, he could not keep
his hands from the most wonderful thing that will ever tempt him in his
life."

"He did love me!"

"In the flesh he did.  One day, a man will love you with his body and
his mind and his soul, and then you'll know the difference.  Not yet.
Today you're longing for Frans de Villiers and you don't even realize
that you're crying for the moon."

"I'll never love another man in my life."

"You will.  We receive enough strength to help us cross our rivers -
it's up to us whether we waste it floundering about in midstream for too
long."

"It's not fair."

"All's fair in the end.  You'll see.  And after every river we've
crossed, we get a little reward, and time to rest before we have to take
on the next.  You'll see.  The first river on our way is almost always
the river of love: while we are young and still strong swimmers.  It
prepares us for the better love to come."

"It hurts, Uncle joop."

"It will go on hurting for a long time yet.  It's not like a pain in
your toe - you know when it's gone.  This is a pain that goes away
without you knowing it - only long afterwards do you realize that it was
your hurt pride that took the longest to heal."

Three years later, when she ran into Frans de Villiers at Stellenbosch,
she understood how true Uncle joop's words had been.  She felt nothing.
Except for that something that remains between two people who have once
loved each other.  Even if it had been in the flesh only.  Even if
they've grown to hate each other.

ALMOST NOTHING HAS CHANGED in the centre of the village.  The only new
building is the bank, standing there like a self-confident, untouchable
place full of secrets.

Uncle joop and Aunt Sally are glad to see her.  They want to know how
her parents are getting along in the new congregation at Bloemfontein.
Has she been to visit them there?  Not yet.  Is Marian still teaching in
Paarl?  Yes.  Is it true that she has got engaged?  Yes.  To a man who
also teaches in Paarl.

She is invited to look at some of Wilhelm's latest paintings.  She has
to stay for tea.

At last she speaks out. "Aunt Sally, if you don't mind, I would like to
talk to Uncle joop alone."

"Of course I don't mind.  Shall I ever forget how you came to him when
you were in trouble that time?"

"At least I'm not in trouble this time, Aunt Sally." But old woman looks
as if she does not quite believe her.

And apparently joop Lourens does not either.  The minute he closes the
door of his study, he asks. "Do you have problems, Araminta?. "Not as
such, uncle."

"When are you going back to university to finish your studies so that
this property-selling nonsense can stop?. "You've asked me that before,
and the answer is still the same: I have no intention of going back."

"I wish I knew what has happened to the Revd Rossouw's once cheerful
daughter.  A girl, that in spite of everything, left this village with
her head held high.. "Come now, Uncle joop!  Do I look unhappy or
something?"

"I get the impression that you've come to a standstill.

And at the same time you're as restless as a trapped animal.  I ask
myself, what's bothering her?"

She laughs.. "Perhaps it's having to stand still while my feet want to
start running!"

"Where do you want to run to?"

She must be careful, the old man is sharp.. "To where the man of my
dreams is waiting - hopefully the right one this time."

"Your tongue and your eyes aren't speaking the same language, Araminta.
Why did you want to see me alone?"

"I've come to ask if .  .  ." She takes the diamonds from her pocket and
places them on the desk in front of him.

"If you would buy these." She sees how his body stiffens in the chair as
if from shock.  It's not the way' she had planned to do it, she had
wanted to explain about the Shirleys first ...

"Where did you get these?" He makes it sound as if it's a bomb she has
put down in front of him.

"A client of mine needs R15000 urgently," she says.. "They want to get
out of Zimbabwe and buy a house in George but they haven't got enough
money.  They are good, honest people - please don't look at me like
that, Uncle joop!. "Go and give these back to them immediately!. "I just
thought .  .

"You thought nothing!"

Oh no, she had not meant to upset him like this.. "I'm sorry, I think
I've made a terrible blunder.  Please forget about it." Should she take
the diamonds and go?. "Honestly, I didn't mean to upset you." He is
still staring at her - he does not make a move to help her over her
mistake.

Perhaps he wants her to leave ...

"Sit down."

She sits down again.. "I wish there was some way I could undo all this."

"Why did you come to me?"

"Because.  Because I thought you might be able to help these people."

"Answer my question."

No, she's not going to.

"Why did you come to me, Araminta?"

He means to know.  She says the words as fast as she can. "Because the
people always said you made your fortune from diamonds." She sees how it
hurts him.  How disillusionment leaps into his eyes and his body starts
to sink back into the chair.  She didn't mean to hurt him like this ...

"Are you telling me that they still said that, even after I won the case
against jan Trap?"

"I'm sorry."

"Answer me!"

"Yes." He sits there as if his whole body is slowly absorbing blow after
blow of defeat and dismay.. "Please, Uncle joop, say you'll forgive me!"

He just looks at her.  He takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes; when
he puts them back on there is something like hatred in his eyes.. "You
see, Araminta," he says, 'man shows very little forgiveness.  I left
this village by the back door.  When I returned, I entered at the front
and for that they have never forgiven me." His bitterness is welling up
and spilling over.

"That's not true."

"You won't understand.  They would have accepted it, if I had stayed
here and moved up slowly, street by street, for that is how most of them
proceeded.  Had I come back without one of my legs, it would have been
all right too - but I came back with money, and that was unforgivable.
Every beggar and collector comes knocking at my door, because I'm good
enough for giving.  But never a knock at my door from someone from this
neighbourhood coming to invite me or Aunt Sally over for a cup of tea.
Not for a birthday, not for Christmas, not for anything.  It's like a
never-ending punishment."

"I never realized you felt like that .  .

"For myself I don't mind, but I didn't want it for my Sally."

"To me, you were always the nicest people in the whole neighbourhood.  I
swear it."

"You give and you give.  But you're human, so you also want to be liked.
Even though it does sound a silly thing for an old man to be saying."

"I like you."

He looks away and stares at the wall behind her...

slowly he begins to tap on his desk with his fingers...

"You say these people want to get out of Zimbabwe?. "Yes.  But they
don't have enough money.. "Did you tell them you were bringing these to
me?. "No."

He stops tapping.  Starts again.  Stops.  He seems calmer.  When he
turns back to her, he seems to have made up his mind.. "Diamonds,
Araminta, are not playthings," he says, taking a writing-pad from the
drawer next to him.  From the holder on the desk he chooses a pen; there
is a sense of purpose in every movement he makes.  When he starts to
write, he doesn't hesitate.  .  .  .

When he signs his name, it's a kind of seal he puts on it.  It's like a
moment of reckoning, of getting even.  He takes an envelope and writes
an address on it.. "Your good fortune is your ignorance and innocence,
and the fact that you came to me.  Your clients' good fortune is that I
once had to get out of Zimbabwe too.  This letter is addressed to a man
whose name you never - never - reveal to anyone.

If they ask you ten years from now whom I sent you to, you say you've
forgotten the name - even if they put a gun to your head."

"I give you my word."Then it was true what they had been saying all
these years?

"The man will trust you and buy the diamonds because it's me that's
sending you to him.  Take the people their money and wipe this day from
your memory together with the name of the man.  Tell yourself it was a
dream in which you dreamt of an old man in his moment of deepest
bitterness."

"I promise I will.  Thank you.  Thank you very much."

He folds the letter and puts it into the envelope.. "Do you have this
clear?  This has never happened!. "I promise."

"Good.  Now take this, and if you really want to thank me, do so by
going back to university while you still can."

"I don't want to go back.  I want to live and become a happy person."
Careful, she thinks, you're sounding childish.. "That does not mean I'm
not happy now - it's only that I don't want to discover when I'm old one
day, that I've been stoned to death because I was afraid to run.. "What
are you saying?"

"I didn't put that quite right, let's forget it.  But, uncle, there's
something else I've been wanting to ask you for a long time, but never
had the courage to."

"What?"

"Did my father ask you for the money that allowed me to go overseas with
the student choir?" Perhaps she never asked because in her heart she
still hoped that it was her father that had given her the money.  The
old man does not answer.. "I want to know, Uncle joop.  I have the right
to know."

"Why don't you ask your father?"

"I'm asking you."

"Yes, I did give him the money.  If I could have chosen a daughter for
myself, I would have wanted her to be like you.  That's why I gave him
the money."

"My father should not have done that."

"Would you rather have stayed at home?. "It's too late to ask that now.
All I know, is that my life would have been different if I had not
gone.. "Why?. "Perhaps we are not really able to choose."

WOULD SHE HAVE STAYED at home, if she had known about the money, she
asks herself as she drives away.  Did she have a choice or was it
predestined?  Was it one of the rivers that she had to cross?  Was it
something as simple as a guardian angel with a warped sense of humour
that had pushed her towards her destiny?

She never intended to join the Village Choir when she went to
university.  Marian was in her final year and had been a member of the
choir since her first year.

She, Araminta, went to university because it had offered hope.  Escape
from school and home and village where the shame kept following her no
matter how hard she tried to put it behind her.  University was putting
on new clothes, leaving the old ones behind.  It was the place where
Future began so that you could get to Now.

Disillusionment is a narrow bed in a small room on the third floor of a
hall of residence, surrounded by rows upon rows of other rooms filled
with strangers and corridors smelling of menstruation.  Every morning,
thousands of multicoloured ants came out the rooms in all the blocks,
making for a multitude of classes.  A multicoloured ant, she followed
the thickest line to the BA classes in sloping lecture-rooms as big as
concert-halls, where the lecturers and professors stood far below.  It
was a huge open prison, you could escape if you wanted to, but you were
too frightened.  You didn't know which door to escape through.

Nothing was right.  Not the clothes old Miss Lily had made you, not the
shoes they had bought you.  God only knew how you were to make do on
your weekly pocket money.  You didn't.  And your father would not have
five cents' mercy on you, for sure!

Twice she changed her subjects before it was too late to change them
again and she was trapped: Afrikaans-Dutch; English; geography;
psychology; history.  The only consolation was the fact that she would
only have to take three of those subjects in her second year.  And two
in the third.

If she got that far.  She would stand in front of the mirror in her room
asking herself.  Why am I here?  Who am I?  What's life?  How am I ever
going to get all the experience that I need?  She was afraid to look too
deep into her eyes, afraid of what she might see ...

A man came hammering on the rectory door one day.  It was early on a
Monday morning.  When her father opened the door, the man shouted,
"Reverend, why don't you get the hell out of here and go and live in
black Africa, where you can preach to the fucking communists?"

Marian got such a fright, she started to cry.  No one ever spoke like
that at the rectory.  Their mother took them to the bedroom and told
them not to be upset, it was only a nasty man who had not liked their
father's sermon the day before.  She, Araminta, didn't know what the
sermon was about because she always daydreamed in church.

When the man had gone, her father came and stood in the door,
tight-lipped.. "Children," he said. "I think you're old enough to
understand the tragic incident that happened here just now." She was
twelve, Marian fifteen.. "I want this to be an example to you of the
blindness of most of the Afr'kaners.  And an indication of why we
Afrikaners have become the most hated people on earth."

It was as if a little hole had been bored into her skull and the words
from her father's lips had poured through it.  When the words got inside
her head, she said to them: You're not true!

So the words went away.

Later that day, she did, however, take down the atlas and turned to the
page with the large orange land in the centre: Africa.  Until then,
South Africa had been an ordinary land made of earth and rocks and
mountains and plants and people and animals - not really part of Africa.

Africa was a far-off place.  Somewhere else.  But then she saw that
South Africa was Africa's feet and that they were living on its toes.
Suddenly she knew where she was living.  A fear came over her - not as
for snakes and spiders, but as for lightning that could strike you when
it wanted to.

Until that day, she had not even understood what it meant to be white. A
white skin was something that you were born with, like arms and legs.
Then one day you start becoming white: gradually.  Later you stand in
front of a mirror in a hall of residence and you ask yourself.  Who am
I, what am I doing here, where am I going?

Finally she went to Marian and told her that she had decided to give up
studying.  Marian laughed and said everyone goes through that,
especially students from the country.  Come do a voice test and join the
choir; it's fun and you make a lot of friends.

The choir was the Village Choir.  A smaller choir than the university
choir, but just as popular and praised by the critics after every
performance.  Often even more highly than the university choir.

She passed the audition, and from the very first day enjoyed every
moment of it.  In the beginning she was just Marian's younger sister.
Later, after Marian had finished her studies and left, she became the
leading soprano.  jakob Hart, the self-appointed clown of the choir, was
the leading tenor and everyone thought there was something between them.

There was.  But not what they thought.

At the end of her second year, there was talk about the choir going on a
short overseas tour in the June of the following year.  It felt like a
dream that could not come true.

A dream costing money.  For although the choir had good sponsors, every
member still had to contribute R800 plus pocket money, another R400.
R1200 in all.  By a certain date everyone had to bring the necessary
consent and guarantee from parents or guardians.

R1200.  Her father would have a heart attack.

It was early autumn.  The streets and pavements were strewn with leaves
that crackled under her feet as she wandered around, trying to find the
courage to phone home.  Every little gust of wind sent more leaves
fluttering down to the ground like large, brown moths - no, like small
bank-notes ...

Having to ask lgnatlus Rossouw for money was no fun.

She had been in standard three before she had found out that the church
was paying her father to preach and her mother to play the organ.  She
had always thought that her father took some money from the collection
plates on Sundays to pay for the week's bread and newspapers, and for
the rest they lived on the meat and vegetables and stuff the farmers and
other members of the congregation used to bring to the rectory.

Occasionally, she and Marian got pocket money from visiting
grandparents, and sometimes lucky enough to find a lost coin in a pew
when they played in the church which was against the sexton's rules.

The day she discovered that her father was getting a monthly salary, she
thought up a clever plan to get a bicycle.

"Father, you said in church this morning that everything comes from the
Lord." She had chosen Sunday lunch as the time for her attack.

"Yes, Araminta, so I did."

"Does money come from the Lord as well?"

"Everything comes from the Lord."

"Why does He give some people lots of money and others only a little?"
She honestly wondered about it sometimes ...

"The ways of the Lord are not always clear to us, Araminta.. "Do you
think God will give me a bicycle if I ask Him nicely?. "No, because you
don't really need a bicycle.. "Will you give me a bicycle then?. "Eat up
your food."

The week after, the sexton's brother brought her a bicycle his children
were no longer using.  She had to write the man a letter of thanks, and
Marian had said that when the time came Father would undoubtedly go
begging for his coffin as well.

She needed R1200.

In the end she didn't have the courage to phone home and ask for the
money.  She got a lift home for the weekend and went to ask in person.

"Let's get this straight, Araminta," her father had said.

"You are the leading soprano.  Correct?"

"Yes, Father."

"Well in that case I see no reason why the sponsors shouldn't pay for
all your expenses."

"They can't do that, Father!  And I don't want them sending a hat round
for me; I'd rather tell them I can't go!"

"Don't be impertinent!  Your academic record, has not been good.  You do
not deserve to go abroad at all."

"You don't understand, Father." Her academic record had already been
discussed ad nauseam, and was a subject best avoided.

"You're quite right, I don't understand.  For it makes no sense that a
student, with As all the way through school except for a temporary
decline - can be struggling with a simple BA degree at university."

"I'm not struggling as such, Father.  I've already tried to explain to
you many times that I have to understand things for myself.  I have to
find my own way.  It's no use understanding only what the professor
wants you to understand from piles of photocopied notes.  Especially in
history." That was the last subject she wanted to touch.

"You know what I think about that.  You know how much time we've wasted
already on discussing it.  As long as the Afrikaner keeps hanging on to
a single view of history, we'll remain pillars of salt like Lot's wife.
Anyway, we must learn to look ahead, not backwards!"

"That's rig ' lit, Father." Careful, she said to herself, we must not
get into another senseless argument.

"In this country only one thing matters, and that is to find solutions
to our complex situation as quickly as possible in order to bring about
justice for everyone."

"As you say, Father."

"Your indifference worries me."

"General Smuts said that the most brilliant men in the world came here
to solve South Africa's problems and every one of them went back
defeated."

"Because the solutions to our problems lie within ourselves!"

"Yes, Father.  At this moment the solution to my immediate problem is
R1200, and I have no way of finding that within myself."

"Where do you think I can get it from?  Everything is getting more
expensive by the day.  I must make provision for us to have a roof over
our heads when your mother and I eventually retire."

"I realize that, Father."

"Perhaps you should stop singing in the choir and apply yourself wholly
to your studies!  Have you thought about the consequences if you don't
get your degree at the end of the year? You have a teacher's bursary."

"You know something, Father?  There's a girl in the choir - her name is
Heldi - she invited the whole choir to her home in Durbanville one
Saturday.  Three bathrooms, a swimming-pool, three garages.  She and her
brother both have new cars, she has the most beautiful clothes.  And
neither her father or her mother have been to university they have a
real-estate business.  Both you and Mother have years of university
training and what have you earned for it?  We never have money for
anything."

"Granted.  But earthly goods aren't everything.  We must look for real
values."

"I would so much like to go abroad with the choir, Father.  Please."

That was the Friday afternoon.  On Saturday morning she had seen her
father going round to Uncle joop's.

Later he gave her a cheque for R1200.  The next morning, during the
church service, she had gone into his study and found a savings-bank
book with R17840 in it, and she said to herself maybe he had gone to
Uncle joop on a social visit.

She would always remember what it had felt like when the aircraft began
to move faster and faster down the runway and finally left the ground.
At that moment the dream came true.  Gone was all the hard work, the
hours spent in rounding off every piece on the choir's programme, the
fear that something like flu might force her to stay behind.

The choir consisted of twenty-one members: twelve women and nine men.  A
final meeting was held shortly before their departure.  For the first
part, the men and the women were taken separately.  Helen Pearce, wife
of Dr Groenewald, the tour leader and conductor, spoke to the women; Dr
Groenewald himself spoke to the men.  What Helen Pearce said, with great
embarrassment, was that no sleeping together during the tour would be
tolerated.  It was assumed that Dr Groenewald had said the same to the
men.

The joint meeting afterwards was a disappointment.

They were once again informed that in England they would only perform
before invited audiences.  Their participation at the choir festivals in
Scotland and Wales would be unofficial, because they were South African
students.

There would be no publicity.  They were to avoid confrontation at all
times and in no way advertise the fact that they were from South Africa.

"The anti-apartheid campaign in Britain is particularly strong and
well-organized at the moment," Dr Groenewald assured them.

In other words, they had to go and perform like sneaks.

Early on the Sunday morning, after a flight of fourteen hours, they
landed at Heathrow Airport.  jakob Hart made a final 'announcement' from
his seat next to her while the plane taxied to a halt.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have just landed outside Londinium, ancient
city of Romans.  Today known as London and the heart of the myth of
myths: democracy."

"Cut out the politics!" one of the others joked.

jakob carried on with exaggerated portentousness.

"Bear it in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that sixty years before Christ,
this enormous city, where there are more inhabitants today than all the
white people in the whole of South Africa, was just a hamlet consisting
of wooden shacks and a single wooden bridge crossing the River Thames.

"Think of that time, think of how the people of the land rioted against
the rule of the Romans, looted and burned, so that extra warriors had to
be called in to force them to submit for three more centuries.  When at
last the Romans went away, new looters came from across the sea to rule
for another six hundred years!. "You must be joking."

"No I'm not.  At last, William the Conquerer came across the Channel
with his mighty Norman army and took the land from the
Saxons-Celts-Angles-Norsemen and id: "Now it's mine." His descendants
continued the sal   1 wars, and blood, my friends, flowed across this
land as it does over the floor of an abattoir.  Blood mixed with blood:
at last the Norman-Saxon-Celt-Angle-Norsemen were of one blood - a new
people had risen and they were called "the English".  Today, dear
friends, everyone in this land is equal before God and the Law: the
princes and the punks, the lords and the ladies; whore, bore, duchess
and dame; earl, bricklayer and marquess."

You could never be sure whether Jakob was being serious or playing the
fool.  A tall, lanky, reddish-blond law student in his fourth year;
brilliant according to his classmates.

Of all the girls in the choir, Jakob had chosen her to walk with or sit
next to.  Perhaps it was because he knew she was 'safe', that she would
not expect more.  For jakob was one of those people that gave the
impression that he knew exactly where he was going, and that nothing and
nobody would stop him.

It suited her.  Her body didn't react yet when someone touched her; it
was still drained after Frans.

On the very first morning they had to get up early and go for a work-out
session in the park opposite the hotel where they were staying.  Matthys
Okennedy did a cheeky thing that first morning: he pinned a small South
African flag on to his track-suit.  Dr Groenewald asked him to take it
off.

On the Monday, a special bus took them to South Africa House for
rehearsals.  Afterwards, when they went to Trafalgar Square luring
armfuls of pigeons and taking photos, a rowdy demonstration against
Nelson Mandela's detainment and against apartheid was taking place in
front of the building.  Dr Groenewald asked them to stay away from it.
Two of the men, however, slipped away to go and talk to the
demonstrators.  When they got back, they said the demonstrators were
planning a round-the-clock demonstration against South Africa until
apartheid was ended and all the political prisoners had been released.
Nobody seemed particularly interested.

That same evening they gave their first performance before a small but
most appreciative audience.  On the Wednesday, the choir left by bus for
Scotland, and performed in Edinburgh the following night.  Everybody
said afterwards that had they been allowed to compete officially, they
would undoubtedly have taken the first place.

And everywhere they went, the people were friendly.  A wary kind of
friendliness.  They looked at you and spoke to you as if from a
distance, as if you were not quite to be trusted or something.

A different kind of people.  More refined.  Higher people. Hollow
people.  Not hollow as in empty, hollow as if all superfluous passion
had been pared away over the ages ...

In Wrexham, in Wales, the choir received a standing ovation. Afterwards,
a small confrontation developed when a man from the audience wanted to
know why there were no blacks in the choir.  Somebody pointed out to him
that there were two coloureds, but the man was not satisfied.  Lucius
and Tyrone were apparently not black enough for him.

For the last four days of the tour, the choir was back in London.  On
the first night they performed with two other choirs in a small theatre
in Islington.  Only one more performance remained, the one scheduled for
the second last day, at the residence of the South African ambassador.

During the morning of that particular day, most of the group went to see
the Tower of London.

Afterwards, she always wondered why it had had to happen.  She didn't
plan to go to the Tower; she and two of the other girls were going to go
to Madame Tussaud's.

Then she changed her mind.  Or perhaps it was her angel that pushed her
on to the coach.

The guide that took them through the Tower was a neatly dressed,
middle-aged man with thick glasses.

In the middle of the enormous fortress stands a big castle; he told them
that it was the castle William the Conquerer had started to build as a
defence against his riotous subjects, nine hundred years ago, and as a
stronghold from which to exert his will.  One of the later kings had the
tower whitewashed and so it got its name, the White Tower.  The walls of
the castle measure fifteen feet thick at the bottom and thirteen at the
top.  Or something like that.  She could not quite hear what was being
said, because Matthys Okennedy kept on passing remarks at the back,
reminding them that the first fortress at the Cape, built some 340 years
ago, had walls measuring twenty feet thick at the bottom and sixteen
feet at the top.  And that it had been built in order to guard the
English from taking control of the sea route to the East round the Cape.

The guide got cross with Matthys, but carried on.

The White Tower, he said, also served as a state prison later on.
Captives of high birth were housed on the top floors; prisoners from the
lower classes were chained to the stone walls in the cellars.  Prisoners
might be detained in any of the thirteen towers on the inside wall till
it was time for their heads to be chopped off.

"I remember it well," jakob suddenly pipped in.. "My own head was cut
off here some four hundred years ago.. "Don't talk bloody shit!"
somebody said, amongst the laughter.

"Pity it grew back on askew!" someone else chipped in.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention!"

"Sorry!"

The guide went on to say that Macaulay, the historian, had said that the
Tower was the most godforsaken place on earth.  Before he could
continue, Matthys butted in again.

"According to the old sea-captains, the Cape of Good Hope was the most
godforsaken place on earth," he cried.

"I wouldn't know," the guide answered with a sneer.

"I've never been there."

Later, attention was shifted to the large black ravens, hopping around
and trying in vain to fly.  Someone mentioned that it had been
prophesied that the throne of Britain would fall on the day that the
last raven left the fortress.  That's why their wings are clipped.

"Well, I'll be damned!" Matthys called out once again.

"That means we'll have to start clipping our wagtails' wings!"

"What do you mean?"

"The wagtail is the white man's emblem.  The day the last ones fly away,
it will be the end of the white man down in the south of Africa."

"Are you making this up?"

"Of course not."

"But in that case, the blacks can simply start wringing the wagtails'
necks!" That was jakob.

"Don't be silly!" one of the others cried.

"Ladies and gentlemen .  .  ."

The guide asked those who wanted to see the Crown jewels to follow him.

Are there angels that take you by the hand and lead you where you are
destined to go?

First you shuffle along in the queue through a hall full of glass cases
in which all sorts of royal objects are displayed: golden dishes,
sceptres, candlesticks, rows upon rows of trumpets, medallions, royal
robes woven with golden thread.  Your eyes could only jump from the one
to the other, in an impossible effort to take it all in.

"Where's the king's crown?" someone wanted to know.

"I suppose we're going to come to it."

Shuffle, shuffle.  Down, down, down steps and through the most
incredibly thick door: CHUBB.  You're in a large, dusky vault with black
walls.  Light comes from a group of glass cases in the middle, filled
with the treasure.

Golden altar dishes ...  swords in jewelled scabbards ...  a salt-cellar
as big as a small castle ...

"Keep moving," a guard says from the semi-darkness.

You are not allowed to stop and look.

Velvet-capped crowns with arches and circlets encrusted with precious
stones.  Hundreds of stones, emitting tiny rays of light.  Large stones.
Small stones.  Bright stones, blue stones, green stones, red stones.
Large white pearls.

"Move on!"

"Araminta, the man's talking to you!"

"I can't look at it all so fast!"

"You've got to keep moving!"

It's like being allowed to see something forbidden, something wonderful,
untouchable, unbelievable - but only for the wink of an eye.

"Look, there's the Star of Africa!" Luclus Muller, walking in front of
her, pointed out the diamond.. "There, in that sceptre with the cross.
It's part of a colossal diamond that was found in a mine outside
Pretoria."

It was the most incredible stone.  Like pale blue ice.  As big as the
palm of a child's hand and cut in the shape of a pear.. "Star of
Africa', it said on the plaque.

"Move on!"

She could not move on.  She wanted to reach out and tap on the glass
wall and say to the diamond. "Look, we've come to visit you!  We're from
the same land.. "Please keep moving, ladies and gentlemen!" The diamond
was longing for home.  She knew it, she felt it.  She saw it through the
glass.  It was too tightly clamped in the sceptre, it was too crowded in
the case and the lights shone too brightly.  Her feet began to move
forward, but in her heart she begged them to take the diamond out so
that she could hold and comfort it.  When she couldn't see it any
longer, a feeling of helplessness welled up in her against the power
that guarded it.  Something akin to hatred.

When they got outside, she deliberately wandered away from the others to
be alone for a while.  She could not understand why the diamond had
upset her so.  She would gladly have spent the last of her money on
going back and seeing it again, but it was half-past twelve.  They had
to be back at the coach at one o'clock.

She was thirsty.  She stooped down for a drink of water at a drinking
fountain but she did something wrong, because the water came out with a
gush, splashing all over her face ...

Perhaps shadows from the future fall on you as a warning - perhaps you
only turn them into shadows of foreboding afterwards.

A little way beyond the tap was a small square fenced off with chains.
Written on a plaque were the names of five women, a lord and an earl
whose heads had been cut off on that spot.

When she turned round, jakob was staring at her intently - not jakob the
clown, but the jakob whose head had been cut off long ago.

On their way back to the hotel, there was great merriment on the coach.
Some of the students had bought some finger puppets from street vendors
and were putting on an impromptu entertainment for the others.

From the back of the bus came other strange noises and shouts, which
remained a mystery until a very disgusted Heidi explained. "They've
bought a book with naked girls in it.  I saw Paul buying it."

"That's nothing," said Yolanda. "I bought a Playgz'rl full of naked men
yesterday!  I'm going to smuggle it home in the bottom of my suitcase."
"Naked men?. "Naked as the day they were born.  Only bigger.. "It's
illegal to take pornography into our country and You know it!" Heldi
retorted, indignantly.. "Anyway, it's downright immoral!"

"How can paper pricks be immoral?" Yolanda teased.

When the coach stopped at the hotel, there was a scramble for bags and
packages and cameras and a last laugh, and no one apparently noticed
what was happening on the pavement.  More than half of them were out of
the coach before they realized that a group of demonstrators was
blocking the entrance to the hotel.

It was a demonstration against them!

The coach pulled away and left them right in front of the demonstrators'
posters. "RACIST PIGS!. "FREE MANDELA!. "VILLAGE CHOIR GO HOME!" Some
were holding up their clenched fists in the air shouting. "Amandla!
Amandla!" Because she had been one of the first to get off the coach she
was standing right in front of the demonstrators and uncomfortably close
to them.  Dr Groenewald appeared from somewhere and told them not to
react, but to start moving away, one by one.

It was not that simple.  In front of them were the demonstrators, behind
them the street and the traffic, on both sides of the pavement, crowds
of pedestrians, so that they were kept there in a huddle.

There were about fifty demonstrators.  Mostly young hippies; only two
were black - a handsome young man with a thick beard, wearing a tartan
cap, and a middleaged woman with a shock of hair, wearing a red dress.

"Amandla!  Amandla!"

"What does it mean?" one of the girls asked in distress.

"If you really don't know, it's time you woke up!" somebody snapped.

"It means "Power to the People"," someone whispered.

The worst thing was the eyes of the people around them.  Eyes looking at
you with unconcealed contempt, and somewhere in your head there's a
little hole ...

Dr Groenewald urged them to start moving away.  She stepped to the left
and managed to get past two of the girls next to her.  She was still in
the front, however, and she felt sure that the woman in the red dress
was watching her.  She wasn't sure, as the woman was wearing glasses.

With difficulty, she managed to reach Matthys Okennedy, who was standing
right at the end.  Had she stayed where she was, it would not have
happened.

"Amandla!  Amandla!" a demonstrator shouted.  Without warning, Matthys
raised his fist in the air and shouted back. "To hell with Amandla!  I'm
a Boer and where I rule, I rule!"

Her first thought wa. "Thank God he said it in Afrikaans, they won't
have understood!" But red-dress came rushing at Matthys like a vixen,
shouting. "Hold your bloody tongue, you white-arsed Boer!" In Afrikaans.

Then it happened.  She, Araminta raised her hand to give Matthys a push
and tell him to keep quiet.  The Reddress must have seen the movement
differently, because the next moment the woman spat at her, right in the
face.

She fled through the demonstrators to get to her room.

But neither soap, nor water, not the hardest scrubbing, nor shampoo, nor
a facecloth or towel, nothing takes away spit from one's face.  Or
hatred from a woman's eyes.

One after the other, the others started coming to her room to ask how
she was.  As if she were sick.  They came and sat on the bed and on the
floor, they leant against the walls till the room was filled with
voices. "I would have spit back at her' .  .  .. "I would've slapped
her' .  .. "Why didn't she spit at Matthys?" .  .  .. "Don't look so
upset, Araminta. "How come the demonstrators knew we were staying at
this hotel?"

She stood in the door leading to the bathroom and covered her ears with
her hands, but the voices wouldn't go away. "They get paid to
demonstrate' .  .  .. "Did any of the spit get into your mouth?" .  .  .
"Where is there an ashtray?. "Did she give you a fright?" .  .  .
"Where's jakob?" Suddenly Retief Human cried out. "Calm down, everyone!
Don't you realize that we have earned every drop of that woman's
contempt?  Every drop!"

For a moment it was dead quiet.  Her hands dropped to her sides. Matthys
Okennedy came up from the floor like a lion that had detected a movement
too close to its lair.

"What did you say?"

"You heard."

"You fuckin' traitor."

"Leave it, guys!" Someone was trying desperately to calm them down.

But Retief and Matthys were on their feet.. "That woman," Retief said
calmly, 'spat on behalf of the millions of oppressed people in our
country.  People who are deprived of all political rights."

"Bullshit!  They have more rights than many whites in South Africa!  The
bloody workers' unions rule the country and when they don't get their
way, they strike and loot and destroy, and the government just keeps on
giving in.

And you say they have no rights?"

"Hear, hear!"

She did not want to listen.  She wanted to flee from the room, but she
could not get to the door and her shoes were missing.  One after the
other they joined in, words collided with words like stones hurled
across the room.  It was no longer a choir that sang together in
harmony, it was a collection of gaping mouths emitting distorted sounds.

"People, please!" someone urged.. "We have the most complex society in
the whole world and no fighting is going to solve any of our problems.
Only reform and negotiation."

"Like hell!  Only birth-control can do that - one black baby is born
every thirty-seven seconds.  It's the fastestgrowing population in the
world, and the whites are paying for all the fun."

"If you've taken all political power for yourself, you have to pay
whatever the cost."

"Nkost stkelel' 1'-Afrt'ca!  God is on the side of the oppressed!"

"Napoleon said that God is on the side of those who have the strongest
army."

"Yes?  And look what happened to Napoleon."

"You're all talking bull and you don't even know it!"

"My aunt's emigrating to Australia.. "My uncle and his family are there
already.. "No solution will be found for South Afr'ca's problems unless
a redistribution of wealth takes place."

"Don't worry, the blacks are stealing the lot anyway."

"So is the fucking government!"

She went down on her knees and started looking for her shoes.

"Have the police ever dragged your mother from your home in the middle
of the night?  Have the police ever shot at people in white streets?"

"You speak with the tongue of an agitator, you take exceptions and make
them the norm."

"The world expects us, the five million whites, to provide hospitals and
houses and schools and whatever to twenty million blacks."

"You speak with the tongue of the capitalist."

"That's right.  Why else would the blacks be streaming south towards the
wealth of the capitalists, not north to the breeding grounds of the
communists?"

There was a little hole in her head . "Will you please get out of the
way so that I can find my shoes!" No one took any notice.

"They're going back to the land that we stole from them, that's why."

"We didn't steal land from anyone!"

"Are you saying that it's fair that only thirteen percent of our
territory has been granted to all the millions of black people?"

"Yes.  For what the clever dicks never add, is that something like
seventy percent of our land is inhospitable!. "And that gives you
racists one more loophole to jump through, but one day there won't be
any loopholes left."

"I see in the papers that the blacks in London are also frustrated by
the way things are going; they claim it's mostly the fault of the
police.  It's the same as back home.. "Will you stop it!" One of the
girls started to cry.

"Back home the main problem is the police with their Caspirs and guns."
"Shooting at children running away."

"I've told you not to turn every goddamn exception into the norm!  Every
time there's trouble, the bloody agitators send the children up front to
start fires and throw stones; that's what they do!"

"Have you ever seen a child carrying a dead child?"

She pushed her way to the door and fled.  Without her shoes.

Even the desolation of a desert could not be more frightening than
walking barefoot in a city, thousands of kilometres from home.  The
worry of not knowing where you are, or where you're going.  The fear of
the demonstrators, of running into the woman with the red dress ...

Neverending streams of cars, buses, taxis, people.  No one knows you're
fleeing.

Only you do.  Somehow you've been sentenced without your knowing what
your punishment will be.  Foolishly you had thought you could simply go
on living, and reach happiness eventually.  Now suddenly you know it's a
dream.

You're white.  You were born in the wrong place.  Somebody once said,
"Life is seven storeys high.  At the top dwell the godly and the good;
it's far off and very high up.

Down at the lowest level live the perverts and everything that's evil.
One step higher is the abode of politics and lies." That afternoon in
London she added: If you live in South Africa, you can try as hard as
you can to climb up but you don't get any higher; they grab you and pull
you back to the place of the lies, no matter where you are.

No matter that you've seen the most beautiful diamond deep inside a dark
place and felt a speck of I'ght within yourself for a moment.

When it got dark, she asked a stranger the way back to the hotel.

And nothing Helmut Groenewald did that night could bring out the old
sparkle in the choir.  Something was gone.

The following day she crept into the cocoon of the orange-tailed SAA
Boeing to be taken home: not across Africa, but round the continent.
Africa did not want its airspace polluted by you.

When they arrived at jan Smuts Airport the next morning, it was jakob
who took over again while they taxied on the tarmac.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have 'just landed outside the city of gold,
Johannesburg.  Bear it in mind that a hundred years ago there was not a
single street or building or stockmarket here, and no Soweto either.  It
was open veld with a few head of cattle here and there.  Think of the
words of one of our earlier statesmen, Reitz.  Remember he said it would
be better if we rid ourselves of this place before it destroyed the
noble character of the Afrikaner, the Boer.  Reitz, ladies and
gentlemen, was not a man of vision, he did not foresee that it would be
this murky cloud of smoke that would cause the damage in the end.

Smoke from the millions of shacks where poor people dwell; poisoned
smoke from the chimneys of the thousands of factories and power stations
and all sorts of places where poor people work.  Think of all the
thousands that have to riot and plunder and murder in this terrible
state of pollution and allow me to say: Welcome home!" No one laughed.

Most of the students changed flights to go own to Cape Town.  She flew
to George where her parents were waiting for her.  From there it was a
little more than an hour's drive before it was 'welcome home' for her.

She ate, she slept, she talked.  Everyone said she was looking well.  No
one noticed the spit on her face.  Not even Uncle joop.

The night before she had to be back at university, she took her father a
cup of tea in his study.  On purpose.

"There was a demonstration against us in London, Father." She made it
sound as if it was nothing in particular.

"Was there?"

"Yes.  A black woman with eyes full of hatred spat at one of the girls,
in her face."

"That was a bit drastic, wasn't it?"

"I thought so too."

"Was it a well-organized demonstration?"

"It seemed so."

"What was the purpose of the demonstration?"

"It was about telling racist pigs to go home and free Mandela."

"Why is it always Mandela only?  What about Sisulu and all the other
political prisoners?"

"The girl said afterwards she was sorry she didn't spit back."

"That would have been typical of what we do in this country.  We do not
ask people why they're spitting, we spit back or put them in prison."

"But that girl didn't do anything, Father!  At least she would have felt
better if she had retaliated."

"Was it you the woman spat at, Araminta?"

Her father wasn't stupid.. "What makes you think that?"

"It just crossed my mind .  .

"I suppose in a way she spat at us all." But the words sounded false.

THE ADDRESS ON THE envelope is that of a Mr. Samuel Sundoo in
Woodstock, Cape Town.  It sounds like a backstreet place.  Had it not
come from joop Lourens's hand, she doubted whether she would have had
the courage to go through with it.

All day long, on the Sunday, she has to stop herself from getting into
her car and driving to Cape Town.  If she did, she would have to stay
the night somewhere, and hotels cost money!

Samuel Sundoo.  It has a strange ring to it.  Indian, perhaps.  If he is
Indian, he should at least know something about diamonds.  For
centuries, the West went seeking all its diamonds in India: overland on
foot, on camels.  After the discovery of the sea route round Africa,
they were taken to the West in little canvas bags on the sailing ships.
Diamonds for the adornment of the rich and the royal.

When jan van Riebeeck was sent to the Cape in 1652 to establish a
way-station on the sea route between West and East, he was given a
handful of Indian diamonds to take with him.  He had to show them to the
indigenous Kolkoi and ask them if they knew what they were.  No, they
didn't.  When he showed them pieces of copper and gold, however, the
answer was always yes, yes ...

The mountain is a hazy blue, almost as if someone had painted it too
light and featureless against the sky.

She takes the diamonds from the violet's leaves, rinses them under the
tap and gently dries them on a towel.

A rather worried Mrs. Shirley phoned on Friday afternoon to say that she
and her husband had only realized afterwards that they might have made a
mistake in involving her with the diamonds.  If she were to get into
trouble, they would be responsible.  What trouble?  All sorts of
trouble.  Can she really trust the person?  Of course.

She didn't tell them about Samuel Sundoo.  joop Lourens would not allow
her to get into trouble.

She keeps the diamonds in the towel and puts them on the table by the
window.  When they catch the sun, the light in them is lots of tiny
sparks of colour ...

One carat is the weight of one seed of a carob tree.  It says so in the
book.  When the old traders didn't have any carob seeds, they used
grains of barley as weight.  Samuel Sundoo will not be using grains of
barley, though.

Really big diamonds are very scarce and are always found in the shelter
of a rock.  It makes sense: without shelter you can be trampled into the
ground no matter how tough you are.  And only 10 percent of all the
diamonds that are being taken from the earth can truly be called
precious stones.  The rest are full of faults and are set in cheaper
rings, or used in tools such as grindingwheels and lathes.

What if Samuel Sundoo says all six diamonds are good for industrial use
only?  Say he offers her something like R5 000 for them?  Then she takes
them back to the Shirleys and that is the end of it.

"Don't worry," she tells them aloud.. "I will not let them make tools of
you." The Bible says stones can hear.

She has found out more about the Star of Africa too.

They say it's the biggest cut diamond in the world and of the purest,
palest blue.  The mother-stone weighed more than 3,000 carats, and was
found in the shelter of a rock outside Pretoria in 1905.  Three thousand
grains of barley.

She went to the Greek on the corner, bought a packet of barley and
counted out three thousand grains.  It took her nearly the whole of
Saturday afternoon.  When she was finished, it was only half a cupful,
which did not seem quite right.

Perhaps barley had bigger grains in the olden days.

The old Transvaal government bought the diamond for something like R300
000 and presented it to King Edward VII of Great Britain for his
sixty-sixth birthday.  One lot of Boers hated the British; the others
said. "We must forgive and forget, and give them our most beautiful
diamond.  What's the use of standing up against an empire as strong as
that?  We've tried it to our doom and sorrow."

The king had had the diamond cut and polished into more than a hundred
pieces.  The largest, 530 carats, was set into the Sceptre of Kingly
Power and justice; the second largest, "Lesser Star of Africa' of
317 grains, was set in the king's crown.

R300 000 for 3,106 carats in 1907.  Seventy years later, a stone of 354
carats was found in the same mine and sold for RIO million.  It didn't
make sense.

And it's not right: a stone lives for millions of years, man only
seventy, more or less ...

She irons a dress to put on and goes to church, taking the diamonds with
her.

Bernard Holtzman and his wife sit two pews in front of her.  Elvin Carr
will not be in church, he's Methodist.

Christel and her husband are Apostolics.  Lizzie, Carr & Holtzman's
second typist-cum-secretary, will not be here either, she's coloured and
Catholic ...  Why does Lizzie sometimes stay behind at the office when
Elvin has to work late?  Don't jump to conclusions, Elvin is old enough
to be Lizzle's father ...

Klaas Muller is in the deacon's pew.  Klaas used to be a schoolteacher,
but left the profession to start his own paint shop in town.  When she
moved to George, he was one of the first people to knock on her door,
asking if she was new in town. Yes.  Does she belong to the Dutch
Reformed Church?  Yes.  May he come in for a moment?  He's the deacon of
the ward, and will be making the monthly collections.  Sure.  He wanted
to know where she worked.

Where she came from.  What her father did for a living.  If she was
engaged to be married or anything?  No.  Neither was he.

The following evening, he didn't come collecting, he came visiting.  The
next evening, he came a little earlier.

And he kept on coming.  She told herself it didn't mean a thing, he was
just coming to chat.  Mostly nonsense.  But at least he could kill a
spider or replace a washer in a tap for her.

Then suddenly, he didn't only want to chat any more, he insisted that
she come and sit on the bed with him, and after that she never opened
the door to him again.

Ralph Linde is also in church.  With his new wife.  His second.  An
irritating, nagging insurance agent, to whom she has already explained a
dozen times that she's not interested in taking out any insurance and
that her reasons are personal.

Joris Oosthuizen is officiating and stands in the pulpit reading from
the Epistle of James.  joris's father and her father were at university
together.  She suspects that her father contacted Joris when she came to
George and told him about her.  Perhaps asked him to keep an eye on her.

Because joris came to call on her even before Klaas Muller did.  Prying,
cautious.

"Don't you think you should have persevered with your studies?"

"No."

"Don't you think teaching would have been a much safer career than
selling property?"

"Not for me." She knew he meant well.

"Don't you think you might have acted a little too hastily?  We all go
through periods of doubt, it's part of life.  After a time one sees
clearlv again."

"I do see clearly."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

They say that if you put a diamond in the hottest of fires, a very
bright light shoots up and then it vanishes without leaving a trace of
ash behind ...  How long do one's traces remain behind you after you
have gone?  Your hair, your nails...

...  ve that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city ...  and
buy and sell, and get gain   She suddenly sits up and pays attention to
what joris is reading.  "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the
morrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapour, that appeareth for
a little time, and then vanisheth away.  For that ye ought to say, If
the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that .  .  ."R

Why is he reading that?

"Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow."

joop Lourens will not send her into trouble!  Not knowingly.

E' ht IT IS KIND OF a slum area.  And Samuel Sundoo is an Indian.  She
wants to leave as soon as she can and never come back.

The wooden stairs she had to climb to get to the first floor are old and
worn and as steep as a ladder.  The carpet underneath her feet is so
dirty, weeds could grow on it.

Up in the corners of the room, spiders' webs are sagging down like
little hammocks under years of gathering dust.

The only thing that does not fit is Samuel Sundoo, sitting across from
her at a most untidy table.  There is no dust on him.  The suit he's
wearing is certainly of the best, and so is his shirt and tie.  His head
gives the impression of being square; perhaps it's the way he combs back
his smooth, black hair from his wide forehead.  Thin lips, stern mouth,
very white teeth.  His eyes say: I belong to East and West - I know many
secrets.  I am who I am, I need nothing of you.

From the moment she walked in, he was openly hostile, as if to make sure
that she will not feel welcome.

She arrived shortly after twelve.  The address on the envelope was that
of a simple little fruit and vegetable shop.  When she asked to see Mr
Samuel Sundoo, a plump woman wearing a yellow saree appeared from the
back like a watchdog, and stared at her coldly.  She asked again to see
Mr. Sundoo.  The woman said she was at the wrong address.  It left her
no choice; she told the woman she had a letter for Mr. Sundoo from joop
Lourens.  The woman took the letter and disappeared out the back again.

When she returned, she took her to a door next to the shop, right on the
street, and motioned to her without a word to climb the stairs.

Samuel Sundoo was sitting behind the table with the letter open in his
hand.  From his gesture, she gathered that she was to take the chair on
the other side of the table.

"Identity document?"

"I beg your pardon?" It's about the first word he has spoken.

"I want to see your identity document."

"Sure." She takes it from her bag and hands it across the table to him.
Will he ask for the diamonds, or should she hand them over as well?

"Did you come alone?"

"Yes.. "Next time you phone and make an appointment.. "There won't be a
next time.  I'm sorry for being a bother - it's a rather long story."

"Why are you so nervous?"

"I've never been in a situation like this before.  I'm not sure what to
expect."

"Where are the articles?"

She takes them from her pocket, unwraps them from the tissue and hands
them over.  It feels like giving away a cat or a dog you should have
kept ...

He switches on the lamp on the table and takes a small magnifying glass
in a black frame from the inside pocket of his jacket.  With a pair of
long tweezers he picks the diamonds up one after the other, holds them
to the light and looks at them through the magnifying glass.  When he is
finished, he places them in a little brown envelope, gets up and leaves
through the door behind him without a word.

She remains where she is.  She waits.

She hardly moves.  It's worse than waiting your turn at the dentist. The
incessant noise of the traffic down below makes it impossible to hear if
he's in the room on the other side of the door or what he's doing.  She
thinks to herself, what if he does not come back?  They say Indians can
be very sly.

It must be more than ten minutes since he went.

What if he does not come back?  What is she to tell the Shirleys?  Why
didn't she ask him if they were worth anything while he was examining
them under the magnifying glass?  How long should she wait before
accepting that she has been tricked?

Someone is coming up the stairs from the street.  Her heart starts
beating faster - the door at the bottom was not locked, nobody knows
where she is, they can murder her right here ...

It's Samuel Sundoo.  Carrying a yellow plastic shopping bag.. "The
stones are of reasonable quality." It's all he says before he gives her
the bag.

In the bag is another bag, a smaller one.

When she gets to her car, she is shaking so much she can't get the key
into the lock of the door.  It's not the door key, it's the key of the
petrol tank.  Relax, she tells herself, it's over.  But her body will
not listen.

She does not dare open the bag when she is in the car; all kinds of
loafers are loitering around.  She must get away and find a safer place.

She has difficulty getting into the traffic, she has difficulty staying
in the right lane.  There are too many cars and trucks simply stopping
where they want to!

What if it's only paper he has put in the bag?  Or a loaf of bread?  She
puts out her hand to feel ...  it's not bread.

It feels like banknotes.

Never again must anyone come and put six diamonds on her desk.  Never.
Not even a single diamond.

There's nowhere she can get out of the line of traffic to find a safe
place to stop.  The first chance comes at the turn-off to the Strand,
half an hour later, and in Beach Road she finds a place at last.

The tide is out, the beach is a wide stretch of sand.  For a moment she
just sits back and becomes a student again, for this is where they
always come the swimming and holding beach parties.  Everything is the
same: the sun, the sea, the sand.  Old people with bandy legs, walking
along the water's edge and leaving long trails of footprints ...  See
what's in the bag.  Not yet ...  Some walk fast and upright as if
denying old age with a show of gusto.  Small children play around their
mothers who are lying in the sun, tanning their winter-white bodies ...

Suppose it's pieces of paper cut to the size of banknotes he's put in
the bag?

The old Portuguese seafarers, trying to find the tip of Africa, had
trouble getting any crew for their ships, because it was firmly believed
that the earth came to an end here in a boiling sea.  If you got too
close, the sun would burn you black, for that is why all the people of
Africa were lack ...

Look what's in the bag!

It is packs of R20 notes: R200 to a pack - R20000 altogether.

Just before sunset, she's back home.  And exhausted.  Since the morning
she has been on the road for almost ten hours.

She dials the Shirleys' number as she promised she would.  Mrs. Shirley
answers.

"Yes, for R20000.. "How are we ever going to thank you, Miss Rossouw?"
"If you're still interested in buying the house, you can come and see me
at the office tomorrow morning.. "We'll be there.  Thank you very much."

"Not at all." In her heart she adds: just don't ever ask me to do this
again.

Before she opens the curtains, she lifts the frill round the legs of the
arm chair and puts the money under the chair so that the mountain will
not see it.

When she opens the curtains, every grey rock-face stands out in the last
light of the sun.  The mountain is as massive and noble as ever.

I did not steal it, she says.  I swear I did not.

She goes and lies down on the bed, watching the darkness setting in and
the first flickering star come out high above the mountain.  Something
is gone.  It's the diamonds.  The bag with the money has a different
kind of presence, but she is aware of that too.  The whole time.  If the
Shirleys buy the house, it will add another feather to her wings ...

More and more stars are coming out, shining like little diamonds in the
sky.  There must be diamonds in the sky, they have found some in
meteorites ...

How much longer would it take?  How much farther must she go?

Is it the money under the chair that's making her so restless?  For two
long years she has been telling herself to be patient: it's a river
she's crossing step by step; if she keeps on going steadily she will
eventually get to the other side.

University was a different kind of stream.  One that pulled you in
relentlessly and carried you along graffiticovered banks you had to
learn by heart, stuff into your mouth, smear over your eyes, while you
slowly realized you were living in two different worlds.

The first was eating and sleeping and attending classes; going to the
beach, having fun.  The second was called South Africa.  Daily sneers
with razor-sharp teeth from posters tied to lampposts in the main
streets.  Or framed outside the cafs. "MORE SANCTIONS DEMANDED AGAINST
SOUTH AFRICA." Cars drove past without a care.. "MORE ARRESTS." Streets
full of people: white, brown and black walked past the posters,
unconcerned.. "ARSENAL FOUND

IN SOUTH CAPE." Shop-windows displaying the most beautiful things; you
promise yourself you'll have lots of money one day.. "RIOTS." Victoria
Street was a lush green tunnel of old plane trees - you could have sworn
they were oaks at first.

4  NATIONAL FLAGS BURNT IN STUDENT VIOLENCE."

Cafs full of students and people eating and drinking.

4 MORE SAA LANDING RIGHTS SUSPENDED." Tourist with thick-soled shoes
took pictures with long-nosed cameras.

SCHOOL BOYCOTT SPREADING IN BLACK TOWNSHIPS."

It felt as if lightning was waiting to strike ...

BEAT UP A BLOODY BOER TODAY!" It was written in big black spray-paint
letters on a wall near one of the men's halls one Sunday morning.  That
same day, one of the Sunday papers carried the headline. "Another 140
held near Crossroads - babies parted from mothers."

The tunnel of trees started to turn into skeletons of bare brown
branches.  The winter grew colder and wetter.

Spring arrived and brought back the green, and in the summer, her first
year mercifully came to an end.

The day after she arrived home for the Christmas holidays, her year's
results were in the post and her father called her to his study.

"How is it that you have such a bad report, for the second time this
year?"

"I'm sorry, Father."

"Sorry about what?"

"Because I'm not the way you want me to be." She said the first thing
that came into her head.  He would not under stand.

"How do I want you to be?"

"Like Mother and Marian.  Mother agrees to everything you say, Marian
agrees to everything Mother says.  She never does anything wrong, it's
always me that causes the trouble."

"Surely, you can't still be having trouble adjusting to university?"

"I'm having trouble adjusting to life, Father."

"We all go through times of incertitude.  The secret is not to get stuck
in the process of adjusting and sorting things out, but to think about
the future and work at it."

"What future, Father?  According to you and most others, there is no
future for us.  Not in this country.  Not if you're white.  Not if
you're an Afrikaner." She wanted to pull him from the pulpit and see him
without his surplice just for once!

"I've never said there is no future for us.  There will be a future for
us if we are prepared to make sacrifices and adjustments.  If we're
prepared to reform and stand together in the struggle to achieve
"Justice for everyone in this country."

"How do you think five fishes and two loaves of bread are going to be
shared between twenty-six million hungry mouths, Father?"

4A fatalistic attitude, Araminta; it suggests an inherent laziness to
get up and fight for what is just."

"Maybe we should simply pack up and leave, Father.

For how is justice to be done?  We are less than three million white
Afrikaners, about as many coloured Afrikangl'sh people, something like
one ers.  Two million En i million Indians, six million Zulus, three
million Xhosas, three million Northern Sothos, two million Southern
Sothos, one and a half million Tswanas - at least I got full marks on
this - one million Swazis plus a horde of smaller nations and immigrants
- and everyone's fighting for a piece of the fish.  Or a whole fish.  Or
all the fishes!  And you say we must stand up and fight for justice?
Whose justice?"

"I'm worried about you."

"When does the struggle come to an end?  When can one start living
without having to feel guilty because you want to be happy?  When does
one get to life, Father?"

"Why are you so defiant, child?"

"Because I'm sick of being confused!  You know what I k did?  I went to
Cape Town with a friend one night to attend an illegal meeting where we
were incited to all sorts of actions and methods of civil disobedience,
so that we could help to make this country ungovernable.  They said the
rulers are living like fat cats while the poor are getting poorer.  On a
big white board the words "KILL GOD AND SET MAN FREE" were written in
big red letters.  They spread out the national flag on the floor and
everyone had to walk over the flag while singing a freedom song.  I
didn't know the words of the song, and I felt as little for the flag I
had to trample on as for the whole commotion.

It was nothing but more walls made of words which I couldn't see
behind!"

"Why did you attend the meeting then?"

"To prove myself - to struggle.  Everybody's struggling for some cause
or other.  Every day we're being told on campus that the time has come
for every student to make a stand.  I don't know what stand to make.  It
feels to me that if I'm to make a stand, I'll end up like a stake fixed
in one place - I'll never be able to walk any farther again."

"Whether you like it or not, one has to make a stand sooner or later,
otherwise the wind comes and blows you all over the place."

"Lucius Muller, that sings with me in the choir, also attended the
meeting.  I always thought we were friends, but suddenly he was speaking
English and snubbing me.

When it was said that the Afrikaner and his language must be phased out
as quickly as possible, he cheered the loudest.  He could just as well
have slapped me on the face.. "Over-sensitivity, daughter, often arises
from fear or unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances.  Changing
people's ideas is what is needed in this country to create a better
South Africa for us all.  I was delighted to hear that your rector has
proposed open universities.  At least we can now begin to address that
black mark against us.  We must pray unceasingly, however, that the
government will come to its senses before it's too late."

"Perhaps one should get as much out of life as possible, before "too
late" comes, Father."

"Perhaps you should go to the beach less often, next year, attend fewer
dances on Saturday nights and pay more attention to your studies!"

"Marian is a tell-tale."

"Marian is as worried about you as your mother and I are.  She's worried
because she won't be there next year to keep an eye on you."

"You know something?"

"What?"

"I went to another meeting as well." She made another attempt to shock
him.. "On a farm outside Stellenbosch.

This time the national flag was draped on the wall.  The meeting was
opened by a reading from the Bible - about how God made a place for
David on the earth, or something.  Another student rolled out a large
map of Africa the whole map was coloured in black except for a little
white spot in the south.  The main speaker of the evening said our
forefathers had toiled and died for this, our only place on the earth.
That the time has come when we must fight for it again.  After that we
had to sing the national anthem.  All four verses.  I only knew the
first one.  When they finished singing, someone shouted: "We will not
lie down and be slaughtered!" Now I keep on seeing us lying with our
throats cut!. "I'm going to make an appointment for you with Uncle
Ernest.. "I don't want to go to him.. "He's a good psychologist; he's my
brother, he'll understand."

I'm not going to him!  I want to drop my studies; I don't want to go
back to university!  Please, Father, let me go and work!"

"I don't think you're capable of making decisions of that kind at this
time.  One does not simply give up at the end of one's first year.  The
answer is no."

She had to go back.

RIGHT-WING AFRIKANERS DEMAND HOMELAND'

PROBE INTO POLICE BRUTALITIES'

MORE PEOPLE ARE LEAVING SOUTH AFRICA)

They called her down to meet a visitor one afternoon.

When she got to the lobby, she found Wilhelm waiting for her.  A
brand-new Wilhelm, back from Europe after two years.  His hair was done
in a long pony-tail, his coat was of the softest yellow leather; a long,
red, tasselled scarf hung round his neck, almost to his knees.  She
reached out to him as if to fresh hope.

"Were they ever nasty to you over there because you are a South
African?" she asked him over dinner that evening.

"Not once.. "And because of the fact that you're an Afrikaner?"
"Afrikaner?  You're talking about something from the archives, my dear
Araminta.  Get up to date!  The oxen have been put out to grass, the
wagons are rotting in museums!"

"I'm serious."

"My having been an Afrikaner - God knows what it really means - is
something I've renounced long ago." There was contempt in his voice when
he said it.

"How can you forswear what you are?"

"You are reborn.  You open your eyes to a new world, you join the
struggle and start living!"

"What struggle?"

"Any one, as long as it's against P.  W.  Botha and the fascist
apartheid government of this country, ma chirie!

We, the new generation, will make up for what has been done to the black
people of this country."

"What wrong did you and I do to the black people?"

"We are the children of the culprits.  Children of Malan and Verwoerd.
But we have the will I and the power to make it right again. Langenhoven
said, each generation must bury a mistake.  Or something to that effect.
We will stand by the might of the majority, we'll wipe apartheid.
THERE WAS A GIRL by the name of Paula in the same hall of residence.
Paula was a drama student, and she used to read palms for R2. Sometimes,
especially at weekends, the girls had to put their names on a
waiting-list outside her door.

Before long, the hall committee decided fortune-telling was not allowed
and spoke to Paula about it.  She took no notice.  Next, the members of
the hall prayer group spoke to her.  She took no notice of them either.
So then it was the duty of the house-mother to call her in, and this
time she was threatened with some law or other against fortune-telling.

just in case this was not bluff, Paula went and picked up acorns, which
she then sold at R2 each, reading the palms for nothing.  There were
even rumours that she paid all her class fees from the money she made by
selling acorns.

Shortly after the choir came back from abroad, and about a week after
the start of the last semester of her third year, she went to see Paula
for the first and only time.

It was an ordinary room, nothing witchy or anything.

Most outstanding perhaps was Paula's very wide and colourful dress and
her strikingly happy eyes.

She bought an acorn and laid her hands on the table as Paula showed her.
Paula looked at her hands, she frowned, she looked, she frowned ...

"What are you seeing?" She was getting a bit worried.

"I'm afraid I don't quite know what I'm seeing," Paula admitted.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think you've come here to find out what most of the girls
usually come for: does he like me or not; am I going to get married and
have children, will I have lots of money one day ...

"Am I not going to get married and have children?"

"Yes.  Eventually."

"But?" She was now very worried.

"There are good, strong lines in your hands, Araminta, but there are
also lines that I have never seen in a hand before."

"Bad lines?"

"Not necessarily."

"You're not lying to me, are you?"

"I don't know.  I honestly don't know.  Maybe you should tell me why
you've come here; perhaps I can try and puzzle it out."

"I came here hoping to feel better.  Everything is so complicated, and
I'm so terribly confused!"

"Confused about what?"

"When I came to university, I thought I would at least learn where I was
going and why.  Now I'm almost at the end of my third year and I'm still
going nowhere in particular.  Apparently no one in this country is,
except that we're all heading for chaos.  Especially the white people.
We, the white Afrikaners, even more so, because Africa does not want us,
the world does not want us She didn't care if she sounded melodramatic.
"Personally it feels to me that I have no right to belong anywhere!"
"You certainly are confused," Paula said.. "Have you got a pack of
playing cards?. "I don't want to play cards!" she snapped.. "Don't You
understand?  I only want to be an ordinary human being, I don't want to
feel guilty because I'm alive!  There are times when I think I'm going
out of my mind; perhaps there's a line on your hand that says if you
are?"

"There is.  But it not in yours, I promise you.  As you've just said,
many people are confused today.  Have you got a pack of playing cards?"

"No.  But the girl in the room next to me has.  Why?. "Go borrow the
eight of hearts from her.  Put it between your pillow and the pillowcase
and sleep on it for eight consecutive nights.  Before you fall asleep,
wish for a clear and tranquil mind and you will find it.  Don't skip a
night."

She would have put a rock in her pillow.  Silly or not.

After the first night, she would have sworn that she was feeling better.
Stronger, less angry at her 'fate'.

The second day.

TEAR-GAS FIRED AT CROWDY

On the third night she had the most terrible dream about floods.
Everything was threatened by brown, muddy water.

NDITION'

STONE THROWING: MOTORIST IN SERIOUS CO

The fourth night.

DOWNPOUR: 200 LEFT HOMELESS'

The fifth night.  She had to work out a history question. "A crl'tz'cal
evaluation of American involvement z'n Vietnam sz'nce 1954." She got
halfway with it and then tore it up.

œ CONGRESS: DOES THE AFRIKANER HAVE HIS BACK

AGAINST A WALL?"

She slept little on the sixth night.

And the seventh night.

USA CALLS BACK LEGATE'

She had another question to work out. "The IsraeliArabz'c conflict from
1948 to 1973 and the factors enabling Israel to defeat the Arabl'c
states in four consecutive wars.  Or something like that.  She couldn't
care less.

4 IS TIME RUNNING OUT FOR SOUTH AFRICA?"

"Two heavily armed ANC terrorists arrested during police raid," she
heard over the radio.. "Bomb exploded this afternoon at two o'clock ...
Black South Africans plead for stronger economic sanctions against South
Africa ...

Minister in fraud scandal ...  Large-scale corruption in Black
Management Committees is being investigated ...

The eighth night.  The card had made no difference.  It was a childish
thing to do anyway.

She got up and went to the bathroom to wash her hair.

While she stood over the bath, her hair foaming with shampoo, the
strangest feeling of outrage started to gather in her.  One moment it
was like hitting a wall of anger, the next moment the wall was gone. She
started crying, and it was awful to cry with your head down because
everything runs back up your nose.  She rinsed her hair, put a towel
round and sat down on the edge of the bath.  She had the most curious
feeling that it was rowing lighter around her.

I am Araminta Rossouw, she suddenly cried out inside herself I am me.
I'm sitting on the edge of a bath in a woman's residence somewhere on
the foot of Africa while the earth is silently spinning through the air
with me and everything else that's on it.  If I want to live, I will
have to emerge m t c as es o t e sins o peop e ong ea , an go and find a
place for myself somewhere else.

She had said it.  It was the most wonderful, unbelievable moment of
liberation; the moment when at last she knew exactly what she had to do.

She went back to her room and started drying her hair.

Warily.  She was afraid the light would go away.  She was suddenly no
longer afraid of her eyes in the mirror ...  she was not in t     I 1 he
mirror now; she was inside her body, safe as in a house while a storm
was blowing up outside.  She had crossed the river of university - and
somehow she would deal with her father and mother and Marian.  She would
have to work in order to earn money.  She was not afraid: if it meant a
new river, she would take it on boldly, for on the other side she would
be born anew.

She would find herself another fatherland.

She turned away from the mirror and started making her bed.  When she
took the card from the pillow, she saw that it was the eight of
diamonds, not the eight of hearts as Paula had said.  In her haste and
anxiety she must have taken the wrong card that night.

It was of no importance.

She didn't go to her class.  She never went back to classes again.  She
started packing her things.

Late that afternoon, Paula came to see her, saying rather sheepishly
that she had suddenly remembered that it had to be the eight of diamonds
and not the eight of hearts that must be put in the pillowslip.

A MONTH AFTER SHE sold the house to the Shirleys, Bernard Holtzman
came into her office one Monday morning and closed the door behind him.
He doesn't normally do that.  And he's not at ease, which is also
unusual.

"I warn you, Bernard, if Elvin has sent you to tell me that Carr &
Holtzman don't want me any longer, I'll go and work for the opposition."
She says it outright, but with some apprehension.  Three estate agents
in the town had had to find other employment in the previous month.  She
had sold one back-street plot, Bernard one house, Elvin not a single
brick.

And Bernard's smile is not real either.. "You know, Araminta," he says,
'you've been with us for something like two years now and I still don't
quite get you.. "Why should you be concerned about that?. "It's normal
for people to form opinions about each other, isn't it?  Especially
people working together.  But the moment I think I've got you worked
out, you go and surprise me again."

Why is he speaking in a whisper?. "How have I surprised you this time?"

"Is it true that you have sold six uncut diamonds for the Shirleys?"

It's a stone hitting her on the back.  The Shirleys have betrayed her!
Is it possible?  For a moment she can't say a word.. "Where on earth did
you hear such a thing?"

"Relax; don't look so alarmed, you can trust me.  The Shirleys have
become very good friends of Elvin's and they told him.  Confidentially,
of course.  They wanted him to know how much they owed you.  Personally
I think you've done them an enormous favour.  From the little I know
about you, I suspect that you would not have taken the chance if you had
not been sure of your own safety."

"I have nothing to say to you, or to Elvin, or to the Shirleys!"

"Easy now!  Trust me.  There's a reason why Elvin told me."

"don't want to hear it." She wants to reach out and cover his mouth with
her hands.

"Araminta," he says, imploringly, 'my only brother, Dirk - you've met
him - he's co-owner of the garage where you bought your car.  jan du
Tolt is his partner.  It took everything they had between them to buy
that garage a couple of years ago; today they're ruined.  People are not
paying what they owe and the country's in a poor economic state because
of the political troubles.  So last year, Dirk went and did a stupid
thing: he bought R20000 worth of uncut diamonds in the hope of making
some money to bail them out and .  .

"I don't want to hear this."

"Please listen.  They're in a deep financial mess.  He had no trouble
getting hold of the diamonds, but he can't find a buyer for them.  He's
been to Johannesburg and Durban and even Graaff-Reinet, to see a couple
of so-called buyers, but not one of them would bite.  They think he's a
police

1   1 trap."

"So you heard a rumour that I had sold diamonds for the Shirleys and now
you see me as your brother's deliverer.  Forget it." The Shirleys had no
right to talk about it.

"He'll pay you commission."

"I will not hear a word of what you're saying."

"He'll be happy if he just gets his money back."

"The answer is no.  And please, you'll have to excuse me; I have an
appointment for ten o'clock with a client that wants to have a look at
Mr. Blom's block of flats."

"I know." He gets up.. "Perhaps we can have another talk later on - when
you're not in such a hurry.  And by the way, Wynand Blom is himself in
bad financial shape.

He bought too much property on the strength of rumours of an oil find in
the sea in this area.  I'm sure, if he sees a cheque-book, he'll bring
his price down quite a bit."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"We'll talk later, then?"

She does not answer him.  When he's gone out, she remains at her desk,
with a sick feeling in her stomach.

Every step I take, she says to herself, I go as inconspicuously and
carefully as I can, and then land myself in trouble because of a favour
to others!

"Somebody's looking pretty despondent this morning!"

When she looks up, Ralph Linde, the pressing insurance agent, is
standing in the door.. "I was just wondering if this Monday could get
any bluer.  Then it did." Ralph Linde always gives the impression that
he's come to save you from any possible disaster.

"Is your car insured, Araminta?" he asks as he pulls out a chair.

"No." She had not expected it of the Shirleys.

"How are you going to do your work if it gets stolen?"

"It won't get stolen; there's an angel sitting on its roof."

"They'd steal it, angel and all.  Rex Meyer's car was stolen from his
yard on Saturday night and that's only a block away from where you are
living, Miss Smart!"

"My car won't be stolen." But in her heart she's suddenly not so sure.
"If you're trying to sell me insurance, you're wasting your time.  And
mine.  I'm just about to go out with a client."

"I can't understand how you can take the risk of not having insurance
these days.  Do you realize that a car gets stolen every ten minutes in
this country?"

"How much will it cost to insure my car for a short period of time?  Per
month.. "I can work something out .  for you from about R200.. "Forget
it.  I don't want to insure my car.. "A hundred and fifty.. "The angel's
cheaper."

The man she takes to see the flats, a Mr. Lotter, has apparently also
heard about Wynand Blom being in trouble and wants the place for about
half the asking price.  She tells him it's less than what Mr. Blom paid.
He says he knows that.  She tells him she does not have the cart to go
to Mr. Blom with his offer.. "What kind of an estate agent are you?" he
asks.. "You're supposed to act in my interest, not Blom's!  If you're
worried because your commission is going to be less, I'll see that you
get something extra under the counter."

She waits until late in the afternoon before she phones Wynand Blom with
the offer.  He says he'd burn the place down rather than give it away to
a jackal for nothing.

Every rand counts.  She carefully calculates every commission in
advance; the commission she would have got for the flats would have been
the biggest she has ever made on any transaction: R10000.  Ten extra
feathers for her wings.  And yet, she is relieved when Wynand Blom turns
down the offer.  Every rand counts, but she does not want money with the
fingerprints of a money-shark like Lotter on it.

When she gets home shortly after five, a tall, attractive man with a big
mustache is waiting at her door.  Dirk Holtzman.

"Mr. Holtzman," she says, coldly. "I wish I knew of a civilized way of
asking you to leave."

"If you did, I wouldn't blame you, Miss Rossouw." He admits it frankly.

"Do me a favour then, and go away.  Please."

"I've got to talk to you.  All I'm asking is five minutes of your time.
I'll go down on my knees for it.. "Five minutes, and the answer is
already no."

She unlocks the safety gate, then the door, and walks in ahead of him.
"Sit down." He hesitates, then chooses the armchair.. "Mr. Holtzman,"
she says, taking the chair at the table, 'you are confronting me with
rumours for which you have no grounds, and I don't like it.  Everything
I have to say, I've said to Bernard this morning."

"I have great sympathy for the way you feel," he says, quietly.. "You
did something dangerous for those people as a favour and they went and
let it out.  s a resu t,  ave now come knocking at your door in my own
hour of need; tomorrow everybody comes running and the day after you
land in trouble.  All I have to offer you is my word of honour to
protect you, and the fact that I can make it worth your while.  Apart
from paying you commission, I can introduce you to Piet Sinksa."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He puts his hand in his pocket
and takes out a little drawstring bag.  The faint sound of crystal
against crystal, of little holy stones ...  Don't lead me into
temptation!  He opens the bag and holds it out to her: two, four, six,
nine they fall into the palm of her hand.  More beautiful, bigger, more
brilliant than the first six.. "I wish you had not come, Mr. Holtzman,"
she says.

"If I can just get back the money that I paid for them, it would help
relieve my situation."

"I wish you weren't doing this to me!" One moment she wanted nothing to
do with them, the next moment she wants to close her hand round them and
hold them tight.

"I'll introduce you to Piet Sinksa as soon as he comes again.  He's a
black; he comes from Kimberley and is the safest contact you could wish
for."

"I'm not interested in meeting him.

"I just thought I could do you a favour in return."

"If I decide to sell the diamonds for you, the commission will be
sufficient.  If I do."

"Miss Rossouw, I'm not here to try and win you over with a sad story.
Those few diamonds can't save my business from the trouble it's in. They
can buy time for me and my partner, and for our families, that's all.
It's almost Christmas."

Two of the diamonds are quite big; one is as clear as a large drop of
dew.. "I will have to think about it first." In her heart she adds: I
just want to keep them with me for a little while.

"As I've said: I'm not here to talk you round, I'm here because I'm
desperate." A hint of anxiety is breaking through his composure.. "Every
year you say to yourself that next year things will be better, next year
there will be an upswing in the economy, and before you know it, the
year has gone by without its having happened.  Things have just got a
bit worse: the country, politics, everything.

If the government reforms too fast, too many people shift to the right;
too slow and they begin to support the left, while the world pushes
harder and harder with sanctions and boycotts, forgetting it's the
blacks that are hit the hardest.  If I close my business tomorrow, there
will be four black families eating porridge for Christmas.  And the
ordinary labourers as well, of course."

"I'm nobody's Mother Christmas, Mr. Holtzman, I've told you I will have
to think about this first."

"If you do decide to help me, how long will it take to sell them?"

"At least a week.  And you'll have to trust me and leave them with me."

"I trust you."

She gets an appointment with Samuel Sundoo for the Friday afternoon at
two o'clock.  She searches her conscience for a sense of guilt and does
not find it.  Only a feeling, that wherever she puts the diamonds, the
light there becomes brighter.

And as with the other six, these want to sleep with the African violet
as well, and in the mornings they lie on the towel in the window talking
to the mountain.

For three whole days they're hers.  Ancient little stones to play with
and make riddles of Where do they come from?  Where will they be going?
For fun, she tries to sort them into four categories: one in the
category of the most beautiful, two in the next category, the two
yellower stones in the third category and the four least brilliant ones
in the last ...  No, it doesn't seem quite right.

She searches until she finds something about Indians and diamonds.  They
say the oldest link between man and diamonds is in India.  That only the
members of the two most primitive castes in the land, the Tora and the
Jhara, used to be allowed to scrape the diamond-bearing gravel from the
river-beds after the rainy season.  All of them men, women and children
- could help with the washing of the gravel and spreading it open on
planks in the sun, but only the women were allowed to sort out the
diamonds.

She likes that.  The women sorted them into the four customary
groupings: without a magnifying glass, by the light of the sun and by
rolling them between forefinger and thumb.

One grouping for each of the four kinds of people on earth, they said.
The scarcest, purest and most beautiful for the holy men that guarded
all knowledge and religion.  The next most beautiful, for the kings, the
noblemen and the warriors.  The yellower or browner stones for the
merchants and tillers of the soil.  And the greatest numbers of stones,
those that were not suitable for gems, went to those in servitude.

Would it be possible to put a diamond back into the earth so that it
could grow purer before you took it out again?  Surely not.  Can a human
being grow purer while living, even if he wasn't born a gem?

After the women had sorted the diamonds, the best ones were taken to the
jewellers.  But a jeweller would never cut a diamond, for they believed
that diamonds were made of holy substance and that it was never to be
wasted.

They would just rub one diamond with another to make it shine a bit
more, because diamonds are already 'radiant beings' in themselves.

For three whole days the nine diamonds are hers.  Eleven AT HALF-PAST
ONE on the Friday afternoon, she parks her car on open ground near
Samuel Sundoo's.  It's raining incessantly.  It's not really a parking
lot, it's a muddy site where a building has been demolished, but it's
the nearest place she can find.

Because it's still early, she wants to stay in the car till it is time
for her appointment, but the windows keep on misting up and she can't
see who's walking past.  It's not a safe area.  Perhaps it's better to
turn up a little early.

"Miss Rossouw," Samuel Sundoo says as she sits down opposite him, 'when
you have an appointment with me for two o'clock, it's two o'clock.  Not
ten minutes to or ten minutes after.  Two o'clock.  It's an absolute
rule of this game." He speaks particularly good Afrikaans.

"I'm sorry." Game?  Last time she promised herself she would never come
here again; now she says it in capital letters.

She gives him the diamonds and he does exactly what he did with the
others - except that he examines the largest of the stones for a second
time under the magnifying glass and puts it in a separate envelope. Like
the last time, he gets up and leaves through the door behind him.  At
least she now knows what to expect and is less nervous.

She had hoped Sundoo would be friendlier.  More willing to talk to her.
There is great knowledge and respect in his hands when he holds the
diamonds.  She wanted to ask him what he sees inside them.

She waits longer than the last time.

And he does not come back by way of the front stairs, but by way of the
door through which he left.  He carries a smallish box on which "Sunrise
Toffees' is written.  He places the box on the table in front of her and
waits.  She gets a feeling that there is something she should do ...

"Miss Rossouw," he says, reprovingly, 'at a certain stage of a
transaction, you are Supposed to ask what I'm prepared to pay for the
articles.  After that you are supposed to count the money in my
presence." He says it like a lecture to a simpleton.

"Joop Lourens said I could trust you." On the spur of the moment, in an
attempt to make conversation, she says the first stupid thing that comes
to her mind and asks. "Mr. Sundoo, is it true that the tigers in the
forests of India are stronger than the lions of Africa?"

"Yes." Not a word more, as if every fool would know it.

"But Africa's diamonds are more beautiful than India's?"

"Yes."

It's no use, he does not want to talk to her.  He's waiting for her to
open the box.  When she lifts the lid, she draws back her hands with a
jerk, for in the box is the most money that she has ever seen together
in her life!. "How much is it?" she asks in alarm.

"Eighty thousand rand.  One of the stones is a particularly good one - a
brilliant white."

Tipelve THERE IS A GOD of heaven and a god of the world.  She has worked
it out for herself.  The God of heaven is like light that permeates
everything, but because the people can't see this God, they've made
themselves another god a mighty god that rules over everything.  And
next to her on the seat of the car is R80000 worth of god in a Sunrise
Toffee box.

"Don't think!" she says aloud.  Keep on going, concentrate on the
traffic and stay in the right lane.

R80000!  It's like a power that has got into the car with her.  A force
that seeps from the box and grows stronger and stronger.  Everything it
touches is freed.  It's deliverance from evil: it's merciful.
Promethean.  It's everywhere within the car, within her, like a joy that
grows until it becomes fearlessness.

Eighty thousand rand.

She wants to put her hand in the box and take out bundles of the notes
and throw them out the window so that others can pick them up and share
her gladness ...

.  Somewhere ahead, there's a road turning off to the airport.  Her
passport is in her bag.  She could buy a ticket to London and exchange
as much of the money as possible for sterling.  There's a man in George
that does it everv year when he goes overseas.  She could buy a ticket
to Switzerland or Austria - not America or Australia - find herself a
place to live in the greenest valley, surrounded by mountains with snow
on their peaks and become a new person.  Liberated.  A residential
permit to live on this earth.  A burden to no one, she has enough money
to see her through till she has learned the new language. She applies
for permanent residence ...  she finds work ...

somewhere, the man she's going to marry and have children with is
waiting for her.  And her children will not be burdened with iniquities
they have not committed, and no one will ever spit in their faces!

It's not stealing.  It's a short cut put in a Sunrise Toffee box for
her.  She will count out Dirk Holtzman's R20 000 and send it to him.  He
said he would be happy if he could just get his money back.  It's not
stealing!  It's a stroke of luck that she has contrived and which she
has the right to profit from too.

Cars are hooting.  At her: the traffic lights have turned green.

Sixty thousand rand if she sends Dirk Holtzman his money.

Twenty minutes later, she passes the turn-off to the airport.

She promises herself she will be coming back sooner than she had ever
planned.  She says it aloud.  She drives past because she does not want
to leave with only the clothes she has on.  That would be deserting.
Because she does not want to leave without saying goodbye to the
mountain.  That would be rude.  Because she does not want the violet to
die without water.  That would be cruel.  The day she leaves, she will
do it in an orderly way.

Bernard said Dirk would be glad just to get his money back.  She has a
little over R7000 in the bank.  Plus outstanding commission amounting
to another R4000.

Plus the money she'll get on the sale of her car and furniture, plus R60000 - that's more than R71 000.  And she had been aiming for R60 000.

She must find somewhere to stop and count out Dirk's R20000.  No, of
course she can't stop with so much money in the car.  She must drive
carefully.  Not too fast.  She must not get home before dark and run the
risk of being seen ...

The freeway takes her through the southern outskirts of the city.  On
one side of the road lies the last of the middle-class residential
areas, closed in, with ugly grey concrete walls.  Then through cold,
industrial areas.  Past the first tin shacks standing out above the sand
dunes and Port jackson bushes: the overflow from an unstoppable flood of
a black squatters' camp.

Don't look.

In the distance, she can see the road crossing the formidable blue
mountains like an upward-slanting scar on the side of the mountain ...
R60000 ...  The very same to keep the first white settlers mountains
that had helped trapped on this peninsula for more than thirty years. On
the seat next to her, in a Sunrise Toffee box, is the power that brought
them here, the sub'ects of the largest, wealthiest trading company in
the world: the Dutch East India Company.  White slaves that had to see
to it that there was fresh produce and whores for the passing ships that
carried the riches from the East.

The sixty directors in Amsterdam freaked out at the cost to the company
of the station at the Cape.  Each guilder it cost meant a hole in the
final profits to be shared out.  For more than fifty years, their ships
had sailed round the Cape, managing without a staging post along the
way; throwing dead seamen overboard had been much cheaper.

However, when Cromwell cut off the King of England's head, threatening
to grab the whole world for England, and the oceans as well, the Dutch
quickly sent jan van Riebeeck to the Cape to put up a fort and a
hospital.

Year after year the ships brought the same complaint from the directors
of the company. "Why isn't the Cape self-supporting and a profit to the
company yet?"

Because of the drought, my lords.  Or because the winter storms have
washed away our gardens.  Because lions broke into the company's
enclosures and killed the cattle; tigers took the sheep, wild cats
devoured every duck and chicken ...

Dirk Holtzman said it would help him if he just got his money back ...

Because Harry, the Koikoi interpreter, had disappeared with the
company's cattle while the Commander was reading the sermon on Sunday,
as the company had decreed he should; for in order to save money, they
had decided not to send a minister to the Cape.

Eighty thousand rand.

Where does coincidence begin, where does it end?  What is in your blood,
what do you pick up along the way?  After ten years, when jan van
Riebeeck left, only three of the original settlers that had come with
him stayed behind.

Hans Ras, Pieter van der Westhuizen and Willem van der Merwe.  The
others had either died or deserted.  Her mother's maiden name was Van
der Merwe.

In a Sunrise Toffee box lies the power to buy herself free from every
consequence of the staging post between West and East.

In her second year at university, a lecturer in history had once
suggested that she should try to use less imagination and more
intellectual rigour if she wanted to obtain better marks.

They had to do a paper on the first white settlers at the Cape.  In a
moment of wilfulness she had written that she had come to the conclusion
that God had fenced in the first white settlers on the peninsula because
there were so few of them; there were something like 90000 Europeans in
America when there were still only 300 at the Cape, including women and
children.  Perhaps God had weighed them too and found them wanting in
strength to cope with the wilderness which awaited them.  So He mixed in
a little German blood, but it was not right yet: they were too pale for
the blazing sun in the south.  A touch of Koikoi blood.

Still too white.  A little slave blood from the East.  Too fair still.
Eventually the darker blood of the French Protestants fleeing from
Europe was added as well.  Blood mixed with blood, and a new people rose
between the East and the West; when enough umbilical cords had turned to
dust in Africa's soil, God let them go.

One thing is for sure: the Lord above might have foreseen this new
nation, but the lords of the company certainly did not.  All that
mattered to them was the profits - and to have enough hands at the Cape
to work with the spade, or hold the guns if trouble should come.  For if
they were to remain the wealthiest trading company in the world, their
enemies had to know that their defences were strong.  But defence costs
money.  Lots of money.  If your coffers are empty, your teeth are
pulled.  Whoever controlled the best spice routes and commercial
strongholds in the East, controlled the coffers in the West.  There was
no time to worry about a new people growing on the toe of Africa.

There were no cars to listen to their pleas for help either.  They
started moving deeper and deeper into the valleys between the mountains,
building themselves dwellings along the streams.  Sowing wheat. Planting
vineyards.

Putting up schools and churches.

Some began trekking over the mountains, saying they, were tired of being
white slaves of the company.  The company was in any case going bankrupt
from waging wars and from officials stealing from it to fill their own
pockets.  No help was forthcoming from the mother country.  They no
longer had a mother country.  Governer Willem van der Stel said they
must stop looking towards the sea where their parents had come from;
they were born here.  So were their children.  This was now their
country.

With their wagons and oxen, their wives and children, their Bibles and
hymn books, their guns and household goods, their servants, their
slaves, their horses and cattle and seed, they crossed the towering
mountains.  Some trekked north.  Most trekked eastwards in the direction
of the place where the hunters and cattle traders reported the earth to
be fertile, with grazing and water, where the sour grass grew that
fattened the livestock quickly ...

To get across the mountains, they took the wheels off the wagons and
dragged them.  The sick and the old, the babies and the lambs, they
carried ...  And now she, Araminta Rossouw, is crossing the same
mountains by way of a beautifully tarred road.

Africa showed little mercy to these new children at its feet.

Scorching them with the summer sun, freezing them in winter.  The beasts
of prey got their livestock: lions, tigers, jackals.  Bushman arrows and
Kolkol spears picked them off; they trod on adders and scorpions, their
wagons rolled down the cliffs.

Africa tormented them with its worst droughts and its worst floods.  It
grew the piss-grass that made their cattle drown in their own piss
water; the livestock that survived were decimated by every kind of
pestilence.

It made them cling to the God of their Bibles.  It made them see His
greatness, His vastness, his mercy.  It gave them shelter on the
hillsides.  It gave them rest in the valleys and time to sow and reap
for bread.  It let them drink at its springs.

It made them strong.

The weak and the old were buried along the way.

Some it made too hard.

Those that wanted to go no further unyoked their oxen and marked out
their own boundaries.  They spoke a new language, a new spirit had
sprung up in their bodies.  They were free.

Three hundred years later, they are the most hated people on earth, and
in her is a bitterness that does not want to go away!  It makes her
fight against a sentence she cannot accept.

Eighty thousand rand.

She must drive slower, get the money home safely.  She will have to stop
at a caf in the next town; she has had nothing to eat since that
morning.  What about the box?

What if someone breaks into the car?

She stops at Riviersonderend and takes the box with her into the caf.
She orders a sandwich and coffee.  She wants to go to the cloakroom, but
what about the box?  She takes the box with her.  When she comes back,
her order is ready, but she's no longer hungry.

As she passes Riversdale, a huge, silvery-white full moon rises in the
east as the sun goes down in the west behind her.  In her mind she runs
across the veld in the direction of the moon, over the bushes, dams,
farms, over the mountains.  For a little while she becomes calmer but
she cannot dream too long, the traffic is too heavy.

An hour and a half later, she's home.

She puts the box on the table and opens the curtains.

The mountain is a giant spectre in the moonlight.. "It's eighty thousand
rand," she says, challenging it to disapprove.. "Dirk Holtzman said he
would be more than pleased to get his money back.  That's why I'm going
to take the rest for myself, and I'm telling you now, it's not
stealing!"

The mountain is a mountain, it cannot hear.

She opens the box and shakes the money out on the bed.  It's in bundles
of R20 notes secured with rubber bands.  The money is unhappy, the
elastic is too tight.  One by one she starts to pull the bands off,
letting the smaller bundles of notes fall on the bed.  In each of the
forty packets there are ten bundles of ten notes held together by paper
clips ...  she starts taking off the clips and as they come free, she
throws them up in the air ...  they begin to breathe, they float down on
to the bed and to the floor like clumsy oblong wings ...

There's a force in her room stronger than anything she knows.  It scares
her.  It gladdens her.  It flies out of the window and down to the
street.  It fills the sleeping shops, it rides in the cars passing by.
It's in the houses, the people's clothes, their food, their carpets,
chairs, tables.

It's in everything ...

Here it stays in abundance, there it passes by uncaring.

It is Fate's mate, holding you back when you want to advance; pushing
you until you stumble.

It is the power that determines whether you eat or starve; sleep warm or
cold; the power that makes people cry, laugh, toil, steal, beg, murder,
fornicate, gamble ...

"Jakob, what is money?" she asked one day when she was tired of trying
to make ends meet on her pocketmoney.

"Money is a woman, Araminta," he said.. "Full of secrets.

The rib from which man has to make a soul for himself, his power for
good - or his downfall.  She has within her the strength to make him a
god or a devil.  If he takes her as his whore, she dies.  When she's
dead, he pursues her; desires her night and day, because her ghost will
lift up her skirts to him and tease him to madness."

"I don't know what you're trying to say."

"Don't worry, just see to it that you never become a whore."

She's tired, she must get some sleep, but the money will not let her.
She plays with it, arranges it in rows round the edge of the bed.  She
stacks it up and builds a tower with it.  The magic that was in the
diamonds is in the money too.  She swears it is.  Only it is much
clearer in the diamonds, more sparkling.  The money is a reflection of
diamonds seen in a mirror.  And the notes will not let her put the
rubber bands round them again, or put them back in the box.  She can
leave the bands off, but she has nothing else to put the money in.

She draws the curtains and starts counting out Dirk Holtzman's share.

It's not stealing, she says to herself At a quarter to nine the next
morning, she puts the box on his desk and sees the hope come into his
eyes.

"Never ask me to do this for you again," she says.

"Never."

"I give you my word.  How much did you get?. "Count it yourself.  As
payment I want two things: commission and Piet Sinksa.  I would like to
have the commission today; I want to see Piet Sinksa as soon as
possible."

"I'll phone and leave a message with his sister.  How much did you get?"

"How long will it take him to come?"

"It depends if he's got diamonds already, or if he still has to get
them.  He usually supplies a man at Mossel Bay; I've only been in luck
that one time."

"Don't try your luck again.  How long will it be before he comes back?"

"I had to wait about a month."

"Phone him.  Tell him I want good ones.  And send my commission round to
my office."

just once.

just once more will she go back to Samuel Sundoo.  For herself this
time.

When she woke up that morning, she knew she had to put all the money
back in the box.  She must walk out of the country, not flee from it on
Dirk Holtzman's money.

She will make her own short cut.

just once.

The mountain was in one of his green-grey moods when she opened the
curtains that morning.  Every rock and wooded gorge smiled at her. Don't
be cross with me, she said in her heart; you live for ever, I don't.  I
cannot plod on and on in the hope of getting out of this land
eventually.

Two messages are waiting for her at the office.  The one says that
Wynand Blom wants to see her urgently, the other is from a man by the
name of De Villiers who was in the office the day before looking for a
house to buy.

"As I was taking him through to Elvin," Lizzie said, 'he noticed the
name on your door and stopped as if he had seen a ghost.  He asked where
you were.  I said you had gone to Cape Town and you would be back today.
He said he'd wait.

He asked you to phone him as soon as you came in this morning; he's
staying in a friend's holiday cottage at Herolds Bay.  I've got the
number.  He wants you to meet him there." De Villiers?. "What does he
look like?"

"Very nice man.  Tall and blondish, but married, unfortunately; a broad
ring on his finger."

"I see."

Frans de Villiers.  It must be.  Deep inside her something stirs - that
something that remains between two people ...  No.  It's the old hurt of
knowing that someone did not really want you.

She rings up Wynand Blom.  He wants her to contact Mr. Lotter and ask
him if he's still interested in the flats and if they could come to an
agreement.  It's most urgent.

When the god of the world gets his hands around your throat, he does not
easily let go again.  Perhaps it's a she, though, as jakob had said.

"Good morning.  May I speak to Mr. Lotter, please?"

"Speaking."

An hour later, Lizzie starts preparing the deeds of sale for the flats
and Elvin comes to her office to congratulate her.

"It's no wonder our opposition's looking for a lady agent; they think
it's a matter of appointing a pretty girl.

Congratulations, your commission should make up for the quiet months
we've had."

"It's thieving."

"What?"

"Blorn is the loser in this transaction.  Lotter, Carr & Holtzman and I
are the winners.  It's not fair."

"It's business, my dear!  And Blom isn't paying your commission, Lotter
is."

"I know.  I may ask you for an advance before the deal goes through."
When Piet Sinksa comes, she must be ready for him.

"I can write out a cheque for you now, if you want me to."

"No.  I'll ask you when I need it.  Thank you."

"A pleasure.  And I want you to know that I thought about you a lot
yesterday - from the way Bernard rushed out after Dirk phoned him
earlier on, I gather that you managed to help him."

"Yes.  I've sold his problems for him." She throws it in his face.. "I
never want to hear about it again, or have it discussed in any way!"

"You need not worry."

Lizzie comes in and says. "Araminta, you mustn't forget about Mr. de
Villiers."

"Do me a favour, phone and tell him I can't leave the office right now,
I've got clients coming in to sign contracts.  Ask him if he could come
here."

Lizzie and Elvin burst out laughing.. "You're still afraid of going out
alone with a man, aren't you?" Elvin teases, "At least this one will be
in broad daylight, not after sunset," Lizzie says, teasing her.  She had
landed in a tricky situation once ...

"It's easy for you to laugh, it was me that had to get out of it.  Will
you please phone him for me, Lizzie?"

"It will cost you four crossword puzzle answers." Lizzie firmly believes
that she will make her fortune by winning a crossword puzzle
competition.

"It's a deal."

He's older and even more attractive as he stands at the door and a touch
of the old fire runs through her body ...

"Hallo, Araminta."

"Good day, sir." As soon as she has said it, she realizes it's a
mistake.  Suddenly she's the schoolgirl and he the teacher again, and it
is quite clear what is going through his mind.

"I couldn't believe it when I saw your name on this door yesterday."

"I was surprised too.  Come in, sit down."

"Did you know it was me?" He closes the door before he sits down.

"Yes."

"It wasn't necessary to have the other young lady phone me - I'm here
alone, my wife didn't come with me."

You fool, she says to herself, going cold.. "I had to get some important
contracts signed."

"It's really good to see you again - not 'just for a few minutes in a
busy street, like the last time."

Bed-hopper.. "Is it true that you're looking for a house in George?"
"Yes.  I'm taking up a post here next term.  I'm on long leave at the
moment, using part of it to find a suitable house - you're still just as
beautiful 5 Araminta.. "I will show you a few houses, if you would like
me to.. "Of course I would like you to.  I don't believe it's
coincidence that made me come in here yesterday."

"We are the best estate agents in town, even if I say so myself." Play
dumb and smile.. "Perhaps it's my luck, the fact that you came into Carr
& Holtzman." Tease him.. "I take it that you've come in advance to see
what's available?

You're still living in Cape Town, aren't you?. "Yes."

"I suppose you'll have to sell the house you've got there first, before
you can buy one here?" It's what usually happens.

"No.  I've already sold my house."

Great.. "I've got a few excellent properties to show you.. "I've never
come across a girl as striking as you.  A girl that can turn a man's
heart to wax by one look from those dark eyes that seem to harbour a
thousand secrets .  .

Stop it.. "A very nice house came on to the market only last week .  .

"Your hair is still 'just as it was when you were at school.

Streaks of gold and brown and honey."

"Your hair has grown darker."

"So has my life."

I'm not surprised.. "Shall we go and have a look at a few of the
houses?"

"Are you in a hurry?"

It's you that was always in a hurry.. "One can lose a bargain by as
little as an hour," she points out.

He looks at his watch.. "It's just after eleven now.  What if you show
me a couple of places, and then we drive down to the sea for a while.
Perhaps there's something for sale at Herolds Bay?"

I see through your plan.. "Only holiday cottages.  Maybe I'll show you
one or two later on." Keep him dangling until he signs the contract.
Every rand counts.  If Dirk Holtzman gives her R15000 in commission for
the diaMonds - even R10000 - if Piet S'nksa comes and goes, she can
pack up and go.

She shows him six houses before she takes him to the one she has
purposely kept until last.  The day she started work at Carr & Holtzman,
Elvin told her never to try and sell a house to anyone.  All she had to
do was to sum up her clients, take them to the right door and allow the
house to sellitself.

She had a good idea which house would catch Frans de Villiers.

"I noticed a few cracks under the windows at the side," he says when
they're back outside.  Finding fault, pretending not to be interested.

"They're cracks in the plaster, nothing to worry about."

"I suppose you agents must cover up as far as you can."

"I don't."

"The garden's a mess, it will cost quite a bit to get it right." That's
digging for a drop in the price.

"I agree.  But it's a bargain as it is, they're old people, waiting to
buy a retirement home."

"Maybe you should get me an option for a week or two.. "Unfortunately,
the owner does not like the word "option".  Perhaps you should get your
wife here as soon as you can, to have a look at the place."

"I'm buying the house, not my wife." As if he's shying away.  Why?

"But she's the one that has to live in it and make it a home.. "She
trusts my choice.. "Do you have any children?. "Two.  The roof will have
to be painted.. "Not for a year or so, but I'll try and get the price
down by a thousand or two.. "Good.  Are you coming to visit me tonight?"
"This town and the resorts near by are full of people that went to
school with me.. "Does it matter?. "Of course it does.  You know it
does.. "Can I come and visit you then?" The transaction is safe, he will
buy the house.. "No."

The envelope lies on her desk when she gets back to the office.  There
are eight R20 banknotes in it, R160.  Plus a little scrap of notepaper
with the words, With the most sincere gratitude.  Dirk Holtzman."

It's like having reached out to a plank of wood while you were
floundering and suddenly the plank turns out to be just a reflection in
the water.

R160!

I nirteen THE WHOLE WEEKEND she is restless and confused.  The mountain
is covered in cloud and it rains without stopping, a light summer
drizzle.  She tidies her cupboards.  She cleans the inside of the
windows.  She cleans the bathroom tiles.  She bakes some wholewheat
bread.  She cries a little, but she feels no better.

Halfway through the Sunday, she puts on her raincoat.

She has to go out.  She will walk and walk until she is too tired to
feel angry any more!

One thing is clear: it won't help her if she takes the money back to him
and throws it in his face.  Or phones him and asks how he could have the
heart to give her so little.  She has to keep him on her side, he is her
introduction to Plet Sinksa.

The streets are quiet.

Most of the shop windows are already decorated for Christmas; strings of
glittering Merry Xmases and Happy New Years are strung over lavish
displays.

GIRL BURNS TO DEATH IN BOLAND UNREST." She catches sight of it by
accident, on a soaked billboard in front of a closed caf.  She crosses
the street immediately.

More windows, more beautiful displays.

There is no one else in the streets, except now and then a car - and the
pigeons and the starlings and the sparrows pecking in the gutters in the
rain.  Pigeons and sparrows and starlings are lucky, she says in her
heart; if they don't like a place, they can simply fly away.  They need
not work to get money to pay for an acroplane's wings!  They need not
sell diamonds to Samuel Sundoo to get a measly R160 for it.

Marian once stole a packet of sweets in old Mrs. Silbert's shop when
they were small.  She didn't notice her doing it.

It was only when Mrs. Silbert called them to the storeroom and the
sweets came out from under Marian's jersey that she realized what was
going on. She couldn't believe it.  Always, at Christmas, Mrs. Silbert
used to send a turkey and a Christmas card to the rectory, even though
she was Jewish.  And Father always used to say. "What a kind gesture,"
and after the New Year he would go and say thankyou himself.  And Marian
had the nerve to steal a packet of sweets from this good woman?

Mrs. Silbert made them sit on the packets of potatoes and said. "Your
father is a good man; what will he say if he hears about this?" She
said. "Aunty, I didn't do it, it was Marian.  When we get home, I'll see
to it that my father kills her.. "No," said Mrs. Silbert. "I want to
spare your father the embarrassment."

So Mrs. Silbert gave them a sermon. "We Jewish people," she said, 'have
an old legend we always tell our children.

Every person born on this earth gets two angels to go with him or her: a
good angel and a bad angel.  The good angel says, "Do good," the bad
angel says, "Do evil." For every good deed one does, one gets another
good angel; for every bad deed, another bad angel.  When Abraham had to
sacrifice his son Isaac, he had many good angels that went to plead for
him with the Almighty to spare Isaac's life.

We must always see to it that we gather good angels to plead for us when
we need it.  What did Marian do?  She listened to a bad angel."

 their way home Marian asked her not to tell their father.  She told him
the minute they got home and from then on they got pocket money every
week.

When she asked her father what a legend was, he said. "It's like a
story.  It's not really true." She was very relieved, for where would
all the angels have found a place in her room?

Her good angel said. "Give Dirk Holtzman all the money you got for the
diamonds so that you need not flee from this chaotic country, but go
with a clean conscience." Dirk's good angel said. "You will have to give
her at least R10000 for this miracle, R15000 really." But his bad
angel said. "Don't be silly!  Give her R160.  It's more than enough."

She walks until she reaches the large residential area to the north of
the town.  It is Sunday; everything is quiet and peaceful.  The gardens
are lush and dripping with rain.  Big houses.  Beautiful houses.  White
people's houses.  Safe houses.  Burglar-proofed houses.
Beware-of-the-dog houses.

Lights that switch on automatically at night when there's any movement.
Warning signs that say. "This property is being protected by the best
alarm system .  .

The first house she ever sold was in this area.  Co'nc' dence?  When all
the contracts were signed, the seller brought her a box of chocolates
because the other agents in town had been trying for almost two years to
sell the house.

"You see, young lady," the man suddenly confided in her, 'in ten years
there will be no apartheid in this country.  These things are worked out
long ahead of time.

All this talk about reform that will bring peace and prosperity to
everyone in the country is a well-planned strategy.

To soften up the white man, to manipulate and confuse him so that he
will walk straight to the grave they're digging for him.  I've bought
myself a place just outside of town, my dogs are on their way, and God
willing, we'll start putting up the security fencing next week.  Mark my
words, things are going to get bad in this country."

She opened the box and offered him a chocolate.. "Why don't you leave if
you feel like that?" she asked him.

"You don't transplant an old tree.  But I always told my two boys:
choose careers you can do anywhere in the world.  They did.  One is
practising medicine in Canada, the other one is a dentist in Australia."

"Are they happy?"

"They're safe."

She wants to live in a house that's safe.  She wants a man to marry.
She's known it since she has met Frans again.

Her body's asking for it.  A strong man, a good man, a clever man.  To
love her with his body and his mind and his soul.  A man to look pretty
for, to be good to.  To love.

She wants a child and they will live in a house with windows that can
safely be left open in a country where hatred has not been planted
amongst the people to grow until its runners slowly strangle the hearts
of men!  Where right and wrong and truth and untruth don't flow together
in one stream, flooding everything in its way; where her children will
not be the most hated ...

But between her and a man and a child and a house with open windows lies
half the globe, and to get there she needs money.  Enough money.

She must turn back home.

There is a short cut through the park, but it is not safe to take it
when you're alone because there are vagrants in the bushes.  Perhaps she
can take a chance?

No.

She will go and live in a land where one can walk through the park in
the rain.  Where you need not be afraid of the dark; where there are no
bolts of lightning waiting to strike.

joop Lourens is sitting in his car in front of the flat, waiting for
her.  She is immediately worried.  Did Samuel Sundoo let him know that
she had gone there a second time?

"Hallo, Uncle joop!  This is a surprise." Act cheerful.

"I saw that your car was here, so I thought you wouldn't be far away."

"You're the last person I was expecting.  Is everything all right?" If
her way to Sundoo is blocked ...

"Not much to complain about.  I dropped Sally at her nephew's, and said
I would come to see how you were.

"Come inside.  I'll make you some coffee." When they climb the stairs,
she realizes that he has grown old, he's climbing with difficulty.. "How
is Aunt Sally?" she asks as she unlocks the safety gate.

"Fine.  I took her to the doctor's yesterday, and he's happy with her
blood pressure and everything.  How are you, child?"

"I'm well, thank you.  Sit down and have a rest." She puts the kettle on
and sets out the cups, watching him.

Why does she get a feeling that he hasn't come just to see how she is
doing?. "Will you take milk in your coffee, Uncle joop?"

"Yes, thank you.  How are things in the property market?"

"It's quiet at the moment.  But my boss says that't's normal for this
time of year."

"Yes.  Fortunately the people from up north are on their way to the sea
for the holidays.  Many will come to buy a refuge in the south, just in
case.  It seems to be becoming the fashion.  A few have even bought
property near us."

"We don't mind, so long as they come and buy.  I'm working on a
commission basis, you know."

"No man in your life yet?  You said last time, You were waiting for the
right one."

"I haven't found him yet.  But I'm sure he's waiting somewhere; I've
just got to keep going until I find him.. "It often happens that he's
right under your nose without you knowing it."

"I'd know if he was there."

"We had a letter from your father to say that they'll be coming to
Herolds Bay for the Christmas holidays, as usual."

"And I suppose to ask whether Aunt Sally will bake the usual biscuits?"

"She does it with pleasure."

Something's worrying the old man, it's not her imagination.  If he's
here because she's been back again to Samuel Sundoo, if he's here to
forbid her going there again, she'll put up a fight. "How is Wilhelm,
uncle?  Is he still in Holland?"

"I was hoping you'd ask.  He phoned to say that he won't be coming home
for Christmas." The old man stirs his coffee slowly, taking his time
before he speaks again.

"As a matter of fact, I'm afraid my Wilhelm has lost his way.  We no
longer know where he really is, Araminta."

"Help yourself to biscuits," sheys, relieved.  It's not because of
Samuel Sundoo that he's here, it's because of Wllhelm.. "You shouldn't
judge too harshly, uncle.  People are confused because of all the
politics going on in this country, everyone's afraid and everyone's
reacting in his own way.

"I know.  And I also know that Wilhelm, the real Wilhelm of my flesh and
blood, is still there somewhere - it's just that he needs someone to
take him by the hand and bring him back to where he belongs."

"We're no longer sure where we belong, these days, uncle.  Perhaps we
don't belong anywhere." What is she supposed to say?

"God has a place for us all.  It's the devil that's upsetting everything
and misusing man's cleverness for his own ends.  If you want to destroy
a man, teach him to hate himself; if you want to destr'oy a people, get
the children to hate themselves.  Wilhelm no longer listens to what I
say, he has learnt to hate his own people, he's mixed up with the wrong
crowd, Araminta!"

"Maybe you're right." What can she say?

"Wilhelm needs someone to bring him back on the right track.  That's
all."

"What is the right track?  Where is it, uncle?" Surely he's not implying
that she is the one to do it ...

"A man that runs this way and that never walks a straight line.  Wilhelm
must settle down, Araminta.  I've been thinking, couldn't you go and
talk to him?  There was a time when the two of you were close .  .  ."

"We're still close in a way, uncle." Please, don't dream the impossible
dream, there's nothing I can do to help!

"He will listen to you, my child." The old man's hands are unsteady, he
keeps on spilling coffee in his saucer.

"What makes you think he'll listen to me, uncle?" She gets up to fetch
him a clean saucer.  She has to mark time and get out of this without
hurting joop Lourens ...

"It's something I've been thinking about for some time.

I don't know any of Wilhelm's friends, he never brings them home.  I
thought if you.  .

"Please, uncle, I owe you much, but don't ask the impossible of me."
Doesn't he know Wilhelm prefers men?

"I'm not asking the impossible.  I just want you to go and visit him.
I'll pay all your expenses; the two of you can travel as much as you
want to.  I want him to walk with his own for a time."

"Do you want to send me abroad to see Wilhelm?"

"I know it's a big thing to ask."

"What if I don't come back?" It's happening too fast ...

"The reason I want you to visit him is exactly that - I gather from his
letters that he's thinking of staying over there for good.  I think he's
sort of preparing us." There's undisguised fear in the old man's voice.

"Please, Uncle joop .  .

"I know I'm asking a lot of you, Araminta, but he's all we have, and if
there's one person that might be able to bring him home, it's you.  You
need not come back immediately.  I remember how you used to fuss when
you were a child because no snow fell here in winter - go and see how
snow falls. Go see all the beautiful places over there.  Take Wilhelm by
the hand and bring him home."

How is she going to get out of this without hurting the old man?. "If
circumstances were different, uncle, if I had not already started out in
my own direction, I might have considered it." That was the wrong thing
to say, the old man might see hope in it.. "I went in search of my own
way my own knowledge - and found it.  Wilhelm went in search of his
way, and he found it too.  But his way and my way are not the same."
What more can she say?

"You can stay away as long as you want to.  No matter what it costs."

"I'm sorry, I can't.  I'm so busy already, getting across the most
important river of my own life, uncle!" Please, let me off!

"We are supposed to help one another across our rivers." He's begging
for her help.

"I know.  But there are rivers we have to cross alone."

When he leaves, she is left with a feeling of guilt and sympathy for the
old man.

But at least he didn't say anything about Samuel Sundoo.

She's safe.

EVERY MORNING, WHEN SHE wakes up, she says to herself.  Today's
the day Piet Sinksa is going to come with the diamonds, and all day long
she carries this hope inside her.

Every time she phones Dirk Holtzman, he tells her she's in too much of a
hurry, Piet will come.

"When?. "Perhaps he's waiting till after Christmas.. "Did you talk to
him?. "No, to his sister.  She gave him the message.. "Why can't I phone
and speak to her myself. "Because she won't trust you.  She'll think
you're out to trap them and then you won't get anything out of them.

Piet will come.  You just have to be patient." She tries to be.

Early in December, the schools close for the Christmas holidays and the
holiday-makers start flocking to the resorts in the area.  Most of them
come from the north.

During the day, they come into town in a never-ending stream of cars,
causing traffic jams in the centre.  The pavements become streams of
people milling about, cash registers overflow with the harvest the
shopkeepers have been looking forward to for most of the year.

In the afternoons, the streets are dirty, the shops tired, and here and
there . "Happy Xmas and a Happy New Year' starts coming loose or hanging
awry.

Ten days before Christmas, her parents arrive at Herolds Bay for their
annual holiday.  Marian and Char-Plerre, her fiance, are with them.

She now lives in three worlds at the same time: work, Herolds Bay,
waiting for Plet Sinksa.

Work.  For every prospective buyer that comes into the office, ten
viewers -'just wanted to have a look at what's on the market' - follow.
She cannot distinguish between buvers and viewers; she goes to the same
trouble for everyone because they all represent the possibility of a
transaction, the possibility of a commission.  In her own car, with
petrol she has paid for herself, she drives them from on. "For Sale'
sign to another, until she feels she should ad. "Free Tours' to the Carr
& Holtzman sign outside.

They complain about how expensive everything is down here in the south;
about the way they are treated; about the poor service in the
restaurants.  How bad the weather is.  How overpriced houses are.

She agrees and apologizes.

When she gets home late in the afternoons, the mountain is waiting in
her window: quiet and aloof above the din.

But she cannot stay too long, she has to change roles; her father and
her family expect her for supper every night.

The table at which you are born is the table to which your umbilical
cord is for ever tied, no matter how hard you pull to free yourself The
food at this table is different from all others, no matter where it's
laid.  It's a place of old familiar things: a certain aroma, a taste,
the way a serviette is folded, the way grace is said.  It's a cloud to
which you return with old resentments, guilt, secrets.

"You're too thin, Araminta."

"There's not much time to eat at the moment, Mother.

We're very busy."

"I don't want to be personal," Marian says with sisterly bitchiness,
'but judging by the lack of furniture and stuff in your flat, you can't
be doing too well.  Even your clothes are mostly what you had when you
were at university.

Seems as if you haven't bought yourself a decent thing in two years!"

"I'm saving up."

"How much have you saved?" Marian challenges her.

Will she tell?  Why not?. "Together with outstanding commission, just
over R20000."

"What?"

She does not look up from her plate to enjoy the surprise on their
faces.  She knows it's there.

"Well .  .  ." says Charl-Pierre, the outsider at the table, 'you're
tempting me to become an estate agent too.

"I still owe R3000 on my car, though." She adds it as a little damper.

Marian would not give up however.. "Are you telling me you're sitting on
R20000 and you're not buying anything for yourself'

"Because I'm saving my money for a specific reason." When she and Marian
were small, they used to walk on the wall round the rectory garden and
see who would fall off first ...

"What reason?. "For something.. "What?. "A man." They all laugh, except
her father.  He looks at her with eyes that say: We'll talk later.

The time comes on the Sunday morning, after the two of them had gone for
a swim and were sitting on the rocks.

It's early still.  The tide is in, the sea looks deep and green and the
sky is clear.  She knows she's going to get some kind of sermon and he's
still preparing his opening.

"The morning you were born, Araminta," he says at last, "I had spent -
like most fathers - a night in anguish in the waiting-room of the
hospital."

"I cannot imagine you being in anguish."

"When the sister came and told me it was another girl, I got up and
walked outside, just at the very moment the sun was coming up.  It was a
strange experience: behind me a new life had just arrived, before me was
the sun of a new day."

"At least you can be sure I'm not moonstruck."

"Don't be flippant.  As a result of that experience, I have always felt
there was something special about your birth.

Perhaps that is why I always felt confident about you in my mind - even
when I was uneasy about you.  But ever since we've arrived here, I've
been trying to find that confidence and I can't."

For a while they sit in silence.  Then he looks at her searchingly and
says. "Araminta, you're becoming a stranger to us.  I don't understand
you."

A cormorant sits on the rocks in the water, his wings spread out in the
sun.

She and her mother never really quarrelled.  Perhaps about a dress she
refused to wear, or a wardrobe that was too untl 'dy, but never because
of her being defiant.  Rebellion was always against her father's rules.
And yet, she fears the day when the door between them will close for
ever.

"Father, I want you to know that I love you, even though I'm angry with
you sometimes.  And I know that you love me too, even when you're angry
with me.. "I think there's something you want to tell me.. "There is.
I'm going to leave the country." She hadn't wanted to tell him just yet,
she had wanted to write him a letter.  She waits for his reaction and
feels herself go tense.

But he does not answer her.  Perhaps he didn't hear her above the noise
of the sea.. "I'm going to leave the country, Father!"

He smiles.. "I heard you."

"Aren't you shocked?" she asks.

"No.  I was suspecting something far worse.. "Like what?" She suddenly
realizes that he's not indifferent, but relieved!. "Like what, Father?"

"Frans de Villiers's wife has left him.  I believe he's taking up a post
in George."

Shit!. "You don't blink an eye because I'm going to leave the country,
Father - you're just relieved because you think I haven't got involved
with Frans de Villiers again!. "Have you?" Like fear flaring up.

"No, I haven't."

"There's no need to shout.  I'm not unconcerned about your decision to
leave the country.  Hardly a week goes by without a student or a member
of the congregation coming to me to talk over the merits of staying on
or emigrating.

I'm sure there are very few people who are not considering it in these
troubled times, though many can only dream about it because of the cost
involved."

"You mean there are very few white people who are not considering it or
dreaming about it."

"Don't always turn everything into a question of colour, daughter. Times
are uncertain for all of us.  And if it helps in any way, I can assure
you that if I were younger I would have considered going myself.  As a
protest.  But I know now that it would have been a mistake.  Protest
must happen here.  Every day."

"Father She turns round and faces him squarely.

"Why do you hate your own people so?" She's been wanting to ask him that
for a long time.

"How can you accuse me of hating my own people, Araminta?" he asks,
appalled.. "How can you?"

It's as if clouds were suddenly gathering above them; she wants to turn
back and run for the sunshine, but she can't.

"Sunday after Sunday," she says, bitingly, 'you get up in the pulpit and
spread the gospel, but when you get down again, You help to fan the
flames against us!  And then, when evening comes, you go on your knees,
praying for peace in the land!"

"Araminta!"

He is getting angry.  Very angry.  It's strange, lgnatius Rossouw seldom
drops his poise.. "I'm sorry, Father.  But this is something that has
been disturbing me for years.  I can try and understand why others hate
us, but why you, Father?" He does not answer her; his mouth is set in an
angry slit and his eyes have grown hard.  Often, when she was a child,
he used to punish her for disobedience by not talking to her for hours.
He was like a rock that couldn't hear, no matter how loud you shouted..
"Father, speak to me!  Show me your understanding today, not your
impatience.  I don't want to go away knowing there's hostility between
you and me."

He is gazing far out to sea.. "Your impression, Araminta, that I hate my
own people, is one that you have created in your own mind.  What you see
as hatred is the impatience you have just spoken of.  The Afrikaner is
in the process of coming out of a long, dark tunnel - many are in the
light already, and many are in the twilight just before the light.

Too many are still far back in the tunnel, though, and there isn't much
time left for getting them out." He is calm when he turns to her.. "Do
you blame me for my impatience?  My concern?  You call that hatred?"
It's as if he wants to put the words in her mind with his eyes.

"Perhaps I've misunderstood you, because you've never put it like that
before," she admits.  She knows they're nearing a crossroads where they
will either find or lose one another for ever.  She senses it and she's
afraid.. "Suppose I'm one of those still at the back of the tunnel, will
you, bear with me for a moment then, Father?"

"If you'll allow me, I'll take you by the hand and bring you to the
light - as I've tried to do so many times, but you always let go of my
hand."

"Because I had to find my own way, I had to find out the truth for
myself.  Can't you understand that?  I don't want to be led, I don't
want to be carried, I want to learn to walk by myself!"

"Why are you so difficult?"

"You see, Father, I came across a pattern, a little crack that got
bigger and bigger the closer I looked." She knows he is not going to
like it, but she has to do it.. "The little crack started when a small
group of Europeans came to the foot of Africa, and became a new nation."

"Surely, you're not still that far back in the tunnel!" he says with
annoyance.

"I'll be as brief as I can.  Otherwise I can't show you the crack."

"I'll try to be patient." As if allowing a troublesome child to have her
way.

"The Dutch East India Company went bankrupt.  Britain came and occupied
the Cape in order to control the sea route to the East." It's like
having to find the shortest route through a maze: every word is a step
and she must be as quick and as accurate as she can.. "In the end
Britain took the Cape and was ordered to give the Dutch œ6 million in
compensation.  For the œ6 million they got an enormous piece of land on
the toe of Africa.  Plus about twenty thousand bushmen and Koikoi
tribesmen and thousands of Xhosas fleeing southwards across the eastern
boundary as a result of the power struggle between the Xhosa leaders to
the north.  They also got the company's thirty thousand slaves and a
couple of thousand half-castes, who had mostly been born of the slave
women."

"How long are you going to keep me on this rock giving me a history
lesson?"

"It's not history I'm telling you about, Father.  It's about an open
secret but everyone ignores it.  And the English got the Boers: about
twenty-five thousand men, women and children that said they were
Afrikaners.  By that time they had already been living along the toes of
Africa for decades.  An independent people who said they were their own
masters."

"They were always an obstinate lot."

"It was decided that these Boers must be Anglicized.

Their mutton sheep had to be exchanged for wool-bearing sheep, and the
men had to be turned into good workers if they were to get back their œ6
million investment.. "Now you're splitting hairs."

"They wanted more than their œ6 million, Father!  The main purpose they
had for the Cape was to provide raw materials for the factories in
Britain.  Especially wool.

Tons of it.  The area round the eastern boundary was a factory owner's
and a Merino sheep's dream." She goes and sits on another rock so that
she can see his face better.

His hair has grown grey, but he is still the tall, handsome man with the
strong face that always stirs a touch of pride in her because she is his
child ...

"May I say something?" he asks.

The dissent in his voice makes her wary.. "Of course.. "I'm afraid it's
much too late to object to the British occupation of the Cape.  For if
you do, you are also objecting to the enormous part they have played in
civilizing this country."

"I agree.  But that's not what I'm objecting to."

"Are you objecting to the course of history then?  You can't change it."

"No.  But I warned you that I was not talking about history." She knows
if she stops, he will not give her the chance to finish.. "The first
thing the English needed at the Cape was cheap labour.  In England, the
reformers had caused the factory owners - the money-men - untold trouble
for using women and orphans as cheap labour.

They would put up with no injustices towards the "noble savages" at the
Cape.

"So missionaries were brought in by the boatload to make the Koikoi and
half-castes, the brown people, industrious and eager for salvation.  A
plan which failed miserably.  Everything that went wrong was laid at the
door of the Boers, who were thank God - not noble savages.  Truth and
lies were dished up together, as the English were to discover in their
own courts of law, but they seldom cared to remember it."

"Don't try to dip the Boers too deep in honey, Araminta."

"There's always a little dirt in good honey," she says, pressing on.
"The English didn't have money to place soldiers on the eastern border
to restrain the looting Xhosas, the Boers were a convenient buffer,
because they had to protect themselves.  All the while the factories in
England were pressing for the promised wool, and your face tells me
you're dying for coffee, Father!  You force me to jump a thousand
steps!"

"Try not to fall," he scolds.

She ignores it.. "I'll skip another thousand stones.  When Britain was
at her wits' end, she decided to send the sternest governor she could
find to the Cape: Lord Charles Somerset.  In 1820 he had thousands of
people shipped from England and settled them on land between the Boers
and the Xhosas on the eastern border - an area where they were already
fighting over land and grazing.  He gave them Merino sheep and told them
to farm the land.  And guns to help protect the border."

"Your great-grandmother, Araminta MacDonald, came out with one of the
smaller groups two years later."

"I know she did.  Slowly the Boers became despondent.

Britain had freed their slaves but didn't have the money to give them
compensation or pay for military protection on the border.  The tax
collectors never failed to turn up, though.  And nobody listened to the
Boers, Father.  Lord Charles himself went to the border and admitted
that they were not the people he had been made to believe.  They were
good and decent.  The lawless individuals among them they themselves
banished to Stellenbosch and Swellendam.  But according to the records
of the English they were all troublemakers, and the record was never
changed."

"Don't get so worked up, child."

"So the Boers went on the Great Trek.  In their thousands, and mostly
from the region around the eastern border.  They said they would go on
until they found somewhere where there were no black people and where
they could rule over themselves. The British settlers bought one of the
leaders a Bible, and inscribed it: "As a farewell token of our esteem
and a heartfelt regret at your departure." In spite of everything, the
Boers had got on well with the settlers.  They had learned a great deal
from them."

"I'm glad you admit that."

"The trekkers travelled round the territory of the Xhosas.  Northwards
and westwards.  Right up in the north various groups turned eastwards
again, crossing the fearsome Drakensberg Mountains in order to get to
the sea, for the republic they planned for themselves had to have a
harbour.  At last, after hundreds of them had been killed by the Zulus
and tens of thousands of their cattle looted, they founded the Republic
of Natal."

"I think you must go a little faster."

She sees the frown between his eyebrows, but hangs on.

"When the English at the Cape received word that the Boers had a
harbour, they were furious.  They annexed Natal and the land of the
Zulus, and they declared it a British colony.

"So the Boers went back over the mountains.  After meeting up with the
other groups, they founded the Orange Free State beyond the Orange
River, deep inland.

A little further north, beyond the Vaal River, they founded the Republic
of Transvaal."

"I take it that they didn't find anywhere where there were no blacks,"
he said, smiling.

"No.  Trollope said that Africa is a land of black people; it was so, it
is so, it will always be so.  The trekker Boers did, however, find many
deserted battlegrounds where the black tribes had massacred each other.
Paul Kruger said we stole no land from anyone."

"What worries me, Araminta, is that you're not getting an inch closer to
the light.  You keep on mulling over things at the back of the tunnel."

I'm asking you to give me a chance to get to the crack that runs through
all this."

"The problem with our history, Aram inta, is that we too easily forget
that there are other perspectives as well."

"You're wrong, Father.  History has only one perspective en it's being
dished up as propaganda for except white people who will believe anything
as long as it's twisted to what they want to hear." As soon as she says
it, he jumps up, offended.

"It's no wonder your marks for history were never better than average!"
he says, sharply.. "It's no wonder I can't reach you."

"Please, Father, don't go."

"I don't think I can listen to any more of this hysterical history
lesson!"

"Please wait.  If you go now, you'll never understand.. "No, Araminta,
it's you that will never understand.  It's you that prefers the darkness
to the light."

WHEN HE GOES OFF in the direction of the houses, without her, it
does feel as if she has been left alone in the dark.  She knows he won't
turn back.

There had been times, when his unyielding attitude had made him so
unpopular with most of the people in the village that she wanted to cry
for him.  Always, while her mother and Marian were supporting him and
spurring him on, she used to go to her room and pray: Dear God, please let
the people like my father.  Or: Please God, let him receive a calling to
another village; perhaps he's been in this one for too long.

And he would get a call but he wouldn't accept it.  Or he would deliver
one of his beautiful sermons on a Sunday morning, and suddenly things
improved again.

In the end, his final break with the local church council came after his
dispute with them about her mother's salary as organist.

Because of money.

The very next call he received, the one in Bloemfontein, he took.

After a while, she gets up from the rocks and walks across the sand and
back into the water.  Something feels incomplete, unfinished.  Like
having to go away, or die, before you have had a chance to say what you
so badly wanted to say.

It no longer matters to her whether others understands or not, it is his
understanding she wants.  So that he won't be sorry because she is his
child, that she is not like Marian, that she can't believe blindly ...

She sees the wave coming and starting to break with a curling, foaming
crest, and she knows that if it hits her, it will be very hard, so she
deftly dives through it.  When she comes up, the next one is upon her
and she has to dive to safety again.  And again and again.  Then she
finds herself in deeper water among the bigger waves and turns on her
back ...  weightless, suddenly detached ...  It's an infinite cradle of
water holding her.  It's solitude and peace.  The sea is her
grandmother, and she's back in her womb.

Gradually she begins to play: she floats, she swims, she dives.  She's a
fish.  A seal.  A dolphin.  It's a water-dance.

It's like flying through a different kind of air .  .  .

As she comes up again, she realizes that she has drifted out too far
between the hills that form the bay.  For a moment she panics, then
forces herself to be calm and starts swimming to the shore with the
waves.

He is waiting for her on the sand.  She didn't expect him to do that.

"Do you realize how far out you've been!" he scolds as he wraps the
towel round her shoulders.

"I'm sorry, I had a bit of trouble getting back." She dries her face on
a corner of the towel, catching her breath.

"You know how treacherous this bay can be!"

"It's done me good, Father."

"It most definitely didn't do me good when I came to look for you, and
saw you right out there!  Don't ever go in that deep again!"

He had come looking for her back?" she asks.

"Because you didn't come home."

"Why did you come But she can see from the way he is looking at her that
it is not the whole truth.  That he too is afraid of them walking away
from each other, without having a chance to turn back.

"I so badly wanted you to understand, Father," she says as they walk
across the sand in the direction of the retaining wall above the
high-water mark.

He makes no comment.  He takes the towel and spreads it flat on the wall
for her to sit on.  He would never let her and Marian sit on the bare
cement in their wet swimsuits.

"Let's talk about other things, Araminta.  It's Christmas time, family
time.  I don't want you to drift away from us any further.  Leave
politics alone - it does not suit you.. "But it's not politics, Father!
I swear."

"Well, let's stop digging about in history then.  What good can it do?"
He's more relaxed.  More composed.

"Where else could I have gone digging to find myself I wanted to know
who I was, so that I could be someone.

I'm supposed to be ashamed of what I am; if you dare to be cheerful
you're accused of insensitivity.  People are frustrated and angry and
afraid - do you know what fear and anger together feel like, Father?"

"Isn't it just two sides of the same coin?"

"Do you know what it's like to be trapped in a tiny college room with
the knowledge you have been searching for, and have found?  You want to
wipe it from your mind but you can't.  It's inside you, it's around you,
you can't run away from it, you only grow bitter and more afraid.. "Of
what?"

"Of the fury and fear you can see coming from left and right in this
country and that will surely crash into one another somewhere along the
line.  You see only one side of the coin, Father.  It seems as if
everyone only sees one side.  The black side.  You're blind as to what's
brewing up on the white side .  .

"What can be brewing up on the white side except guilt?"

"Old anger.  New anger.. "We can't hang on to old anger for ever,
child!. "How do you stop being angry at the axe that has cut off your
best hand, Father?"

"What axe?"

"If I tell you, you'll only get angry again and walk off."

"I won't.

"The Boers, Father, had their two republics  It's like testing the water
first to see whether it's safe to go in or not .  .  .. "The English
said that if they wanted that piece of barren earth without a harbour
they could have it.. "Keep the towel under you."

"Many English people, and some learned Afrikaners, even moved away from
the Cape to settle in the republics of the Boers, for the two British
colonies weren't much better off than the two republics."

"I should have brought your hat."

She combs her hair through her fingers to help it dry.

"Everything went relatively well until one fateful day in 1866 - or was
it '67, I can't remember now - when a Boer child in the Orange Free
State picked up a diamond.  A beautiful diamond.  More diamonds.  The
English were extremely alarmed.  It was out of the question that the
Boers could be allowed to own diamond fields!  What if they were to get
richer than the English colonies?  Don't forget, the Suez Canal was
being dug; ships would no longer have to come all the way round the
Cape."

He nods his head, a little withdrawn.

"So the English got a Griqua native to swear in court that it was Griqua
land on which the diamonds had been found.  Then Britain simply annexed
one hundred and forty Boer farms and incorporated them in the Cape
Colony.. "Pull up a bit of the towel round your shoulders, you're
getting too much sun."

"Prospectors from all over the world streamed into the country.  Money
streamed in.  A new city began to grow Kimberley.  Five vears later the
Land Court found that Britain had done a wicked thing: the land on which
the diamonds had been found had been Boer territory.  As punishment
Britain had to pay the Orange Free State œ90000.  They did it with a
smile, for within ten years, the diamond fields yielded more than œ30
million for Britain."

"Is that a fact?" he asks, with a flicker of interest.

"Yes.  And Trollope said that it was neither the church nor the
missioners with their schools, that gave the black man in South Africa
his first taste of Western civilization it was the ten shillings a week
they earned in their thousands on the diamond fields that did it. Money.
Pay attention now, Father, the crack is getting wider ...

Twenty years later, the richest gold-field in the world was discovered
three hundred miles from Kimberley: right in the middle of the Republic
of the Transvaal where no Grlqua could swear the land was his.  With the
money made on the diamond fields, the English money-men now invaded the
gold-fields.  Britain urgently needed this gold, for the gold reserves
at the Bank of England were dangerously low.  Germany and America were
fast becoming a threat to Britain's position at the centre of world
trade .  .

"Get to the crack, Araminta."

"Money is the crack, Father!  Don't you see?  History is just money
blazing its trail across the earth, even if there are a thousand
different variations of it.  Our own history sy is nothing but a trail
of greed.  To get hold of the Boer gold, Britain provoked them with lie
upon lie until war broke out over - of all the stupid things - voting
rights for the foreigners on the mines!  The bankers in London announced
shamelessly that the biggest money power in the world was now at war
with the country producing the most gold in the world!  They described
it as truly exceptional.

"Thirty thousand men, women and children died on the Boer side on the
battlefields and in concentration camps, Father.  All because of gold.
Their farms burnt to the ground, their cattle killed .  .

"How is it possible that a young girl, on a beautiful day like this, can
carry on with such bitterness about the things of the past?" he asks,
downcast.

"We are living with the results, Father."

"We must forget the past and look to the future, Araminta!"

"Don't play dumb, Father!" She cries.. "Where could the Afrikaner go
this time?  All the territory around their republics had been annexed by
foreign powers.  All they could do was slowly get up from the ruins and
go inside themselves - building a wall to retreat behind where they
would be left alone to govern themselves.  Don't forget, most of the
black people had sided with the English.  The wall the Afrikaner built
round himself is called apartheid.

It is the curse that is about to fall on them while others are getting
fat from our diamonds and gold!"

A feeling of helplessness wells up in her.  A sadness.

Behind her father lies the bay and the houses and the lush reen hills.
She knows they have reached the crossroads, she wants to put out her
arms and hold on to him, but she cannot reach him, his eyes are suddenly
cold and angry again.

"Don't you realize that the wall is going to fall on you as well if you
don't bury the past, Araminta?"

"No, Father, the wall is not going to fall on me.  I'm going away to
make my life somewhere else."

"You're serious then?. "Yes.  The moment I have enough money, I shall
go.. "And if I say to you that the wall will not fall in on us if we
open our eyes to the suffering on the other side of it?

The present signs of capitulation from the government's side are just
panic.  The international sanctions are taking effect.  With japan
turning her back on us now too, the government knows its time is running
out."

"You're right.  In the end it's money that will make the wall fall in.
That is neat.  But where will the money come from to clear up the
rubble."

"Economic growth will have to be restored

"If you think it's that simple, you're dreaming, Father.

Most of the present propaganda against us is aimed at covering up the
crater which the crack has become, and into which we have fallen."

"In other words, you don't see the hand of God in the history of the
world." It is not a question.

"No, Father.  I see only greed."

"You don't see God's mercy in history, in spite of everything?"

"No.

"That His only Son was offered on the Cross for the sins of the world?"

"If Jesus had lived in this country, it would not have been necessary
for him to have died on the cross for our sins; apartheid is the only
sin in this land, apparently!" His face grows pale and he clenches his
teeth .  .  .. "I'm sorry, I should not have said that."

"I hang my head in shame before God this day because I have failed as a
father; because I could not lead the child He trusted to my care to the
light."

"It's not your fault, Father.  I only wanted you to know why I can no
longer stay in this country that does not want me.  Why I want to go and
find a place where I can belong to myself.  Where I'm not penalized for
being an Afrikaner every day, where I'm not supposed to keep on
struggling for the causes of others while my own life is going by ...  I
see Marian coming over there - I'd be glad if you don't tell them yet."

In her heart she knows that they have veered away from each other.

BOOK TWO

One EVERY MORNING WHEN SHE wakes up, she thinks perhaps Piet Sinksa will
come today.

But he doesn't.  Dirk Holtzman says he will come after Christmas, after
New Year.  just be patient; e as spo en to Piet's sister, Piet will
come.

She sells a plot by the sea.  Elvin says the real buyers will come after
Christmas, they know the owners are more willing to bring their prices
down after Christmas.

After Christmas.  After the flood when the waters have subsided.  After
the fever has subsided.  Fortunately she bought the presents she had to
buy long ago.  She didn't buy anything for herself.

But the nearer it gets to Christmas Day, the more she feels that she is
being dragged along by the tide.  It's a fever beginning to take hold of
her even though she knows that every window display, all the tinsel, all
the decorations are simply a lure to entice the money from her purse.

When she goes out to buy bread, she sees the most beautiful dress or a
carpet for the floor of her ark.  Or a bracelet, or underwear.

When she gets home with the bread, she's moody, but she does not know
why.  Or she knows, but she will not admit it.  It's Christmas.  There's
a God of heaven and a god of the earth; one of the two keeps on urging
her to go and buy herself something nice.  She doesn't know which one.
All she knows is that she has to hang on to every cen. "I P'et Sinksa
turns up!

The day before Christmas, the Saturday, it is as if the fever has risen
beyond all bounds.  The shops and streets are a crazy flood of people,
apparently spending every last rand they possess in order to satisfy a
terrible hunger.  By ten o'clock in the morning, she needs every drop of
her self-control not to run to the bank and withdraw all her monev and
go spending and spending until she is satisfied too.

When she wakes up again, it is - mercifully - Christmas morning.

She sits at the table and watches the mountain appear out of the night.
Somewhere a wagtail pipes its incessant waking call.  When the other
wagtails do not answer, he seems to become annoyed.. "Wake up!  Wake
up!" he calls.

Somewhere a Cape robin Joins in, with its soft gurgling call and a
sparrow begins to chirp ...

As it gets lighter, every gorge on the mountain starts throwing a shadow
to the west ...  when the sun comes out, the mountain sees it first. The
warm yellow rays fall across its highest slopes and spread like a smile
which is getting broader and broader.

"Happy Christmas!" she says.

"Happy Christmas!" it replies.

All is at rest.  The fever has subsided.  The birds are happy, the sky
is blue; the earth spins quietly on its path round the sun with its tons
of Christmas trimmings and presents, completing its daily 'ourney of two
million miles ...

Something a lecturer once said during a geography class still makes her
wonder sometimes ...  he said they mustn't forget that there is a group
of top scientists who maintain that the earth is stationary at the exact
geographic centre of the universe - that there is no proof of the
'proof' that we're spinning through the sky round the sun.  The earth
turns on its axis while the whole cosmos spins round it.

Everyone in the class laughed, except the lecturer.

Mountain, whether we're spinning or standing still, please see if Piet
Sinksa's coming.  Tell him to hurry up! of January she sells two Frans
de Villiers rings her twice to ask if he can come and visit her - after
the secon. "No!" he slams down the receiver.

And Piet Sinksa does not turn up.

Late one Tuesday afternoon there is a knock on her door and when she
opens it, she sees jan du Toit, Dirk Holtzman's partner.  It's rather
strange.  If Piet had come, Dirk would have let her know himself.  Or
phoned.

"Good afternoon, Miss Rossouw.  Maybe you don't remember me, but we have
met before."

"I do remember you.  You are Mr. du Toit." He hasn't got any diamonds
with him, she is somehow sure of it.

"I would like to talk to you for a moment." He's uneasy.

"Come inside." If it concerns property, he could have come to the office
.  .  .. "Please sit down."

"Thanks.  To be honest, I've been trying to summon up the courage to
come to you for some time now.. "What about?"

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

"No." She opens the window and passes him an ashtray.

He has an honest face.  His hair, his eyebrows and the hair on his arms
are all exactly the same golden-red colour, it makes him look kind of
transparent.  She reckons he must Two SHORTLY BEFORE THE END

properties: a house and a plot.

be about forty and finds it strange that a man of his age can be so
unsure of himself.

"Why did you want to come to me, Mr. du Toit?"

"Please call me Jan."

"Very well." Perhaps it will put him more at ease.. "Why did you want to
see me, jan?"

"You won't believe me, but years ago, when my wife came here to George
to teach, she lived in this very flat." As if he wants to fence around
and muster a bit more courage first.. "After a year, she found herself
another place to stay - it's too cold here during winter."

"It is.  I won't be staying here much longer either.  At least, I hope
not."

"I hope not, for your sake.  I was working for the school board at the
time.  It was before we got married and long before Dirk and I went into
partnership.  That was after I inherited some money from my father, you
see." After every draw on the cigarette, he taps it to remove the ash,
even if there is no ash ready to fall.. "It's actually a rather sticky
matter I've come about."

"Why do you say that?" He has no diamonds on him, she's sure of that.

"It's about Piet Sinksa."

What does he know about Plet Sinksa?. "What about him?"

"To tell you the honest truth, I'm waiting for him too." It sounds like
an admission of guilt.. "You need not worry about Dirk telling me about
what you did.  You can trust us."

"Trust you about what?"

"You know ...  I mean." Tap-tap.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about, Jan." If he
wasn't so pathetic, she might have got cross.

"You see, what I mean is that I've asked Piet to bring me some as well.
Diamonds.  You know?  So I'm waiting for him too.  I've got the money
ready and everything.  But if my wife finds out, she'll divorce me.  I
had to take a second mortgage on my house to get the money: R10000.

I've got the money, as I said.  But now this blooming Piet does not turn
up."

"You should be glad," she says, coldly.. "For if, by any chance, you
thought that I would sell diamonds for you, you made a very big mistake.
I wouldn't have."

"I'm sure you don't really mean that," he says, sheepishly.. "I reckoned
that if you were selling for yourself, you might as well sell for me
too.  Everybody says it is far more difficult to find a buyer than a
supplier."

"I don't like this.  It's as if I had given Dirk Holtzman a key to my
door, and now he has duplicates made for all his friends and partners."

"I swear I won't talk."

"We have nothing to talk about."

"But I haven't told you why I'm here yet!" he says with urgency,
stubbing out his cigarette.. "I can arrange something for us.  I can get
some very nice diamonds from another man."

"Who?" The moment she asks it, she realizes she has been too eager; a
tiny spark of hope had shot through her before she could stop it!

"Nick Wehland.  You must have seen him around.  He drives a smart red
German number with a folding hood.

He brings his pick-up to our garage for repairs.. "I don't know him."

"He's in town quite a lot.  He owns a piece ofland not far away, right
under the mountain to the north.. "Not my mountain."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Just a slip of the tongue."

"He wants to plant ferns for the export market."

"So you told him I sell diamonds."

"I didn't mention your name, I swear.  We just had a chat one day.  He
said he comes from Koffiefontein, not far from Kimberley.  Born and bred
there.  just for a joke, I asked him ...  it was the week before
Christmas when I started to realize that Piet wasn't going to turn up. I
asked him where you could get a few stones, so he said I could just say
the word, he's got all the contacts up there, he could get me as many as
I wanted. Good ones."

"So you told him I sell diamonds."

"He asked me how I was going to dispose of them, so I said I knew of
somebody."

Something doesn't feel right.  She was waiting for Piet Sinksa.  Now
Piet is jan-du-Toit/Nick-Wehland-Koffiefontein.  A path that she thought
was straight is suddenly full of bends that she can't see round.

"Mr. du Toit - jan - I don't think you quite understand my position.  I
was pushed into two situations where people in need had to get rid of
diamonds.  As it happened, I knew somebody that knew somebody that
bought them.

I got involved with something I know nothing about.

Perhaps I'm na'lve, but it never felt for a moment as if I was doing
something terribly illegal.  But what you're speaking of does."

"Believe me, I know it's a dangerous business.  But if we're cautious
and keep quiet .  .  ."

"I hope I'm not included in your "we".  I want nothing to do with it."

"But you're waiting for Piet Sinksa too, aren't you?" he asks, obviously
disappointed.. "I'm waiting for him.  I swear that I've never even
committed a traffic offence before.

It's just that life has become so bloody unfair - I'm working my butt
off, I'm paying through the nose to keep a roof over our heads.
Everything they eat costs more every month and so does the bloody taxman

"Jan .  .

"I promise you, I'm not a racist, but these days you have to be black if
you want to have things your own way.

If you're white, and you don't pay your rent or your water and
electricity, they throw you out or cut off your supply.

But if you're black, you only have to boycott everything, saying how
oppressed you are, and nothing happens to you.  They just put in the
papers, now and again, how many millions of rands are owed in rent and
electricity in the black communities.  It's not that I don't feel sorry
for these people.  I know their argument is that they're taking what's
been taken from them, but when are they going to stop taking?"

"Do you think R10000 worth of diamonds is going to save you?"

"I didn't say that.  But it can buy me a few nights' sleep.. "And then
go out and buy more diamonds, and come back to me, pleading with me to
sell them?  Sorry, I won't be here, Jan."

"Nick Wehland told me only this morning that he knows of two chaps that
are coming down from Koffiefontein with a load of sheep over the
weekend; he can arrange something for us.  Good stones."

"Don't say us!  If he can get hold of "good stones", he can surely
organize a buyer for you as well?  Seeing that he has such wonderful
contacts." She says it with her lips, while the tiny spark grows into a
tiny flame inside her.

"But it's the buyer that's the problem!  Nick says he's been waiting to
do a deal himself for a long time, but he has no way of selling them.
It's no use having diamonds if you can't get rid of them again.  You
know that yourself.

Nick says, if you can get a couple of people to pool their resources and
do a big deal, you take one chance and then you're finished with it."

"I hope you succeed."

"You couldn't just introduce us to your buyer?  I mean .  .

"Forget it."

"Piet Sinksa's not going to come.  I'm telling you.  Dirk says so too.
And Nick Wehland.  He says if someone doesn't turn up, you can be sure
he's been caught.  Nick's no fool, he knows diamonds all right.  He says
it will take him a day or two to arrange everything - he'll get them
here for us.  Nice ones.  Nick's our big chance."

"Diamonds, jan du Toit, are not playthings." She knows these are joop
Lourens's words, but that is not how she means them.. "Diamonds are
mysterious things, noble things."

"Diamonds have not been put on the earth for the Oppenheimers only,
that's what I say."

He did not understand.  And a diamond would not be happy with him.
Perhaps a handful of worker diamonds, but most definitely not wise ones
or kings; perhaps that is why she feels jealous and wants to step in
between him and them.. "I think you better make me an appointment with
Nick Wehland; I want to meet him and talk to him." Perhaps she should
jump in before both of them - perhaps he is another Piet Sinksa.

"We can get in my car and drive out to his place right now.  He said
it's for me to say when I'm ready.. "I want to talk to him alone."

"Then you and he wangle things behind my back, and what do I get?" he
asks indignantly.

"I only want to talk to him first, see what he looks like."

"If we do it, we do it together."

"Very well then.  Make the appointment."

"It could turn out doubly lucky for you - he's not married."

"I'm not interested."

Think nothing, hope for nothing, she tells herself over and over again.

But within her, the hope that had died - waiting for Piet Sinksa -
quietly starts coming to life again.  If she has to sell for two others
as well as herself, so be it.

ESCALATING VIOLENCE'

She has taught her eyes to look past newspaper headlines, but they won't
always do it!  It's as if they want to find something with which to stir
up her sense of urgency.

There are days when she feels like panicking, feels that she is in the
grip of circumstances from which she may never escape!  Shortly after
New Year, she had to have her car's exhaust system replaced, and when
she went to fetch the car, the man said that the radiator had perished
as well.

The day after that, her hair-dryer broke.  And one of her best
transactions fell through: the building society would not grant the loan
because they thought the purchase price was too high compared to the
real value of the place.  The seller refused to bring his price down,
and the buyer didn't have the cash to pay the difference himself.

TAMBO SHOCKS WITH ANC'S LUST FOR MURDER'

Elvin says that people from all walks of life are going to start
grabbing what they can get while there's still time ...

Her father wrote to her to remind her of the R250 interest she still
owes him on the money he lent her.

That's right.  But in her heart she had hoped he would let her off, a
sort of forgiveness.

Shortly after nine o'clock on the Wednesday morning jan du Toit phones
to say they have an appointment with Nick out at his place, at four in
the afternoon.  He will pick her up at the office at a quarter to.

Don't think, hope for nothing, she says to herself, but the whole day
long a little spring of excitement keeps on stirring in her.  Not even
Major Harrington, a most irksome old Englishman, whom she takes out to
have a look at property in Wilderness, can annoy her in the least.
Nothing that's on the market is to his liking.  If he sees something he
likes the look of, he wants to buy it and when she tells him it's not
for sale, he says. "Everything is for sale at a price, young lady."

At one o'clock he asks her to lunch, but it's more a command than an
invitation.  A command she obeys of her own free will, for he's actually
only a big old lion that knows exactly where he wants to put down his
big old paws.  He no longer bothers about the conventions.  When it's
lunchtime you eat.  When you want to ask a personal question, you ask
it.  If you don't like the answer, you say so.

She likes him.  And after lunch she takes him to the large two-storey
house on the lagoon that she has saved for last.  But he is not taken in
by her ploy.  He congratulates her on her choice of trump card and says,
"It's a happy place."

And the valley below Nick Wehland's smallholding is a happy place too.
After they turned off from the highway, they took a dirt road through a
pine plantation for about two kilometres, and then down a steep slope to
the little valley covered with natural forest.  One moment they were in
a world of dry pine needles, the next moment in the green, damp shade of
a place where fairies could live because man had left them a bit of old
forest there.  It had a brook running through it, and it was overgrown
with the most beautiful ferns ...

"Nick tells me he bought the place from a German chap.. "When we come
back, I want you to stop down here for a bit.. "Why?. "It's pretty.. "I
see."

The road climbs back up a hill and back into pine plantation.  At the
top, in the open and against the slope of the hill stands the house: a
neglected house with a faded blue roof.  Behind the house is an old
corrugated-Iron shed where four coloured women are busy packing huge
fern leaves into cartons.  Stacks of the dark green leaves are lying on
wire frames waiting to be packed.

"Where's Mr. Wehland?" Jan asks the nearest woman.

"He's gone to the airport," she answers, stiffly.

"To the airport?" jan reacts with surprise.. "But he's expecting us!"
"He's gone to dispatch the ferns.. "Oh," he says, relieved.

From the moment he picked her up he's been acting guilty, long before
he's done anything.  As if he is looking over his shoulder to see if
anybody's watching him take a step away from the straight and narrow.
They had even driven out of town by way of the back streets, to avoid
being seen by his wife with a strange girl in the car.

"Well, I suppose we better wait around till he comes, then," he says,
lighting another cigarette.. "I hope he doesn't take too long.  I've
told my wife I'm going to deliver a car, and I won't be late."

"Are you afraid of your wife?"

"I wouldn't call it that; it's just that I don't like to upset her -
there's never been any trouble between us.. "Where do they pick all
these ferns?"

"Nick's got a team picking them down at Knysna in the forest.  It's
about half an hour's drive from here.  He exports them."

"Don't they die in the boxes?"

"No.  They're called seven-week ferns - they're tough.  I believe
they're used for flower arrangements overseas.. "Here as well."

"Perhaps we should go and sit in the shade on those chairs next to the
house.  What do you think?"

"Yes."

The mountain peak above the town looks much nearer from here.  It stands
like a colossal presence to the north of the house.  It's a different
mountain peak from hers, taller, but pierced by railway tunnels, and
there is a tall metal structure high up on it like some kind of monster.

"What is that peak called, Jan?"

"I don't know.  We call it George Peak.  Have you ever crossed it by
train?"

"No."

"I took my wife and children over once.  There are seven tunnels.  In
places the train runs so close to the edge of the precipices, it makes
your hair stand on end.  I hope Nick doesn't keep us waiting too long;
I'm all keyed up."

It's better in the shade.. "I sometimes drive up to the lookout point at
the top where you can see all the four passes that cross the mountain,"
she says.. "It gives you people used to go over in their courage to see
where brave." wagons.  They must have been extreme

"That's more than I can say for myself at this moment."

could, jan?"

"Would you leave the country if you

"No.  Actually, I don't know.  Perhaps.  Things are looking bad for us.
They say the blacks are not only asking for one man one vote now,
they're saying "one white, one bullet" as well.  God knows what's to
become of us.  And our children.  Where are we to go?  What will it all
cost?. "A lot of money for a family like yours."

"Exactly." He sits up and points in the direction of the pines.. "Look,
there's a pick-up coming now .  .

Nick Wehland is like a big, clumsy dog with a mustache.

Dark hair, thin at the top, curly and long round the ears.

He does not look drunk, but he smells of alcohol; he's direct and rather
blunt.

"Listen here, girlie, let me tell you straight out, I don't want any
trouble." He does not invite them into the house, but joins them in the
shade.. "Jan reckons we can trust you; I say women are loose-tongued
creatures and loose-tongues are to be kept away from certain goods."

"I understand what you're saying, Mr. Wehland."

"My name's Nick.  And first of all I want to know why a girl like you
wants to get involved in something illegal."

"For personal reasons."

"I don't trust personal reasons.  Are you in debt?"

"No.

"Have you stolen money that has to be repaid?. "I don't like the tone of
this conversation; you're insulting me."

"A man never knows what daft ideas you women might think up.  Say, for
instance, I arrange the delivery of the stuff and you go and report me
to get the reward you're entitled to?"

"What reward?" jan asks, nervously.

"Why do you want to know?" Nick retorts, brashly.

"I only asked."

She takes him to be about the same age as jan perhaps not quite a
worker's stone, more a yellow stone for a merchant or a farmer.. "I'm
afraid," she says. "I don't think I'm interested in the so-called
"goods" any more."

Nick turns to Jan.. "How come she is talking like this now?  I thought
you said she could sell for us?"

"Wait, wait, wait - I said she only wanted to see you to begin with."

Nick turns back to her.. "What do you see?" he asks.

"I don't know."

"Then you better make up your mind.  I can organize us a smart deal.
There are two men coming down to Oudtshoorn with a load of sheep.
They'll be there on Sunday.. "How many can I buy for about R17000?"
"Depends on what you want.  Possibly four good ones.  I would suggest -
if I decide to trust the two of you - that you first make sure about
your buyer.  I don't want to sit with the stuff burning a hole in my
pocket."

"You won't."

"Who's your buyer?"

"That's my business."

"I don't want to eat the bloody guy!  I only want to know where I
stand."

"Other people have trusted me.  If I decide to buy, you will have to
trust me as well."

"If the two of you drop me.  .

"No, man, we won't!" says jan, throwing away a cigarette end.

"Maybe heaven knows why I should take your word for it, but I certainly
don't." He looks at them, clearly struggling with indecision.  Then he
says. "OK, I'll phone.  As soon as they arrive in Oudtshoorn, I'll drive
over to check if everything's all right.  Then I'll phone and you can
come over early on Monday morning."

"Why can't you buy them and bring them to us?" she asks.

"Seems to me you haven't got much in your head, woman.  It doesn't work
like that.  Would you send someone else to buy you a pair of shoes?" She
can't help wishing that it was Piet Sinksa, not Nick.

"I'm not sure.  I'll have to think about it first.. "If you're not sure,
you should drop it.. "I need time to decide."

"You have until tomorrow evening.  I can't leave it later than that.  My
brother has to arrange everything up there.. "It sounds as if more and
more people are involved.. "Listen, you either trust me or you don't.
Say the word, and the deal's off."

"Wait!" an steps in hurriedly.. "You two can't sit here fighting over
everything.  When we've given our word, we stick to it."

"Listen, jan," Nick says with a grin, 'in this game you trust no one's
word.  Say, for instance, we buy the diamonds.  That means you and I
have to give ours to her to sell.  Right?  That means she can turn round
and say her handbag got stolen or something.  We have no law on our
side, and it's easy money for her."

"Forget it," she says, getting up.

"No, wait!"Jan cries.. "Nick was only joking!"

The tunnel mountain is beautiful and green.  Every rock on it is clear,
every crevice.  In the gorges, pockets of forest still survive, most
probably because it was too high for the woodcutters to go.

Behind her Nick Wehland asks her to sit down.

"You know, of course," he says, as she sits down on the edge of the
chair, 'that once you've established a strong front and back door, no
diamond detective will be able to get to you."

"What do you mean?"Jan wants to know.

"If you have a safe supplier and a safe buyer, who is there to give you
away?  I know a man - he's stinking rich from diamonds - if a police
stooge walks in, makes no difference how good he is, he phones the
police right away and tells them there's a man trying to sell him
diamonds and will they come and collect him.  Just like that.  Because
he has his supplier and his buyer, his front door and his back door.  He
is so safe, you won't find a crack anywhere at all."

"Is that a fact?" Jan sounds very impressed.

"Yes.  But it's not easy to get those doors in place.  I tell you again,
girl, I don't want any trouble.  If jan hadn't said that you already had
a buyer, I wouldn't have been interested.  However, should things work
out, we could possibly think about setting up a little company .  .

"I will not be part of your company, Mr. Wehland, I won't be here."

"And where, may I ask, will you be?"

"As far as possible from here."

"Then be a sweetie and give us an introduction to your buyer."

"No.

,if I take a guess at his name, and I guess right, will you tell me
then?"

"I might." She is sure he won't know.

"A certain Venter chap at Mossel Bay?"

She does not answer.

Her own mountain is clear and very blue when she gets out of bed the
next morning.  just once, she says.  just once.  Please.

It's not that she doesn't trust Nick Wehland; it's different this time
because it's a definite, planned transaction.

Neither jan or Nick will allow her to keep the diamonds for a few days.
They don't understand that she has to play with them first, that Samuel
Sundoo will not buy diamonds that are unhappy.

She did her sums during the night: together with all the outstanding
commissions she has R20500; the maximum he can spend is R17000.  She
has to pay her rent and S have money for petrol; she must eat.

But she has made up her mind she'll buy.

And she's come to terms with the fact that she will have to go over the
mountains via Oudtshoorn to get away.

How else could she do it?  How much longer can she go on waiting in a
flat that's not even an ark now, but a prison?

No.  She's done it for more than two years.  Working.

Hoping.  Anticipating.  Two years of struggling to get across a river,
trying to grow enough feathers for her wings so that she can fly away.
God knows why she had to be born in this country!

Her mother phoned her shortly after the beginning of the year.  It's
usually her father that phones.  Her mother said. "I am deeply shocked
by this absurd decision of yours to leave the country, or rather to run
away from the responsibilities that we must all face - as you did from
university I A tree that bears no fruit is wicked in the eyes of the
Lord

...            Squabble, squabble, squabbled. "South Africa is still a
land of milk and honey .  .  .. "No, Mother, of golden syrup and
Cremora; milk and honey have become too expensiv. "Don't be cheeky!  We,
as your parents, forbid you to go ahead with this nonsense!"

Please, Mother, don't.

Two nights later, Marian phoned.. "Don't tell Mother, but Charl-Pierre
says he's been thinking about leaving for a long time."

Thursday.  Friday.  Saturday.  Sunday.

Four days to wait.

It's hot.  It hasn't rained for weeks.  It's as if the year does not
want to gather momentum.  Everything is hazy, the mountain as well.

She had waited for Piet Sinksa for a long time and hope had gradually
died away.  She only has to wait for Nick Wehland for a short time - but
with all the intensity of uncertainty and excitement.  Nick said he
would phone on Sunday night between eight and nine to say whether
everything was all right.  Whether she and jan should come to Oudtshoorn
on Monday morning.

She goes to work.  She goes home.  She eats and sleeps.

It feels as if her life has reached a closed gate, and she's waiting for
the key.  The key is Monday.  And Thursday morning at eleven o'clock,
when she has her appointment with Samuel Sundoo.  She phoned him and
said she was sorry to bother him again, but this will definitely be the
last time.  She told him that she might be bringing quite a few.

One thing she knows: when she walks away from Samuel Sundoo, she will
not have much farther to go.

At the moment, however, Jan du Toit keeps phoning her every few hours to
ask if she hasn't heard from Nick yet.  He knows very well that Nick
will not ring before Sunday evening and that he is down at Knysna with
his fern pickers, but Jan wants to make quite sure.

On Friday afternoon, Elvin gives her a cheque for the amount of all her
outstanding commission.

On Saturday morning, jan walks into her office with a cake-tin under his
arm.  He does not speak normally, he whispers.  In the cake-tin is a
canvas bag containing his R10000 in cash.

"A precaution, Araminta.  just in case.  I can't take the money home -
my wife will see from my face that I'm hiding something from her.  She
always does."

"Don't you think I should go alone, jan?" Diamonds won't be happy with
him ...

"Nick said we should each buy our own shoes.  I can understand that you
can't expect anyone to take risks for you.  May I smoke?"

"Yes.  And for heaven's sake, please stop acting like a child that's
afraid to jump, but doesn't want to back down either!  You'll make
yourself a nervous wreck."

"You're right.  We must think positive.  Be optimistic.  I took a course
in that once."

"Wonderful.  Apply it."

"I told my wife I'm getting a lift to Oudtshoorn to fetch a car.  It's
true.  So I must bring back a car, if you don't mind.. "I don't mind."

"And please don't phone me at my house on Sunday evening.  I'll phone
you when my wife's in the bath or something." Tap-tap.

"You've told me that a hundred times already, Jan."

"Do you think this is going to work out?"

"You've asked me that a hundred times as well."

"I know.  I'm sorry.  It's just nerves .  .  ." Tap-tap.

"As long as you don't get on my nerves on Monday." She doesn't want to
be rude to him, but jan du Toit would upset anyone.. "Go and buy
yourself a sedative and take it early on Monday morning."

"I wish I could be as calm as you are.  Aren't you afraid that something
might go wrong?"

"No.  Because nothing is going to go wrong.

"I'm a church officer.  A man of faith.  If only I knew whether it is
proper to ask God's help when buying diamonds ...  What do you think?"

"You'll have to decide that for yourself." In her heart she wonders if
it's a sin to wish that he would have the runs on Monday morning ...

Sunday.

She can't sit at home all day.  She decides to go to Herolds Bay for a
picnic and a swim.

An hour later, when she passes the airport, a huge, silver-bellied
Boeing is coming in to land, so low above the road, she feels she could
put out her hand and tickle it.  As it nears the guard-fence, she wants
to square her shoulders and say,"Careful!  Your wheels are going to
touch the wire Then it's safely over and it lands smoothly on the runway
like a big metal bird.

It's the omen she has been looking for, the eagle by the road, the
harbinger that has come to say. "It won't be long before I come and pick
you up and fly away with you inside me.  Faraway.  To the land of the
green valleys between the mountains with the snow on their peaks, where
cows wear bells and moss grows on the slate roofs of the houses on the
slopes .  .

She's not stupid.  Cows leave dung in the road.  Roofs of slate leak and
snow is cold.  But in the land of the green valleys between the
mountains you need not be afraid of a wall falling in on you, or of
lightning waiting to strike you.

The tide is out.  The sea is at rest, smooth and lazy.

When she parks her car by the beach, she sees that someone has hacked
down the sign that said. "WHITES ONLY/SLEGS BLANKES."

i nree IF LIFE IS SEVEN storeys high, she must be climbing down quite a
few steps to get to the diamonds.

In the end she sets out for Oudtshoorn without Jan.

Nick Wehland phoned to say they must meet him at eleven o'clock at the
hotel just outside Oudtshoorn.  The goods' have arrived, everything's
OK.  Later, when jan phoned, they decided that she would pick him up at
the arage at half-past nine.  It's just over an hour's drive to
Oudtshoorn.  At seven o'clock that morning, however, a most bewildered
jan du Toit was sitting with her in the flat: unshaved, his hair not
properly combed, wearing one green sock and one grey one.

"Araminta, I tell you, I've had a hell of a night.  I didn't sleep a
wink.  If something happens to me, what's to become of my wife and
children?  I don't know what is going to happen to them in any case,
because I don't know how much longer Dirk and I can keep the wolves at
bay.  But at least I want to be with them.  I know I can't expect you
and Nick to buy for me as well, I don't expect you to take any risk on
my behalf.  Call me a coward if you like.  I deserve it.  But just
before dawn this morning, I opened the Bible in my darkest hour, and the
first words my eyes fell upon were: "A prudent man foreseeth evl'l, and
hideth himself." Just like that, as if Solomon was pointing his finger at
me."

She couldn't help feeling sorry for him.  He was just a big, frightened
man who had realized that it was too high for him to jump down.  Even
his hands seemed too limp to hold a cigarette.  She asked if she could
make him some coffee: he said no thank you, would she just return the
cake-tin ...  When she told him to leave the tin, that she would buy
diamonds for him and sell them and see to it that he got his fair share,
he went down on his knees, asking her if he could kiss her feet.  She
told him not to be silly and to get up from the floor. He got up and
said God would bless her for it.

At half-past nine she set out alone.

But she admitted to herself that she been hoping until the last minute
that Piet Sinksa would still turn up.

It's cool.  The mountains are in cloud up to their thighs.

Long before she reaches the top of the pass, she enters the eerie white
stillness of the mist.  She likes it, it's peaceful.

She actually woke up that morning with a feeling of peacefulness.  Of
completion.  Like the morning she had woken up in the hall of residence
knowing that that was the day when she would get up and start walking in
a different direction.  Because she had to.  Because she realized she
was a bird in a cage, but that the door was open, although she was still
beating vainly against the bars.

She had got up that morning and started packing her belongings.  Then
she had taken a taxi to the station and gone home.  Every possible
reproach had been slung at her; they were pleading with her for hours -
praying for her.  In the end her father had threatened to take her back
by car.  She had told them she couldn't go back, she must start to earn
money.

She had to.  The 'had to' was inside her.  Like courage.

She had got the job at George, but from the first day she knew that it
was just a bigger cage and she would have to stay in it for a while.
When the man came and put six uncut diamonds on her desk, she had not
realized it would turn out to be a short cut for her as well.

The higher the road goes, winding up the mountain, the thicker the fog
gets and the more slowly she drives.  Tiny drops of mist cling to the
ferns in the rock crevices along the road; the mountain reeds look like
long, ghost-like plumes.  A cluster of wild watsonias makes a sudden
splash of orange.  It's beautiful.  She wants to stop and walk in the
mist to feel the droplets on her face, but she can't; women on their own
on mountain roads get raped.

jan du Tolt had turned back because Solomon told him that a prudent man
sees the approach of evil ...

What evil?

She'll close her mind to it, grab the diamonds and run with them to
Samuel Sundoo's.  If the fog is still on the mountain when she returns,
she'll stop and hold the diamonds out of the window so that the little
drops can fall on them too.

It seemed to her that Samuel Sundoo had sounded a little friendlier when
she phoned him to make the appointment.  Almost as if he was glad to
hear from her.  She made the appointment for Thursday.  On purpose.  So
that the diamonds could stay with her for three nights and two full
days.  She had given the African violet some plant food and cut out the
old leaves.  But when she goes to Cape Town, one little diamond will
stay behind on a leaf In her skirt pocket is an extra R2 000 which she
had withdrawn from the bank.  Nick had said that the men had brought
enough to make a good choice from.  After the main transaction, she is
going to buy a diamond for herself, to keep!  Not as a talisman, but' as
a little magic stone which contains millions of years of light from all
the stars that spin around the earth - or with the earth through the
sky.  She will take it with her wherever she goes.  And a little bag of
African soil ...  for it to sleep in at night.

She had told Elvin on Fr'day that she is leaving.  Not where she was
going to, only that it would probably be quite soon.

He was shocked.. "Are you going back to university?. "Why does everybody
keep asking me that?. "Do they?. "Just about.. "Could I persuade you to
stay on with us?. "No.  I'm sorry."

"Not even if I tell you that I've heard from a very reliable source that
they're expecting extensive development here in the southern Cape, as a
result of the oil and gas strike in the sea at Mossel Bay?"

"Oil and gas in the sea can't save us, Elvin." She didn't want to get
into an argument, she just wanted to add something.. "According to one
of my clients, it's just another colossal and expensive gimmick to
provide employment." His eyebrows gave a little twitch.. "It's funny to
see you angry for a change!"

"I don't really get angry any more, but I get afraid sometimes."

"What are you afraid of?"

"That things in this country might suddenly take a turn for the worse -
before I've made enough money."

"Strange, I always wondered whether you came to Carr & Holtzman to work
or to hide - I never suspected that you suffered from the white fear
syndrome.  Not you, Araminta.. "I don't have a British passport as you
have, Elvin.. "If it weren't for the Afrikaner's stupid, age-old dreams
of the republican ideal and exclusiveness, you would have had one."

"If it weren't for the Afrikaner's stupid dreams, we might all have had
Russian passports now."

"At least we would have been welcome in more places."

"You don't really mean that."

"I suppose not.  It's been a bit of a shock to discover that you want to
leave us.  And I would never have suspected you of racism or
ultra-conservatism." From the twinkle in his eyes, she knew he meant it
as a joke.

"I'm not sure I know what that means.  Words are walls which I cannot
see through.  I don't even know what justice or injustice is any more; I
no longer believe in either of them.  What are the masses shouting for?
Is it freedom, or is it simply the right to live in a state of anarchy?"
She realized that she was taking the conversation in the wrong
direction, but couldn't stop herself Elvin looked at her in
astonishment.. "Are you telling me that you've been in a state of quiet
revolt, right under our noses all this time, and that we haven't noticed
it?  That I haven't noticed it?  I always know when Lizzie and Christel
have problems.  I help when I can, even if I'm just a shoulder to cry
on.  I was under the impression - as the others are - that our pretty,
clever Araminta is getting over a love affair.  Now I find out she's
involved in a far more serious conflict than I would ever have guessed!
It shows you we don't know one another. That is the whole problem in
this country: we don't trust one another."

"Don't jump to conclusions, Elvin.  I'm not rebellious any more, but I
still need to get it off my chest sometimes."

"Stay with Carr & Holtzman; we dot want to lose you, Araminta."

"Thank you for asking me.  And thank you for having given me the work in
the first place.  I know Bernard had doubts about appointing a woman,
that it was you that convinced him to give me a chance.  Lizzie told
me."

"We've never regretted it."

"Neither have I."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I hope to have enough money so that I won't need to work for a bit -
give myself time to decide where I want to live and so on.  And then
find a nice man," she added, so as not to let him get too close to the
truth.

On the other side of the mountain the sky is clear and the sun is
shining.  In the distance lies the next range of mountains: the
Swartberg Mountains - 'black mountains', although they're always pretty
blue.

She is scared.  Not scared in the way that jan had been.

But scared that her car will break down and that she won't get there on
time; that Nick will turn out to be another Piet Sinksa; or that the
diamonds will not be right, that Samuel Sundoo will say he does not want
them.

At twenty minutes to eleven, she stops at the hotel.  It's hot.  The
shrill, incessant sound of sun beetles hangs in the air ...  She sees
Nick coming from the main building and gets out of the car.

"Where's jan?" he asks abruptly.

"He couldn't come."

"What?" he cries, taking a step back as if he wants to run away.

"He asked to be excused."

"And you agreed?" He makes it sound as if she has committed a terrible
sin.

"He got scared."

"And you're so bloody stupid, you believed him?" He's raging mad, he
smells of drink.

"Nick .  .  ." He frightens her.

"You've gone and got us into a fucking trap, woman!  By this time he's
reported us for sure.  We'll have to cancel the whole bloody deal!"

"Nick, please ...  I didn't realize it was such a bad mistake."

"I said right from the start I don't trust no bloody woman!"

"You're overreacting!  jan is the last person that would want to get us
into trouble.  He gave me his money, I told him I'd buy for him as well.
You're quite wrong."

"Do you know to how much trouble I've gone to?  If these people are
walking into a trap because of your stupidity, there's going to be big
shit, I tell you."

She forces herself to stay calm.  If he gets too upset, he won't see
reason.. "Jan has a wife and children, Nick, he decided to get out for
their sake.  Please try to understand that." He puts his hands in his
pockets, takes a few steps to the left, to the right, looks up in the
direction of the entrance to the hotel grounds, watching the car that
has turned in and is coming towards them.  He keeps watching.

The car stops, a man and a woman get out and walk into the hotel.. "Jan
will not land us in trouble, Nick.  You've got to believe me."

He seems to be deciding whether to run or to stay.  At last he says,
"Come on then."

It's a country hotel: all the rooms are round thatched cottages.  There
are small goats and geese and ducks in a large enclosure.  Peacocks on
the lawns.  She walks to the back of the car and takes out the cake-tin
and the bag which holds her own money.

"Come on!" He hurries her on, a bit more composed.

She follows him through the rows of cottages to one in the furthest row:
number 12.  He has the key.  He opens the door and walks in ahead of
her.

It smells of thatch.  There's a jacket and a newspaper lying on the bed.
It does not look as if anyone has slept there, unless they have cleaned
the room already.  Theta ns are drawn.

cur i

"Sit down," he says, closing the door.. "We must get the money sorted
out."

"I've counted Jan's money, it's R10000.  Mine is correct too." She
wishes that he would open a window so that more air could come in.  It's
hot and close.

"They're bringing quite a lot, so that we can pick and choose.  To start
off, we'll spend an equal amount: R10000 each.  That's what I've told
them.  If we're satisfied with the deal, I'll buy you the biggest
bargain of your life from the extra R7000 you've got - but keep quiet
about it, we'll have to soften them up first." He looks at his watch.

"We must get ready."

She can't decide whether she should tell him about the diamond she wants
to buy for herself.  She's afraid of saying anything that will make him
flare up again.  For the moment, she only wants it to be over because
she doesn't like the situation, but she's there because she has chosen
to be there.

He opens the cake-tin and starts counting jan's money.

He does it with the practised skill of a bank clerk.  There is sweat
under his arms.  She wants him to open a window ...  He counts the money
a second time.  Then he takes her money and counts out R10000; the
extra R7000 he puts in the inside pocket of the jacket and puts it on.

"Watch me," he says; 'with this I'm going to buy you the biggest piece
of luck you've had in your life."

"Where's your money?  Or aren't you going to buy any more?"

In answer, he pulls back the bed from the cane bed head and takes a
canvas bag from between the two mattresses.  Barclays Bank.  He pushes
the bed back in place before he shakes the money out on the cover. "Have
you made arrangements with your buyer?"

"Yes."

"For when?"

"For Thursday, as I said."

"Why you want to sit on the bloody things till then heaven only knows."
He puts all the money in the Barclays Bank bag and then tucks it behind
the pillows on the bed.

He looks at his watch again.

"What time is it?" she asks.

"Ten to.  I'm going to get myself a drink.  Do you want anything?"

"You can't go out and leave me here alone, you said they'll be here at
twelve!"

"I'm not getting the fucking drink from a shop in town, I'm getting it
from the bar inside!  Or do you want me to order room service and
advertise what we're doing?. "Please hurry up, then!"

"You don't open the curtains, you don't go out of the room, you wait
right here for me."

"Please hurry."

When he's gone out, she goes and sits on the bed.  It's quiet, nothing
but the sound of the beetles comes through the walls and the roof ...
Next to the door is a window; if only she could open those curtains.  A
round place feels different from a square place.  How do you build a
round lace with square bricks?  If only she could open a window!

There's a lilac and brown carpet on the floor; it looks as if the dirt
has dried in large circles when it was washed ...

Was that a knock at the door?

Surely somebody had knocked on the door.  Softly.

Perhaps it was Nick.  She walks to the door; there's no one on the other
side of the peephole.  She must have imagined it.

But she's hardly got back on the bed when she hears it again.  When she
opens the door, they're standing close to the curve of the wall,
hesitant and unsure: an elderly man in khaki clothes who looks as if he
has just come from a sheep-pen.  His trousers are held up by a string,
his shirt is clean, but faded from too many washings.  The younger man
does not look much better.

It's them.  She knows it.  Relief, gladness, fear - because Nick isn't
back yet - all go through her at once.. "Good afternoon," she says,
holding the door open for them.

"Is Nick here?" the old man asks, cautiously.  His hat has left a furrow
on his forehead; his hair is grey and has clearly been cut with a pair
of household scissors.

"Please come inside, Nick will be here any minute." They are plain
people, but good people.  The mouth of the younger one is hanging open -
perhaps he's a bit retarded.

"Come inside." They don't want to come any nearer.

"Please, come inside."

"Why isn't Nick here?" the old man wants to know.  He's suspicious.

"Nick's just gone to the bar to get himself a drink.  My name is
Araminta Rossouw.  I'm with Nick, you can trust me.  The Young one moves
first.. "Everything's all right, you can trust me." As if she were
luring them in.  When they're inside, she wants to close the door and
lock it suppose Nick takes too long and they want to leave again?  She
must reassure them, put them at ease.. "Please sit down on the bed or
wherever you want to.  I'm sorry I don't have something cool for you to
drink.  It's hot, isn't it?"

"Yes." The older one sits down on the bottom end of the bed, twirling
his hat round and round in his hands.  The young one looks around
inquisitively and puts his head round the bathroom door.

"Hell, Pa, you should come and see how many towels there are!" he calls
out in surprise.. "White.  Like cotton wool." He's definitely stupid.
But sweet.

"We told Nick we'd be here at twelve," says the old man.

"I know.  He'll be here right now, I promise." In he heart she shouts:
"Nick Wehland, please hurry up, they're going to go!"

"A man should keep his word." The old man's getting angry.

"I agree, uncle.  And I apologize.  I really do."

"He's gone drinking, Pa.  Aunt Poppy says he drink a lot."

"Nick said there would be three of you.  He and another man and a
woman." The old man is getting uneasy ...

"That's right.  But the other man couldn't come any more, so I came on
my own." Please don't go, I know you've got the diamonds.. "You can
trust me, uncle, really you can.. "I said twelve o'clock.  It's past
twelve o'clock now.  Tell Nick we've gone.  .

"Wait!" she stops him as he gets up.  She grabs the bag with the money
from behind the pillows and holds it out to him.. "See, uncle, here's
the money!  It's R30000, you can trust me." He does not seem to want to
take it!. "Please, I've got to have the diamonds!"

"What does a young girl like you want diamonds for?" he asks, warily.

"I want to sell them, I need the money for something that is
tremendously important to me!" Please, please ...

"Give it to her so we can get out of here, Pa."

Thank you.

The old man takes the bag with the money.  From his shirt pocket he
takes a plastic coin bag: Standard Bank.

There's a lot In it.  Her hands are shaking; she has trouble getting it
open.  She sits down on the bench at the dressing-table ...  they roll
out into the palm of her hand: the most beautiful little crystals ...
some are at least five grains of barley, more ...  a few are so clear
she can see right into their depths ...

She bends down and puts her cheek against them.

Magic.  A feeling of joy rushes through her and she gently closes her
hand round them ...  But there's something wrong with them, there's no
gladness in them.

Why do they feel so dead ...  Are they glass?

"Uncle?" There's a hand pressing down on her head, trying to push her
under the water.. "Uncle, are you sure these are diamonds?"

He swings the bag with the money between his legs.

"What do they look like?  Don't tell me you haven't seen diamonds
before."

She bends down and puts her cheek against them again: they are diamonds.
But there's something wrong with them, there is no joy in them.

When she looks up, it's no longer the 'uncle' either.

It's a different man.  The younger one too.  Their faces have changed.
The older one gets up and puts out his hand as if he wants to take the
diamonds away from her.

"Sorry, lady, playtime is over, I'll have to take them back and
introduce myself.  I'm Major Kruger of the diamond detective branch and
this is my colleague, Lieutenant Botha."

The hand pushes her head down, down, down.

"You are arrested on a charge of illicit diamond dealing You are free to
keep silent or to make a statement.

Anything you say may be used in evidence against you .  .  ." It's the
voice of the retarded one.  She sinks lower and lower and lower.

Four THERE IS AN INSTANT where the sense of shock stops and the fear
begins. There is an instant where fear stops and a sense of
powerlessness takes over, when you are confronted with the law that says
you may not buy or sell or be in possession of uncut diamonds unless
authorized ...

You're trapped.  You've gone down a one-way street and you cannot go
back and make the wrong right.  The nightmare keeps on repeating itself
in your mind ...  over and over ...  You don't wake up, you are awake.
You have fallen into a pit of mud and terror lives there.  You're
trapped within your own body; if you try to escape, you're dead.

Your way home is a grey, tarred road that rolls away from you, while the
nightmare goes on and on repeating itself.

There is an instant where powerlessness stops and despair begins; when
you weep but there are no tears.

The colour of fear is black.

It was a police trap.

You walk between them to their car.  A white Cortina.

The worst shaking is in your legs; you think you're going to fall.  They
carry the cake-tin and the bag with the money.  The goats in the
enclosure bleat at you, the geese laugh.  You have to sit in the front,
and they drive into town with you.  You are under arrest.  There are
many people in the streets, tourists in stupid clothes with cameras on
broad, coloured straps round their necks like flat snakes.

You don't want to be under arrest.  They must stop the car so that you
can get out and walk with everyone else in the streets.  Please, let me
get out!

You don't cry it aloud, you cannot say anything.

They're taking you to prison.  You think they are.  The one that was the
old 'uncle' at first drives the car.  Nick is also in the car, he sits
in the back with the idiot.  Nick is also under arrest.  He came into
the room, quite jolly and with a glass in his hand, greeted them with a
cheerful. "Yes!  Yes!  How's it going?" When he realized something was
wrong, he said. "You bastards." So they said he must come along too.

They drive you through tall iron gates.  It's not a prison, it's a
large, grey, modern building.  At the back of the building there are
large grounds; in the far corner stands an old house that has been
neglected.  The garden is overgrown.  They take you into the house.  The
rooms are offices.  No bars.  Bare floors creak with every step; you
cannot breathe properly.  Heads peep curiously round door frames as if
at something unusual.

It's definitely not a prison, the room they take you to has no bars
either.  The window is open.  You could jump through it and run away. An
almanac hangs on the wall; it say. "Kelly's tyres are tough."

Nick is taken to another office.  You don't see him again.

Major Kruger and Lieutenant Botha are with you.

They are very friendly; you are the bird they have caught in the gin,
now they want to play with you.  Give you teaime.

They Want you to like them.

They say. "Young lady, if you plead guilty, you will make it easier for
yourself and get it over quickly.  If you plead not guilty, it will be a
long-drawn-out affair.  Plead guilty, and we'll try to have your case
brought before the court today."

You tell yourself to say, yes, guilty.  You make a statement, they help
you with the words.  You sign your name, but it doesn't look like yours.

They take you deeper into the house to a smaller room.

There is a table.  Lieutenant Botha squeezes sticky black stuff from a
tube on to a flat, square tin and rolls the sticky stuff with a little
roller to spread it out.  He rolls and rolls.  You begin to realize -
the most terrifying, helpless realization.  You cry: Please don't!  On
another flat surface he puts a white form ...  takes your fingers one by
one and presses them into the sticky black stuff.  He tells you to relax
and make your hand limp.  You can't.  Every finger is printed on the
form: then all four fingers together.  Both hands.

You say to yourself.  don't make such a noise, crying.

You can't help it, they have robbed you of a secret.

They show you where to wash your hands with pink jelly soap from a cup
without a handle.  Everything round the wash-basin is black.  Every
crack in the basin, between the tiles above the basin; the taps as well.
You wash and wash, but the ink will not come off - it's got into you.

They fetch you, walk you to the building in front - the police station!
You're under arrest.  One constable shouts to another. "Hey!  Come enter
her in the cell register; I'm busy."

Back to the white Cortina and out through the iron gates.  You keep your
hands tightly closed on your lap, you're afraid to see the ink.  They
drive you down the street and say you're in luck, they've got you in at
the court.  There are people in the streets - they are not under arrest.

You must wait in the quadrangle at the court building.

The walls are made of blocks of stone.  You stand with your face to the
stone so that you won't see the people looking at you.  You stay there
till they come and fetch you for your case to be heard.

The courtroom is like the inside of a church.  Except that the Eye that
watches you is not up in the roof, but on the bench, in the magistrate's
face: pale green eyes that glare at you as if they can't stand the sight
of you.  He reads the charge against you, asks if you realize the
seriousness of the charge.  You nod your head.  You cannot take in all
the words, your head feels big and heavy ...  The magistrate says bail
is granted in the sum of RSOO and the case against you will be heard in
this court on Friday 7 March.  You are to be present on that day at nine
o'clock ...

There is R2000 in the pocket of your skirt.  You ask to be taken to the
cloakroom: you wash your hands, but the ink will not go away.  You count
out the money for the bail, they show you where to pay it and give you a
receipt.

Then you are free to go.

No, not yet.

The idiot takes you back in the white Cortina to your car at the hotel.
"Promise me you'll drive home carefully, especially over the mountain."
As if he's concerned about you.

"What's happened to Nick Wehland?"

"Don't worry about Nick, worry about yourself." He leans to the back to
get the cake-tin and puts it on your lap.. "Here is my telephone
number; if there is any problem, or if you feel like talking, even if
it's later tonight remember, we can do a lot to have your sentence
reduced.

I'll come and visit you in any case.  I know we can rely on your
cooperation."

You don't ask him what he means, you just throw down the piece of paper
with his number on, get out of the car and slam the door behind you as
hard as you can.

Five SHORTLY AFTER HALF-PAST five, she drives into George and goes
straight to jan du Toit.

The moment she places the tin on the desk in front of him, she knows it
was not him.  In her heart she had begun to believe that his guilty
conscience made him report her and Nick in the end.  But it was not him.
He's too glad to see her.

"How did it go?" Anxious, hopeful ...

"It was a trap.  I've been caught."

For a moment he stares at her blankly.  Then the truth dawns on him.
"Caught?" he asks, stunned.

"Yes.. "You were caught?" As if it hits him a second time.

"Yes.. "And my money?  What about my money?. "They took it together with
Nick's and mine.  It's confiscated."

"Oh God, don't tell me that!  It's borrowed money!" he shouts, ripping
the lid from the tin.  When he sees it's empty, he looks up, his eyes so
filled with fear that she cannot bear it.. "I've got to pay it back!"

"I'm sorry, Jan."

Some time during the night, she falls asleep, still wearing her clothes.
When she wakes up, it's daylight and she wants to close her eyes and go
back to sleep, but she can't.

Her mouth tastes foul.  She hears herself groan when she gets out of
bed.

She does not open the curtains.  She never wants the mountain to see her
again.

She's dizzy, she must eat something.  But she cannot cut the bread
because the ink is still on her hands.  As if she had been branded.

She has a bath and washes her hair.  Standing over the bath, rinsing her
hair, she slowly reaches the moment where rebellion begins.  She asks
herself. "How did I get into this!  How am I going to get out of it?"

With the towel round her hair, she walks to the window and jerks open
the curtains.  The mountain stands tall and serene over everything.
"Mountain," she confesses. "I've got into the most terrible mess." He
looks at her without a trace of reproof on his old rocky face, and lets
her cry till the first, faint stirrings of courage begin to break
through the panic inside her.

She must dry her hair, get dressed and go to see Nick.

Thank God, the R7 000 was not in the bag, they didn't lay their hands on
that.  They'll give her the choice of a fine, they won't put her in
prison ...

Mountain, they will not send me to prison, will they?

A cloud comes over his face.

Friday 7 March.  That's three weeks from now.  A new wave of panic
starts to engulf her.  Somehow she will have to stay on her feet and get
out of this!  And get her hands clean.  She mustn't think about
tomorrow; she must take one step at a time and keep on going.

First she must see Nick.

She feels bad about jan's money.  Nick's too.  But he hasn't got a wife
and children, he can sell ferns ...  If only she had waited until he
came back, if only she hadn't given the bag with the money to the man!

If, if, if.  What's the use?

It wasn't Jan.  Could it have been Dirk?

She must get to Nick.

When she gets to the valley where fairies can live, all the beauty has
been drawn back inside itself, it doesn't speak to her.  It hides behind
a thick glass wall, because she has horrible black ink on her hands.

The same four women are packing ferns as she walks up to the shed.  Nick
stands with his back to her by the nearest packer.  He seems not to hear
her coming; one of the women looks up briefly, and then goes on with her
packing.

When she's about halfway between the house and the shed, she hears Nick
scolding the women.. "I can't turn my back for one bloody day and trust
you to carry on on your own!  I told you I wanted Saturday's and
Sunday's ferns packed when I got back from Oudtshoorn!  But if I'm not
here you just spend the time bloody fucking and boozing and .  .  ." One
of the women makes a sign with her head and he spins round.. "And what
the hell are you doing here?" he asks, without drawing breath.

"I've just come to tell you that it wasn't Jan," she says, shaking.

He storms right up to her.. "Listen here," he hisses, with clenched
teeth. "I don't want to hear another word from you or jan du Toit!  So
get into your car and get off my property!" She steps back because she's
afraid that he will strike her.  Behind him the women look on without a
trace of emotion.. "I'll go as soon as you give me my money.. "What
money?" He throws it down as a challenge.

She's scared, but she doesn't let him see it.. "The R7 000 you took from
me in the cottage and put in your pocket."

"Don't come here with a bloody shit story, I took no money from you!"

Nick Wehland is a dirty wall rising up in front of her.

She knows she can't make it budge an inch, whatever she does.  It will
just make her hands even dirtier.

When she gets out of her car at the flat, Lieutenant Botha gets out of
the white Cortina behind her.  Another stone wall.

"Hallo, gorgeous!" he greets her.. "You never thought I would come
visiting you this soon, did you?"

No, she didn't.

When she was in primary school they discovered a cat in the classroom
one morning.  One of the children had probably smuggled it in.  A ginger
cat.  Someone closed the door and the boys started chasing the cat. Over
the desks, under the desks, the teacher didn't come and stop them!

The cat got frantic.  There were red scratch marks on the boys' hands
and arms, but they would not give up.  When the cat starting clawing his
way up the corner between the blackboard and the curtain, she started
screaming.  When the teacher came, the cat was so terrified he just
crouched in the corner, a large wet spot spreading under him.  At
break-time he saw that the door was open, and he fled.

Ever since, whenever she thought of the cat - even after all these years
- the most awful feeling of anguish would come over her.

As it did now.

He takes his time, browsing through her flat with his hands in his
pockets, looking at everything.  When he comes to the books on the
shelf, he stoops down for a while and says. "Clever girl, hey?"

She does not answer him.  She did not invite him in, and she did not
invite him to sit down.

He's a tall man.  Light brown hair, no longer parted in the centre as it
had been when he was pretending to be retarded.

His eyes are blue.  His nose must have been damaged long ago:

own the bridge and it makes his face look cracked.

a scar runs deep.

"Do you like cats?" She has to know.

"I'm a dog man.  Bull terriers." He picks up the porcelain bowl that
stands on the bookshelf and studies it carefully.

"Must be quite old, hey?"

"Yes."

"One day, when you don't want it any longer, remember to give it to me.
I collect old stuff."

"It belonged to my great-grandmother.  I was named after her."

"I was wondering why they had given you such a silly name.  Why didn't
they change it to Ami or something?" It's none of your business."

"Bit of a spitfire, aren't you?" He sits down on the chair at the table,
his back to the mountain.  She sits on the bed.

"Don't frown at me like that, young woman, I'm here to help you.  I was
only doing my job, yesterday, as you do yours: selling houses."

"Couldn't you just have given me a day in which to recover from the
shock?"

"Remember the saying: strike while the iron is hot?  Do your family and
friends know you've been caught?. "No.

"That's something in your favour; it increases your usefulness."

"Your decoy, Nick Wehland, has stolen R7000 from me."

"Is that a fact?" As if it's a joke.

"He took it from me, pretending he was going to buy me an extra bargain
at the end.  Then he went out to get himself a drink, giving you people
time to get me." She had worked it all out: Nick Wehland had been acting
as if he were surprised and shocked when he came back; they never said
they had arrested him.  They just said he had to come along too ...

"You should be careful, making allegations like that, you know.  Can you
prove that he took the money?. "No.. "I suggest that you take up the
matter with him then.. "In other words, he not only gets the reward
money from you, he also gets away with the money he has stolen from me."

"You will have to take it up with Nick Wehland.  I know nothing about
him.  I'm here to help you so that you can help yourself in the end."

"How?"

"By being a little pleasanter, in the first place.  By accepting that
you've been caught, coming to terms with it and cooperating with us?

"In what way?"

"If you help us to arrest a certain man, we'll tell the court of your
assistance, which the magistrate will take into consideration when he
has to sentence you.. "Is that what Nick Wehland had to do?"

"Forget about Nick Wehland.  Look after yourself.  Only last week, a man
got a sentence of seven years' imprisonment in Windhoek on a charge of
illicit diamond dealing his first offence.  Without the option of a She
keeps her face as impassive as she can so that he will not see the
fright he has given her.. "Did they catch him with a lot of diamonds on
him?" She has to ask.

"I don't know.  But I promise you it's the truth.  And I'm not telling
you this to scare you, I'm telling you because I don't want to see it
happen to you.. "What must I do?"

"I've told you: help us to catch a certain man."

"Who?"

"Your buyer."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Take us to your buyer." It's a cordial command.

"My buyer?" She tries to sound incredulous in order to play for time.  A
name you never reveal, even if they put a gun to your head.. "What
buyer?" she asks, as innocently as she can.

"Come now .  .  ." Coaxing.. "You know very well who I'm talking of.  The
man to whom you sold Dirk Holtzman's diamonds, to whom you would have
sold the others'

"He's dead." She says it without thinking't's all she can think of in
her dismay.

"Ami ...

"That is not my name!" she snaps at him, still playing for time.  Her
hands begin to sweat.

"Very well, then.  Let's say I believe your little joke tell me who he
was when he was alive.  I could take some flowers to his grave."

Trapped.  jan du Toit with his loose tongue would ha ye given away
everything to Nick Wehland!  She feels she wants to scratch and spit
like a cat.  She must find a way to escape!  How?. "Whoever told you
that I sold diamonds fo Dirk Holtzman was talking through his hat."

"You're a damn good liar for a clergyman's daughter."

"If you know so much about me, you should surely know my so-called
buyer's name.  I suggest you send Nick Wehland to him to lure him into a
snare for you." Something tells her: spit and fight, they don't know who
you sold the diamonds? "I can assure you, Lieutenant Botha, that I have
stolen nothing from anyone.  I wanted to buy a few diamonds with the
money that I had earned but I was prevented by the law made specially to
protect the interest of the mining magnates, which says: "Woe unto the
man who dares to touch a diamond unless they, the magnates, put it on
the table for him!  Woe unto the man that touches the diamonds that
their forefathers came lying and stealing for in this country." She
knows she's making a fool of herself.  He is sitting there with his legs
crossed, calmly swinging a foot; he knows the door is barred, the cat
can't get out.

"Missy, you're ingenuous.  You should never have allowed yourself to get
into a situation like this.  It's not for children." As if he is really
feeling sorry for her.. "And you're very pale - did you get enough sleep
last night?" As if he's truly concerned about her.. "I'm not here to
scare you, I'm here to help you.  This is a game for sharks, my girl, no
one's going to help you unless you're prepared to swim with the others.
I suggest you go and lie down for a while, take a good rest and have a
good think.  Then I'll come back and we'll talk.  We might even take
your buyer a few nice flowers this very evening.  Or early tomorrow
morning.  Then it will all be over.  We will testify to your ration and
show the magistrate you've done something to assist us."

Talking to her like a brother.

He closes the door softly behind him when he leaves.

She's the bird in the snare, the cat in the corner.

They want someone's head from her.  They think that it will be someone
living near by - perhaps the man at Mossel Bay.  They don't know about
Samuel Sundoo.

Will an attorney know what she should do?  How much does an attorney
cost?  Will joop Lourens know?  No, he must never find out.

Her appointment with Samuel Sundoo is for Thursday morning at eleven -
the day after tomorrow.  Is this coincidence?  A door that's been left
open for her to escape through?  With which to buy a lighter sentence?

Everytime she hears or thinks the word 'sentence', it is as if a snake
is striking her with its poisoned fangs.  Seven years for a first
offence without the option of a fine?  Did he make it up in order to
scare her?  Surely they won't send her to prison.  They have to give her
the option of a fine ...

Where will she get the money to pay it?

Mountat'n, I'm afraid!

Stay calm.  Think.  Would Samuel Sundoo hesitate to trample on her in
order to get himself out of trouble?  No.

If you're an Afr'kaner you expect to be trampled on anyway.

Is Samuel Sundoo a descendant of the Indians that Britain brought here
by the boatload?  To come and work for the British colonists in the
sugar plantations in Natal, I I    1 where the Zulu refused to work for
them?

Does Sundoo know about that, or has he forgotten?

Most of them were recruited in the slums of Calcutta or Madras: Coolie
No.  1, Coolie No.  2 - Coolie No.  200 ...

Coolie No.  100,000!  Because their names were unpronouncible to the
British, they were given numbers.

She goes and sits at the table, resting her head in her hands.  She
knows she will destroy Samuel Sundoo to save herself.  She has to.

It wasn't for the Boers that the Indians worked at ten shillings a
month.  It wasn't the Boers that tormented them during the day and
crowded them into mud and corrugatediron shacks at night, with holes in
the ground for toilets and dirty water to drink.  It was the British.

If Samuel Sundoo came in at this moment, she would tell him that it
wasn't in the parliament of the Boers that it was decided that they were
not a 'civilized race', but in the parliament of the British colony of
Natal.  It was not Boer documents that stated that they had to be kept
apart from the white colonists, that they had been brought to Natal like
mules and oxen or machinery: to work.  Suggesting that they be sent back
when their work contracts expired, because they didn't belong here.

Few ever went back.

What else would she tell Sundoo?  That they arrived in their thousands
between 1860 and somewhere early in the new century, and quickly learned
to hate the colonists.

When their contracts expired, they went off and started little shops:
today a pumpkin carried under one arm, tomorrow a home-made cart on
wheels, the day after a little shack with a roof on.

It wasn't long before the news reached India that pumpkins were selling
well on the toe of Africa.  Suddenly a fresh throng started to arrive
from India: businessmen of a higher station - with money and expertise.
Perhaps Samuel Sundoo is one of their descendants?

They came, buying the others' shops and putting them out of business.
Within five years they were prospering and putting their grievances
before the Colonial Secretary in London.  They complained about the
brutality of the colonial police; the injustice of the colonial courts;
the curfew.  They started agitating for political rights, civic rights...

The British colonists were getting worried.  The 'coolies' were
increasing at an enormous rate.  At the same time, resentment was
gathering in the hearts of the Zulu people.

They believed that when someone fights you and wins, taking what's
yours, you submit, and wait until you're strong enough to take him on.
If you win, it's his turn to submit.  The Indians, they said, fought for
nothing and defeated no one, they came to the land of the Zulus as
slaves for the colonists and now they were getting fatter and richer by
the day!

So the Zulus started plundering them, burning down their shops, raping
the women, killing the men.  And the violence spread, like a fire
burning more and more fiercely.

Next the stupid white colonists were sending in troops of white
policemen with guns - not to help the Zulus, but to save the Indians.

And in the end everyone hated the Boers.

When Lieutenant Botha comes back't's almost dark.  She tells him he may
take her great-grandmother's bowl, if he still wants it.  The man to
whom she has sold the diamonds is dead.  He says. "Now you're asking for
trouble, lady.  Big trouble, because you're messing around with me now."
She just keeps quiet.  He says. "You better start praying the bloody
sun's gone down for you!" She says nothing.

Then he takes the bowl and walks out.

She couldn't give Samuel Sundoo away - she had given her word to joop
Lourens.

SOME TIME IN THE SMALL hours of the night - like a tiny bubble of
air rising from deep down - she remembers a picture she had seen in a
book once.

It was soon after the spitting episode, before she had realized that she
would have to prepare to leave the country.

It was a picture of a leper walking through a deserted village at the
dead of night.  Round his neck was a leper's bell so that people could
hear him coming and get out of the way.  It was cold, it was snowing. He
was walking with a stick, his back was crooked.  With him was an old
woman, leading him by the hand.  Because she was with a leper, the
people were avoiding her too.  The only light in the picture was a ray
of warm yellow light coming through a window, and the leper was standing
in this light.

No matter how dark it is around you, the picture said, there will be a
ray of light from somewhere.

When dawn begins to break, she knows that she has no choice: she will
have to go out and buy herself light.

At half-past ten the same morning, she pushes open the glass doors
saying Visser, Malherbe & Visser, Attorneys.

She does not know any of them, but she knows that one of them is a
friend of Elvin's.

Inside, it feels like a doctor's waiting-room.  The woman at the
reception desk looks up over glasses fastened to a string round her
neck.  She could be trying to decide which illness you have.

"Can we help?" Businesslike.

"How much does it cost to consult an attorney?"

"Our usual consultation fee is R75 per half hour or part thereof.. "I
would like to see an attorney, please.. "There are three attorneys here.
Which would you like to see?. "It doesn't matter.. "If you tell me what
your problem is, I can refer you to the most suitable one.. "I should
like to see the cleverest one.. "All three of them are clever. Otherwise
they would not have been lawyers." Snotty.

"Anyone, then.. "Well ...  I can make you an appointment with Mr.
Malherbe for three o'clock this afternoon.. "I want to see one now,
please.. "That is not possible.  Mr. Leon Visser is in consultation at
the moment; the other two are not back from court yet.. "I'll come back
at three.. "Name?. "Araminta Rossouw.. "I beg your pardon?. "I'll spell
it to you."

Three o'clock.  That means a wait of five and a half hours.

She can't go home, for she's afraid Lieutenant Botha will come back. She
has phoned Elvin to say that she wouldn't be in the office today.  He
said it's all right, he understands.

Understands what?  Has jan told Dirk, Dirk told Bernard, and Bernard
told Elvin?

What if she goes and asks Elvin if she can stay on at Carr & Holtzman
and he says no?

How did I get into this?

How is she going to while away five and a half hours?

What is she going to do if Elvin says they don't want her any longer? If
word gets out, not even the opposition will want her.  She could go and
work at an estate agents in Cape Town ...  how much will it cost to move
there, how much more will she have to pay for her rent in the city?

Seventeen thousand rands' worth of wing feathers lost at a go.  Shit.
How could she have landed in this mess?

No, she doesn't want to live in Cape Town.  She does not want to live
under an angry mountain.  Table Mountain, backdrop to the mother-city,
the beautiful 'castle in rock', is a very angry mountain because he can
never sleep.  They shine strong lights in his eyes every night so that
people can look at his beauty in the dark as well.  He calls out for
help, he cries out in fury, with fire after fire, but no one hears.  As
a student she had never wanted to go into Cape Town with the others at
night.

Where is she going to find feathers for her wings again?

I'llgrow mysenew ones.

They won't put her in prison, will they?  What if she can't pay the
fine?  She walks faster.  She can't go and ask her father for money.  Or
joop Lourens.  Why did she have to do it!

Eleven o'clock.

Twelve o'clock.

She can't keep on walking like this.  She must go and sit in a caf,
order a pot of tea and take as long as possible to finish it ...

SEVEN PEOPLE BURNED ALIVE - BLACK TOWNSHIP VIOLENCE', says the newspaper
hoarding at the entrance to the caf.. "MORE SANCTIONS', says the
hoarding on the other side.  She walks past them.

How much longer is it going to take her to get away now?

What if she has to find other employment and can't?  Unemployment's
rising by the day.  She can't go without money.

Two years' work in a canvas bag, given to two stoolpigeons!  Plus R7000
in the third one's pocket.

She knew there was something wrong with those diamonds the moment she
had them lying in her hand.  Samuel Sundoo would not have wanted them.
Once anger has moved into a diamond, it is no longer good, no matter how
beautiful it is ...

"Once upon a time, there lived a very beautiful diamond," she tells the
plumbago hedge, the ash trees on the pavement, the stones, herself.. "It
was the largest, finest blue diamond in the whole world - until they
stole it from setting in the head of a god in India.  The diamond Its 1
1 became very angry and misfortune fell on everyone that possessed it
after that; one of its owners was devoured by wild animals. When Louis
XIV, King of France, bought it, he had it cut and faceted, making it
about half its original size.  It was he who revoked the Edict of
Nantes, which meant that the Protestants were persecuted once more, and
some of them fled to the Cape where their blood was needed to make a new
people.

"When the king died, it was of a strange and terrible illness.  Perhaps
it wasn't because of the diamond, though, but because of the hundred
whores he had had as mistresses.

"Louis XVI inherited the diamond, and he was guillotined.  After that a
man by the name o omas ope bought the stone and lost everything he had -
which was a lot, because he was a millionaire.  At last they locked away
the diamond and its wrath deep in the British Museum.

"Anger that's locked in for too long gets worse and worse .  .  ."

Two o'clock.

How tired she feels!

There was something wrong with those diamonds; Samuel Sundoo would have
noticed it...

There is something in diamonds, one can feel it.  They radiate
something.  They say that if the sick drink water in which the famous
Koh-i-Noor diamond has been dipped, they will be healed.  It was 900
barley grains, that Indian diamond.  But it was stolen too, and taken to
Persia where its curse fell upon one shah after another.  It took
revenge on all its owners until it was taken back home to India.

But by that time, Britain had won the struggle for power in the East and
was ruling over India.  And over the Cape.

So the diamond was sent to London, where it was cut and faceted and
polished and set in a royal crown, and kept behind a thick glass wall in
a dark tower.  Most of its anger had by now been cut away, for only 106
grains remained of the original stone.

How much is going to be left of her by the time she gets out of this
mess?  The question confronts her like a challenge; she tries to find it
an answer, but cannot.  All she feels is a growing sense of outrage
within her.

She waits outside on the pavement in front of Visser, Malherbe &
Visser's offices until it's three o'clock.

The woman takes her down a short passage; at the end is a door on which
it say. "Koos Malherbe'.  A warning in bold, black letters.

"Please be seated.  Mr. Malherbe will be back soon." Stacks of folders,
bookcases reaching up to the ceiling, rows of uniform books like
soldiers standing in line, guarding dark and complicated laws.  Two
enormous desks.

Walls covered with paintings and certificates in narrow black frames; a
robe thrown over a dumb-valet in the corner.

The room is filled with the fear that people have left behind, and she
has come to add hers to it.  It is a place where the guilty and the
innocent come to buy hope.  How many times had she opened the rectory
door to someone coming to her father for help!  Some cried even before
they reached his study; others never cried.  But on every face was
reflected the anxiety or the hatred or the grievance with which they had
come, and some of it always stayed behind when they left.  It was a
cloud that you could feel, but not see.

And Koos Malherbe when he enters seems to issue a warning, sending it
out ahead of him, saying it with his body. "I'm every book on these
shelves, I am the law come alive, I can save you or let you drown." He's
not thirty, he's not forty.  He is not exceptionally tall, but he looks
as imposing as a tree: dark, attractive mouth, eyes that warn you anew.
If she had to draw a picture of him, it would be with red crayons.  When
he walks round the desk and sits down on his throne of charcoal-coloured
leather, she realizes that it lis not a ray of light that is falling
over her, it is the icy cold shadow of a rock in the heat of day.

"Araminta Rossouw," he reads from the folder the woman has left.  When
he looks up, it is as if he were looking at sinner number 100, or 200,
or 1,00. "What can I do for you?" he asks.  Very professional.

"I'm in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

Illicit diamond dealing."

He looks at her sharply, as if she had just changed into a different
creature before his eyes.. "I beg your pardon?. "It's true.. "When?"
"The day before yesterday.. "Where?. "In Oudtshoorn.. "Where do you
live?. "Here in George.. "Do you work here?. "I sell property for Carr &
Holtzman.. "I thought I'd seen you somewhere.  I go and see Elvin at the
office sometimes."

"Elvin doesn't know that I've been caught.  At least, I hope he doesn't.
I want to know if they can send me to prison without the option of a
fine because I've refused to cooperate with them.  I want to know what
they do to you if you haven't got money to pay the fine .  .  ."

"It's your first offence, then." This is not a question.

"Yes.  I don't want to go to prison."

"Relax.  It's not the end of the world.  Tell me what happened, just
tell me the truth and start from the beginning." It's another warning.

For a moment she does not know where 'from the beginning' is.. "From the
beginning' is when you're born, long before you're born perhaps.  From
the beginning can be tomorrow.  It would be best to begin with the
Shirleys.

"In October last year, a man and a woman walked into my office .  .

When she's finished, he leans forward on his arms.. "Miss Rossouw.
Araminta.  If I put everything you've just told me together, there are a
few things that make no sense.

Unless I can make sense of them, I can't help you.  In the first place
your apparent stupidity does not fit with your obvious intelligence;
also I would like to know where you got R17000 to buy diamonds with."

"I had another R2 000 in my pocket." She says it on purpose.

"There's not much happening in the property market at the moment, so
where did you get it from?"

"The market's not as dead as all that.  I saved it out of commission
that I've earned.  I'm not a thief." I'll sleep with you if you help me.
Please.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"How long have you been with Carr & Holtzman?"

"Two years and two months."

"How many young women of your age in this town, do you suppose, have
been able to bank R 19000 over the last two years?"

"I didn't buy any clothes, I didn't buy anything for the fun of buying
it.  I've just bought the absolute minimum.. "You'll gain nothing by
getting cross with me.  If I am to find extenuating circumstances for
you, you had better help me."

"Can I go to court without a lawyer?"

"We'll decide about that later."

"If you get the option of a fine, but you haven't got the money, can you
pay it off gradually?"

"That can be arranged.  But don't get the idea that it's a dress account
that gives you six months to pay.  What's the date of the trial?"

"The seventh of March.  I've got enough money to pay you for this
consultation, but not for a court case."

"What makes a girl like you decide to smuggle diamonds?. "I didn't
smuggle diamonds!  I only wanted to buy diamonds in order to sell them
at a profit, so that I could get money more quickly for a specific
purpose."

"What purpose?"

"To leave the country."

It's a hit.  She sees it in the way he sits back in his chair, in his
apparent surprise at discovering for the second time that she hasn't got
the disease he had thought she had.

"Why do you want to leave the country?"

"Because I cannot see how any political leader will ever succeed in
getting thirteen different nations - depending on how you count - though
any Rubicon in this country." She knows she's reacting with the
brashness of fear because she has no other weapon against his
unrelenting rectitude.

"Even if Moses came and parted the waters for us, it would make no
difference, for on the other side there would still not be enough money
for everyone.  And because there isn't enough money for everyone,
millions live by stealing and plundering and murdering and lying and all
sorts of things to get hold of money - and the rest pretend they're
alive, while they're living behind stronger and stronger bars.  I'm
sorry if my answer was a bit longer than you have expected." He looks at
her as if she is a child who has been allowed to get something off her
chest.

He doesn't say a word.. "If you're trying to make some kind of
diagnosis, I'll gladly tell you more!"

"What?"

"Have you got any idea, Mr. Malherbe, of how many billions of rands the
world has already given to the oppressed of this land?  How many
millions goes from us, the taxpayers, to them?  How many millions are
being sent by the Arabs to keep the revolution going in order to get a
black government into power, so that they can obtain the uranium they
need for the nuclear bomb they want to make in the Middle East?" She
gets a feeling that she's not impressing him ...

"But all the money that's pouring in makes no difference, it's still not
enough.  In the meantime the government governs less and less and the
country's creditors more and more, while cabinet ministers and
bureaucrats are filling their own pockets as fast as they can.  The few
really wealthy people are getting their money out to Switzerland in case
they have to flee.  On the one side of the stage stand those that are
pleading for economic stability because it's the prerequisite for peace
and good government; on the other side of the stage stand those that are
asking for international sanctions and boycotts so that the money supply
dries up, because according to them the state must be bankrupted if we
are ever to have peace and stability.

There was a time when I thought communism was the answer, that
everything should be divided equally, but that works even less well.  So
I can't be bothered to worry about what's right or wrong any more. Right
and wrong, truth and lies are concepts that have become so confused in
this country that no one will ever get them unravelled again.  I wanted
to buy the diamonds so that I could go and live in another country."

"Is that a fact?" Like an amen.

"Yes.  And besides, Africa no longer wants white children, and the world
can't wait to see the last of the Afrikaner."

"Really?" Cynical, like a second amen.

"Yes!" Maybe she had been given the stupidest of the three attorneys ...

"Where did you plan to go?"

"Probably to Switzerland.  Perhaps Austria.  I would have been packing
at this very moment."

"So what will you do now?"

"I must get out of this mess and start again from scratch."

"Is that why you wouldn't give away your buyer?  Because you 're hoping
to go back to him with more diamonds later on?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Can you see yourself repeating this whole political diatribe in court,
arguing that you needed the money in order to leave the country?"

"I'll say it on my knees, if it will help." And I'll sleep with you.

"Suppose I'm the magistrate, and I say to you that it's a poor argument,
given the fact that there is a wonderful future waiting for everyone in
this country, provided that we are prepared to break down all the
barriers, make sacrifices, reach out to one another in friendship and
forgiveness - that running away is for cowards?. "Then I'd say: "Your
Honour, you are dreaming, you are just like my father.". "Who is your
father?. "Ignatius Rossouw.. "What's his profession?. "Minister of the
Dutch Reformed Church.. "Where?. "Bloemfontein.. "Brothers and sisters?"
"One sister.. "Occupation?. "Teacher.. "Your mother?. "Organist in my
father's church."

"Excellent.  You must bring up your father's standing as mitigation.
Under no circumstances will you go and repeat this other story in court.
Magistrates don't like emotional political recitals.  Especially not
when delivered by a woman."

"It wasn't a political speech."

"I don't care what you call it, just keep it out of court.

You'll put on the oldest dress you have and do your hair in a plait.  A
single plait, not the latest ones with dozens of rows: a good
old-fashioned one.  You'll go without a lawyer because it will be to
your advantage.  I know the prosecutor, I'll speak to him in the
meantime.  The day before you have to appear in court, 6 March, I'll
brief you here in my office to prepare you.  You'll go and tell the
court that you're sorry and promise never to do it again.  Your father
will tell you that the Bible says, if you land up in the power of
another, it's best to plead and beg in order to save yourself.  You've
done a stupid thing, now you'll have to be clever in order to get out of
it as best you can.. "I'll do as you say." Your Honour.

"In the meantime, when you have nothing else to do, reflect a little
more on the so-called complexity of money - it seems to be a subject
that intrigues you.  You might even discover that it's actually far more
simple than you suppose.  Lieutenant Botha, or one of his colleagues,
will probably visit you again; make sure that it's not out of
stubbornness that you're refusing to give them your cooperation."

"It's not."

"Diamond detectives are not the kind of men that allow silly girls to
play games with them.  And, incidentally, you were a fool to give away
your great-grandmother's bowl.

When you go out, make an appointment for 6 March at reception."

Telling you it's time to go.

But she feels better.

She has a little more courage with which to try and get on with her
life.  First of all, she has to go back to work as if nothing has
happened.  If they know, they know.  If they don't now, she won't tell
them.

They do know.

She realizes it the minute she walks into the office.  She sees it in
Bernard and Lizzie and Christel, beaming at her, over-friendly; she sees
it in their eyes that don't lie.  And it is all over Elvin's face when
he calls her to his office.

"Major Harrington, your client for the Wilderness property, was here to
see you yesterday.  He wants you to cancel his option on the house, as
he's going into hospital for an operation tomorrow."

"I hope it's nothing serious."

"At his age, any operation is serious."

She had been so sure that that transaction would go through; the
commission it would bring was her speck of hope, if she has to pay a
fine ...

Elvin picks up a pen and starts to make doodles on the desk pad in front
of him.. "Araminta," - he does not look up - 'don't you think there's
something you ought to tell me yourself?"

"If I'm an embarrassment to Carr & Holtzman, I'll leave."

"Then it's true?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry." He puts the pen down and looks up.. "I'm sorry if I have
been instrumental in this, if I started it when I told Bernard about the
Shirleys.  I can't tell you how bad I feel about this.. "It was my own
stupidity that got me into this mess; there is no need to feel guilty,
Elvin.. "In spite of what you say, I still feel responsible.. "Who told
you what happened?. "Bernard.  Dirk had to call a doctor to the garage
for I jan; his wife must not find out.  But what surprises me most is
that you could have trusted a man like Nick Wehland.  He's the biggest
fern thief there is - he even picks them at night, and they can't catch
him.  They say he's not only picking ferns, he's plundering and
destroying the forest as he goes, and making stacks of money, selling
and exporting them.  You'll have to get yourself a good lawyer."

"I have."

"Who?"

"Malherbe of Visser, Malherbe & Visser."

"Koos Ma]herbe can be tough as hell, but he's a good lawyer.  Promise me
you'll tell me if there's anything I can do."

"Do you think I will be able to live it down in the town?"

"Of course.  At the risk of overestimating myself, I might say that, as
a member of the city council and chairman of the hospital board, I do
have some influence that I can use to make things a bit easier on you."

"Thank you.  What I actually wanted to ask, is whether there's a chance
that I could stay on at Carr & Holtzman's."

"I was hoping you would.. "That's decent of you, Elvin.  Thank you."

THE DAYS ARE STREAKED with light and dark: more darkness than
light.

Darkness is Ralph Linde walking into her office on the Friday morning,
closing the door behind him.. "They could have knocked me over with a
feather!" he exclaims.. "Araminta Rossouw, you're the cherry on the
cake!  Why didn't you tell me you were looking for diamonds?  I could
have brought them to you on a tray."

"Go away."

"Never send away your good fortune.  How many do you want?  I've got an
old black friend, he can bring us a cupful.  Tomorrow.  Minimum
four-carat beauties.  Where do you think Klaas Muller got the money from
to start that paint concern of his?"

"Go away."

"What I can't figure out, is how you got involved with a riffraff like
Wehland.  You know that he spent five years in jail for diamond
smuggling before he came here?  What possessed you?  The moment the dust
settles round you, I'll arrange us a proper deal.  The only problem is
to get a genuine buyer."

"Ralph Linde, I promise you, if you come near me with anything illegal,
I'll report you immediately."

As he gets up, he says. "Well, when the magistrate clobbers you, as he
will, you'll know where to find me.  See you!"

A ray of light comes on the Monday night when Lizzie and Christel knock
at her door, cheerfully holding up a chocolate cake and a bottle of
champagne.

"I bought the cake!" says Christel.

"And I bought the champagne!" says Lizzie.

"I haven't deserved this." It's the first time that anyone from Carr &
Holtzman has ever been in her ark, and for the first time she's sorry
that she hasn't got two easy chairs.

"Whether you like it or not," Christel announces, 'we've unanimously
decided it's time to make you come out of your shell.  We're finding you
a man as well."

"Wait a minute.  .

"You wait until you see our list of possibilities!" Lizzie cries, and
starts to ease the cork out of the bottle.. "Let's get some glasses!"

"I really can't afford to get involved with a man now," she owns up
after they've toasted her.. "I've lost all my savings.  I've got to
start again from scratch."

"Man-time's at night, when you don't work!" Christel states with
determination.

It's like the old times, the night-time sessions when she was a student:
talking, laughing, gossiping - eating.  Then she had had to hide her
confusion and rebelliousness from the other students; from Lizzle and
Christel she disguises her uncertainty and fear, knowing that everywhere
clocks are ticking off the minutes to 7 March.

She laughs with them, chats with them; they pour the champagne, they cut
the cake.  But the two of them are together, while she is on the
outside.  And the 'subject' is carefully avoided.

"We've put Herman johnston on top of the list of possibles for you,"
Christel confesses.

"Who's he?"

"An architect's draughtsman.  He's already asked Elvin about you several
times."

"Is all this Elvin's idea?"

"What if it is?" Lizzie asks.. "You don't know what people are really
like until things go wrong.  You, for example.  We always thought you
were the quiet type, recovering from a disappointment - I mean ...  who
would have suspected that you were into diamonds and .  .

"Herman's a really nice man," Christel interrupts, loudly and quickly.
"He's good-looking, he's the right age, everything.  Elvin's planning
one of his super three-yearly dinner parties, inviting us all - plus, of
course, Mr. johnston!"

"I'm afraid there's only one man I'm interested in at the moment and
that's Koos Malherbe."

"That stands to reason," says Christel.. "But that doesn't mean to say.
.  ."

"Do you know anything about him?"

"He's a bastard," says Lizzie.. "My mother's cousin worked for him and
his wife before they got divorced." It was gossip time.. "They weren't
married a year," Christel adds, 'when he threw her out.  Just like
that!. "Threw who out?. "His wife.. "And then?. "She divorced him.. "How
long ago was that?. "Don't know," says Lizzie.

"Six, seven years ago," Christel reckons.

"It's good to know.  .  .. "Please don't get involved with him.. "I am
involved with him; he's the only hope I've got.. "Let's tidy up,"
Christel says, getting up.. "I promised my husband I wouldn't be home
too late."

When the three of them are gathered at the kitchen end of the room,
Lizzie's curiosity apparently gets the better of her.. "Araminta, if you
don't mind me asking: are they nice?  The uncut ones."

"Take a cloth and help me dry, Lizzie," Christel orders.

"I'm only asking.. "Yes, Lizzie, they are nice.  Very nice.. "I've only
seen them in pictures.. "Pictures can never show the real magic of
them.. "I would like to have a two-carat set in white gold," Christel
admits.

"I would like one big one set in ordinary gold," says Lizzie.

They don't ask her what she would like.

After they've left, she puts out the lights and opens the curtains.  The
mountain is a pale silhouette against the night sky.  It is sleeping.

There is something she has to face and think through: Koos Malherbe. For
the first time since Frans de Villiers, she has deliberately reached out
to a man.  With Frans she did it playfully, challengingly.  Shall I or
shall't 1?  Will he or won't he?  Infatuation - first love - heaven on
earth.

When she reached out to touch Koos Malherbe, it was from something akin
to revenge.  Why?  Was it a case of hitting out instinctively at someone
who was looking down at her from above?

Yes.

And no.

Is it because he is untouchable, behind an impenetrable wall of glass,
and not a Frans de Villiers that was there for the taking?  Is there
something wrong with her, do 'forbidden' men turn her on?  Or is she
simply the bitch her mother had said she was?

No.

Koos Malherbe can show her that her hands aren't too dirty for a man
like him to touch ...  She needs to have his approbation.

How?

What if she does not succeed?

She has to.

Every morning when she wakes up, she fears that this is the day
Lieutenant Botha is going to return.  And every night there's one square
less on the calendar before the day of reckoning.  The urge to start
running becomes stronger and stronger.

Every night she says to herself.  Tomorrow I'll sell a house or a plot
or something - tomorrow - tomorrow tomorrow.  Elvin sells three houses;
Bernard sells one of the best farms in the district, but all she sells
is a cheap plot on the wrong side of town.

Every morning she warns herself not to panic.  Every night she goes to
bed with more panic in her heart.  There ought to be a law that says you
must be punished on the day of your wrongdoing!  Every day you spend
waiting for your punishment is a slow torture that breaks down your very
life, your dreams - a vulture tearing the hope from your flesh.  It
brings bitterness against jan du Toit, Nick Wehland and the other two,
pulling you deeper down into the mud.

They wait until it is nearly the seventh before they come, Major Kruger
and Lieutenant Smith.  Not Botha.

They don't come to her flat, they come to her office like two
prospective buyers, and none of the others suspects anything.  Major
Kruger is wearing a suit; Lieutenant Smith is in overalls, as if he had
just stepped off a ladder after painting a ceiling.  Even his hair is
speckled with paint.  They're pleasant, polite; ask how she is, ask
whether she has got herself a good lawyer, if there's anything she wants
them to do for her.  Can you get a cup of tea in this place?  No.  What
about a little smile, then?  Keep quiet, don't show them you're scared.

"Well, can we expect a little cooperation at least?. "What sort of
cooperation?"

"Something that will let us go and whisper in the prosecutor's ear, the
day after tomorrow .  .

"What sort of cooperation?"

"You know Klaas Muller?"

"No."

"Come now; you don't forget an old lover as easily as that?"

How does one run away?

Do you know Klaas Muller that has the paint shop?  Yes.

We've heard that he's desperate to get diamonds.  Perhaps we should do
him a favour and take him a few?  Most sardonic.

Don't do this to me, please.  Don't let me do this to Klaas, don't take
away the last of my self-respect.  They don't hear her.

Lieutenant Smith takes a little plastic bag from his pocket ...  two,
four, six ...  he shakes them out into his hand and holds them out for
her to see.  Six little crystals fit for a king and crying out to her to
take them.  She can't, the hand in which they are lying is the force
that guards them.

And her.  They are 'just bait, containing the indignation she feels
surging up in her, for she knows she's to be reduced to bait as well!

Don't think.  Do what they want you to do.  Do it blindly: swim with the
sharks, swim with the stream in exchange for a magistrate's leniency.

Their plan is thoroughly worked out; Major Kruger gives the details and
instructions.. "It has to happen fast.

Muller must be up to his neck in it before he gets a chance to think. At
a quarter to one, Lieutenant Smith walks into the paint shop: he's busy
painting his house and has run out of paint.  After five minutes, you
walk in, Miss Rossouw.  You tell Muller that the regular supplier you
were waiting for has turned up with diamonds unexpectedly.

Tell him the poor man came all the way from Upington by bus, that he's
absolutely to be trusted, but you don't have money to buy.  Tell him the
diamonds are magnificent, the best you've seen - I promise you, the ones
we'll show him will be even better than the ones we've got with us. Tell
Muller the man wants R25000 for them, but you're certain you can bring
him down to R20000 ...

You'd better take careful note of what I'm saying, miss, nothing must go
wrong.  Assure him that the diamonds will sell for at least R100000.
Play a strong suite.  Soft-talk him, ask him to help you out, tell him
you would hate to have to go to Dirk Holtzman.  If he asks where the man
with the diamonds is, say you wanted to bring him with you, but he's
afraid of trouble.  Push him.  Say the man has to catch the three
o'clock bus back to Upington, say you'll bring him after two o'clock.
Don't leave before you have a definite answer from Muller."

"And then?"

"At two o'clock one of my men will go back with you.

With the diamonds.  And don't even attempt to give Muller a warning.
Lieutenant Smith is notorious for his eyes and ears, he'll be in the
shop all the time, watching you.  Help us to catch Muller, and you help
yourself.  Don't try anything you might regret."

"What if he doesn't want to buy?"

"He'll buy.. "Can't this wait until tomorrow?. "No.  You must do it
now.. "The moment we strike, you freeze right where you are.

You don't utter a word, you simply pretend to be extremely surprised and
shocked and leave the rest to us."

"I know how to do that.  I've seen Nick Wehland doing it.. "Put Nick
Wehland out of your mind.  Help us to trap Muller, and we'll help you on
Friday.. "Couldn't it be someone other than Klaas?. "Well ...  we'd
still prefer your buyer, of course.. "Forget it, he's dead."

Don't think.

White Cortina.  She's not under arrest, she sits in the back.  People
are walking in the street; they are not under arrest.  Klaas Muller will
notice them when they come past with him ... Mountain!  The sky is grey,
clouds are hiding him ...  Smith gets out of the car to walk the last
few yards to the shop.

This is not happening, she says to herself; it's a bad movie I'm
watching.

The white Cortina drives slowly round the block.  When they get to the
shop, an old truck pulls out of a parking bay, perfectly situated so
that it's not right in front of the door.  Did Major Kruger nod to the
driver?  Has that been planned as well?

"OK," he says, switching off the engine, 'go in and clear the way for
us."

Don't think, get out, start walking - even a pool of mud has a bottom
somewhere.  Klaas is standing talking to Smith between the shelves at
the back and does not see her coming.  Smith sees her.. "Believe me, my
friend," she hears him saying as she gets close enough. "I'm halfway
through the last room and we have to move in.  I've been to every paint
shop in town, and not one of them has any Old Lace in stock." He looks
disappointed, completely at a loss.. "Do you have a colour that would
match it?"

"The closest would be Ivory.  Perhaps you should do the whole room with
that." Klaas tries to help, still not noticing that she's a few steps
behind Smith.

"Perhaps I should think about it.  Help the young lady first, I'll look
around for a while."

"Araminta!" Klaas says in surprise as he turns round.

"Hallo, Klaas." I can't do this.

"You're the last person I expected to see - excuse me a moment, sir .  .
." Smith has already disappeared round the end of the shelf; she knows
he's in the next aisle, his ears and eyes lurking somewhere between the
tins of paint ...

"I wanted to come and see you to say I'm sorry - Ralph's told me.  I
couldn't believe it at first.  What went wrong?. "Impatience.  Not
holding out, not waiting for my regular supplier." I can't do this to
you.. "That's why I'm here.  I don't quite know how to put this to you,
but I'm in a difficult situation."

"Say if there's anything I can do."

Look at what I'm telling you with my eyes.. "As a matter of fact, it's
to do with my supplier.  He showed up unexpectedly from Upington with
some beautiful diamonds and I'm not in a position to buy at the moment.
I haven't got the money.  He wants R25 000 for them, but he's hard up.

I know he would come down to twenty.  I was hoping you could help him."

"Hell, you're pushing me into a corner a little fast now," he says,
anxiously.. "How safe is this man?"

Where's Smith?  How much is he able to hear and see?

"If I had waited for him, I would not be in the mess I'm in right now.
He's safe." Look at my eyes!

"Can I come and see you tonight?" A hint of eagerness has crept into his
voice.

"That's part of the problem.  He's catching the three o'clock bus back,
and I don't want to take him to Dirk Holtzman."

"Hell ...  this is a bit fast.  Where's the man?"

"I can bring him to you."

"Has he got the diamonds with him?"

"Yes."

"You say they're good ones?"

"Very."

"What do you think I'll get for them?"

See what I'm trying to tell you!. "A hundred thousand."

"Wow!"

He sees nothing, he's already buying.. "I'll have him here at two
o'clock." I can't go through with this, I'll somehow have to make a plan
...

She sees Smith coming round the end of the shelf.. "My friend!" he calls
out to Klaas. "I'll have to take your word about the Ivory - excuse me,
lady.  I'll tell my wife the Old Lace is a bit faded!" Ha-ha-ha.

Silly schmuck.

They pick Smith up in the next street, carrying the tin of paint under
his arm.  They laugh, they say she's the actress of the vear, she's
earned the longest drink in town.

Sit quiet, she tells herself, sit very quiet ...

They don't drive her back to the office, they drive out north of the
town.  She asks. "Where are we going?" Smith says. "Unfortunately, we
can't go and buy you a drink because you might be seen with us, but we
do have a couple of beers in the car." She says she has to get back to
the office.  It is absolutely essential.  She has an appointment with a
very important client who is coming at two o'clock, and she must go and
make the arrangements.  She cannot afford to lose the transaction, she
needs every cent.

She pleads with them, tells them they can go with her, stay with her,
guard her if they wish.

They take her back and hurry her into the office.

Elvin and Christel are out at lunch, Bernard is probably in his office,
Lizzie is at the reception desk.

"Lizzie .  .  ." she says very loud, praying that she will look at her
eyes and catch on, 'my appointment with Dr Harrington is at two.  Will
you please phone him and ask him if I  can change it to three o'clock.
explain to him that I haven't finished with these two clients.  And could you
get us some tea, please?"

"I was wondering if you had forgotten about old Dr Harrington," says
Lizzie, reprovingly.  She has grasped enough.. "I'll bring you some tea
right away."

"Bloody white for a coloured girl, isn't she?" Smith remarks when they
get to her office.. "Pretty too."

They watch her, baby-sitting her.  She has to put them at ease, she does
not know quite how .  .  .. "I'm sorry you had to bring me back, but
it's a really important client.. "At least it's cooler here than
outside.  We would have brought you back to fetch your car in any case.
This time you will go on your own and park right in front of the shop."

"Who's going back with me to Klaas Muller's?"

"One of our other men.  Smith will go with you and show you where to
pick him up."

"Will I be showing the diamonds to Klaas, or will he do it?" Win their
confidence, if you can.

"It doesn't really matter."

"Don't you think it would be better if I showed them to him?" Don't
insist on it too much.

Probably.  We'll leave it to the other man to decide.

He's the expert."

Behind them Bernard walks up and down past the door like a watchdog.
Lizzie would have told him that something was going on.. "If that's the
best way, it's all right with me.

just promise me it will be over quickly."

"Chop-chop."

She says to herself.  I'm scared, but not of them.  It's not quite true,
but it helps to keep her courage up.  If Klaas Muller uses his eyes and
his brains, she can help him, otherwise he will be in trouble too ...
Lizzle, please bring in the tea, she cries in her heart.

Lizzle arrives with the tea.

They drink up and talk about some wild party they went to the night
before.  They brag about how fast they drove over the mountain from
Oudtshoorn that morning.

"Do you live in Oudtshoorn'she asks.  It's a quarter to two.

"No.  We're not ostrich boys."

Ten to.  When she looks down, she can see her blouse moving with the
beating of her heart.

Five to.

"I think we should make him wait until about ten past," says Smith. "Let
him work up a good appetite."

At last Major Kruger gets up and says. "Come on!"

She takes her handbag and asks if she can go to the cloakroom first. The
moment she has said it, they're on the alert, glaring at her
suspiciously.  She laughs and tells them not to worry, it's not outside
the building, and there's no telephone or even a window to jump through.

The man she has to pick up is waiting under a tree in York Street.  A
coloured man.  The clothes he's wearing are old; the jacket is too big,
his shirt is buttoned to the top.

He looks kind and bewildered as if he's come from the backveld to bring
a sick child or wife to see the doctor.

"Lieutenant Rensburg," Smith introduces him as he gets out of the car.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Rossouw.  Let's go." Professional.  Strict.

"Where are the diamonds?"

"In my pocket.  For the duration of this transaction, my name is Moses
September.  You will walk ahead of me.

Don't try and give the man any hidden signs - I have men planted in the
shop to watch you closely.  We don't trust you."

"If you don't trust me, why are you dragging me into it?. "Don't give me
any of your cheek.  You need us more than we need you, because you have
two problems on Friday: a formidable magistrate and an even more
formidable prosecutor ...  Put on the indicator when you are turning -
keep your mind on what you're doing!"

Mountain!  She can see it at the bottom of the street between two
buildings for a moment; the wind has frayed the clouds round it.  It can
hardly see her through the haze.

A yellow Cortina pulls out from right in front of the shop, giving her
the ideal place to park.  And Lieutenant Rensburg is very crippled when
he gets out of the car: one of his knees buckles alarmingly and she
realizes that she is on stage with some very clever actors.

Klaas is standing inside the door; it's clear that he has been worried.
When they enter, he gestures to them to follow him to his office.  There
are quite a few people in the shop, she notices.  Don't look to the
right or left, she says to herself, just keep on walking until you get
to a chair so that you can sit down.  Every drop of courage has e she
picked up Lieutenant Rensburg.  She's left her sinc afraid that she
might open her mouth and start screaming like the day the cat got into
school; that the screams will come from her mouth involuntarily ...

"Good afternoon, master." It's Moses September, the humble coloured. "My
name is Moses."

"Good afternoon.  Hallo, Araminta.  Please take a seat." Moses, the
nonentity, sits down respectfully on the edge of his chair.  She sits
down on his left, Klaas on the other side of the table.  He's tense.

"I believe you've got something to show me, Moses?" says Klaas.

"Master .  .  ." Troubled and beseeching.. "I was under the impression
that everything would be ready when I got here.  It's dangerous to try
to sell these things like this." That's true."

I didn't know about Miss Arri, I was only told when I got here."

"I understand."

"The master at the garage, Baas Dirk, bought from me some time ago, but
now he wants to buy dirt cheap.  I'm in a bit of a fix, master.  Life is
hard, I have two children in high school; I say to them, "If you don't
get learning, you end up like me, hardly able to write your own name."

A chill is creeping over her; but she is not going to scream, it's not
the day of the cat.  It's the day that Araminta Rossouw says. "Do
whatever you want with me, punish me as the law decrees; I can fall no
lower.  Not any more."

"Show the master the diamonds, Moses, she orders.

He has them loose in his pocket.  They're unbelievably beautiful; one is
almost bottle green and the others are clear and white.  He holds them
out for Klaas to see, an eager, captivated Klaas.  She leans over and
takes them from Moses's hand with the fingers of her left hand.  She
holds them tightly for a moment: there is no hatred in them.  Nothing.
Only sadness.

Then she swiftly rolls them over into her right hand and holds them out
to Klaas.. "I told you they were beautiful, didn't I?" She counts to
three.  Then she puts them down in front of Moses September.

She does not look up.

"The green one is an unusual one, master.  Rare," Moses says.. "I can't
take less than twenty-five for them."

"Mr. Muller said he'd give you twenty," she says, sharply.

"Wait, Araminta!" Klaas interrupts.. "I'll give him R25000.  That's his
price.  I'm in business myself' You stupid fool!

"Thank you, master.  Thank you." Gratitude dripping from his lips.

"Not at all.  The moment I manage to sell them, I'll send you your
money, Moses.  just leave your address with

"I don't understand, master ...  the rules say cash.  Hard cash.  It
doesn't work otherwise." Moses is a little at a loss.

"You can't do this to me, master.  I'm a poor man.. "Now don't get
upset.  .  ."

She gets up.. "While the two of you are fighting this out, I'll go back
to work." She does not look to right or left, she keeps on walking.

Klaas Muller had seen what she had said; he's playing with a pigeon for
his own amusement.

AT TWELVE O'CLOCK, the next day, the sixth, she tells Koos Malherbe he
need not worry; she no longer has any intention of getting him off his
pedestal or into her bed.

Nor will she attempt to touch him again.  She says it to get it over and
done with, but he can't hear her, because he's not back from court yet;
she was told to wait in his office.

She waits.

She has her oldest dress on, the white one with the little colour is
already faded.  Her hair is plaited, as instructed.

Common sense tells her they won't send her to prison, but just in case
she has put the violet on the desk in her office.  Lizzie takes care of
the office plants, and she'll water it for her.

Klaas had made her agree to go out to dinner with him the night before.
When she got home afterwards, she threw up, because the fear is in her
stomach now, not in her head any more.

Klaas wants to go to Oudtshoorn with her tomorrow; Klaas wants to have
her flat painted for her; Klaas wants to buy her a second easy chair.
Klaas wants to go and pick her a star.  He says he would certainly have
bought those diamonds if it hadn't been for the wor. "DON'T' written on
the palm of her hand when she held the stones out for him to see.  She
told him that she had had no idea of how or when she would be able to
write it, with them watching me ...  blue dots that she got in her first
year at university.  The Eight her as they did.  That she had not even
been sure that there was a pen in her handbag.

When she got back from her 'business' with Klaas, the others at the
office wanted to know what was going on, why she was looking so dazed.
She told them it was because she had just been to the most ridiculous
concert.

Hardly five minutes later, a deeply shocked joris Oosthuizen, her
father's friend, walked in.  His voice was filled with emotion when he
said that he had just heard that she had been caught for illicit diamond
buying.  Surely it couldn't be true?  It is.  His eyes growing glassy
with horror, he said. "How could you have done such a thing?

Don't you realize what this is going to do to your parents?. "Yes, but
fortunately they don't know, and should you dare to tell them, I'll kill
you myself."

He said he had no intention of telling them - he would only pray that
they would be spared this terrible humiliation.

She hears Koos Malherbe coming down the passage: whistling, faultless;
self-assured.

The moment he enters the room, the shadow of the rock falls across her
once again: cold, but safe.

"Good day," he says.. "How are you?"

"If I could, I would run away."

"Don't try to." He hangs his robe on the stand in the corner.  There is
an air of great manliness about him that seems to emanate from his
shoulders and his back ...

"This the oldest dress I have and I have done my hair in a plait."
Please, be just a little kind to me.

"It looks good." He comes and sits down on his throne.

"I now want you to go and stand over there at the window and let your
hands hang at your sides."

She gets up and does it.. "Like this?"

"Yes.  That is how I want you to stand in court tomorrow.  Don't fidget.
Don't do anything that may irritate the I mag strate.  Remember that
it's difficult for him to have a defendant in court without an
attorney."

"Why?"

"It means that he must do most of the work himself.

Explaining your rights to you, protecting you from any injustice from
the prosecutor.  All sorts of things.  Make it easy for him.  The
prosecutor will read out the charge and ask you how you plead: guilty or
not guilty.  Say guilty and look guilty.  Not contemptuous, as you're
now doing!. "I'm not contemptuous."

"Don't talk back!"

"I'm sorry." Your Honour.

"The magistrate may put certain questions to you in order to satisfy
himself that you indeed understand the charge and if you admit to the
accusations thereof.  He will probably ask if you were aware that you
were doing something illegal when you bought the uncut diamonds.. "I
never really thought about it like that."

He slams his hand down on the desk so hard that her whole body recoils
from the shock.. "Whether you thought about it like that or not, you
can't go and say so in court!" he shouts at her.. "If you do, the
magistrate will put aside your plea of guilty, which means you'll have
to plead not guilty.  And your perverse line of argument won't get you
out of that mess."

"I'll say I knew it was illegal and wrong, and whatever else you want me
to say!"

"Keep your hands still; stop screwing up your dress like that."

"Stop shouting at me, I'm not deaf!" she yells back.

"I've admitted that I'm guilty, what more must I say?

Why can't I be sentenced so that I will at least know whether I am to go
to prison or not!  If it please Your Worship to give me a fine, I don't
know where I'll get the money from to pay the state, because the state
has already taken R10000 from me!"

"Come and sit down, you're hysterical." It's an order.

"I don't want to sit down.  I'm tired, I want to get it over with."

"Come and sit down."

She goes and sits down.. "I'm sorry.. "The magistrate will say that the
court finds you guilty.

The prosecutor will say that you have no previous convictions, and then
the magistrate will ask if you want anything to be taken into
consideration in mitigation.  Tell him that your father is a minister of
the Dutch Reformed Church speak clearly and humbly - say you love your
father very much and that you feel infinitely sorry for what you're
doing to him.  That he is a good father, that he does not deserve this
from his child .  .  ."

"My father doesn't know what I've done."

"You'll say it as if he does!"

"I'll say it as if he does." Don't bite my head off.

"When the magistrate is deciding on the appropriate fine for you, he'll
ask how much you're earning and what you own.  Don't make up stories.
Tell him."

"When does he sentence me?"

"After this."

"When do the decoys testify against me?. "There is no need, since you
will be pleading guilty.. "When will they say that I didn't want to
disclose the name of my buyer?"

"The magistrate will not be interested in that."

"Then they were lying to me?"

"They have their methods.  You deserved it." I wouldn't sleep with you
even if you begged me to.

"What do you think my sentence will be?" The bastards, they lied to me!

"If I were sentencing you, I'd give you a fine of R6000 or six months
imprisonment."

"I thought you'd have chosen the death penalty!"

"I would advise you to leave your sauciness at home tomorrow!. "When do
I ask if I can pay off the fine in instalments?. "After you've been
sentenced.  In a place like Oudtshoorn, the magistrate will decide on
the amounts of the nstalments himself, and on how they are to be made.
As a rule, the first payment is the largest."

"Must I pay it immediately?"

"Not necessarily.  You will most probably be allowed to start paying
from the end of the month."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you'll have to go to prison."

Once upon a time, there were four little bushmen.  They lived in a land
called Botswana and one day they killed a man.  Someone came and told
her father about it one Sunday, after he had preached a sermon on
justice and injustice.  The British South African Police arrested the
bushmen and charged them with murder - Botswana was still Bechuanaland
then, the foster-child of Britain.  The four bushmen were taken before
the assizes and asked if they had in fact killed the man.  Yes.  The
prosecutor and the judge did everything they could to make them
understand that they should say yes, and then add that they had not
killed him in cold blood, they had done it for such and such a reason.
The bushmen, however, kept on saying they killed the man because he had
to be killed - bushmen don't know about lying or swearing.

So the judge sentenced them to hang.

The four bushmen were then put in prison to await the arrival of the
gallows.  Bechuanaland had only one gallows and this was on the back of
a lorry, which went from village to village to hang whoever had to be
hanged.  It was a vast country, the roads were bad and the lorry drove
slowly.

At the end of the first month one of the bushmen died and the others
looked pretty bad.

The head of the prison called in a man who knew everything about bushmen
and asked him what he should do.  Before another month is out, said the
man, the other three will be dead too because bushmen must go to the
veld to graze.  So he suggested that he should come on Sundays and take
them out to graze.

Every Sunday morning for three months, the man came and took them out
into the veld.  He said to the wardens, you need not fetter them, they
will not run away.  When they got to the veld, they clicked and clacked
in their funny language, merrily digging up roots to eat and running
around; stalking, playing, dancing, making fires and cooking little
birds.  When the sun went down, the man took them back to the prison.

At last the lorry with the gallows arrived.  When the little bushmen
were hanged, they were nice and fat.

She closes her eyes and says to the mountain: Please, let me graze on
your slopes, let me sleep in a gorge until tomorrow.  She climbs, she
stumbles, she smells the wild herbs in the brush, she puts her face
against the moss on the shadv side of the rocks, she kisses the petals
of a blood-rei lily - she watches the mountain's eagle returning to its
nest.

When she wakes up, it is Friday, 7 March 1986.  Four hours later the
magistrate sentences her to six months' imprisonment or R6000.

That same afternoon, someone pays in the full amount of the fine.  Koos
Malherbe has to tell her a second time before she grasps it.

"Someone paid my fine?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"It was done through an attorney.  I was simply asked to inform you."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know."

He's lying.  She knows he is.

It's a warm, yellow, merciful light that falls on her from someone's
window.  It could be Klaas Muller.  Elvin.  Dirk Holtzman.  Even Koos
Malherbe, although he's the last person she'd suspect.

SLOWLY, DAY BY DAY, she begins to recover.  Little by little, she
begins to move forward again.

the UNREST FLAMES UP." Her rent goes up by R100 a month.

MANDELA DEMANDS FREEDOM WITH MATCHES.

It feels as though an ominous cloud is steadily gathering over the
country; the lightning flash absorbing energy: here a spark escapes,
there a Rtray bolt; bombs, knives, shots, sticks, stones.  People roused
up to a frenzy; people maimed, people murdered; people frightened.

Every morning the sun comes up and calls the people from their houses.
People ride in cars, in buses, in taxis or they walk; people go to work,
talk, laugh, eat and drink.

When the sun goes down, the fear increases: doors and windows are
locked, alarms turned on, dogs bark - people listen, people wait.  Whose
turn is it tonight?

The trees start to shed their leaves.  The days grow shorter and cooler,
the mountain is a deeper blue and the old restlessness begins to stir in
her again.

At the end of April she sells the most expensive house on the market at
Wilderness.  She sells it to a remarkably recovered Major Harrington.
Early in May, she sells two houses above the hospital to two brothers
from Pretoria.

"The Great Trek is turning back, miss, the white people have started
moving southwards," says the elder of the two as he writes out the
cheque.. "My late father predicted it years ago: he always said we would
have to return one day, south of the Orange River and west of the Fish
River where our boundaries lie.  I thank God that I am here now for it's
getting dark up north."

Bernard sells one house and a gift shop.  Elvin sells two houses and a
smallholding.  All to buyers from the north.

She does not care if they came from the North Pole as long as they keep
on coming.  Elvin reckons it is the talk about oil and gas in the sea at
Mossel Bay, fifty kilometres away, that's causing the upswing in the
property market.

4 ELEVEN KILLED IN UNREST - SEVEN BURNED'

Bernard has started putting his newspaper on her desk every day when
he's finished with it.  She takes it and throws it in the waste-paper
basket, but she can't help seeing the headlines.

BLACK POLICEMAN BURIED ALIVE'

Her stove breaks down.  It's cheaper to buy a hotplate than to have the
stove fixed.  She will simply have to get along without an oven.

'700 SQUATTERS' SHACKS BURNED DOWN - FACTIONS FIGHT."

Christel's eyes are red and swollen from crying: she has discovered that
she is pregnant.  She says they'll never survive without her salary,
even without a child.  She didn't want a child yet.  It will have to be
put in a daynursery ...

Lizzie says. "Don't worry, Christel, Araminta and I will help you make
clothes for it, and for the first few months we can take care of the
baby here in the office kitchen." Christel says. "I don't even know
whether it's right to bring a child into this world; the pastor of the
church says the devil's aim is chaos and perversion, and he's certainly
getting his way in this country.. "Don't worry," says Elvin, 'it's the
same all over the world." Carr & Holtzman will give her maternity leave.

Was it Elvin that paid her fine?  He denies it.

There is a stronger bond between Christel and Lizzie and herself since
they visited her that evening.  She likes it.

4 BLOOD FLOWS IN FLAMES."

ANC. "Let us take up our weapons - our necklaces, our hand-grenades, our
machine-guns, our AK 47s, our limpet mines and everything - and let us
fight the keepers, the police and the army .  .

She must get away.

June.  She sells a beach house at Herolds Bay and four large plots in
town.  She has no outstanding debts, her car is paid for and if she adds
up all her outstanding commission, she now has R22 000 in the bank.

Frans de Villiers's wife is back with him; she saw them together in
church.  Elvin says Bernard and he will have to think seriously about
appointing another agent before the end of the year; there are rumours
that an enormous refinery is to be built in the area ...

Again she begs with him to wait until the following year before
appointing anyone.  If the rumours about oil and development for the
Southern Cape are true, if the property market holds up, she'll not only
recover from her own stupidity much faster than she had thought
possible, she should be able to be out of the country in another year or
so ...

4 VIOLENCE CLAMPED DOWN."

4 STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED."

&RESTRICTIONS ON PRESS.

Koos Malherbe.  Suppose a miracle happens and he phones her and asks her
out to dinner or something.  just once.

Say an even greater miracle happens and he asks her to have a
relationship with him She needs to be honest with herself, because she
still has a lurking feeling about him.  It's not like being in love.

It's more like a persistent hope that he might still stoop to touch her.
Really touch her.  just once.  To make the ink on her hands go away.

No, it's more than that.  Koos Malherbe is the weight she needs to put
on the other side of the scale: emigrate, or stay for a man like Koos.
She asks herself which she would do - and knows if she lies to herself
it will be like taking the wrong road for ever.

Emigrate.

Koos Malherbe is just the moon in the sky, the balm which she needs to
mend her shattered self-esteem.  If he had wanted to reach out a hand to
her, he would have done it when she came back from Oudtshoorn.  When she
stood at his desk in utter desolation, crying out to him: Please take my
hand!  But he did not hear her.  He had sat there on his throne like a
judge, he had not even asked the old witch at reception to bring her a
tissue or some toiletpaper for that matter.  She had had to wipe her
face with her hands and arms.  He just went on telling her that the fine
had been paid.

When he comes to see Elvin at the office, he greets her as he passes her
door, his whole attitude saying: You haven't perhaps broken the law
again, have you?

She sells a minimarket.  Elvin sells a bottle store and Bernard a block
of flats.  All to buyers from the north.

Either it is coincidence or it is a little strange.

It does not matter.  She is concentrating on reaching the opposite bank
of a very important river!  Better and stronger wings are growing on her
back and somewhere waiting for her there is a green valley, between
mountains with snow on their peaks and peace at their feet.

&CAR BOMB.  THREE WOMEN KILLED - one about to emigrate to the USA."

She tries to dismiss it, but she cannot forget the words.

She thinks: I won't let it upset me, it happened in Durban, it's still a
long way from here.  She throws the paper into the waste-paper basket,
but the words keep jumping out at her.

She must get away.

She must get away as soon as she can.  A friend's sister took care of
old people in England for three years and earned a lot of money.  It's
the kind of work you can do without a permit.  She must phone and find
out about it.

"One about to emigrate to the USA' - is it a message telling her to
hurry up?

"Good afternoon." When she looks up, he's there, standing at the door.

Koos Malherbe.. "Good afternoon," she says.

"How are you?. "I'm fine, thank you.  How are you?" I must get away as
soon as possible ...

"Well, thank you." He does not walk past, he comes in and sits down as
if he has a natural right.. "Elvin's busy with a client, Lizzie will
call me when he's finished.  How are your plans going?" As if he's in a
hurry for her to leave.

"I've just decided that I must get away as soon as I can.

"As long as you don't try doing it the way you did last I time.
Remember, next time they'll lock you up."

"Mr. Malherbe, how long are you going to look at me and talk to me as if
I were a criminal?" She asks it straight out.

"I don't see you as a criminal.  I see you as a typical example of
someone with a good brain who cannot see the simple truth."

"I saw the truth long ago: money.  Although you and the law books may
not agree with me."

"Perhaps that's why I'm rather interested in you: because you seem to
have succeeded in getting on the'track of the truth by yourself.
Unfortunately you then did what asses do: You built a bridge over it."

"I beg your pardon?" You say I interest you ...  ?

"Some asses need bridges to be built for them so that they can reach the
truth.  Other asses build their own bridges across the truth - to help
them avoid the truth.  Every bridge we build to avoid a truth collapses
sooner or later.

You survived the first crash; now beware of the second."

"I promise you, there won't be a second one." You say I interest you?

"I'm glad to hear that.  Elvin says you've done a few good deals lately.
When are you planning the big step?. "Elvin seems to have a habit of
discussing me with other people."

"He did not discuss you.  I asked him."

"What for?"

"Because I think if you earn enough, you might not be tempted into doing
something illegal again.  I'm interested in your plans, because I hope
you will manage things better this time."

I don't really interest you at all.. "I'm leaving on 15 December." She
hears herself saying it - as if it had been decided already, inside her,
without her knowing it.  It's suddenly a reality.  A specific date, the
date of the birth towards which she has been struggling for more than
two years: 15 December.  There's sense in the date: Marian is getting
married on 13 December and has asked her to be her bridesmaid.

"That's six months from now," Koos Malherbe remarks.

"So see to it that you keep straight till then; don't be tempted to
stray off after those shiny little stones again."

"I won't." In her heart she adds: the only foolish step I might be
tempted to take between now and then is in your direction.  Somehow, you
are still an obstacle I have to surmount ...

She no longer denies it.

TWO BOMBS EXPLODE IN JOHANNESBURG'

July comes and goes without a single successful transaction.  It is cold
and wet.  The mountain is covered in mist for days on end.

MOTHER'S ANXIETY FOR BABY AFTER BOMB'

Christel says they will have to sell their car to afford the things for
the baby.  Lizzie says she has ordered a book that will solve their
problems.  What book?  Your Money Problems Solved z'n the Ancient Way.
Lizzie herself is having money problems, for she borrowed R200 from her,
Araminta, to pay into her account at Foschin"s so that they would not
take her to court.  Bernard says he can't wait for Lizzie's book to
come; he'll pay her RIO for every secret that works.  Things are bad for
Dirk and jan too.

'44 PEOPLE LEAVE SA DAILY IN MAY'

She phoned her friend; her sister was looking after two wonderful old
people in London.  Very rich.  A hundred pounds a week.  That's more
than R400.  She promised to send her the address of an agent in London.

If it should turn out that she must go and work in England for a year or
so, she'll come to terms with it.

Anything.

August.  The month of dry leaves and wind storms.  Life consists of
getting up in the morning, going to work, hoping for a transaction,
going home.  Sometimes Klaas Muller comes and takes her out to show his
gratitued.

Sleep, get up, go to work.  As when you dream that you re running, but
you can't run fast enough to go forward.

SOWETO UNREST CLAIMS 13 LIVES'

RED BOMB IN SHOPPINC, CENTRE'

September.

Everywhere in town the trees are in bud.  It's blossom time.  It's
spring.

One Wednesday afternoon there is a man waiting in the rain at the bottom
of the stairs that lead up to her flat.  A black man.  His raincoat is a
plastic dustbin bag with holes for his head and arms; the rest of what
she can see looks like a scarecrow.

"Madam.  .

Her first thought is that he wants to beg, but then he opens his hand
and on his pink-brown palm lie four magnificent diamonds, on which the
raindrops fall like little pin-head lights.  He says nothing, he just
stands there.  Cars drive past behind them on the wet road.  The sound
of typewriters comes from the office at the corner of the building; the
rain drips from her umbrella.  She does not know what to do, she just
stands there, bewildered.

"The man at the blue office said I must come and show them to you."

"What's the man's name?" His act is even better than Moses September's.

"The man with the light brown hair and the glasses.  I think his name is
Linde."

"Ralph Linde?"

"Yes, madam.  I'll take R10000 for them."

"Where do you come from?"

"I work at the mines at Koffiefontein.  Up north.  We fly them out with
pigeons."

"Is that a fact?"

"Yes, madam."

He does not stop her when she reaches out to take them.. "They are very
beautiful," she says when they're lying on her hand.  They want her to
keep them, they want to stay with her, they are nice and friendly.
They're little holy stones.  She stands there holding them, knowing she
should be afraid, but she's not.

"The man said I madam could phone him."

"I'm sorry ...  She says it to the diamonds.  She wants to bend down and
kiss them before she gives them back, but she doesn't.  She lets them
roll back into the man's hand and says. "I'm sorry, I can't buy them."

But her hands are shaking when she unlocks the door.

She makes herself a cup of coffee, she irons a dress and a blouse; she's
restless, she's upset.  Something tells her it wasn't a trap.  He had an
odour of old, stale sweat around him; his nails were dirty and broken.
If it wasn't a trap, she had sent away the biggest chance of her life!
But how could she know?

How?  She could have phoned Ralph Linde.  And then find out afterwards
that it had been a trap after all?

A clever one.  With Ralph Linde acting as another Nick Wehland ...

It wasn't a trap, she could almost swear to it.  The diamonds were not
angry, they were good and beautiful, Samuel Sundoo would have bought
them!

It's almost dark.  Should she get into her car and go and look for the
man?  No.  Where would she find him?  Go and look for him.  Go to
Ralph's house - maybe he's there.

Please, mountain, say yes.

No, says the mountain.

EEC SANCTIONS'

She sells a plot.

JAPAN IMPOSES MORE SANCTIONS'

She sells another plot.

4 DISINVESTMENT WILL KILL 400,000 IN SA'

She must get away.

4 SANCTIONS AGREED - DEFEAT FOR REAGAN'

She wrote to the agent in London.

KODAK PULLS OUT - GM, IBM, COCA-COLA NEXT?"

October.  The trees are covered in new leaves, the gardens are in bloom
and the sky is blue; she wants to go out into the country, she wants to
go climbing up the mountain ...

Five clients in a row.  Four turn away from every house she takes them
to: the prices are too high.  The fifth one buys Bernard's caravan in
despair.. "They say it's OK in the caravan park, miss." Less than three
months left until 15 December.

Koos Malherbe comes to see Elvin twice running when she's out; as far as
she can gather, he didn't even ask about her.

Get up in the morning, go to work, go home.  Day after day after day ...

Early in November, Lizzie's book of miracles arrives.  It provides fun
for everyone at tea-time.  "Never pick up a button and put it in your
purse or your bag," Lizzie reads from the cheap yellow pages. "Buttons
button up your luck because they fall under the protection of Saturn,
which is in itself restricting."

"Lizzie, isn't that New Age stuff?" Christel asks, with distrust in her
voice.. "Our pastor warned us to be very careful of anything to do with
New Age.  It's dangerous.. "Read on, Lizzie!"Bernard prompts.

"Make sure your money-box is made of tin and not plastic.  Jupiter
guards over things made of tin and Jupiter is the planet of money."

"It definitely sounds like New Age," says Christel.

"Don't be silly," Lizzie says.. "It's exactly the opposite: QQancient"
secrets."

"Get rid of it, I tell you."

Lizzie and Christel argue; Bernard tells her to read on; Elvin says it's
baloney, the best he's heard in a long time apart from the present
political talks.

"Should you need money urgently, wrap the scales of a herring in a piece
of tissue-paper and put it in your purse or your pocket." Where do you
get herrings?. "Take any old fish," Bernard suggests.

"Plant a purple lilac at your front door; plant it on a Thursday ... the
best day of all, however, is 4 November, whether a Thursday or not, for
that is the day of money.. "I started working here on 4 November,"
Araminta reminds them.

"Did you?" asks Elvin, surprised.. "I knew from the start you would
bring us luck."

"Do you still think so?"

"Of course I do."

IMF

"If a purple lilac is not available, morning glory will do." '

"Buy a purple lilac in a pot and put it right at the entrance to the
office," Bernard proposes.. "I'll get one for my brother too."

"Here comes a good one: "Put a silver coin on your hand, bow three times
to the new moon and say. "Monev in my hand, multiply in my land!""

"Send that tip to the Minister of Finance immediately!" Elvin suggests
with a snort.  The phone rings.  Christel gets up.

"When you move into a new house, sprinkle salt on the doorstep and
you'll never be in want for as long as you stay there."

"Araminta!" Christel calls from the switchboard, 'it's for you, I'll put
it through to your office."

Ten IT IS PIET SINKSA'S SISTER.

It is Piet Si'nksa's sister!

She says her name is Angeline, and she got the number from the man at
the garage.  Baas Dirk.  She knew that she had been waiting for Piet
earlier.  Piet had been in a very bad car accident.  Yes, madam.  Both
his legs were broken.  No, madam, I was in Windhoek with our mother at
the time.  Piet is much better now, thank you, madam.  He asked me to
phone and tell madam, if you're still interested, he's back in business
again.  He's got good ones.  Big ones.  The only problem is, he can't
get down there, madam.  He bought himself another van, but it's an old
thing, it gives him more trouble than anything else.  He asked me to
phone and ask if madam could possibly come up to Kimberley.  Yes, madam,
Kimberley.

Yes, madam can talk to Piet himself.  I'll give you our number and if
madam phones at about six o'clock, he should be home from work.  Yes,
madam.  Thank you, madam.

She puts down the receiver and gives it time to sink in ...

Piet Sinksa's sister ...  Tidings from the blue.  The old hope suddenly
flares up from the cold ashes, sending a flush of shock through her.  It
was a chance she thought she had lost for ever; luck, which seemed to
have passed her by, returning.  It's the coin with which to pay back
Nick Wehland and the two decoys, even if they never know it!

She tries to find in herself a sense of wrong, a twinge of conscience,
but she doesn't.  All she finds is a faint and wonderful feeling of
relief and happiness.

"Araminta!" Lizzie calls from inside, 'when you're finished, come and
listen; you're missing the best of all!. "I don't want to hear any
more." she calls back.

It's a dream she would not even have dared to dream.

It's deliverance.  It's Piet Sinksa's sister.

Later, when Bernard comes and puts the paper on her desk, she asks him
to take it back for she never wants to see a paper again.

"I don't blame you," he says.. "Things are looking bad; God knows what
we're heading for."

In her heart she says: I know where I'm heading.

Elvin comes past and wants to know if something is wrong.  Why is she
sitting with her face in her hands?

"I'm working something out, something very important."

"Can I be of help?"

"No, thank you, it's personal.  Please, don't look so worried, I'm fine.
Really fine."

She waits until two o'clock and rings up Dirk Holtzman to ask if
somebody had asked him for her telephone number.  Yes.  Piet Sinksa's
sister.  Did the woman specifically ask for her number?  No.  She
actually phoned to ask if he was interested in buying again.  He told
her that if he had the money, he would certainly have been interested.

So then she wanted to know about the lady Piet was supposed to contact.

"I only wanted to make sure."

"Are you going to buy?"

"I just wanted to know how she had got hold of my telephone number.
That's all."

She has the strangest feeling of reliving a situation she's been in
before.  Like a forgotten dream.  Not quite.  As if she is heading for
something that has been put in her way a long time ago. Something
inevitable.  A paradox: she knew that she was on her way there, but she
just didn't realize it.

She cleans out the drawers of her desk to keep herself busy, quelling
her increasing anxiety.  She goes to the chemist for Christel.  She
comes back and starts dusting every leaf of every plant in the office.
"ANC'S TO MURDER FARMERS, SAYS WITNESS." She didn't want to see it, but
the paper is lying on the cupboard in the corner of Bernard's office as
if some joker had known she would be coming to dust the plants.  Even
the words in the heading sound like something that's been buried deep
inside her for a long time.  A hundred years, two hundred years ...

She stands with the cloth in her hands, staring at the wall while old
pictures appear from deep inside her.

Between the first and second British occupation of the Cape, the Dutch
had another go at governing the foot of Africa.  When Governor janssens
asked the Xhosas on the eastern border why they were murdering the Boers
and burning down their farms, they said the English told them to do it
because they were coming back.

It does not matter any more!  she tells herself, turning away from the
wall.  Piet Sinksa has come.  A wave has come, it's picking her up and
carrying her with it to her destination.  Straight there, without her
having to go and wash up in England first.

It's a long, restless afternoon, waiting for six o'clock to come.  One
thing is clear in her mind: if she must go to Kimberley, she must go
right away.  Or as soon as possible.

With outstanding commission, she has R27000 in the bank, of which she
can use at least R25000 for the diamonds.  She will have to ask Elvin
for an advance again, which might be a problem.  What if he asks her
what she wants it for?

Eight minutes to six.  Wait until after six, don't give the impression
that you're over-eager.  Tidy the bookshelf ...

Why Kimberley of all places?  Can it be coincidence?

She has always wanted to go to Kimberley to see the land of Prester John
for herself ...

Tomorrow is Friday; she will have to have her car serviced just in case,
and the garages will be busy.  She hasn't got an appointment.  If she
leaves on Sunday, she can come back on Tuesday; perhaps she can come
back via Bloemfontein and stay the night with her father and mother ...
What will she tell Elvin if he asks what she wants to do with the money?
She'll say she can do what she wants with it, she's not a child.  She'll
tell him she wants to go away for a few days, she won't say where to.

No one need know.

Six o'clock.  From sheer nervousness she dials the wrong code and has to
start all over again.  On the other end a man says cautiously. "Hallo."

It's Piet Sinksa.

He says he would like to come down himself, but the old Combi he has
bought is as useless as he is.  How is Baas Dirk?  Shame.  Yes, madam,
things are bad for us all.

My sister said madam wanted to speak to me personally.

Yes, madam, don't worry, I understand.  Nice ones.  Ten.

But madam would be under no obligation to take them all.

I had some very nice ones last month as well, but before I could let
madam know, the man that buys for the man at Mossel Bay came and took
the lot.  The smallest one I have at the moment is about ...  about six
carats, madam.

Very good ones, all of them.  It's difficult to fix a price over the
phone, madam, but don't worry, I won't rip madam off ...  As soon as
possible would suit me too.

Monday's fine.  just tell me where I must meet madam.

The best hotels are the Savoy and the Kimberley Sun.

Yes, they're more or less in the centre of the city.  I would appreciate
it if madam would give me a ring the moment madam gets here ...  and,
madam, drive carefully - it's a long way ...  A little over eight
hundred kilometres.  The best route is via Beaufort West and De Aar and
then on to Klmberlev ...  It's a pleasure, madam, and my sister sends
her regards.

She's not stupid; she knows it could be a trap that is being set for
her; she's aware of it all the time.  Even if Piet Sinksa sounds
friendly and decent, even if Dirk said he could be trusted absolutely,
she will have to be on her guard every moment and somehow think up a way
of making the transaction as safe as possible.  just in case.

And this time she will wait until she has got the diamonds home before
making an appointment with Samuel Sundoo.  This time she'll let them
stay with her as long as she wants to, and she'll keep one to take with
her.

Early on the Friday morning she has her car serviced.  She goes to the
bank and withdraws R18000 of the R19000 she has there.  Later in the
morning, she helps Lizzie in the front office because Christel has had
to go to the doctor's.  The fact that she must go and ask Elvin for the
rest of the money is worrying her.  What if he says no?  She cannot go
all the way to Kimberley to take the biggest risk of her life with only
half an egg in her hand!

When she woke up that morning, she told herself to think it over
carefully before getting out of bed.  To change her mind while there was
still time.  She asked herself if she wanted to go on selling property
in the hope of getting away some time during the next year or two?

No.  Does she want to go and work in England?  No.  Does she want to go
to Kimberley?  Yes.  And if it's a trap?

She'll simply have to be sharper than the trap.  How?

She'll ask if she can hold the diamonds before she hands over the money.
She'll know if there's something wrong with them ...

That's jumping off a roof, hoping you can fly, she warned herself She
will put the money in the boot of the car and tell Piet Sinksa to take
it out himself and leave the diamonds in its place.  Then she will get
into the car and drive off.

What if they follow her?  Who?  Major Kruger and Lieutenant Botha. Don't
call for trouble.  Say everything goes well, and then when she stops she
discovers it's pieces of glass?  She will ask to see the diamonds first.

At half-past one, she summons up the courage to go to Elvin's office. "I
want to ask a favour.. "Come and sit down.  What can I do for you?"
"Could you please let me have my outstanding commission in advance
again?  Today." She sees his eyebrows twitch.. "It's R8000."

"May I ask why?"

"I need the money."

"I don't mind giving you the money, your transactions are secure enough,
but you can't blame me for being a bit suspicious.  When you asked me
before ...

"I know.  But you need not worry.  I'm not involved with Nick Wehland
again, and I'm not going to Oudtshoorn to walk into another trap, I
promise you." Please don't say no.

"Araminta, I often wish I knew what your real problem is."

"My only problem is that I want to be free - to start really living my
life."

"What do you want to be free of?"

"Of living behind bars with the walls closing in around me.  I need
money to buy myself out.  I want to go away for a few days - I am
planning to go and stay with my parents at Bloemfontein.. "Promise you
won't get angry if I tell you something.. "What?. "Koos thinks you'll do
it again.. "It's not for Koos Malherbe to speculate about what I'll do
or won't do.  It's my life.  And I've come to the conclusion that it is
wrong to go on living in fear, for then you're not really alive.  So
it's time to pack up and go.

That's why I need the money, Elvin."

"Where are you going?"

"You once asked me why I came to work for Carr & Holtzman.  I came to
work here to make enough money to enable me to leave the country. That's
why."

"What?" He obviously didn't expect it.. "You're leaving the country?  I
don't believe it." He sits there, staring at her as if he has trouble
fully grasping what she means.

Then he leans forward and looks at her closely.. "Or perhaps I do.  That
would explain a lot of things.  Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Where are you planning to go?"

"Probably Switzerland.  I plan to look around for a bit first though, to
find the right place.. "You are serious.. "I am.. "I have a sister in
Switzerland, she's married to a Swiss.

I'll give you her address - I'll let her know about you.. "That would be
wonderful."

"This comes as rather a shock to me, although you're the third person
this week to tell me they're leaving.

Everyone can do as they think best, but personally I think people are in
too much of a hurry to run.  And this puts an even bigger question mark
in my mind about giving you your commission in advance again.  Why?"

"I promise you you need not worry."

"I don't know about that.  But I'll ask Christel to work out the correct
amount and give you a cheque.. "Thank you.  I'll be back on Wednesday."

"Don't do anything irresponsible, please."

"I won't."

Something feels wrong.  All day Saturday she feels it.  She knows that
if she sits down quietly, she'll be able to get to the bottom of it, but
she does not want to.

She tidies her flat, puts the violet in a basin with water, gets out a
suitcase and puts petrol in her car.  She makes herself something to
eat.  She counts the money for the third time and puts it in a plastic
shopping bag: R25000.

Plus R1000 in her handbag for expenses.

She tries to read.

When the sun goes down, she goes and sits at the window, watching the
mountain slowly changing colour for the night ...

She will not let her guard drop for a moment, she will not walk into a
trap.

Going to Kimberley means more to her than just the diamonds.  She can
think of no better place to shed the last traces of bitterness.

The first star comes out above the mountain ...

Maybe that's just an excuse.  Maybe, deep down in her heart, it's also a
journey of revenge, although she does not like the word.  Perhaps she
wants to go to Kimberley to climb over a forbidden wall, pick up a stone
and hurl it through a window with all the force of her anger before
running away ...

When the first diamonds were found in the Free State, British geologists
assured London that there could not possibly be any diamonds there.  The
Boers must have rigged it in order to attract capital to their wretched
wilderness!. "Wicked inventions!" cried the London Times.

When Britain realized her mistake, they made a Griqua swear ...
The Boers were persecuted with lies and deceptions, and she feels every
turn of the screw in her own flesh, because she has dug too deep in her
efforts to find herself.

Then there was the gold.  While the Boers were being angered on this
side, hatred was stirred up for them amongst the ordinary people in
Britain, so that when it came to war over the gold, they would be
willing to pay the taxes to pay for the war.. "They're a kind of Negro,
cruel, and live on mealies," the British newspapers wrote.

When Rhodes started smuggling firearms to the foreigners at the mines,
Paul Kruger discovered that only four out of ten Boers possessed a gun,
and an old-fashioned one at that.  But for ever after the Boers are
depicted as having had a Bible under the one arm and a gun under the
other.

The knock on her door is so sudden and so loud that it makes her jump.
When she opens the door, Koos Malherbe is standing on the other side of
the safety-gate.

"Good evening," he says.  It's a warning rather than a greeting.

"Good evening." I wonder if Elvin has sent you ...

"If you're not going to ask me in, could you pass me a chair so that I
can sit down out here."

"Sorry." She unlocks the safety-gate and invites him to come in.

He is a self-assured Noah entering the ark, letting his eyes wander
slowly over everything.  He's a relentless rock sitting in her armchair,
looking at her as if she is a particularly troublesome case.. "Araminta
Rossouw," he says. "I had to choose between letting you carry on with
whatever you are doing, which would have saved me a lot of trouble, or
coming here and trying to bring you to your senses."

"Am I supposed to feel flattered because you have chosen to try to
rescue me?"

"No.  Not at all."

It's a slap in the face.  For a moment her pride is shattered, but then
she recovers and hits back.. "Mr. Malherbe," she says coldly. "I once
climbed over a passionfruit hedge to get to a forbidden man, but I
realized later that I had only reached the physical in him.  The day I
came back from Oudtshoorn I would have climbed over the highest
barbed-wire fence for a little kindness from you, to hold on to until I
could get myself together again.

I realized then that you are too hard and dispassionate to be reached.
So why don't you save yourself the trouble and go home?  You do not
understand me."

"You're right.  I don't understand what goes on in your mind.  I've
never come across a girl with a mind like yours."

"Now that is a compliment." He did not even seem to feel the irony.. "I
can offer you coffee or tea, I don't have anything stronger
unfortunately."

"I don't think we should interrupt this conversation in order to make
coffee.  When you stop evading the issue, we might get somewhere."

"Is it true that you turned your wife out of your house?" She knows it's
a silly way of trying to get back at him.

"I never had a wife.  But I did ask the person I was married to to leave
my house and get her priorities sorted out.  She did.  She's playing
golf in America at the moment." Without a flinch.

"Did Elvin send you here?"

"Elvin phoned to tell me that you had asked for an advance on your
commission again."

"That's right.  I did."

"To buy diamonds?"

"To go on a journey of revenge."

"Answer my question: to buy diamonds?"

"If I say yes, it's not the whole truth; if I say no, that's not the
whole truth either."

"One moment you speak absolutely frankly, the next moment you play
games.  I'm not your rescuer, no one can rescue you except yourself. Had
you been a common little lawbreaker, I would not have gone to any
trouble.  You think you're smart.  But let me tell you, you're playing
with fire without realizing how hot that fire can be.  If you are caught
again, you will go to prison.  If you think prison is like what you see
on television or in films, you're making a mistake.  Prison is hell, a
women's prison: the lowest circle of hell."

"This time it's different.  They won't catch me."

"Even if they don't, the unwritten law will, even if it has to pursue
you across the globe!"

"What law?" she asks.

"I did not come here to give you a sermon.  I'm here to appeal to you
not to try and buy diamonds again.. "What law?"

"A law that is not written in any of my books, as you would say.  An
unbending law that brings its victims into my office every day:
ninety-nine percent of the people that come to me are there because they
have tried to build a bridge avoiding this law of laws!  They're there
because their bridges have collapsed.  As you yourself came, and as you
will again if you don't start thinking."

"Laws are made by people, Mr. Malherbe.  Maybe they are the supports of
the bridges you're talking of."

"I'm talking about a law not made by man, the law that says we get
nothing in exchange for nothing."

She laughs.. "I would never have suspected you of such na'l'vety, Mr.
Malherbe."

"Nothing for nothing," he repeats, quietly.. "If your father had made
you read the Bible more often, you would have known that it says you'll
be despised and punished when you steal, even if you steal because you
are hungry.. "I did not steal!"

"Nothing for nothing.  Weigh that against all the clever arguments you
put forward about money in my office that day.  Use it as a watch word
in all man's affairs if you wish.  We get three basic things: food,
shelter and clothes to cover our nakedness.  The rest we must earn."

"Unless you are one of the millions of unemployed; then the state will
look after you," she objects with a sneer.

"Yes.  But remember, the state's bridges are often the highest, and
that's why they fall the hardest when they do.. "I wonder who paid my
fine .  .  ." She puts it down like a trump card.

"You must have earned it somehow."

"I sold Dirk Holtzman's diamonds for a Sunrise toffee box full of money
...  was that nothing for nothing?" She tries another card.

"He must have earned it somehow.. "I don't believe you're saying this."

"Every good you do is multiplied by seven and placed to your credit.
Everything you squander, money as well, is multiplied by seven and taken
away from you - your father should have taught you that as well."

"Does this law apply to everyone, or just to some?" she asks, mockingly.

"To everyone."

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you, for your laws and your bridges. I'm
going away tomorrow, and I'm going to stand on one of the best and
soundest bridges in the world; when I'm there, I'm going to spit out the
last of the poison that is in me.  Then I'll turn round and walk away
from this country, taking with me money that I have not stolen from
anyone."

"Where are you going tomorrow?"

"To the land of Prester johannes."

"Who's Prester johannes?"

"A descendant of the Wise Men from the East who took gifts to the baby
Jesus." She plays with him.. "You may know him by the name of Prester
John.  He had a great kingdom in Africa which remained undiscovered for
many years."

"If I'm not mistaken, they came looking for his kingdom in Africa after
they failed to find it in India."

"You surprise me, Mr. Malherbe."

"Tell me where you're going tomorrow."

"I told you.  To land of Prester johannes.  They say there's a copy in
the British Museum of a letter he wrote to the Byzantine emperor in
Constantinople in which he describes his peaceful kingdom and the
wonders to be found there.  Of the river full of precious stones that
flows through his land; of the earth strewn with gold.  There were no
poor in his kingdom, no one stole or lied or committed evil deeds - I
assume they knew about the law of nothing for nothing."

"Why didn't you finish your studies?"

"Because I decided to make a life for myself elsewhere.

The early Portuguese explorers were instructed to keep a lookout for the
land of the Priest and to win him over in the name of God and for the
profit of Portugal, Mr. Malherbe." I'm enjoying this.. "Something like
two hundred years later, jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape and soon
the powers that be in Amsterdam were giving him hell for not making
contact with the lord of the land of diamonds and gold."

"Where are you going tomorrow?"

"Do you know about the letter that Van Riebeeck wrote to the magnates in
Amsterdam after ten years of neverending pressure to find this elusive
kingdom?. "You're going to walk into a trap."

"He said that he had studied the old Portuguese maps and had come to the
conclusion that the land of precious stones and gold lies, not to the
south, but to the north.

And to get there you had to overcome many hardships: desert and heat and
thirst.  You had to travel to the river of the elephants, through the
vast grazing areas of the Koikoi, and everywhere the Koikoi tribes were
at war with one another over cattle and women.  Beyond all these
dangers, you would get to the land of the cannibals, which was guarded
by tame lions, and only then would you get to the land of diamonds and
gold.  Van Riebeeck's calculations were not far out, were they?"

"Are you going to Kimberley?"

"Yes," she admits, defiantly.

"To buy diamonds?"

"Yes.  And to spit.. "Why is a girl like you so very bitter?. "Because
something made me fight against a fate that made us the only white tribe
on the foot of the darkest continent on earth!  We're not West, we're
not East.  We're south, in the middle of the day where there's neither
dawn nor dusk, and for the sins of orty years we've been reviled as the
most hated nation on earth.  The world does not want us, Mr. Malherbe.
Africa does not want us - they can't send us to the moon, so what are we
to do?  Pack up and go while there's still somewhere to go to.  I know
there are fools that think we can get on to wagons again, take up our
Bibles and our hymn books and .  .  ."

"If you're going to Kimberley, you're going to make an ass of yourself'

"I must."

"Why?"

"I once had a friend that I loved like a brother.  He always said
Prester johannes is just the secret name of the great Spirit that lives
somewhere between the south and the north.  To me it's a place where a
handful of diamonds is waiting for me, so that I can leave at last.  And
while I'm there, I would like to ask this great spirit why he never had
pity on us.  I want to ask him why jakob Hart went north to join the ANC
- and if it really was an accident that he was standing up in the lorry
as it passed under the bridge that beheaded him."

"I remember the jakob Hart case; it was in every newspaper at the time.
There was no question of foul play, and it's an established fact that he
had joined the ANc as an agent of the South African government."

"I know.  It's just that I often wonder if we have angels that push us
where we must go."

"Maybe one goes of one's own free will."

SHE WAKES UP AT an unfamiliar noise ...  as if someone had
wrapped a stone in cloth and thrown it against her window.  A moment
later, her alarm clock goes off and she wonders if she didn't dream it.

"Good morning, mountain!"

It's six o'clock.  The first rays of the sun are already touching the
highest cliffs with a deep, warm glow.  She must get up.  She must go to
Kimberley.  She closes her eyes and allows a feeling of excitement and
anguish to seep through her.  Excitement because she knows that when she
gets out of bed it will be the start of the last lap.  Something inside
her is telling her so.  The great spirit, the one that makes the sun to
rise and the rain to fall, that sends the drought to make you get up and
move on, has put it inside her.

Her anguish is the fear that something might get in her way and that she
will not see it in time ...

Suddenly she hears the noise at the window again.  She sits up in bed
and waits.  There's nothing there.  Just a speck against the sky that
comes sweeping down and hits the glass with a resounding thud!  It's her
stone wrapped in cloth: it's a swallow.

Why does it do it?

She jumps out of bed and runs to the window to see if it is hurt and
lying on the ground.  There's nothing there.

But when she turns away from the window, he does it again!  She pulls
the curtains - maybe there's a reflection on the glass and he can't see
the window.

It must have been that, because he does not come back.

Or perhaps it's the day of the birds.

For when she drives out of town, there is a most beautiful reddish-brown
eagle with a spotted white breast sitting proudly on a telegraph pole.
She winks at him as she drives past .  .  .  a hawk or an eagle at the
start of a journey is a good luck sign and it makes her feel better
about the swallow.

The road starts climbing the foothills of the mountain; the air is still
cool after the night.  She listens for the little voice inside her
telling her to turn back, but does not find it.  But she does not find
the excitement with which she had woken up either, because the memory of
the last time she drove over this very same mountain haunts her like a
ghost.  It was foggy that morning, and she drove into the trap almost
jubilantly.

No matter how often her common sense tells her that Plet Sinksa is not a
trap, she knows she'll have to be wary and alert as never before in her
whole life.

just before she left home, she phoned to make sure that the arrangements
are unchanged.  Angeline answered.  Piet was still asleep, she said, but
she could go and wake him if madam wanted her to.  Please don't.  She
only wanted to check before setting out.  Not to worry, madam, Piet is a
man of his word, he walks a straight line and so do I.  By the way, if
madam would like a cat, bring a box - there are six kittens here that we
must find homes for.

One of the first things she is going to do when she has settled down in
her new country is get a cat.

Nothing for nothing ...

She's not getting the diamonds for nothing, she's paying for them.  Koos
Malherbe's philosophy is paradoxical.

What about the money people inherit or win - or welfare money?  What
about gifts?  Or are these conveniently included somehow in the category
of money that has been earned?

Koos Malherbe.  One thing she knows now: no woman will ever dare to
climb over any of his fences.  But it makes her feel good that he had
come, evidently thinking that he would be able to stop her.  It means he
must have cared a little.  The only thing she had promised him before he
left was that she would turn back if she had any doubts along the way -
even if she was only ten kilometres from Kimberley.

Should she turn back?

No.

It's hot and dry on the Karroo side of the mountains.  If all goes well,
she will be in Kimberley between three and four o'clock ...

She'll work until the end of November.  That will give her time to sell
the car and furniture and pack.

She waves to a little grey hawk with black shoulders sitting at the side
of the road.  Funny, she can't remember a single hawk or eagle along the
way on the morning she went to Oudtshoorn ...

Nothing for nothing.

It's not always true.

They say you must never wait for opportunities in life, you must look
for the opportunities that are there already and grab them.  Fine.  She
had taken a chance to go and sell diamonds for the Shirleys and Dirk
Holtzman; now it's her turn.

Money.  They say it's a sin to be poor, for if you're too poor for too
long you lose your courage as well as your morals - it sounds like
something from Lizzie's book.  To be too rich is not good either, for
then you become mean or bored to death.

Money, money, money.

If Koos Malherbe had said there should be a law that forbids you to have
more than you really need, she would not have argued.  Except perhaps to
remind him that even the communists had not managed to make that work in
practice.  On the other hand, the capitalists would have the horrors:
for capitalism depends on people wanting all the nice things that can be
bought - preferably on credit, for then you have to work in order to pay
off the money before you can buy the next thing and start paying off the
money for that ...  Is that how people are kept working?

She has never thought about it like that before.

Nothing for nothing?

There's a God of heaven and a god of the world.  Perhaps the god of the
world is too smart for the people of the earth?

Think about something else.

Prester johannes had three magic stones: one that could make you see the
unseen, one that could make you invisible and one that made light in the
dark ...

On the other side of Oudtshoorn, although it's not quite half-past eight
the heat already runs in waves across the veld.  Ostriches peck about in
bare paddocks on both sides of the road.  They have wings but they
cannot fly.  Hundreds of ostriches.  Thousands of ostriches.  In places
it seems as if they had eaten the earth itself ...  They say that there
was a time when ostrich feathers sold so well that the farmers and
merchants of this district wallowed in money.  They built themselves
mansions of dressed stone and ordered shiploads of luxuries from Europe
to put in them and lived like kings and queens.

When the price of ostrich feathers fell, they fell with it.

That's not what she wanted to think about.  There is something about
ostrich feathers ...  they're different from those of other birds.  All
the little plumes that grow from the central quill are exactly the same
length - like truth and righteousness.  The ancient Egyptians believed
that when you get to heaven, your heart is put on a scale and weighed
against an ostrich feather to find out how much wrongdoing you've
brought with you.  If your heart moves the scales even slightly, you
have to come back to earth and try again.

Hundreds of ostriches, thousands of ostriches, and most of their wing
feathers have been clipped.

Perhaps that is why there are so many people on the earth: no one is
getting it right?

Don't be silly.

On the other side of De Rust, the road begins to wind through an
enormous gorge in the Swartberg Mountains.

She's already some way into the pass when she sees the white police car
ahead, waiting at the side of the road, the blue light on its roof
flashing on and off.  An officer steps into the road and puts up his
hand to stop her.

There are no cars in front of her or behind her, which alarms her a
little as she starts to put on the brakes.  Why is she being stopped?

"Good morning, lady," the man says as she rolls down the window.. "Will
you please pull over on the other side of the bridge.  There's been an
accident a little further on and the road is blocked.  It won't be long
before we have it cleared.. "Has anybody been hurt?"

"Nothing serious.  Furniture van from Kimberley turned over; they come
speeding through here, they think the signs warning of sharp curves have
been put up for fun.  If you would just pull over - thank you."

A furniture van from Kimberley.  Why did he tell her that?  He was not
supposed to tell her, was he?  They never tell you anything unless you
ask ...

She pulls over on the other side of the bridge and stays sitting behind
the wheel in order to calm down.  There are quite a few cars waiting
already, people are walking along the road in the direction of the
accident.  She tells herself not to be foolish, no furniture van would
have been sent from Kimberley specially to come and block the pass to
her.

And the swallow at the window?  Birds know things people don't know.

The sexton's wife had been expecting twins once.  Suddenly, one day, two
swallows came flying into the window-pane where she was sitting sewing
and that same night the twins were stillborn. Afterwards the woman said
she knew the swallows had come to tell her something.

OK, the sexton's wife had been forty-five.  But what about the two
pigeons that suddenly fell stone-dead from the roof of the Governor's
residence at the Cape one morning?  Would it have even been recorded if
it hadn't been seen as something supernatural?  And shortly afterwards
the most devastating smallpox epidemic broke out: within a month, more
than a hundred of the settlers were dead and the Koikoi were dying like
flies.

The birds had known.

She gets out of the car.

Perhaps the swallow had tried to tell her that the road through the pass
would be blocked.  No.  Perhaps he was trying to tell her that Piet
Sinksa is a trap that they're setting for her.  Perhaps she's getting
paranoiac.

What about the eagle she saw when she was just setting out?

Behind her, formidable cliffs tower into the sky - and on the other side
of the road rises the opposite wall of the e being inside a mountain
that broke '

gorge.  It's like'     in two millions of years ago.  First a little
river came and made a way through the crack, then man.

With her eyes she starts climbing the rock-face on the opposite side of
the road: from ledge to ledge, from foothold to fissure, hanging on by
her fingers - it's a game.  She must get to the top without slipping and
falling ...  higher and higher, calculating every move until she reaches
the summit.  When she looks up, three swallows are circling above her
head ...

Must she turn back?  If she wants to, this is the place to do it: she's
just over a hundred kilometres from home.

But what will she return to, her other self asks.  Continuing to work,
perhaps for years, while life goes by, day after day?  Turn back and
never know whether Piet Sinksa was a good deed multiplied by seven? Turn
back and survive behind bars for the rest of your life while hatred
piles up around you because you're white and live in Africa?  While the
world weighs you with more untruths than truths for sins you have not
committed, while political parrots with golden teeth keep on tearing
your people apart?

It's a farce.

The white man on the foot of Africa does not have the money to buy
himself free.  Except a few perhaps.  Except those who make plans and
buy themselves free in time.

An hour later, when they've cleared the road, she drives north.  The
wreck of the furniture van lies along the road: GOODWILL REMOVERS, say
the big red letters on its side.

At the end of the pass, there is a little brown hawk sitting on a post.
She does not wink or wave at him; from here on she intends to keep her
eyes on the road, rather than looking out for omens along the way.

Slowly the vast arid plains of the Karroo begin to spread out around
her.  It's no longer Africa's green, mountainous toe, but a hard,
desolate, sparsely inhabited world.

It's hot.

She drives through Beaufort West without stopping.

Hour after hour, a feeling of determination builds up in her, giving her
strength and stalling the fear in her.

Victoria West.

Piles of rough, dark brown boulders are scattered like little mountains
across the immensity .  .  .  She sweeps away the road and the telegraph
poles, the power-lines and )ackal-proof fences, and imagines bushmen
running across the plains like little yellow-brown ghosts.  Their
shelters nestle against the piles of rock; they hunt, they gather, they
dance .  .  .

And they get up to leave when they have to.

Hour after hour she drives.  It's hot.  For long stretches at a time,
hers is the only car on the road.

Britstown.

More and more thorn trees on the plains; tall grass between the scrub,
and desolation everywhere ...

Where am I going, she asks herself.  Why don't I turn back?  Because I'm
three quarters of the way there already.

Because it's the only short cut I can see ...

Ages go by in kilometres and ghosts: the bushmen bands grow fewer - the
Koikoi tribes with their horned cattle and fat-tailed sheep, covered
with hair instead of wool, grow bigger and stronger, the tribal wars
grow fiercer.

Far behind her the first ships round the Cape of Storms at the foot of
Africa.  More ships.  Fleets of ships.  In the bays animals are acquired
for meat from the nearest Koikol and they in turn must barter or trade
with the Koikol deeper inland: ten head of cattle and ten sheep are
needed for every fair-sized ship, five of each for the smaller ones, and
at least forty head of cattle and fifty sheep for every East Indiaman -
and that, multiplied by a few hundred years and hundreds upon hundreds
of ships, results in the Koikoi becoming vagrants without cattle.

From the south came the wagons with the children of the children of the
first white settlers, searching for another place to stay.  As she is.

God in heaven, that is supposed to be j'n us all, is there a pattern we
do not see or have you made us as aj .  oke?

She cries it out from the depths of her being.

Shortly before three o'clock, she stops at Hopetown.  It is eight hours
since she has left home and according to her road map the Orange River
must be just outside the town.

From there it is another 120 kilometres to Kimberley.

She fills up her car with petrol.  She washes her hands a .  rid face,
buys a sandwich and a cool drink.  For the first time since that
morning, the feeling of excitement returns.

Ten minutes later she comes to the river.

The only other time in her life that she could not take in the full
wonder of what she was seeing was the day she saw the diamond in the
sceptre in the Tower!  As then, she cannot stop and look, because "No
Parking' signs forbid her to stop on the bridge; she has to keep driving
and at the same time try to see as much as she can of the river, coming
from the east and disappearing to the west.  She drives more and more
slowly ...  the car behind her hoots ...  It's a wide, formidable,
yellow-brown mass of water that flows like blood through a huge open
vein.  It's a primeval force.  It's a living thing.

It's a boundary.

When she gets to the other side, she wants to turn back and cross the
bridge again, but there are cars in front of her, and impatient ones
behind her.  She has to keep going.

About twenty kilometres farther on, she begins to realize that there has
been a gradual change since she crossed the river.  The earth is
speaking a different language.  The air is different.  It's not her
imagination; she can feel it, see it.

It's a different country.  Humpbacked hills, pointed hills, flat-topped
hills.  Stretches of thorn trees like umbrellas with their feet in a
carpet of long green grass.  Farms, power pylons ...

Is this the start of the Priest's land?  She cannot decide whether she's
disappointed or simply too tired to appreciate anything at the moment.
It's beautiful, but in a different way, and it doesn't feel the way she
had thought it would ...

The traffic on the road is heavier, people are driving faster.  A grey
hawk with a red beak and red legs sits on a telegraph pole at the side
of the road.  She's never seen a hawk like that before.  A little way
further on is its mate.

An hour later, the road becomes a long avenue of pepper trees.

Kimberley.

Twelve THE FIRST THING SHE does when she gets to her room in the hotel
is to dial Piet Sinksa's number.  The telephone rings and rings.

No one answers it.

She tells herself not to worry, they will have just gone out for a
while.  But it does worry her.  They knew she was coming eight hundred
kilometres to see them, they knew she was going to phone when she got
here; the least they could have done was to be at home!

It is almost five o'clock.  She unpacks her suitcase and puts the bag
with the money in one of the drawers.  After a shower, she dials the
number again.  Still no answer.  She tells herself not to panic, but she
does.  Nothing is as she thought it would be.  The air-conditioner in
the room makes more noise than anything else, she's forgotten her comb,
she feels cooped up between the four papered walls!

She turns the air-conditioner off and opens the window.

There is not a breath of air, but at least it is less noisy.

From where she is standing, she looks down on the backyard of the hotel:
a row of garages with their doors painted orange.  Not a car, not a
soul.  The rest of the view is roofs: red roofs, pointed roofs, tin
roofs.  Like hats, one can't see what's underneath them.  A church
tower, the purple tops of jacaranda trees.  There are no mountains.

Only a tiny strip of veld in the distance and huge, white, bulging
thunderclouds against the blue of the sky.

She's the only living thing left on the earth.  Except for a rumbling
somewhere up above, getting closer and closer until it turns into an SAL
Boeing coming in low over the city, with its wheels out ready to land.

Nothing feels the way she thought it would ...

She turns away from the window to dial the Sinksas' number again. Please
be at home; please answer the phone!

Nothing.

The Sunday stillness is oppressive.  The room is a concrete cell closing
in around her.  She lies down on the bed, gets up again; she sits down
on a chair, gets up and walks to the door; she opens the door and looks
down the passage.  Nothing.  Only a red carpet and a row of closed
doors.

It is a quarter to six.

What if she has come all that way for nothing?

She goes back to the window and looks at the strip of veld on the
horizon.  It is something to hold on to, a last bit of land that has
been left undeveloped, where she can go and burrow into the earth with a
stick and find a handful of little stones with which she can light her
way out of the darkness ...

What if she has come eight hundred kilometres for nothing?

Mountain?

The mountain is too far away, he can't hear her.

The Priest is gone too.  He left long ago.  He walked away with his
magic stones.  Perhaps he made himself a raft of tree-trunks and carried
it south until he got to the river - she thinks up a story, it helps her
to feel better.

When he got to the river, he floated down to the sea on his raft.

Then came the bushmen, the Koikoi, the black people from the north and
the east; they came with their bows and poisoned arrows, their sticks
and their spears, to wage a thousand years of war, because the Priest
had taken the peace away with him.  And the earth had to drink every
drop of blood that was shed; it became a bitter place, and all the
bitter places joined together into a large bitter stain that seeped into
the very stones, as prayers seep into the walls and make churches holy
places; as curses seep into the walls and make prisons evil places ...

No, she says to herself, go over it again and go think it out better.
Fortunately a river full of diamonds was flowing deep underneath the
earth, and in every diamond was a speck of light it had got from the
stars themselves.  Yes.

And so from the earth came millions of little lights to heal the bitter
stain.

Then the Boers came with their wagons.  Some kept on trekking northwards
till they crossed the Vaal River.  First they found the Priest's
diamonds and then the gold, and then the earth had to drink a lot of
blood ...

Behind her the telephone gives an ear-splitting ring.

"Miss Rossouw?. "Yes." It is the girl at reception.

"Can you come down please; there's somebody here to see you.. "Could you
send them up to my room please?. "I think it would be better if you came
down."

The woman is standing outside on the pavement at the entrance to the
hotel.  She's black.  Her eyes are wary; her hands betray her
nervousness.  She's wearing a bright pink skirt and a white blouse; a
red and white headscarf covers her hair; her shoes are old and worn.

"Are you Plet Sinksa's sister Angeline?"

"Yes, madam." Cautiously.

"I tried to phone you, but there was no reply."

"That's why I've come.  Our phone's out of order.  I said to my brother,
madam will ring when she arrives.  I went looking for madam at the other
hotel, but madam wasn't there."

You're either a very good person or a very good trap.

"Thank you.  It was kind of you.. "I just came to tell you about the
phone."

"As your phone is out of order, we had better decide now where we are
going to meet tomorrow." I will not make a single move unless I can see
exactly where I'm going.. "If Piet and I can meet somewhere in the city,
we can make further arrangements."

"If you don't mind, madam, it is not a good idea to stand talking like
this; it would be better if we walked along, pretending to be
window-shopping.  You understand?" She is very uneasy.

"Understand what?"

"Kimberley is a place with many eyes, madam.  It's better if we walk as
we talk."

"I see." They cross the street because there are no shopwindows on the
side of the hotel.. "I thought if Piet and I could meet as early as
possible .  .  ."

"He leaves home a little after six in the morning; he has to start work
at seven.  He asked if you could meet him at one o'clock.  Madam can say
where."

The first window they stop to look at has a display of motor-car spare
parts.. "If you don't mind me saying so, Angeline, I find this rather
silly.  And it may sound irresponsible, but all this secrecy makes no
sense to me.

We're not planning a burglary.  It's a matter of Piet handing over
certain articles, and me handing over whatever I owe him for them.  Why
can't we get into my car, go to your home right now and get it over
with?  It's still long before dark."

"It's not safe for you to drive into the township, madam, and anyway
Piet will not do business on the Sabbath.

He's a man of the church, madam."

I wonder .  .  .. "Fine, I understand.  What do you suggest?

Where should we meet?"

"It does not matter, it's your decision.  As long as it is not at the
hotel, if you don't mind.  Hotels are dangerous places - Piet has never
been caught.  Neither have I."

"Are you in it as well?"

"I just stand in for Piet sometimes.  He gives me something for it.  He
had a man that helped him, but he went off with all the money one day.
So we said never again.  I think we should go on a bit."

They come to a chemist's shop on a corner.  She points down the side
street.. "Tell Piet I'll park my car down there, shortly before one
o'clock tomorrow.  It's a red Datsun with a CAw registration number .  .
." Something's wrong; there is open hostility suddenly on the woman's
face and in the manner in which she pulls away.. "Is something the
matter?" The woman stands there, glaring at her, challenging her.
"What's the matter, Angeline?"

"You've chosen an ideal place, madam," she says sarcastically.. "We may
be black, but we're not stupid!" she adds, with undisguised hostility.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.

First you say we mustn't stand around talking, and now we are standing
here arguing!  Please, I'm tired, I've come a long way.  If I said
something wrong ...  y

"That place down there, madam, where you say you'll park your car, that
bluish building - do you know what it is?"

So it was about a building lower down in the side street.

"I have no idea what you mean.  I've never been in Kimberley in my life
before!"

"That place, madam, happens to be the headquarters of the diamond spies.
And you want to lure Piet there."

"I'm sorry.  I swear I didn't know it.  I'll park my car in front of the
hotel."

"Can I make a suggestion?  Park your car somewhere outside the city and
let Piet bring the stuff to you there.. "Whereabouts outside the city?"
She's not stupid either.

"It does not matter.  Madam can go ahead of us and pick a place - we're
not cheats.  We don't steal, we're only taking what has been taken from
us and you're buying it!" Bitter and vindictive.

"Tell Piet I'll wait for him in my car under one of the last pepper
trees on the road coming in from the south.  I'll be there at one
o'clock, and then I'll decide where we exchange the necessary."

"I'll tell him," she says, stiffly.

"Please, I've come a long way."

"I'll tell him.  He'll bring them."

When she gets back to her room and lies down on the bed, total
exhaustion gives way to relief.  Angeline Sinksa - or whatever her
surname is - is no police-trap decoy.  She is quite sure of it.

When she wakes up and puts on the light, it's six minutes past midnight.
She's hungry, she has slept right through dinner-time.  It is a long
time until dawn and an eternity to her meeting with Piet Sinksa.  She
puts on her nightdress and tries to go back to sleep.

Very well, she admits to herself, I wanted to romanticize this whole
thing, see it as inevitable, something of a last pilgrimage.  Now it's
not.  It does not even feel like a dream falling into place.  It feels
like nothing.

Perhaps it is like being happy; often you don't know you're happy, and
it is only afterwards that you realize you've been happy at a particular
moment.  Maybe she'll feel better once it's morning and she can get out
of this hotel room.  Or once she has eaten.  Then she'll take a walk
through the centre of the city to kill time.  She may even go and see
the Big Hole.

It's not a trap that has been set for her.  She knows she'll get the
diamonds.  They will go home with her and she will show them to Koos
Malherbe before she takes them to Samuel Sundoo.

It is no use closing her eyes and trying to get to the mountain.  It is
too far away.

So is Koos Malherbe.  She had tried to touch him, but couldn't.  She
accepts that.  He probably thinks her hands are too dirty for him.
Perhaps he has other preferences, like Wilhelm. In any case, she only
wanted to feel what he feels like, for the worst loneliness is when
there is no one to touch you because you first have to make a new life
for yourself somewhere else.  That's why a man like Koos Malherbe could
have provided a moment of comfort for the something in you that needs to
escape and go playing sometimes.  With a man.

Think about something else.

Are certain things put in your way, long ahead of time, without you
suspecting it?  Little things, big things.  Do you walk right past some
of them because you don't know they've been put there with a purpose?
Sometimes you stoop down and pick one up simply because it holds some
kind of fascination for you; you don't realize that it's been put there
for you to find it much later ...

Why was the river such a vivid moment?  Why is she so aware of it?

You start learning about the Orange River almost as soon as you start
school.  So what?  It's a river.  Later on you come to realize that it
is a particularly important river.

Later still, when you begin to rebel against the fact that you were born
in Africa, you notice that Africa gave its best and sweetest water to
its black children in the north.

To its white children in the south, it has given the most and soil -
and the Orange River.

One day, Uncle joop called her over to his house; he said there was
something he wanted her to have because Wilhelm was not interested in
it.  She was in grade nine.

No.  Grade nine was Frans de Villiers.  She must have been in grade
eight.  He gave her three old books and she had to look as if she was
pleased, because he was watching her reaction.

She walked home with the books.  It was winter, and it was nice out in
the sun.  As she walked, she idly flipped the pages of one of the books
through her fingers as you might kick a stone as you go along.  As she
did so, she noticed scribbling in a margin and quickly turned back to
find it again: scribbling in a margin could be a secret someone had
written there and forgotten about.

The person who had written it, had done so with a purple-coloured
pencil; the handwriting was old, older than Uncle joop's, and the words
were. "Often God's love manifests the greatest in the least of us." With
the same pencil, the person had drawn an intricate frame round an entry
in the book - which was actually a diary, Van Reenen's _journal, for the
year 1803.  Fascinated, she sat down on the grass inside the front gate;
as she read, she imagined the scenes she was reading about.

It described the day when Governor janssens and his party arrived at the
Orange River on their journey through the settlement at the Cape.  The
Orange River was more or less the northern boundary at the time.  With
some difficulty, they managed to shoot and kill a hippopotamus, which
then, unfortunately, drifted down the river and on to the other bank.

There it lay.  They thought up every plan they could to get the
hippopotamus back across the river, because the Governor had never seen
one in his life.  A freed slave who was in the party, and a very strong
swimmer, came forward and offered to take a rope over to the
hippopotamus.  It was winter and bitterly cold.  He swam and swam, but
the current was too strong.  One moment he was swimming in the water,
the next moment he had gone under.  The river took him just as it had
taken the hippopotamus, and threw him up on the opposite bank.

So now the slave was lying there too.  Whether dead or alive, they could
not tell.

When the six wild bushmen that had been following the party for days for
meat and tobacco and beads saw the former slave lying on the other side
of the river, they became frantic with concern.  They ran up and down,
they shouted and carried on; no one could calm them down.  At last they
got hold of a dry log, pushed it into the water and, sitting astride of
it, started paddling out across the mighty river with their hands,
apparently quite unafraid of the water.

When they got to the other side, they made a big fire and dragged the
slave to it; they took off their skin cloaks, and covered him with them,
and slowly the slave started to revive.  The next morning they made a
fire again, and when he was warm, they put him on another log of wood
and started back with him.  Two of them swam across next to him, but it
wasn't long before he was in trouble.  The slave didn't know how to ride
on a log - he kept falling off it.  They stayed with him and held on to
him.  The current tried to take the slave, but they wouldn't let go of
him.

Little by little they struggled on.  For hours they struggled to get him
back and, the diarist said, if it had taken even another five minutes,
they would all have been drowned.

She wrote many an essay at school about that incident afterwards.  The
pictures she had made herself of the river matched the river nearest to
the village, the Gouritz River.

Now, after all these years, she knew that her pictures were wrong: the
Gouritz is Just a little trickle compared to the Orange.  For the first
time, she knows why someone had written those words in the margin of the
old book ...

When she wakes up again, it's morning.

It's a new day.  A normal day!  There are people on earth again; they're
talking and laughing down in the yard and a car is pulling out from one
of the garages ...

It's the day of Piet Sinksa!

Nothing, nothing, nothing must go wrong on this day.

She says it out loud, at the same time becoming aware of sharp
twittering noises somewhere outside ...  She recognizes the sound, but
she can't place it immediately ...

When she gets out of bed and goes to the window, she sees that the sky
is filled with hundreds of swallows: flying and gliding like little
black bats in broad daylight.  Those that come diving down pass at some
distance from her window; behind them in the clear blue sky is the long
white trail of another jet, like an omen.

She stands there at the window, and can find no sense of wrong or fear,
or any desire to turn back, within her.

She finds only a wonderful feeling of peace, as when, after a long
journey, you suddenly find yourself in a green valley between mountains
with snow on their peaks ...

it's just a matter of getting there.  And picking up a handful of magic
stones on this side of the river to light your way out of this land ...

Is it wrong, she asks herself for the last time.

No.  Africa does not want white children.  Not even at his feet does he
want to make room for you if you have a white skin; when your father no
longer wants you, you leave.

The last part of her journey out starts today.  She knows it.  She'll
ask them to get her account ready at the reception desk, she won't stay
another night.  It won't be necessary.

Her 'task' will be completed early enough for her to be able to drive
home, even if she gets there after dark.

Straight home.  Not via Bloemfontein.  Not now.  Bloemfontein is for
later, when Marian gets married and she has to go there to say goodbye.

Always, no matter how much she clung to her dream of the valley between
the mountains, a little pool of lingering doubt and uncertainty had
remained.  Now it had gone.

What if Piet Sinksa is part of a trap?  The question does not come from
the pool of doubt - she asks it herself, on purpose.  Like testing a
stone before you step on it to see if it's quite firm.

It IS.

She has a shower, gets dressed, packs, takes the bag with the money and
goes down to breakfast.

For an instant, as she's going down the stairs, she has the strange
feeling that she has been here before.  Not on the stairs; somewhere
else where it felt the same.  Like a film stopping to reel back, but
gets stuck.  Then she's on the stairs again, knowing it's probably the
Oudtshoorn incident that has come to haunt her.

The foyer is bustling with people and so is the diningroom; mostly men
in suits with briefcases beside their chairs, like members of a congress
or something.  Nice men.  Clever men.  Two are black.  The dining-room
has no windows; heavy curtains, draped over the walls, create an
impression of windows, and air-conditioners blow a soft breeze across
the room.

She takes her time over breakfast - it's a long time until one o'clock.
When she's finished, she'll check out and go to the shops.  She might
even buy herself a new dress.  Why not?  For months now she's had this
desire to throw awa'v all her clothes and buy herself new ones.  In the
meantime, she'll treat herself to just one new dress.

But it is an impossible city with impossible streets!  If it's no. "One
Way' signs sending her circling round the block, it's a creep cutting
shamelessly in front of her and taking the only empty parking bay. Twice
it happened.  And it's hot.  And no matter which way she turns, at the
end of the street there's a board with an arrow sayin. "Big Hole'.

When it happens for the umpteenth time, she turns and follows the arrow
out of sheer frustration.  In any case she had planned to go and see the
hole if there was time.

At first she thinks she has taken the wrong turn again, for it is not
outside the city as she thought it would be; it's down an ordinary
street with industrial buildings on one side.  Another arrow shows her
where she should park her car.  Perhaps she should go back and buy the
dress first it's too hot to be out in the open.  Fortunately someone,
long ago, had the sense to plant the parking area with pepper trees.  An
enormous luxurv coach has taken up a whole row.

As she gets out of the car, she stops dead; the very first sound she
hears is the long, lamenting call of a didric cuckoo: dee dee deederik
...  dee dee deederik ...  I t's a mocking sound, a memory, a call that
says something to her - it's the bird that lays its eggs in the nests of
other birds.  It's strange to find him calling here ...

She locks the car and follows the path up the slope to the top where a
group of tourists are queuing to buy admission tickets at a window. It's
hot.  The place is making her feel irritable.  Perhaps it's the heat.  A
board says. "Big Hole and Open Air Museum'.  Perhaps she should turn
back; if she has to wait till all these people have been attended to, it
may be too late to buy the dress ...  dee dee deederik ...  But the
group starts moving towards the entrance; the tour leader must have
bought one ticket for all of them.

Then it's her turn.  She asks the man if she has to pay separately to
see the hole and the museum.  No.  She gets her ticket, but does not
know which way to go.  She's thirsty, she must find some water to drink
...  She's in a little village; it's a replica of Kimberley when it was
an old mining town: narrow, dusty streets, old signboards above old
corrugated-iron and wooden buildings. "S.  Perilly, Fine Handmade
Cigarettes.  Head Office Glasgow, Scotland' dee dee deederi. "Fancy
Goods.  Drapery.

Imported Shawls. "Goodchild & Rothschild, The Auction Mart. "Watchmaker'
"Hairdresser. "Licensed Diamond Dealer' . "Oldest house, 1877
manufactured in England and brought to Kimberley by ox wagon' .  .  .
"Vooruitzicht' - the name of the farm on which the town was founded. She
remembers that the British Colonial Secretary at the time, Lord
Kimberley, complained that he could not pronounce the name Voorultzicht,
and so gave orders that the place had to be given a name worthy of the
British Empire: Kimberley.

She finds a tap and waits until the water runs cold before she drinks
from her hand, and sprinkles some on her face and arms ...  The place
makes her uneasy;

perhaps it's the heat.  Perhaps she should go back to her car.  But she
sees an arrow pointing. "Big Hole'.

Moments later she comes to a large wire cage which the people are
entering ...  she goes in too ...  it's a narrow cage built on a
platform projecting out over the edge of the hole.  She walks up to the
front.  She hears herself say: it's not true't's not true.  Before her
the most terrible, incredible hole plunges down into the earth: the
biggest man-made hole in the world.  No picture she has seen of it
showed how big and frightening it was!  Across the void, in the
distance, lies the city centre.  She does not want to look down again,
but she must.  From the top of the hole yellow-brown earth walls slant
down till they become sheer curtains of blue rock, plunging into a pool
of green water far below.  It wants to pull her down.  The knuckles of
her hands are white as they grasp the wire mesh in front of her.

Dee dee deederik ...

Don't look down, she says to herself.  Round the hole, there are still
patches of lonely veld with grass and thorn trees; trees and grass grow
on the slanting walls down to where there is no more soil for roots to
cling to.  It's as if they're trying to hide a little of the wound.
Somewhere in the air is a sharp, endless twittering noise it sounds like
swallows, but there are no swallows, only hundreds of large moths far
below, circling round and round above the water.

Then she realizes that they are not moths - they are swallows.

"Are you feeling all right?" the woman standing next to her in the cage
asks.

"I'm all right, thank you." Go away.

"It's incredible to think that this was once a hill, isn't it?. "Yes."
Go away!

The woman goes away.

She'd forgotten that it was once an ordinary hill in the veld.  Until
someone picked up a handful of diamonds on its crown and prospectors
came flocking.  They dug and dug, and brought up from the earth riches
such as had never been found before in the whole world. When the hill
was levelled to the ground, they started digging down.

Deeper and deeper and deeper.  She sees it before her eyes.

Later, when the wheelbarrows could no longer get up the slopes, a
network of steel cables hauled up the large heavy buckets of earth to
the top, and all the time a town was growing up around the hole.. "It's
a place for those who want to sell their souls!" a visiting preacher
cried out in despair.

The best whores came on ships from over the sea and by ox wagon all the
way from the Cape: œ1 a time, œ5 for the whole night.  Gambling-houses,
canteens, merchants by the wagonload, concerts, thieves, swindlers.  The
mining magnates had the shacks of the thousands of black workers fenced
in so as to have better control over them; especially in order to curb
diamond stealing.  To keep them on the mines for longer periods of time,
they gave them plenty of strong drink ...

She feels sick.

Then gradually there were fewer diamonds in the sieves, and no more
yellow earth down in the hole.  The diggers had come to a hard, blue
rock - and panic.  Two brothers by the name of Bernato appeared on the
scene from London.  And another, a preacher's son from a village north
of London: Cecil John Rhodes.  Together they started buying up claims
from the disheartened diggers until almost all of the hole belonged to
them.  Then came the machinery they had ordered from England, for what
the ignorant diggers didn't know was that the hill and the yellow earth
beneath the hill were just the cap of a volcanic pipe that had burst out
of the earth millions of years ago.  The best diamonds were still
waiting down in the blue rock for those who had suspected that that was
the case.

Dee dee deederik!  It was not the bird, it was she herself.

Deeper and deeper went the machines, digging out the earth until water
started rising from the bottom as if to say: no more.  Not far from
there they started digging the next hole ...

Slowly she starts moving back, away from the wire .  .  .  her hands,
her arms, her feet, her whole body is stiff and sore because she had
held on so tightly.  She must get to her car, she no longer wants to be
here.  If something had wanted to punish her for thinking she could spit
from a bridge and get rid of her anger, she has had her punishment.

Perhaps she suffers from a fear of heights without having realized it
...

Immediately outside the cage she looks up and sees the board.  She did
not notice it when she went in.  It is like a giant tombstone on which
the particulars of the deceased have been recorded: diameter of hole 1:6
km; depth to the water level 165 m; depth of water 230 m; work abandoned
August 1914; 22,500,000 tons of earth removed ...  Behind the posts on
which the tombstone rests, three cocopans three large trolleys, stand in
a row, filled with little pieces of glass, representing diamonds, so
that visitors can see what 2,722 kg of diamonds looks like, because that
is the quantity of diamonds that was taken from the hole.

Three wretched cocopans full of diamonds and one monstrous hole in the
earth?

First she feels anger.  Then helplessness.  Then a consuming pity and
guilt and compassion, making her crouch down and put out her hand to
touch the warm yellow soil, saying she's sorry because she doesn't know
what else to say.  And from the earth rises a sadness that swells up in
her as if she should shed the tears that have been withheld.

She suddenly knows that she made a mistake when she sent the Priest down
the river and out to the sea - the Priest did not go away, he crept into
the earth to hide.

Only when the earth finally dies will he go away.

"Are you all right, miss?. "Yes."

She gets up painfully.  She must get away from this place and go to her
car.  It's half-past twelve already.

The man at the window who sells the tickets is reading.

"Excuse me."

"Yes?"

"What did they do with the soil that they took out of the hole?"

"The municipality put it at the back here," he says, indifferent.

"Where?"

"There, where the caravan park is, the blue mounds you see there.  They
sieved it again first, and found quite a lot more diamonds."

"Why didn't they put it back in the hole?"

He looks at her, surprised.. "Funny you should ask.  Only last week a
man came here asking me the same question.

Man from England, as if it has anything to do with him, as if I'm
responsible for the hole.  I told him it would be impossible.  You know
what he said to me?"

"What?"

"He said, if I had a hole in my leg, would I want it to be healed, or
would I display it at a fee for others to see.  I told him I'm just
doing my job.  And now you come here, asking the same daft question."

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to know."

Don't think.

The earth is our mother, the sea is our grandmother ...

Don't think, just get to your car.

For three cocopans.

1 nirteen THE OLD RED COMBI is already parked under one of the last
pepper trees.

It's five minutes to one.

When she puts on the indicator and starts to pull in, the front doors of
the vehicle open and the two of them get out: Angeline and the man in
the blue overalls: Piet Sinksa.

She pulls in two trees away from them.

"We were getting worried that we might have missed madam as you went
past.  This is my brother."

"How do you do." The hand he holds out is rough, the hand of a labourer.
He's short in build and very darkskinned; he has a friendly face.

"Angeline didn't tell me madam was so young.. "Thanks for the
compliment, but you're mistaken." There is a scar starting above one of
his eyes and running into his hair like a parting.. "I'm sorry if I've
kept you waiting." Angeline has the same skirt and headscarf on; across
the white T-shirt she's wearing is written UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA in a
semicircle.

"I don't know what madam has in mind," Piet says, cautiously.. "Perhaps
it would be best to drive out a bit further from the city.  It's not a
good idea, us standing here.. "I want to see the diamonds first.  Right
here."

"Trees have eyes, madam," Angeline says, warningly.

"I know.  I'll tell them to close their eyes."

She laughs.. "I said to Piet, madam's not like most of the other white
people, madam's got a heart that's warm to us black people, madam won't
get us into trouble.  Piet, show her the diamonds."

He doesn't want to.. "You're making a mistake, both of you.  We've been
standing here too long already.. "I want to see the diamonds first."

"Show them quickly, Piet; the road's quiet at the moment," says
Angeline, encouraging him.

Piet is still not happy.. "Then madam must open the car bonnet first so
that it looks as if we've stopped to help madam.  Then we can be
examining the engine." To Angeline he says. "Go and loosen them."

They wait till the bonnet is open.  It's obviously a well practised
ritual: Angeline gets into the front of the Combi and fidgets with
something on the floor while Plet gets in under the Combi.  They work
fast; the next moment he crawls out with a plastic bag in his hand, tied
with a short cord that had obviously been secured under the Combi.  In
the bag is a dirty old cloth and in the cloth ...

"You see, madam," Piet explains, 'if something goes wrong, we cut it
loose at the top as we're driving and let it drop on to the road.  That
way they won't find anything on us if they search us."

In the cloth lie three, six, nine, ten diamonds.  The largest is the
colour of an orange ...  two are green like new leaves ...  three are
pink and the others are white and clear like huge drops of water.

"Madam is rather overwhelmed," says Piet, proudly.

"Are they all diamonds?"

He gives a little snort.. "Of course," he says, beginning to fold the
corners of the cloth back over them.

"Wait!" she cries.. "Let me hold them in my hand for a moment, please."

"Put them in madam's hand," says Angeline.

"We've got to get away from here!"

"Put them in madam's hand, so that she can have a proper look!"

He hands them over reluctantly.

They are blessed stones filled with ancient light ...  in the most
beautiful one, it's a golden light ...  She cannot make out whether
they're happy or not.  Piet Sinksa does not give her enough time to hold
them.  He takes them and wraps them in the cloth.

"We must get away from here!" he says.

"Madam can go on ahead, and we'll follow you," says Angeline.

"I don't want them." She hears herself saying it.  She sees astonishment
come into their eyes as they look at her in disbelief.. "I'm sorry.  If
I could afford it, I would buy them and make little holes for them in
the ground and put them back where they belong: in the earth."

"What?" Piet asks, flustered.. "We have to sweat to get them out, and
madam wants to go and put them back in again?"

"I don't want them.  I don't want to buy diamonds any more.  I'm sorry
for the trouble I've caused you." She closes the bonnet.

"Just wait a minute!" Angeline says, stepping in front of her.. "I don't
think I understand.  Are you saying you're not going to buy?"

"That's right."

"May I ask why not?" she says with contempt.

"Simply because I don't want diamonds any more.  I'll manage on my own.
I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense to you, it does not even make sense
to me at the moment."

"It's not a matter of making sense, madam," Piet chips in from behind
Angeline.. "I just don't understand.  I've kept the best ones for madam,
I sent away the other baas who was offering ready money.  I told him I
had given my word to someone else.  Now it seems that there's something
wrong with the diamonds and they're not wanted any more."

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with the diamonds!" 4Forget it!"
says Angeline, abruptly.. "Madam doesn't want them." She's cross.  It's
as if she's telling Piet: don't bother with her , to hell with her.. "It
seems to me she doesn't know what she wants."

She turns round and walks away to the Combi.  Piet stays behind as if
to have a last try.. "Madam," he says, 'it's not my funeral - it's
madam's.  If madam lets these diamonds go, you're never going to get
another opportunity to buy from Piet Sinksa."

"I know.  Tomorrow, when I regret this, I'll think of you because I've
waited a long time for this day.  And please, do me a favour, be good to
those diamonds while they're with you.  Put them in your pocket or
somewhere diamonds don't sparkle in dirty cloths."

The next moment Angeline shouts from the Combi. "Leave the white-arsed
Boer alone; she's wasting our time!" Immediately she feels the old
spittle on her face.  She turns round and looks the woman straight in
the eyes.  She wants to say something to her, she wants to spit at her
with the hardest words she knows, but she cannot get the words across to
her - she's standing too far away.

All she can do is to get into her car and drive off.

Southwards.  Home.  When she looks in the rear mirror, she sees the red
Combi driving in the direction of the city.

Long after she's crossed the river, long after she has passed Hopetown,
her mind starts to clear and the tension in her body begins to ease.

Somewhere, something has gone wrong.  It's inside her, but she doesn't
know what it is.  She only knows that she had waited a long time for
Piet Sinksa and when he finally came she turned away because she had
been overcome by three cocopans filled with bits of glass.  Because she
had crouched down and imagined herself feeling the heartbeat of a dead
old Priest beneath the ground!

She will go and work for the rest of the money.  She will not cause the
hole to be made bigger in order to provide her with a short cut.  She'll
manage by herself.

Not because of Koos Malherbe's law, but because she herself has decided
to do so.

If perhaps an angel had pushed her to the edge of that hole in order to
tell her something, he had succeeded.

Africa is cripple, Africa's feet are hurting.  She can only promise
that she will tread as softly as she can while she is still here.  She
will never again say she's going away because Africa does not want white
children - she takes those words back.  Its his white children that
helped to dig the holes and are still helping to dig them.

She will say she is going away because she is ashamed of having thought
that she could stand up against a mighty empire and extort a lesser
sentence for this little nation between the West and the East.  She'll
say she thought that if one kept on clinging to injustice, one would get
to justice in the end.

Now it seems as if she has got nowhere.

She will admit that deep in her heart she had hoped that Africa would
shed one tear over her.

Now she knows that the earth can feel pain.  Stones too.

The Bible says stones can hear.  If stones can hear, they can feel too;
and if stones can feel, they can feel pain and stones are but petrified
earth, millions of years old ...

Britstown.  She won't be home before dark.

They say that if you want to know what millions and millions are - if
you want to know how old the earth is you must think of it as being
forty-six years old.  No one knows anything about the first ten years of
its life and not much about the next thirty.  When it was about
forty-five years old the shrubs and the woods and the grass and the
flowers started growing, and there was food and air for the animals and
the birds that were about to appear.  When everything was prepared and
the table was laid and running over with abundance, modern man arrived -
and that was about four hours ago.

Four hours ago.

Three cocopans filled with diamonds.

And man began increasing and destroying and killing and making holes.
Those that have must fight to keep what they have; those that want, must
fight to get it.  And she, Araminta Rossouw, is only on the earth for a
fraction of a second and she did not buy the diamonds!

It's too late.  She can't turn back.

Victoria West.

She must get petrol.. "ANC PLAN TO INTENSIFY CAMPAIGN OF MURDER,
SABOTAGE, ARSON  .  The words are displayed in a red metal frame in
front of the fillingstation caf, big black letters on white paper.  They
do not disturb her any more.

About thirty kilometres south of Beaufort West, she stops to stretch her
legs and rest a while.  She always wanted to know what it feels like to
stand on a wide open, semidesert plain where one can see a long way and
no one can sneak up on you unawares ...

First there's an almost deadly silence ...  watching her .  eerie ...
then a movement ...  the call of a bird, an insect.  The sky is blue,
the breeze is cool ...  all around the plains are empty: the bushmen are
gone, the Koikoi are gone, the wagons and the oxen are gone ...  she is
alone on the veld spinning silently through infinite space.

She's inside it.  It's alive.  She's alive.  It's the same aliveness.
It's Now.

A little grey bird sits on a twig, chirruping away.  The sound that
comes from his throat is yellow ...  In the distance a moorcock takes
wing with a screech - a purple sound .  .  .  She stoops down to let her
fingers stroke a little shrub - it's green...  A grasshopper with a fat
red body ...  big brown ants...  small white flowers.  When the rains
come, a carpet of wild flowers will cover the plains from the tiny
little seeds the earth has hidden and kept alive ...

What is life?

Who is she, living between the West and the East, where it is South ...
where the summer lives, where the full moon lives?  Her life comes from
the earth which is her home, her mother.  She's a child of Africa's
feet, where the mountains and the wild, barren places are mercifully
still whole.  Most of them.  Did the Priest come here to hide his peace
on the outstretched, desolate plains around her?  Is that what she feels
closing in around her, giving her solace ...

In the distance a car is approaching.

She must go.

When she turns round, he is sitting on a post on the other side of the
road, looking straight at her: a big brown eagle.

WHERE Koos MALHERBE APPEARS from, she doesn't know.  When she
stops, his car pulls in behind her.

He carries her suitcase up the stairs.

She puts the bag with the money on the bookshelf and opens the curtains.
The mountain is not asleep, it has waited up for her.

And Koos Malherbe stands with his hands in his pockets, staring at her
as if he wants to find the answers to the questions on his face in hers.

"I am not in trouble, if that's what you want to know.. "I tried to get
hold of you yesterday, but you had already booked out of the hotel."
Cold.

"What did you want to get hold of me for?"

"I wanted to know if you had come to your senses." As if she is a
disobedient child standing before him.

"I've never been out of my senses and I'm too tired to get angry with
you."

"The fact that you are back tells me it wasn't a trap.. "It wasn't."
I'll save the rest.. "Sit down."

"I don't want to sit down.  I also assume that you didn't find the
Priest you were looking for."

"I did.  But he's very cold and dead.  It will take many big fires to
bring him back to life again."

"I take it that you've had your spit?. "The wind blew it back in my
face."

"Did it make you feel better?"

"Lighter.  Only half of me has come back.  And by the way, your "nothing
for nothing" does not hold water.  The dldric cuckoo pushes the eggs of
other birds out of their nests and lays his own in their place."

"Have you ever heard a dldric sing a happy song?"

"Do you have an answer to everything?"

"No.  Especially not when it comes to you.  I take it you'll be going to
Cape Town shortly?" It's a little red warning light.

"What?. "To sell the diamonds.. "What makes you think I'd go to Cape
Town?. "Because your buyer is in Cape Town.. "How did you get that into
your head?. "I know.. "How do you know?. "You told me.. "Am I under
cross-examination?  Am I in some kind of trouble I don't know of?"

"If it wasn't a trap, you're evidently not in trouble.

Unless your bridge starts toppling in on you."

"I think you're playing a game with me.  Why?"

"Because something does not fit.  You."

"Then let me make it easy for you, because I'm tired, Mr. Malherbe.  You
see, I didn't want to be a member of the most hated people on earth.
When I found out that I had no choice, because that's what I am, I
decided to fight what I am.  But little by little, I came to realize
that we're not as bad as they say.  So I got even angrier.  When I came
to the conclusion that there is in fact no place for us here, in this
country, I decided to go and look for somewhere else to live.  I did
have a choice after all.  But now I know something I didn't know last
night: Africa never wanted us to leave.  We are the children of its
feet.  It did want us, but truth and lies and right and wrong got
terribly mixed up.  It can't take care of us any longer, it's tired of
its children.  All its children.  And I did not buy the diamonds."

"What?"

I thought I'd get you off your pedestal with that.. "I decided to cross
the river on my own.  South Africa owes us nothing.  We've helped to
devour it."

"You didn't buy the diamonds?"

Touch me ' )just once.  Hold me a little, please.. "No.

Though I held them in my hand, they were very beautiful and it wasn't a
trap."

"Why didn't you?"

"My sister once stole a pack of sweets and the shopkeeper gave her a
talking to.  She told her an old Jewish legend: that for every good
deed, you get a good angel, and for every bad deed, a bad one.  If
you've collected enough good angels, they'll plead for you when you're
really in trouble.  Long afterwards, I found out that the woman had only
told half of the legend.  Peoples, nations, are awarded good or bad
angels for their deeds too.  I feel sad because my people, in spite of
everything, have not gathered enough good angels to plead for them now.
We are in trouble."

"We are.. "How did you know I would have gone to Cape Town?. "You had an
appointment there once before that you didn't keep."

"How do you know that?"

"Let's just say that one attorney talks to another.  When you did not
turn up, your buyer assumed that you had been caught, and that they
would put pressure on you to reveal his name."

"Was it he that paid my fine?"

"He was a day too late.  It had already been paid."

"Who by?"

"Perhaps by a good angel."

"Did you pay it?"

"No., I thought so.. "Have you ever considered leaving the country.

"Yes."

"Would you?. "When I no longer had a choice.  Yes." He looks at his
watch.. "You must get some sleep.  I'm glad you're back safely.  That's
all I wanted to know."

As if he were saying: the court is adjourned now.  Case dismissed.

Everyone at Carr & Holtzman had also been worried that she might have
got into trouble, for one after the other their faces brighten when she
walks into the office the following morning.

"You make me feel like a lost sheep!"

"Well, just about the whole town was looking for you," says Christel.
"Mr. Blom wants you to phone him.  A Mr. Williamson came in and asked to
see you.  He wants to buy a plot or a house with large grounds.  The
Shirleys recommended you to him.  Then there was a friend of the
gentleman you sold the beach house to at Herolds Bay; he said he'd come
back."

"Don't let Elvin hear all this.  He'll threaten to appoint an extra
agent this very day."

At five o'clock that afternoon, she sells a house to Mr. Williamson from
Johannesburg.

And Wynand Blom has a second appointment for the Friday morning; she has
to make a final offer on his behalf for business premises in the
industrial area.  It's a difficult
transaction, in a world of steel and scrapiron and oily cement
floors and noise, and neither the seller or the buyer are prepared to
budge a cent.  The one wants his price or it's no sale, the other says
he can keep it then, but he still wants the place all the same.

She spends the whole of Friday morning negotiating between the two.
Elvin gives advice, Bernard makes suggestions.  Somewhere during the
day, Lizzie informs her that someone has sent her flowers; they're in
the kitchen, dripping water.

At half-past four the two hard-headed businessmen agree to meet each
other halfway and a very happy Wynand Blom buys the concern.  When he
has signed the contracts, and she is showing him out, she sees a woman
standing at the desk with Christel - actually, it is her beautiful shoes
she notices: soft green high-heeled sandals.

When she comes back in, the woman is still there.  The rest of her
outfit is as smart as the shoes: green striped two-piece suit with
puffed sleeves; thin gold bracelets; large gold earrings; hair short and
very chic ...

The woman turns round and says. "Hallo, Araminta." It's Angeline Sinksa.

For one blinding moment, overcome by shock and fury, she has only one
desire: to spit in her face.

But she can't.  She has no spit, her mouth is as dry as dust from
fright.

It was a trap and she hadn't realized it.

"We haven't really met; I'm Lieutenant Grace Ngobenl."

She would like to ask her what she wants, but she can't get a word out.

"I was working in George this morning, so I thought I'd come and say
hallo.  Maybe we can talk?" Well-spoken.

Amiable.

"I have nothing to say to you." The words sound as if they're sticking
together.  Where's Lizzie?  What happened to Christel?  How much can
they hear of what's being said?

"I can understand your reluctance, but I would very much like to talk to
you.  It's important to me."

She has to get her away from wherever Lizzle and Christel are.. "Come in
to my office," she says, curtly.  In her heart she adds: Don't think for
a moment you'll get anything out of me with a new approach.. "Sit down."

"Thank you."

Don't let her see that you're trembling.. "What did you say your name
was?"

"Grace Ngobeni." She sits down as her name says: gracefully.  And with
self-confidence.. "Please let me put you at ease, I'm here as Grace
Ngobeni, not as part of my job."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"There is something I would like to ask you, because if I don't, it will
bother me for the rest of my life."

"I have absolutely nothing that I want to say to you."

"No one, either guilty or innocent, has ever looked at me with so much
hatred as you did when I called Lieutenant Slxaxeni back to the Combi.
You're still doing it.  I'm sorry about the crude words I used.  I had
to.  Two of your old acquaintances were lying at the back of the Combi
under a blanket: Major Kruger and Lieutenant Botha."

You can take just so much terror, and no more.  Then you react.. "I
don't think I like black people."

"Don't feel bad about it.  I know many black people I don't like myself.
And just as many whites.  What bothers me is that a person like you can
look at me with so much hatred.  A good person."

"Do you mean you - or me?" she asks acidly.

"Let's stop beating about the bush, Araminta!  You're no ordinary woman
and neither am I.  If we start hating each other, there's no hope for
either of us.  Nor for the rest of us." Quick, intelligent.

"If you think that you and I can make any difference .  .

"I don't only think it, I believe it.  Wait until you've seen the world
as I see it.  It would be as dark as hell out there, my friend, had it
not been for the ten of us who carry the other ninety."

"What do you mean?" There is an irresistible challenge in Grace
Ngobenl's eyes.

"I see them, I count them.  The good people.  Ten in every hundred.  A
hundred thousand in every million.

Walk down the street, count them yourself.  I do it regularly, it keeps
me going, it makes me fight.  Then suddenly and unexpectantly I pick one
up on a pavement in Kimberley one Sunday afternoon, and I wonder what
she is doing there and why she is so very angry?"

"I'm white.  I'm a member of the most hated people on earth.  If you
think I'm saying this out of self-pity, you're quite wrong.  It no
longer matters much."

"There was a time when the Boer women were the strength of this land.
Because it did matter to them.. "What is it you want from me?"

"Through all the years that I've been doing this work, I've never seen
any of my quarry handle diamonds the way you did.  Afterwards, I asked
one of my colleagues what the word for "compassion" is in your language.
He said, ontferming - "to care for".  There was something of that
between you and those diamonds.  It hit me so hard, I was jealous of it.
But when I called Lieutenant Slxaxenl away, you swung round, hating me."

"Why did you call him away?  Why did you seem to lose interest in
pushing me to buy?  Was it one of your tricks?. "My mother will be
ninety next month.  When she was a little girl in Lesotho, the women of
the kraal used to go and burrow for clay in the foothills of the
mountains.  One day my mother joined them.  Late in the afternoon, when
they got back, the women went and showed the headman the strange little
stones they had found in the clay that day.  When the headman saw the
stones, he sent them back to the hills immediately, to go and put them
back where they had found them.  They were diamonds.  Then you stood
there saying that if you could afford it, you would buy the diamonds and
put them back in the earth.. "I meant it."

"The reason why I didn't push you, was because I didn't want to see
Major Kruger and Lieutenant Botha get their hands on you."

Mountain.
It's the cool spray of mist - the touch of a bird's wing, lightly
brushing her face and sweeping away the old spittle.  There is no deceit
in the woman's eyes and she is waiting for you to take her hand ...

"Had you pushed me in the right way, I might still have bought."

"I was afraid of that."

"I don't know what to say.  I'm sorry that I said I didn't like black
people .  .  ." She gets no further.  Lizzie, nosy Lizzie, comes in with
a bouquet of flowers so big she can hardly get through the door.

"Sorry to interrupt, Araminta - I'm just bringing in your flowers."

"Is it your birthday?" Grace asks when they're alone again.

"No." There is an envelope with the flowers, not the usual florist's
card.. "Appreciative clients sometimes send me flowers."

"That's nice."

"It is." And these are the most beautiful flowers anyone has ever sent
her - fairies could play in them.. "I didn't mean it when I said I don't
like black people.  We are all in trouble, we've built too many bridges
across each other's truths.  The most beautiful diamonds on earth are
black.

Often, when they're cut, they're pure and white inside oh dear, that
does not sound the way I wanted it to.. "I know what you mean," she
says, smiling.

"I got such a fright when you turned round and I saw who you were; I
still can't think properly.  I don't know what to say to you, I want to
give you these flowers .  .  .. "You owe me nothing.  You're a good
person.  Good people don't owe one another anything - we are one
another."

"You are the good person, not me ...  What did you mean when you said
ten people must carry the other ninety?"

"It's an old legend: ten strong ones carry ninety weak ones.  If the ten
strong ones lie down, the ninety rise up and destroy everything: the
tens, and the legends as well.

The ten are lying down, Araminta, the ninety have started the stampede."

"Only one tenth of all the diamonds that are mined are suitable for
gems.  But all diamonds are made of holy material, from the highest to
the lowest."

"Why didn't you buy the diamonds?"

"I wanted a short cut out of this country and I thought the diamonds
would provide it.  Then I saw the terrible hole that had been made in
the earth.  As if someone had been maimed to satisfy man's greed for a
moment.  I can't explain to you how it felt; I only know that I didn't
want to buy the diamonds after that.  I couldn't."

"Do you really want to leave the country?"

"Yes.  I've thought for a long time that Africa does not want white
children, only black children.  That's why it doesn't bother about us.
Now I know that even if I go away, I will always be a child of Africa.
And Africa cares for us too - we are all its children.  But we do not
care for Africa."

"Africa is not bothered whether his children are black or white,
Araminta, but Africa desperately needs its good children!  Don't tell me
this is an idealistic dream.  The drought breaks when we dream that the
rain is coming; it will not break while we believe in the drought."

"Dreams cost money.  There is not enough money; the people will not
understand.  In any case, the more I think about it, the more I'm coming
to believe that we're actually building one enormous bridge across the
whole world and it is leading nowhere.  No one will have anywhere to
live.  We just keep on digging holes."

"The tens will make the miracle happen!" ' I'm sorry, I don't believe in
miracles any more.. "That's a pity.  I am here, because I had hoped you
might." She gets up.. "I must leave for the airport, I have to catch a
plane to Johannesburg."

"I wish I had something to say to you."

"Say you'll break down the bridge you've built over me."

"I say it."

When she comes back after walking with Grace Ngobeni to her car the
faint scent of flowers hangs in the air.

It's quiet.  Christel and Lizzie have gone home.  Somewhere she can hear
one of the others opening and closing drawers.

It was not Piet Sinksa after all.  It was a trap and she hadn't known
it!  It is as if she had stood on the edge of an abyss and someone had
pulled her away - the shock hits you afterwards and freezes the very
blood in your veins!

She takes the envelope from the flowers and opens it.

"Did you hear?" Bernard asks at the door.. "Nick Wehland was caught for
buying diamonds this morning.  Apparently by a woman detective from
Kimberley.  Araminta?. "Go away.  I don't want to know."

"What's this enormous bouquet?"

"Go away.  It's mine."

She reads the words over and over until she believes they're true:
"Marry me.  Koos Malherbe."