kagablog

148

Whilst water-skiing he was run over by a speed boat and churned up by its propeller. His shaven skull shows the terrible scar and depression. A broken right arm, smashed knee, left leg with four compound fractures. He is paralysed down the left side. He stares with big round eyes and speaks in a slow quiet voice that is still somewhere else. Deeply tanned, a big man powerfully built - a fine specimen of male meat. But now his round eyes stare unblinkingly, the whites contrasting against his brown face.

‘How do you feel?’

‘I feel like a vegetable. A mummy.’

An attractive young woman comes to sit with him for long periods, seeing to his needs, reading to him, talking and encouraging without sentimentality. When I see all the little things she does, the thoughtful necessities and the luxuries she brings him, I feel sick with an inexplicable sorrow. Home-made biscuits, a flask of soup, a pot plant, portable TV, radio, clock, tape recorder, shaver, special supports and pillows in bright patterns made by a woman’s loving hand. It isn’t possible to care that much for very long.

149

He complained to the sister that when he lifted Maureen, who is sixteen, she swore at him, calling him a ‘Fokken poes.’ He feigned an outraged shock and distress.

‘One so young!’

He repeated the epithet several times.

150

At tea time I went with the other orderly for a smoke. In his ancient car we drove down into Salt River. He stopped outside one of the houses in a grimy street and ran in for the parcel. Then we went to his place a block away. He had a cubicle at the back of the house. In the yard stood a large kennel and he insisted that we get into it in case the boere came. I crawled in after him. It was dark and stank of dog. We sat cramped together with knees drawn up and heads bent forward sharing the pipe in his cupped hands.

We returned to the ward smelling like curs, our white uniforms covered in hairs. I can’t say I felt euphoric but the patients appeared comical and the rest of the morning sped by almost unnoticed.

Now I am calm and sober and bored with the quiet of the afternoon.

151

This is the start of night duty. It is a warm sultry night and unless a cool wind springs up I don’t see myself being able to sleep much tomorrow.

152

The night seems to have passed much more rapidly than a day.

153

The world shrinks and closes in. It is an unnatural routine setting one apart from the rest of the world in such a way that there is virtually no contact. They arrive and we leave, they work and we sleep. The two routines complement each other and the creatures of the night become separated, cut off, strangers glimpsed as hurrying shadows at dusk and dawn.

154

Outside it has been raining and it is cooler but unless a wind picks up it will be very humid and worse than ever.

The activity below increases as the night advances. A drunken man covered in blood staggers from an ambulance shouting, ‘Waar is hulle? Waar is hulle? Net wys vir my. Waar is die poeste?’

In the lamplight the tarmac is still dark with the wetness of rain. The voices of ambulance men talking, a guffaw of laughter. Already a pattern is discernible and it is possible to make generalisations. Most attempts at suicide occur Saturday afternoon and evening. Stab wound victims between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty. Car accident cases between twelve and two. This predictability casts a steady impersonal light upon faceless citizens barely human.

155

He believes it was some kind of ESP that made him depart from normal practice and don a crash helmet instead of bathing cap on the day of his dreadful accident.

156

By no stretch of the imagination could I be deemed a happy man. I am troubled and restless - a godless man. We are all godless men.

It is cool and very quiet this Friday night.

157

The senior nurse is deranged. She rambles on about being born again and about the glory of the gospel. She relates amazing tales of the Devil and demon worship. She tells an anecdote about enlisting divine assistance in getting her washing dry - she wanted to hang it out but it was pouring with rain so on bended knee she importuned for a change in weather. Lo and behold, within five minutes the sky was clear. It just shows you.

158

‘We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.’ I wrote it down but can’t remember where I heard or read it. Laing?

159

A cool night without wind. It is overcast and there is a strongly fishy sea smell, wonderfully fresh as if a northwester is bringing it in from the Atlantic.

The boy has cancer. It is intended that his leg be amputated at the hip. His parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses and refuse consent for blood transfusion, but he must also undergo intensive cytotoxic treatment to arrest further spread of the disease. This treatment is so horribly drastic that it is certain he would require blood.

The wrong-mindedness of religious fanatics? The doctors are agreed that the carcinoma has reached a terminal stage and that whatever is done the boy is going to die anyway. The treatment is experimental. Maybe they will learn something from it. So the parents’ refusal will save him a whole heap of agony. God works in wondrous ways.

They say that earlier today he climbed out of the window and sat on the ledge, ’sunbathing.’ It is feared he might have had intentions of suicide. His surgeon, on being consulted, prescribed ten milligrams of Valium three times a day. The houseman had to lie to get him to take the sedative, telling him it was ‘for the blood.’

A precocious but rather nice boy he has been capitalising on his situation and manipulating it to charm the nurses and young girls who come to hold his hand and talk to him. They allow him to kiss them and secretly touch their breasts and run a hand over their cute little rumps. Now he is to be reduced to a zombie this pleasure will be denied him. He will be too drugged to take any kind of interest in such matters.

160

Like polar cold my discontent penetrates to the bone. I have no choice.

161

I sit in the office much of the time, one eye on the red light above the door, arguing points of religion with this crazy senior nurse. She has not one but three Bibles open on the desk before her. Also she has any number of those tiresome tracts that pose impossible questions like, ‘Where are you going?’ and give unbelievably simple answers such as: ‘God gave you a free will. You can choose between everlasting life and eternal damnation.’

I argue out of boredom, and yet I find the arguing itself excruciatingly stale and tiring. We are from different galaxies.

162

Lancelot Brown is sixty-six. He has pinched features, the cheeks falling in, cheekbones, chin, nose, forehead becoming more prominent as if the skin were being stretched tighter and tighter. He has the dirty pallor of the old and gravely ill. Fearful, pain-filled eyes, pleading, at times treacherous and cunning, frightened, frightened. A fractured femur has brought him here but he also has extensive CA.

He does not bear pain well. After groaning and crying he is cringingly apologetic. His bowels work profusely and it is difficult moving him with this goddam fucking useless Thomas splint on the broken leg. He professes pain in every part of his body.

The other patients are embarrassed and resentful and alarmed by his plight. They are often unsympathetic and cruel, laughing at his loss of dignity, complaining about the offensiveness of his smell.

His wife knows the prognosis and needs support. This afternoon she became tearful and turned to a nurse for comfort. What comfort?

135

He says he has been through the mill.

Operation after operation, months of hospitalization, pain, limitations.

He is divorced. ‘My two sisters are also divorced. We are unable to form proper relationships.’

The division in his family, how he left home at seventeen. The bitterness in his voice when he says he is unwilling to name ‘them’ as his legal next of kin.

136

The fat woman from De Aar has head and spine injuries. The back of her head is smashed in and she is in a semi coma. She wears a traction harness, a canvas headpiece which passes under the chin and pulls back over the ears and under the head. To it is attached a two pound weight hanging from a pulley behind her. Because it is difficult to move her she has not been washed and has the characteristic dried blood and sweat smell of the accident victim.

137

The woman with the fractured skull has started screaming. The cerebral cry, it is an involuntary animal wail. The inhuman quality of the sound as it echoes down the corridor has unnerved some of the patients and spoilt their appetite for lunch, which has just been served.

138

Benny Greenberg entertains his fellow patients.

‘In life you can be two things: you can be rich or you can be poor. If you’re rich you’re alright. If you’re poor, you can be two things: you can be sick or you can be healthy. If you’re healthy, you’re alright. If you’re sick there are two things that can happen to you: you can live or you can die. If you live you’re alright. If you die there are two things that can happen: you can go to heaven or you can go to hell. If you go to heaven you’re alright. If you go to hell you’ll be too busy talking to all your old friends to worry about anything else ever again.’

139

Mr Nobody is quite destitute and yet the Department of Social Welfare asserts that as he is from the Transvaal he is that province’s responsibility. He possesses shirt, trousers and a pair of shoes that have been given to him by a sympathetic patient.

He did try to speak to his sister in Johannesburg. He phoned, reversing the charges, but they gave him hassles.

‘They started tuning me this and that. Why did you do that? How are you going to do this? Are you alright for doing that? No, I could see it was just telling me not to say anything. I didn’t ask them. I’ve had enough of that. No ways. Better just me on my own. These people just give me hassles.’

Moral: Never try to reform a man - just help him. Especially if he is family.

‘The Salvation Army isn’t bad. Bed and breakfast for fifteen rand a month maybe. For pensioners and downers, you know.’

140

‘Your watch has stopped, Professor. Here, let me wind it for you.’

‘Be careful you don’t overwind it.’

A look of contempt and then, with incredulity:

‘What for do I want to overwind your watch, Professor? You sound like my grandfather. Cautious, cautious, cautious. Overwinding breaks a watch. Why should I want to break your watch? I don’t want to fuck your watch up. I want to wind it for you.’

141

‘That professor, why don’t you take him, and when nobody’s looking, push the cunt down the stairs? Christ, Man, I had to laugh, the way he moves on those crutches. Like a fuckin’ chicken pecking at the ground, the way his head keeps jerking forward.’

In his turn: ‘Look at that chap.’ Indicating Alberts, the new orderly. ‘Why does he have his hair like that? He looks like a Bassett hound.’ On another occasion: ‘Artistic looking, isn’t he?’ And: ‘Can’t have much grey matter.’

142

He was outraged when the prof told him he had found the Alex Quartet boring, and that he preferred Gerald Durrell. The woman intern who he was trying to chat had not heard of either Durrell.

‘You medics are philistines! You haven’t heard of Lawrence Durrell?’ Staggered. ‘You haven’t read the Alexandria Quartet?!’

143

It’s a pity that he should persist in such explicit sex talk. He likes to mention lovers, mistresses, affairs, dalliances, his prowess and virility, his broadmindedness, his vast experience. I find it irritating and a little embarrassing. He arouses my distaste for the personality which insists on pushing itself. Why can’t he speak in more general terms? Instead, he portrays himself as the male lead in his masturbatory fantasies. I walk away with a yawn of annoyance.

144

Of an afternoon the sun cuts and slants from the mountain behind the hospital. To the northeast soft patches begin to show and the Tygerberg gains definition, slumping low across the flats. Beyond is Africa, flat and brown and hugely barren.

145

Faith, Hope and Love.

Faith - the suicide, the leap that Camus spoke of. Surrender.

Hope - the futile delusion of an escapist.

Love - voluptuosity and self indulgent martyrdom.

146

Joe Da Silva is eighteen. He was in the army when he first began to have knee trouble. In a military hospital his leg was put in plaster but the pain grew worse. He was fast losing weight. The cast was removed to reveal a malignant carcinoma. Here he has undergone extensive tests and it has been discovered that the dreaded CA is metastasising and has already infested the lungs. Overs-kedovers. They have amputated just below the hip, for what purpose I do not know. Unlimited analgesics are prescribed. He has not been told.

Unfortunately the morphine causes nausea so they are having to balance his dysphoria by administering an ever increasing number of different drugs. Much of the time he is asleep or in a stupor of discomfort.

Just after lunch today he perked up. His radio was turned up loud and he hummed to the music and sat up in bed, his eyes wide and bright with some strange elation. Dark brown eyes with bottomless black pupils. His face has the first gauntness of death and his head is already becoming a skull. He has aged in the past week.

147

In B1 I shave a man who is pale grey with fear. He is being prepped for a colostomy.

‘Is it a terrible thing?’

‘No, it’s quite common in here.’

‘But you never feel normal again, do you?’

‘You’ve always got this bag.’

‘Does it give a lot of trouble?’

‘Well, it’s probably a little inconvenient but you can do almost anything you used to do, and go anywhere.’

‘Does it give a lot of trouble?’

‘Well, you have to change the bag instead of going to the toilet. But it’s not that bad. Better this than being dead, hey?’

There ensues a pause in which he turns an even paler shade of grey. Then he hastily pushes the towel aside and struggles upright.

‘This bowel washout thing I had this morning…. Still working. I must go to the toilet.’

Was it unfeeling of me to mention the shadows silhouetted against the curtain?

119

Steyn has a visitor, a stocky man of about thirty in the cheap smart clothes of a door-to-door preacher. He leans over the bed and reads from the Bible with an affected American accent, ersatz Billy Graham, grotesquely comical in the way he slurs his words and grimaces angellically. Norman Steyn stares up in blank wonderment, lost in senility.

120

Fisher to Mulligan: ‘Have you had enough, Sir? Have you finished? Yes?

A guts-full? You eat like a bloody horse.’

121

His wife has tipped me five rand in appreciation. Protection money? She wants his ring as he is losing weight fast and she fears it might fall off. That’s about all she will have. She is worried that on going back to Valkenberg he might be relieved of it. You never know.

122

Mulligan can’t remember that the batteries in his radio are run down. Each time his eye falls upon it where it stands on the locker, he reaches out, takes it, and turns it on. He twiddles knobs for a long time until convinced that it doesn’t work. Five minutes later he will repeat the performance.

123

Douglas is fifty-five and looks at least sixty-five. Another weak and stupid man. Having had TB he now has bronchial problems yet continues to smoke heavily. He is indignant that he should be advised to give it up. An ex-alc too, by the sound of it. His story is a garbled mess of lies and boasts too tedious to concentrate on. With an aggressive, nagging insistence he airs the ideas and opinions of a feeble bigot.

124

Martin Singer is back and I am jolted from my stupor. Ten minutes of talking to him and I see how starved I am of educated, cultivated, modern company. My isolation is virtually complete. All that I have is what I can glean from books and magazines. It puts me ten years behind the time.

125

Claude Mulligan is fast losing his ability to coordinate mind and body. Now he is unable to walk and his speech is so slurred as to be almost unintelligible. He does not know the day, month or year and often is unaware of the time, being as much as twelve hours disorientated. He forgets that he has just had lunch and says he is hungry for breakfast. His hands and head shake and his vision is impaired, as are all his judgements. When he tries to pick up an object he reaches to the side of it and has to grope. It helps if he shuts one eye.

This time he says he spent twenty years in the Post Office as a clerk.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘That’s a personal story.’

This is no dignified resistance to an attack on his privacy. This is because he can’t think fast enough. Last time he was an accountant. Then he was married with two lovely children; now he’s a bachelor. Confabulation, they call it.

‘Mr Mulligan.’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever been in Valkenberg?’ knowing that he has spent the past three years in that institution.

‘No, of course not. Why, do I look mad? Ha, ha, ha.’

126

Dan Jones enjoys life, working hard, eating, drinking, screwing. Keeping the company of other rough men like himself. Drinking, above all. A welder by trade, he has also been a mercenary in the Congo, a fisherman, and a stuntman. Welding is a hard job and contract work is well-paid if one is prepared to be on the move, living for months on end in godforsaken parts.

There has been little choice. He found himself on a road and has followed it. He must know it will end soon when he is knifed in a bar, or shot to death in the street. Maybe he will land on his head next time he falls out of a building. He has accepted his fate and some would say this makes him a noble creature.

The ‘rays’ emitted in arc welding have sterilised him.

‘I can still get a cockstand and fuck normal, though.’

He gets a kick out of lying naked under a sheet and casually, accidentally, exposing himself to a nurse. Explaining to a pretty young thing about what happened to his leg, lifting the cast, he talks earnestly, all the while watching her embarrassment and excitement at the revelation of his balls. Then he pretends to suddenly notice and decorously adjusts the sheets.

Tales of fighting in Joburg bars - the Broadway in the south, the Bel-Air in Braamfontein. Weekends in jail. His mates: Harry Walker, Mel Lester, Monty Labuschagne, Hennie de Klerk, Okkie Van Heerden.

‘I tell you, those were good days. Those were fuckin’ good days.’

127

It is early Sunday afternoon and very quiet. I am bored. I am apathetic.

Outside, a group of chuls is sitting on the lawn under a palm tree singing hymns and carols, a little drunkenly. Slow and mournful on the heavy afternoon air. Do you have a friend in Jesus?

A zealous official in white coat hurries out and stops them. He is unmoved by the spirit of Christmas. This is a hospital. Take it to the Lord in prayer.

128

How terrible this boredom. The spirit falls supine, the eyes glaze over, lifeless, the voice is flat and despondent. Despair is close at hand in this valley of evil, black bitterness towering all around. Emptiness. Death.

Laugh, you cunt.

129

Outside a southeaster is blowing with steadiness from off the Indian Ocean bringing clean summer air. Christmas weather with few clothes; barefoot, certainly. Blue agapanthus flowers wave under a sky equally blue.

130

Three years ago his leg was smashed. Three years he has spent in hospitals, on crutches, being laid up. Nine operations. This tenth is a transverse graft, an attempt to get the bone to knit.

He is a zoologist delving into cell structure.

An exuberant young man, almost hyperactive in rapid speech and frequent laughter. He is tormented by an upbringing that was suffused with hatred and metaphysical violence, his own failed marriage, experiences in the Rhodesian civil war, financial difficulties, and now a crippled leg.

‘I have learned some patience. And empathy with the sick.’

131

I cannot say I feel transported by a spirit of festive joy.

132

Jacob Niemand is about thirty-five. He loosely describes his occupation as ‘operator.’ He was married for eight years and has been divorced for a year. The marriage produced a daughter, now ‘about seven.’ He had a good job at Witbank but after some three years trouble started. There was interference from the in-laws. The mother and aunts were always calling to cook, bring food, clothes. The father would even come on the weekend to cut the lawn and work in the garden - as if he wasn’t capable of doing it himself. Then he began to drink and that caused more strife. His wife took to the bottle too. He began to chop and change jobs and drink even more heavily. After the divorce he became shiftless, working for short periods and then roaming the country.

‘I would buy a train ticket to Durban, jol around there for a few days and say, Ag, nooit! and buy a ticket for East London. There a short time and, Ag, nooit! a ticket for PE.’

This time he was in Cape Town with a canvas tog bag and the clothes he wore and maybe ninety rand. At nine o’clock in the morning he was still drunk from the night before. As soon as the bottle store opened he bought a shot and went to the Gardens to drink. It was there that he was attacked, beaten up, robbed of bag, money, jacket and shoes.

‘I was earning four hundred rand a weak at Sasol Two. But I just spent it one time. No, just drinking. Thirty, forty rand a night. That’s all there is to do. No, I haven’t had one woman since I was divorced. Just booze.’

He has tried for Welfare relief in order to get back to Johannesburg.

‘But they just tell me I must waai back myself and get work. They can’t help. No, fuck it. I’ll just have to hitch-hike.’

The last time he tried to visit his daughter there were ‘too much hassles, too much grief.’ First they said she wasn’t there, but he knew this to be a lie. He went away and had a few drinks and when he came back they said he was drunk and couldn’t see her like that.

133

Early there were two coon bands playing carols outside, and then later in the morning the Salvation Army came and played.

I had a couple of whiskies with Dan Jones before lunch but I feel sober and cynical instead of joyously peaceful. It seems preposterous that anyone should choose to die like that.

134

An eminently weak and stupid man, he proclaims his cowardice and tells stories to illustrate how badly he behaves when under pressure.

Misadventure at sea: Something went wrong and they were nearly capsized. When they managed to reach the shore he leapt from the boat, ran to his car and drove flat out for home. A neighbour calmed him and made him go back and help his fishing companion to get the boat up out of the surf.

Last night he phoned his wife to tell her the surgeons had decided that another operation was necessary. She was irritable and short with him, telling him not to keep phoning. He felt deeply wounded.

He feigns lameness in his right arm and asks me to give him a shave. Whilst I lather his face he tells me what a bitch his wife is but that he deserves her pitiless contempt. A sister walks into the ward and aggressively demands to know why he can’t shave himself. He forgets about the lameness and attempts to be chummy and hearty and offhand. She detests his oily manner and the way in which he touches her arm, tries to take her hand. In trenchant terms she belittles him and upbraids him and insists that he shave himself and stop wasting the orderly’s time. When she is gone his eyes are filled with tears of humiliation. A victim by vocation.

77

I have been transferred to C2, the orthopaedic ward. Instead of two large general wards, male and female, there are several small rooms with from one to four beds in each.

I must adjust to the slower pace and routine that is different in some of its details. To make the time pass I must try to keep busy. Each task can be done more slowly and thoroughly and more time can be spent talking to the patients. Once it is seen that I work efficiently and reliably I shall be able to lengthen the lunch hour and take extended tea breaks.

78

An angry orderly, tall, thin and wiry - a Woodstock White with thick black hair and a dago moustache:
‘My mate, come and help me before I choke that fuckin’ lot in there. God help me if I don’t fuckin’ choke that bitch. She’s supposed to be a nurse. Can’t she help a man? Christ. I’ve got no time for the woman. As true’s God I’ll choke her.’

79

A hot clear day, a beautiful morning to be outside. The sea must be calm and exuding freshness. Singer is playing a tape of lifting Soul. He lies there puffing on a cigar and blue wisps of aroma drift with the music through the ward. There is an atmosphere of sleepy quiet.

80

Randall is emaciated with a terribly distorted rib cage. He has a single yellow fang and a productive cough.

‘Is it difficult being old?’
He does not hear. A gloomy prospect, this old age business.

81

Davis is full of complaints and dithering nonsense but he has a dry sense of humour. Three bottles of milk stand on the window sill maturing in the sun. This is his ‘curds and whey.’ In his locker he has a bottle of whisky and he would tipple through day and night if not discouraged.

‘And they try to tell you about religion and that we were put here by God. How ridiculous!’

82

Old Mr Davis is eighty-two. Until he was seventy-six he swam the year round in the cold Atlantic off Sea Point and walked the mountains from Signal Hill to Cape Point. Then, whilst painting his house, he fell from a ladder and broke a leg. The fracture healed but he developed a respiratory complaint which he calls ‘emphysema.’ Now he has broken a hip.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever Gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.

83

The appreciation of poetry, vigorous exercise in the outdoors, a staple diet of sour milk, moderate but regular intake of malt whisky and a vehement refusal to do anything blindfolded or against one’s better judgement: these are the keys to longevity.

84

He is half-cut on his whisky and fiercely serene, lying there reciting from memory verse upon verse, eyes glinting with an obdurate light, voice shaking with emotion.

‘Why are these damned Christians so afraid of death? Why can’t they see that Swinburne was right? ‘Only the sleep eternal in an eternal night.’ What is there to fear in that?

85

Singer has had the plate removed and will be going out soon. After the anaesthetic he wept openly and painfully, causing some embarrassment to the other patients. His dark suffering eyes are red and swollen and he snivels helplessly and hopelessly like a child who does not know why he is crying.

I see Martin Singer as a refined and complex character. Each surface detail is an indication of depth and turbulence. Each clue, if followed, leads into rich confusion. He is reading modern women writers, in search of the female psyche, the essence of Woman. He is divorced. He is in group therapy. He holds a Master’s degree in sociology. He reads Eastern religion. He has a new girlfriend.

86

Lifting an elderly woman from her bed into a chair I sensed her pleasure at feeling a man’s arms holding her. She took comfort and strength from it.

87

I cast about for Death. Like a torchlit snail on a branch laden with pre-dawn dew. Before the advancing convulsion, extension and rotation; sweeping with that extraterrestrial helmet, antennae twitching and quivering. I sniff the air, peer into shadows, strain my ears, scan for rays and vibes. Maybe in the eyes of the other patients something lurks.

88

I blanch and quake with fear when I read such a description of ’schizoid existential manifestations,’ the forerunners to ‘the onset of psychosis.’

The self, in order to develop and sustain its identity and autonomy, and in order to be safe from the persistent threat and danger from the world, has cut itself off from direct relatedness with others, and has endeavoured to become its own object: to become, in fact, related directly only to itself. Its cardinal functions become fantasy and observation.

89

I am relieving in F2, Neurological.

He was attacked by ’six kaffirs’ in the riots whilst working for Bantu Affairs in Gugulettu. They shot him ‘through the heart.’ Miraculously he didn’t die but he suffered brain damage after an interruption of blood supply, and his motor control was badly impaired. Now he is a jerking, slobbering, gibbering invalid who walks with such painfully violent difficulty that he is confined to bed except for visits to the toilet

‘One shot.’.

90

There are only four male patients, so there is even less to do than in C2. With boredom comes depression. The future looks bleak and chaotic. I find myself nervous and frightened.

91

Now this particular patient is twenty-five. His attractive, bouncy young wife has come to take him for a drive and I must get him down in a wheelchair. She is apparently very cheerful and bears it with surprising fortitude. They have a child.

92

To be able, dispassionately and with clear eyes, to draw a line below which the quality of life must not be permitted to deteriorate.

93

Once again excruciating boredom lays hold of me. Frustration seethes and I feel desperate for some way of escape. I have fought this sense of featureless futility. Somewhere at an indefinite time I strayed into dark realms which the subsequent years have done nothing to illuminate and make safe.

94

Outside Accident Unit was a strange and wondrous sight. A man was helped from an ambulance and escorted inside. From his skull a yellow-handled screwdriver protruded at an angle.

95

Old Mr Davis will need great reserves of strength to survive this battering.

Bored nursing assistants torment him. ‘For God’s sake, go away! I want to be left alone!’

To his consternation he has been moved several times from one ward to another. A change of Sisters, a change in arrangements.

First he is allowed unlimited Scotch. Then it is withheld entirely.

He asks his surgeon if he might go back to his flat in Muizenberg to convalesce. This callous fool tells him, ‘No, they don’t want you back there, Mr Davis. You must go to Eton Convalescent Home. They don’t want you.’

96

It is not cold but outside it is raining steadily. There are six male patients and I have little to do but think: of disappointment and travail. I become more aware of the transient and frivolous and yearn for depth and quality.

97

I am powerless, savouring pain and beauty, hoping to bear them with some kind of resignation.

98

Orderly, did I ever tell you? The cucumber, once it has been peeled, becomes the most indigestible food in the world. So they peel it.

Are you enjoying it, Mr Davis?
I don’t seem to be able to digest it. Oh God.

99

Davis: God, can’t they give me a shot of pentathol or whatever it is? The Barnards said they would both prefer to be put out of their misery if they found they were suffering from an incurable disease. There’s nothing worse than this damned emphysema. God, I can’t take this any more. I’d rather be dead.

100

Nurse: Come on, Mr Davis. It’s time for your nine o’clock smile. You’ve got to smile once every hour.
He coldly ignores her.

Thank you, Orderly. You’re very good.
Yes, the orderly’s a very nice chap. He’s very good with old ladies too.

40

There was excitement in the ward. Approaching five in the afternoon Mr Rubinstein attempted to shuffle off this mortal coil. Action stations. Beds and lockers were moved, the doors were opened wide, the curtains were drawn round the rest of the patients and within three minutes there was the sound of running feet and the rumble of high-speed trundling. In rushed the emergency crew with Max Cart, the resuscitation machine. He was lifted on, the pneumatic arm was put in position on his chest and cardiac massage began. The auto-respirator hose was connected up and stimulants were administered IV. There were three doctors and two specialised sisters with assistance from the locals.

Meanwhile supper had arrived. Mr Patterson was in the bed alongside the scene of action and I began to feed him some soup. In his confused state he imagined he was at a garage and told me to put twenty-four pounds in the front and twenty-six at the rear. The sound of the respirator was similar to that of a compressed air pump at a filling station. Then I had to go for a cardiac monitor from the equipment room.

Because it was after five the equipment room in the basement was locked and I had to go up to matron’s office for the key. Matron Schulz was on duty. She was looking for the book for me to sign when a dry squealing noise was heard from the corridor. She rushed out and shouted at the two nurses who were pushing a trolley. She came back muttering about oil, laziness and discipline, and threatening to phone the ward.

‘I think they need the monitor rather urgently, Matron.’

She gave me a piercing look, checked me skew, so to speak, and handed over the keys. As it turned out there was no urgency. By the time I returned to the ward Mr Rubinstein had departed to join his maker.

41

I had to put Paul’s tubing on Mr Patterson. He resisted and shouted, asserting that I was trying to have sexual intercourse with him. This is helping to kill him off, this violence and humiliation.

42

Mr Patterson went quickly but without much glory. Violated and outraged, tubing forcibly put on his cock, needles shoved in his veins, hands tied, cotsides caging him in, food and medicine poured down his throat, laughed at as a source of amusement, sworn at as a noisy troublesome nuisance. The only redeeming feature to his death was that he went down fighting.

43

When I had finished shaving him I was surprised to see him bring out a small hand mirror from under the bedclothes. His eyes lit with interest and pleasure at the difference. At this late stage he is still concerned with his appearance.

44

Mr Du Pont’s wife comes every day, nearly all day, to tend him, sitting at his bedside talking quietly, soothing him, feeding him, protecting him from the callousness and brutality. Love and devotion and loyalty and friendship. She talks quietly in French. He is in constant and acute pain and distressed at his condition - body collapsing, hair falling out. At least he won’t die alone. Her love might even ward off loneliness long enough to allow him to die without having to face it. But if he lingers too long…

45

Mr Du Pont is on a ripple mattress now that he is paralysed. He can only bear the pain if he is laid completely flat on his back. The paralysis is creeping upward. He still has some use of his hands and arms. The treatment has been discontinued and it has been decided to let him die. There is an emphasis on making him as comfortable as possible and administering analgesics whenever necessary.

46

Mrs Du Pont brought photographs to show how her husband looked before his illness. A smiling man of about forty with thick black hair proudly standing with his wife, children, friends. And surprisingly tall. There is little connection between the man in the photographs and this wasted creature lying in the bed, black feverish eyes trying to smile up at us in an irritating attempt to be brave.

47

Du Pont declared that he was about to die and called for his wife and daughter and a priest. To me he seems somewhat premature.

48

More often now there is a look of resentment and bitterness on Mrs Du Pont’s face. She must be getting to hate this hospital and city.

49

A sudden commotion: Mrs Du Pont outside crying, inside Mr Du Pont shouting,
I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!
Now he is sedated and calm.

50

Du Pont is cracking. Two days ago he summoned family and priest for he felt he was dying. Yesterday he attempted to have his last meal like a condemned man. Mince and cream cracker. Finally, after a few mouthfuls, he ritualistically swilled water in his mouth and spat it onto the remaining meat.

It is time for pressure care.
‘The suffering, it is terrible, terrible. Leave me, just this time. I beseech you. Call the sister.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘I feel she is here. Please go look.’
‘No, she’s not here yet.’
‘No, I feel now that she is just here. Please go look. Call her. The pain, it is terrible. Please, I beseech you.’
‘The sister will be here at seven, in three quarters of an hour. As soon as she comes I’ll tell her.’
‘No. I think she is here. Please. I beseech you. Call her. Please. I am relying on you.’
His eyes are very dark with pethidine. Pleading. Pain and fear, desperate fear. He is losing his dignity and dying ignominiously. The end draws nigh and yet I still do not detect any heavy shadow of death.

51

Du Pont is on the brink. Finally his head has taken on a shape to be expected. The skull looks shrunken and small and the flesh of the face itself has sunk and turned yellowish grey. The sinking of the cheeks and loss of colour seem necessary. The mouth and eyes are mad with fear. Violent hiccoughs are a symptom of an intestinal obstruction. The abdomen is distended tight and smooth as a balloon. He vomits a dark fluid that must contain a large proportion of blood. Tonight or tomorrow.

52

The priest has just been to see Du Pont and his wife and daughter are with him. Is it a matter of hours? Do most Catholics experience such fear? Maybe it is considered healthy to cling with such miserable tenacity.

53

Is anything emerging from the mist. Have I reached a conclusion?

Mr Du Pont was guarded by his wife and daughter and he died in a horrible manner. Alone, without their support and love, he would have gone sooner, without a doubt.

Is it not better to be left for the hyena, the brief bumping crunch of jaws, than to be carried and dragged for day after agonising day through the torrid tormented bush to a death that will come with the same pitiless and stinking breath, the same hot snuffle?

54

For a layman Hirsch knows a lot about matters medical, but he does not seem to realise the severity of his own condition. And yet somewhere far back he must surely know.
And old Mr Benton with the malignant growth in his neck, the shape and size of a young pear. He speaks with contempt of the tenebrous state of the ‘quacksters’ and the futility of all the tests; but he does not acknowledge the obvious - their feigned perplexity and continued investigations are perfunctory and dilatory. That fast-growing tumour will dispatch him before the month is out.

55

Hirsch was difficult this morning - in pain and weak. He was irritable with a foolish nurse and then later apologised to her. The fundamental decency of the man has survived right up to this late hour.

56

Hirsch’s eyes are becoming more prominent. He shakes and gasps, from fear I think.

57

All and sundry, including his wife, are predicting the imminent demise of Mr Hirsch. They don’t like the look of him and point out any number of tell-tale signs. His breathing is rapid and shallow. Mrs Hirsch notices his eyes, far away, staring. She saw that look in her mother’s eyes.

58

Within two minutes Max Cart arrived without much excitement. His naked body already looked like a corpse, arms at sides, palms up. I didn’t get a look at his eyes. A doctor shone a torch down the back of his throat and rammed down a tube to access the lungs. He was lifted across onto the cart, everything was connected up and the pump got going. On the fifth pump a pause. One-two, one-two, one-two, one-two, one-two - hisss. Regular as clockwork.

Mrs Hirsch had been hurried out. The son and daughter arrived and more phone calls were made.

No go. There was no response. They stopped the machinery and there was a rush of decompressed air. He was disconnected and dumped back on the bed and Max was trundled away. The face was composed, a sheet pulled up to the chin and the weeping daughter and white-faced son were led in to take a last look. Where is he now? I thought. Mrs Hirsch took a brief look.

The ward was intensely still. Distant voices from the corridor. Mr Benton hawked and spat into his sputum mug, apparently unconcerned about the fate that, unbeknown to him, was zooming in.

The belongings of the deceased were put into plastic bags on a chair beside the curtained deathbed to be taken away by the relatives. A tube of toothpaste, a shaving mug, rolled up dressing gown, a slipper, bottle of cool drink seen through the transparent bag, ownerless.

59

I suppose they called Max for Mr Hirsch because his wife was there at the time and a show had to be put on. The orders had been that he was not for resuscitation.

28

Nico Swart is a delicately stunted, cerebral palsied ‘child’ of twenty-three. He lies impassive, ignoring my attempt at communication. Then a flick of the black eyes - an inhuman child. At night he brightens up and utters a stream of obscenities like a parrot. Who could have taught him this? It is thought that he has lymphoma, a disease which should dispose of him within the next few months.

29

A turquoise swimming pool set with symmetry in clipped green lawn. Black stripes below the water, white railed steps in the corners. An upturned bench on the grass. Rain falls from a heavy sky and from the shelter of the veranda I watch the drops disturbing the surface of the pool. The air is clean and cold and does not smell of sickness.

30

Goodman: I’m a good psychologist. I can sum people up at a glance. I looked at that man and I could see he was swollen-headed. I took an instant dislike to him. What does he think? He thinks he is important, some kind of Very Important Person. You know, the Bible says all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away.

Suddenly I am very bored. How can I take this?

Goodman has lost a five-cent comb.

My comb has been stolen. Whilst I was asleep. Last time I was in here I was drugged and someone stole my teeth.

31

Johnson is seventy-two and has a rare blood disorder called Von Willebrand’s disease.
I am busy with research. I have been doing research into my condition for the past forty years.

‘I feel indisposed to receive any visitors today. I couldn’t be bothered, they’re too much trouble. I’m a very sick man. I’m not one to complain. I am very independent.’ And this after having got me to change his pyjamas for him merely because he likes to feel fresh and enjoys constant attention.
I would have committed suicide long ago if my religion permitted it.
What religion is that?
The Jewish religion. It forbids suicide, otherwise I would have done it long ago.

32

After a hard day, the last hour of which was spent helping with the restraint of a crazed cirrhotic whilst the houseman performed a lumbar puncture, I emerged from the hospital to be confronted, on rounding a corner, by the massive shape of Devil’s Peak. Its dark enormity, blown with cloud and shadow, reared so impossibly high and overpowering that I was flooded with a sense of foreboding.

Was it the violence of the wind raging up there across the Devil’s face that so filled me with fear?

33

DEMENTIA, according to Merck’s gospel, 13th Edition: a syndrome of progressive irreversible cerebral insufficiency caused by organic factors and characterised by predominant cognitive functional loss.

The clinical picture is of slow disintegration of personality and intellect because of impaired insight and judgement and loss of affect. The progression of the disease is more painful to the beholder than to the patient. Interests become restricted, outlook becomes rigid, conceptual thinking becomes more difficult, and some poverty of thought becomes apparent. Familiar tasks may be performed well, but acquiring new skills is difficult. Initiative is diminished, and the patient may become distractible. In addition, a global defect eventually develops, involving all aspects of higher cortical function. Along with the cognitive dysfunction, specific disturbances of speech (dysphasia), motor activity (dyspraxia), and recognition of perceptions (agnosia) may be discernible. Memory impairment increases, beginning with problems recalling recent events or finding names readily: the impairment varies greatly from time to time and often from moment to moment. It can be circumvented at first, but as the defect increases, remote memory is also progressively impaired. Characteristically, orientation becomes impaired at first for time, later for places, and finally for person.

In some patients, cognitive dysfunction is preceded by modifications in their usual behaviour and emotional responses. Typically, affect is blunted, but in early stages it may be excessive. Normal personality traits may become exaggerated or caricatured: an obsessive patient may be unbearably pedantic and rigid (organic orderliness), or a sociable extrovert may be facile and inappropriately jocular. The initial affective change may be dominated by irritability with periods of anger and violence. Depression is common. If the mood change (depression, anxiety, or elation) is sustained, the disorder may be misdiagnosed as a primary affective condition. Affect becomes more and more shallow and evanescent as the condition progresses and finally gives way to severe blunting, marked perhaps by a fatuous euphoria without depth.

The patient may embark on foolish and ill-judged, perhaps illegal, activities, but he cannot sustain them as his motivation and drive decline. Habits deteriorate, and the patient becomes slovenly, dirty, and eventually incontinent, culminating with the need for total nursing care in later stages of the illness.

Senile dementia: There is no treatment.

34

I am irritated by Archie Morgan’s whining. He has a steadily swelling scrotum that is fast approaching the proportions of a soccer ball, he has the grotesque bloated belly of a starved child, skinny, stick-like arms and shoulders, and a suppurating anus.

35

Archie Morgan exudes the foul sweet smell of a septic wound. At twenty-eight he is a bearded, long-haired derelict with ascites, liver failure and perineal abscesses.

His stomach works frequently and it is a difficult, messy procedure. From the moment the curtains are drawn the trouble begins. He feels the pan:
‘Hey, no Man! You want to freeze my arse off?’
This is a delaying tactic which must be ignored. If the pan is warmed he says:
‘Hey, no Man! You want to burn my arse off?’
Two pairs of hands are needed, one to help him lift himself, the other to slide the pan under him. He is weak and in discomfort and does not like to move or even be moved.
‘Now listen, be careful. Please, Man. Don’t grab me there! Oh my fuck! No, don’t. I can’t take this pain. Nurse, what are you DOING? Hold it. Jesus no. Careful. Oh my God!’
He is such a wreck. Alcoholism to liver failure to ascites. Generally deteriorating health and unhygienic personal habits have encouraged the formation of anorectal abscesses: neglected, they have developed into a fistula. So each time his bowels move the wound must be cleaned and dressed. For this he has to be turned on his side - another process punctuated with yelps, oaths and groans.
The odoriferous combination of ‘purulent discharge’ and faeces - his especially - produces a strange effect. Once one has become better acquainted with this smell it loses its nauseating quality and assumes an esoteric fragrance, like opium and lust in an oriental brothel.

36

Archie Morgan employs flattery with such obsequiousness that I laugh openly.
‘You’re just the man I wanted to see. You’re my friend, hey. I tell you, when I knew you was coming on duty, when I saw you come through the door into the ward, you know my heart started beating. You know, kind of fast. No, really. I’m not bullshitting you. You’re my friend. Hey listen. Do us a favour, won’t you? I don’t like to ask but would you do us a favour? Just one little favour. I don’t like to ask you.’
‘What do you want?’
‘You know. The usual. You KNOW.’
‘You want another cigarette? They say you’ve got to cut down, Archie.’
‘No, not that. For fuck’s sake!’ Whispers: ‘Come here, Man.’
I bend close and he says, ‘Won’t you get me a pan?’

37

We killed Palmer this morning. There was obviously no hope and it was convenient that he should die before lunch. A nasogastric tube was ordered. Benny Lipschitz had a lot of trouble passing it. Finally he decided it would not go down and tried to withdraw it. To his amazement it wouldn’t come out. This had never happened to him before. There was nothing for it but to use force so he wrapped the free end round his right fist, put the palm of his left hand steady against Palmer’s forehead, braced a foot against a leg of the bed and yanked, like starting an outboard motor or lawn mower. It whipped out with a spatter of dark blood. Unbelievable! It had knotted itself! The patient was alive enough for his yellow eyes to register dull horror at what was being done to him. If he could have walked he would no doubt have left there and then, never again to place himself in the hands of anyone remotely medical. He vomited a quantity of ‘coffee grounds’ and lay groaning weakly. Anxiously Doc Lipschitz looked at his watch and moved his attack to a lower level. That did the trick. Whilst a tube was being forced up through his penis Palmer vomited with finality and gave up the battle.

38

Certainly I have become callous. I rarely feel compassion for them. I am tired of feeling compassionate. Now I often see them merely as sources of entertainment, hardly bothering to empathise with even the most pitiful of cases. And as a result I learn nothing.

39

Louw, the fat farmer, is most confused and in mortal fear for past misdemeanours. Nemesis. For stealing sheep and screwing Coloured girls he is now paying and praying.
‘God sal antwoord.’

15

Bluff, 63, is a confirmed alc in with the DT’s. He has come from William Slater via Valkenberg and before being committed this time he had been living alone in a room in Tamboerskloof. A bachelor and a clerk. He has served several stints in William Slater and at Muldersvlei Farm.

After four days of the wildest delirium he is recovering fast and shows surprising resilience. His visual and motor problems have largely resolved themselves. On first regaining his senses he spoke openly and with considerable pity for himself, of his aloneness in the world, of his lack of support and encouragement. As he gains strength he becomes less open and begins erecting his façade of self-sufficiency and worldliness. When he has got it all more or less in place he will be released to follow a familiar pattern: rehabilitation and abstinence, return to society and a job, renewed acquaintance with loneliness and boredom, recourse to the bottle, unemployment, a binge grander than the rest. Maybe the next time will be the last time.

16

Rabkin: I am going to commit suicide.
What’s that, Mr Rabkin?
I am going to commit suicide.
Don’t do that Mr Rabkin. Rather have a cup of tea. Two sugar?

17

At the age of thirty-seven Hector Dodds is a fucked-out wreck.
‘Every night I always pray to God until I fall asleep that I can walk again and get a good job.’

18

Rabkin in a thundering theatrical voice: Oh, the pain! The pain! God, God, God. Then, enquiringly: When is God going to come into the business?
Nurse: You think God would make a good partner, Mr Rabkin?

19

Dodds lying on his side between cot sides. vomiting into a kidney bowl and over the sheets. A dirty, tattooed, malodorous heap. Red-haired and phthisic, with long filth-caked fingernails. There is everything wrong with him: epilepsy, a broken femur, tuberculosis, alcoholism, impaired vision, hearing and speech. He has been an invalid for the past six years, cared for by his mother. Whilst in the City Hospital for TB and alcoholism he fell out of bed and broke a femur and knocked his head, developing epileptic seizures.

He curls up in bed, his long bony hands touching his face, shielding his eyes and nose. His filthy nails indicate some kind of anal exploration or stimulation. ‘Cerebral atrophy’ is one of the diagnostic terms used in his case. It’s a toss-up between cerebral atrophy and Korsakoff’s psychosis. Vague terms for ‘fucked in the head.’

20

Busy with blood pressures, the five o’clock obs, my mind vacant but for a growing impatience as knocking-off time approached. I was suddenly confronted by an ugly incident with an ugly man. When I inflated the cuff of the Baumanometer stinking clammy Dodds violently wrenched his arm away, glaring at me with wild hate.
‘Fuck off, you bastard! Fuck no, man! No fuck, man!’
Then he said later, when reassured and calmed.
‘Take me to my mother’s room, please, won’t you?’
‘You’re in hospital, Hector.’
He looked blank, bewildered. Then frustration and rage filled his eyes.
‘Fuck it, man! Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ He pounded the palm of one hand with the other fist. ‘Christ, man, I forgot! I’m sorry, hey. Fuck it, I’m sorry.’ In his laboured and slurred Woodstock speech.

21

Prior was on the phone from Casualty. He was with an old A1 patient and they were on their way to the ward. The man’s condition was ‘basically hypertensive.’ He arrived conscious, groaning with exhaustion and misery. As he was getting across from the trolley to the bed he seemed to lose his strength and rolled over onto his side, his face half buried in a pillow. He lay there and began to make a snoring, snorting sound. Lifted forward his eyes bulged glassily. I removed his spectacles and called Prior. We lifted him up and he lay there quiet, staring with blank dilated orbs, as if aghast at the emptiness of it all. His breathing had stopped. Prior felt for the carotid and in amazement said, ‘Jesus, he’s just died!’ He called to Benny Lipschitz and said, ‘Benny, this guy’s just gone and died. There’s no output. Nothing.’ Lipschitz came over and gave an experimental shove on the chest. I fetched the cardiac massage board but they didn’t want it. ‘No point in calling Max. There’s no output. What could it be?’
The consultant arrived and they puzzled over the body for ten minutes, tapping here and there, listening with stethoscopes, lifting eyelids, feeling and prodding. Then they walked off talking of CVA’s and PM’s, shaking their heads and scratching their arses.

After his wife had come we washed him and wrapped him up in plastic. There was the usual hush in the ward, broken by the crisp ripping sound of cellotape, each rip ending in a snap.

22

Now a disoriented patient who supposes himself to be travelling in a car and not lying stationary in a hospital bed. He holds on tight for corners.

23

Apart from the quietness I have noticed a stifling feeling of closeness behind the curtains with the corpse. The air seems warm and I experience a slightly feverish sensation. I haven’t discerned any characteristic odour, yet the air is certainly not bracing and I breathe it reluctantly.

24

The condition of the clothes of a patient on admission is noted with ruthless detachment. What might pass without notice in the street is exposed in all its shabbiness under the disinterested scrutiny of an orderly kitting in the items. A hole in a sock, worn-down shoes, a frayed collar, unpressed grimy trousers. And how demeaning toenails can be! A poor man with a genteel mind is filled with shame and humiliation.

25

I asked Meyer the time and in his excruciatingly slow bumbling way he showed me his fancy digital watch which, if you held a diploma in computer science, could be made to tell the exact time in Santiago or Peking. It took him some ten minutes to establish correct South African time.

Then he glared past me to the doorway.
‘What’s happened to him?’ He indicated the empty bed.
I shrugged and he nodded comprehendingly.
‘I see.’ Behind me in the doorway he had glimpsed Mrs Beck. ‘I’ve seen that before. A woman in dark glasses being embraced by another woman. I’ve seen those expressions.’

26

There is no conclusion to be drawn. There is no easy explanation. The evidence does not point to a facile homily. Anyway, why does every experience, every piece of evidence have to be disposed of, ‘assimilated,’ accounted for? Before one is content to let a matter drop why does one have to be didactic?

27

Stopel is a genially demented old man, unshaven and dressed and smelling like a vagrant. He was found wandering in the street with a graze on his forehead and some well-meaning citizen brought him to hospital. He has been admitted for observation.

He was brought in on a trolley and lifted onto a bed, much to his amazement. I have persuaded him to take off his shoes, which are lined with newspaper, and am trying to explain what is happening.
‘This is a hospital.’
‘Oh, yes? That’s very nice. But I think I must go now, thank you.’
‘They want you to stay here with us for a while. They want you to stay in bed.’
He sits up and begins to swing his feet off the bed when Dyer the registrar and Prior the houseman arrive. They spend ten minutes thoroughly examining him. Then the truth dawns on them. They ask him to stand, and he stands up in the bed, causing them some alarm. No, they meant down on the floor. He gets down and stands out of bed.
‘This is very easy,’ he says. ‘Anybody can do it.’
‘Can you walk?’
‘Of course.’
He takes a few paces and looks back at them and smiles modestly. Then he heads off down the ward ready to go wherever the door leads. The doctors turn and walk away, shrugging their shoulders and raising their hands, saying,
‘There’s nothing wrong with him.’
I stop Stopel next to Buchanan and suggest he put his shoes on before returning to the big wide world. Buchanan reaches over to his locker for the air freshener (Spring Breeze) and begins spraying Stopel and the air around him.

1

Up the long sloping tunnel that connects the main hospital buildings to the nurses’ home. The lift to the basement and the linen bank. Low concrete beams and pipes overhead. So much piping, like veins and arteries and nerves and ducts. It is hot and humid.

They issue me with twelve uniforms that are anything but uniform. Ill-fitting white cotton trousers and jackets that have been donned by a succession of orderlies drifting through the big barn. The trousers are too baggy, or too tight, or too short in the leg. The jackets have high, collarless necks and button up at the side and give one the appearance of a chef, or an ice-cream vendor, or a barber.

In the sewing room I look at my reflection in the mirror and fight the compulsion to run. I have difficulty recognising myself. But is that not just what I want? Nothing can be done with this impersonal white uniform. Heavy white cloth to cover the body. This is my identity.

2

Sickness and excrement and the accompanying smells, sounds and sights.

3

The dawn walk starts with the click of the gate. Palmerston Road in lamplight and right at the public swimming baths. A man wrapped in a heavy coat leaves his idling car and closes a garage door, fumbling the cold lock in the dark. Across Queens Park playing field to the start of the path running along the cliff top of Brickfields quarry. Towards the mountain beyond the high mesh fence is Eastern Boulevarde arush with early traffic. The uneven grassy path winds up towards the top of Hospital Hill and ahead to the east the sky is lightening and brightening with sunrise colours. I pass the two skeletons on the cliff edge where they stand gnarled in silhouette. The wind is drawing out long streaks of smoke from the kiln chimney stacks and below and beyond them stretch the lights. Two at a time I climb the steps to the flyover bridge and descend on the freeway pavement past the nurses’ home. At the stone cairn, memorial to the dead, I slip under the fence and cross the hospital road towards the canteen, past the pool. Down the steps to the chapel and then around to the front entrance, passing the exhausted, inward faces of night staff shadows.

4

I am horrified and revolted by human sickness and old age. Sacks of flesh and bone dying messily in their own shit. Ugly, helpless and undignified. I am drawn to the idea of suicide. There is an argument that stresses the importance of man battling on till the last breath, never giving up hope: but I do not understand or accept it.

Mr Putney is in his seventies, a senile diabetic with pneumonia. He lies in a huddle, a catheter running down to a bag under the bed. He can do nothing for himself, not even turn on his side. He remains in an imbecilic daze, weakening, deteriorating. Why should he be kept alive? Why is this clinging to life so abject and cowardly?

5

The Florence Nightingale Pledge

I solemnly pledge myself before God and
in the presence of this assembly, to pass
my life in purity and to practice my profession
faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is
deleterious and mischievous, and will not take
or knowingly administer any harmful drug.
I will do all in my power to maintain and
elevate the standard of my profession, and will
hold in confidence all personal matters
committed to my keeping and all family affairs
coming to my knowledge in the practice of my
calling. With loyalty will I endeavour to aid the
physician in his work, and devote myself to
the welfare of those committed to my care.

6

How does it feel when you no longer wish to part your teeth, open your mouth? When opening your eyes is too much? Waiting to snuff it, tense and inward as more and more of the body and mind shuts down for the last time.

7

I swear by Apollo the physician, Hygeia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgement the following oath:
To consider dear to me as my parents him who taught me this art: to live in common with him and if necessary to share my goods with him; to look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art if they so desire without fee or written promise: to impart to my sons and the sons of the master who taught me and the disciples who have enrolled themselves and have agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone, the precepts and the instruction. I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgement and never do harm to anyone. To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug, nor give advice which may cause his death. Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But I will preserve the purity of my life and my art. I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest. I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners (specialists in this art). In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction, and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men; be they free or slaves. All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or outside of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and never reveal. If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all time; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

8

Mr Rubinstein is a miserable, whining little Jew. He said he was a good patient but he’s not. He complains, whimpers and groans in his embarrassment and discomfort. He said he was prepared to pay for everything. He shakes violently with nervous tensions, makes sudden panic-stricken movements and repeatedly says he can’t take any more. Yet I don’t dislike him.

On the other hand I felt an immediate aversion towards that hugely revolting Afrikaans specimen, Lambrecht. A brutal, ravaged red face, vomiting and bellowing. A particularly disgusting heap of humanity.

9

‘When I am at home, if I have difficulty, after a couple of days I just take a little soap on the end of my finger and massage the anus, gradually moving up. It helps a lot. Maybe I manage to remove a clod obstructing the passage. The only problem is causing some bleeding from a pile a little higher up.’

10

What a relief! My wash died in the night.

11

Returning from tea I was in time for my first ‘laying out of a corpse.’ He had a distinctly Goyaesque expression on his face - eyes open to slits, mouth agape in cadaverous leer, black tousled hair.
He looked better dead than alive. Not peaceful by any stretch of the word but at least no longer so explosively flushed. Also an improvement without the plastic airway.

12

I have noticed more than one patient taking a morbid interest in the obituary columns. They scan the names almost eagerly, searching for someone they have known, someone they have outlived. The greatest reward is to spot the name of a fellow patient who ‘disappeared’ yesterday. The perversity lies in their dependence on the printed word for death to become a reality.

13

Grobelaar: No, I don’t want nothing.
Here’s your lunch.
What must I do with this?
Have you no appetite?
Chris’, man. I’ll have to have a fuckin’ big appetite to eat THAT.

14

Chronic airways disease complicated by pneumonia has brought Tom Grobelaar into the ward. He is a skinny little man in his seventies and, every breath being a battle, is distressed and irritable. He finds it difficult using the bottle. He prefers to get out and stand unsteadily beside the bed, wheezing and moaning and cursing as he pisses onto the floor. And the sputum mug is a fiddly little thing so he just spits over the edge of the bed.

‘Chris’ Jesus, man! Ohh, Christ. I tol’ you, I don’t want nothing. Just leave me alone. Hi, this bloody fucking thing! Christ, man. Oh Jesus, what is this?’
‘Soup’
‘Take it away’
‘You must drink it.’
‘No, Christ man. I tol’ you, I don’t want nothing.’ He coughs a few times in his characteristic way, exhausting himself. Each cough is a shout of pain and dysphoria ending in the word ‘Mimi,’ his wife’s name. As his condition deteriorates he calls for her more frequently.

“Got the intellectual acumen of a hospital porter.”
“Oh? Is that bad? I don’t know any hospital porters. What’s distinctive about a hospital porter?”
“You’ve never been to hospital? Consider yourself most fortunate. Two years ago I was in Groote Schuur for an appendectomy. Nearly gave me a hysterectomy their anatomy was so bad. Anyway I was wheeled about by porters and a porter was sent to shave my nether regions prior to surgery. First struck me a blow with a rubber mallet, then nearly amputated me and finally stole my comb. And blind drunk too. The lowest form of life on earth, these porters and orderlies, barely recognisable as human.”

A kid of about thirteen or fourteen had the audacity to press the pedestrian button, and when the green man lit up, got on his bike and began to pedal across the four lanes towards the cycle path on the other side. Matt saw what he was up to, noted the ridiculous uniform he was wearing, and gave him a brassy Beemer blast, telling him to forget it.

True to form, the fucking arrogant little shit ignored the warning and kept on going. Instead of braking or swerving, Matt accelerated and was able to take him out with clinical precision, everything lined up down the middle, fair and square. The car’s bumper pulverised the boy’s left leg, snapping and crushing it as if it was made of eggshell.

The bike shot off and landed in a bed of blue and white agapanthus, except they weren’t in bloom, and the boy landed face first on the Beemer bonnet. Matt had a brilliant front row, big screen view of bulging eyeballs and flying teeth - so much for the thousands wasted on orthodontic chicanery in pursuit of the Hollywood smile - before the boy’s body fell from car to tar.

As he turned right and aimed for the Constantia Village car park, he looked back and saw the kid writhing in the road. Bloody amateur dramatics! He had a good mind to go back, run over him again and really give him something to writhe about. But that would have been a self-indulgent side-show. He must concentrate his attention on the main narrative and let it reach a conclusion as speedily as possible.

There was some sort of drama going on in the car park. The place was choked up with vehicles, there were cop cars and ambulances and other emergency vehicles with lights flashing, and he spotted an SABC van with camera crew. There was a crowd gathered near the Standard Bank and he caught a glimpse of two bodies lying on the paving covered over with white plastic. There must have been another bank heist.

He was on the point of abandoning the car just anywhere when he saw a conveniently situated open bay. It was reserved for the disabled but that was all right. As he pulled in there was a flash of red in his mirror. Parked across from him was a fucking Ferrari, out of the box. He engaged reverse and shot back with all the malice he could muster. CRUNCH! There we are, a minimum of a million bucks to fix that lot. He returned to his reserved parking.

Before leaving the car to complete the only mission he’d ever had in his life, he put a fresh clip in his Glock and checked Larry’s gun. It was a 22 calibre Walther - Mickey Mouse compared to his 9mm, but effective enough at close range. Only two cartridges missing.

Outside Exclusive Books a small demonstration was taking place. A middle-aged couple were standing behind a collapsible table and some hand-written placards proclaimed their opposition to the sale of books written by two servants of Satan. The books in question were The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.

Their protest action consisted of tearing a page from one of the offending books, twisting it longways into a taper and lighting it from a small gas burner on the table. When half the page had been consumed by flames, the unburnt remainder was dropped into a steel bucket. Then the same thing with another page, all the while denouncing the evil atheists in loudly judgemental tones.

Matt stopped in front of these lunatics. He recognised them: this was the selfsame pair who had harassed him and his friend on a previous occasion.

He reached out and took the woman’s hand. She looked faintly puzzled, but being a happy-clapper she was accustomed to shaking hands with all sorts of Christian brethren. However, instead of shaking the woman’s hand Matt grasped it firmly and held her wrist over the open gas flame. Of course she protested and struggled, but he was able to give her flesh a good scorching before letting her fall to the ground screaming.

Her partner, sensing the presence of the devil, rolled his eyes, raised his hands clasped in prayer, and called for assistance.

“Save us, Lord, save us!” he shouted. “Deliver us from evil, in the name of Jesus Christ our saviour!”

Matt took out the Walther and put a bullet through the hands pressed together in supplication. Astonished, the man opened his hands and contemplated the two neat holes beginning to ooze blood. Then he fell to his knees in a religious frenzy, believing he had been crucified and was about to be whisked off to heaven.

The woman was now shouting, screaming, spitting and snarling all at once, her eyes mad with hatred. It was a horrible sound and sight so Matt shot her twice, at random, without really taking aim, and that shut her up. Then he strode into the Seattle coffee shop, a gun in either hand.

BANG! He felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder. Shouts and screams. He grabbed a waitress and, using her as a shield, looked about. Ah, there they were; at a table in the far corner. That bastard Claude was sitting there, holding his pistol in both hands, trying to get a line on his nephew’s head. And Trudy, mouth open, fork poised, staring at her son in furious disbelief. What the fuck was she eating? Could it be Black Forest cake? Black Forest cake! The fucking cow was half way through a huge chunk of Black Forest cake, not half an hour after being informed that her son, her only child, had been burnt to death in a car crash.

BANG! The waitress’s body went limp. The callous bastard! Matt let Claude have it with his trusty Glock. The bullet struck him in the middle of his chest and he threw up his arms and crashed over backwards.

“Matt!” Trudy screamed. “You detestable little brute! Look what you’ve gone and done. I always knew you’d be a no-good. From the day you were born I hated the look of you. I loathed your disgusting little mouth trying to suck at me. I always hated the sight…”

“Bitch!” Matt shouted. BANG! “Bitch!” BANG! “Bitch!” BANG!

Trudy lay on her back in a most unladylike fashion. Her stupid little skirt was up around her hips, exposing the crotch of her pantyhose, inviting the boot.

“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” Matt shouted, kicking his mother’s body in the most disrespectful way a son might imaginably kick his mother.

There was a groan from his fat uncle. He could also hear sirens and a voice shouting into a megaphone: “Come on out with your hands up! Come on out with your hands up!” Christ, these cops learn it all from watching crap American TV.

He placed his foot on his fat uncle’s neck, below his chin, and applied some pressure.

“What did you say to me, you fat cunt?” he snarled, shoving down hard. “What the fuck did you say to me, you fucking fat cunt?” Without pity he repeatedly stamped on the fat neck, remembering the pitiless way his uncle had enjoyed bullying him when he was a kid.

“You’re mad,” Claude managed to croak. “You worthless freak, you’re mad.”

BANG! BANG!

The first shot entered his eye and exited the side of his head, punching through the skull bone like it was a paper bag. The second bullet pierced his neck, but not before passing through Matt’s foot.

Christ, the pain! Ow, ow, ow! Oh my fuck, this was just too stupid. What a fuckup, even though he’d successfully accomplished his mission. Enough’s enough.

He poked the muzzle of his gun into what was left of the Black Forest cake and worked it about. Then he licked off some of the decadent confectionary, savoured it, put the barrel in his mouth, sucked, and pulled the trigger.

The idiot outside was still shouting at the corpses to surrender and come on out with their hands up. Inside the coffee shop and the bookshop there was a profound hush. Then from the bookshop side came the sound of stealthy movements and a head cautiously appeared above the top of a bookshelf. This head was framed by a halo of frizzy orange hair. Other heads appeared and soon they were all on their feet and peering into the coffee shop.

On the outside a growing number of faces were being pressed up against the windows. Several cops in bulletproof vests, arms at the ready, also drew near and peered in. One of them broke open the door, which was unnecessary because it wasn’t locked. They entered the shop and immediately began messing up the crime scene by doing things they’d been specifically trained not to do. Like moving the bodies and handling the murder weapons and leaving their sweaty fingerprints on everything. One of the female officers even removed Trudy’s expensive platinum watch and slipped it into her pocket for safekeeping.

Horry Horowitz, still clutching the book on eugenics he’d been reading when the firing broke out, was unimpressed. However, he felt a duty to tell the police who was who. It was hard to say who was in charge so he spoke to the cop with the biggest belly.

“This is a family murder,” he said. “The Dreyer family of Constantia.”

“And this one?” asked the cop, prodding the waitress with the toe of his combat boot. “Is this one the family bediende?”

Fuck! He should have kept his mouth shut.

Then the media arrived. First ETV and then SABC hard on their heels. They had just finished with the hold-up, and now this lucky scoop. The cops got all sullen and aggressive and tried holding up tablecloths to obscure the scene of carnage, and the crowd began to hiss and boo.

Realising this was an opportunity of priceless promotional value, Horry stepped outside and addressed the crowd and the cameras.

Horry: I am David Horowitz, spokesperson for the Fifty Fifty Foundation. I am also a friend of the Dreyer family of Constantia and I can tell you that what happened in there [points to the coffee shop] was a family murder. The son shot his mother and his uncle before turning the gun on himself.

SABC: Mr Horowitz, do you know what motivated the young man to go on this killing spree?

Horry: Yes. On the surface of it this was a revenge attack. Matt, the son, believed that his mother and uncle, who were married a few months ago, engineered the murder of his father and made it look like a hijacking. But on a deeper level this was the action of a psychologically and emotionally traumatised victim of family, social and broader systemic pressures.

ETV: Would you say, in your opinion, that the alleged perpetrator was mentally unstable?

Horry: In my opinion we’re all mentally unstable - what’s known as kopbefokt. [Crowd titters]. But yes, Matt Dreyer was a bit more unstable than most of us. He was being treated by a psychiatrist for bipolar disorder, and by a traditional healer for hallucinatory dreams and lack of motivation. He was receiving all sorts of medication, both pharmaceutical and herbal, which might have contributed to his psychotic behaviour. He also drank like an alcoholic, smoked dagga, and partook of all the club drugs.

SABC: What was his family background? Was he ever abused as a child?

Horry: He was born into an extremely wealthy but emotionally dysfunctional family. Although surrounded by affluence he was brought up in an atmosphere of shallow self-indulgence and callous disregard for the feelings of others. His mother and his father were incapable of loving him and he grew up starved of affection. He had a particularly hostile relationship with his uncle, who usurped his father’s role in a flagrant and depraved fashion. And when he was thirteen he was packed off to boarding school where he was subjected to humiliating ordeals, outlandish rituals and a viciously authoritarian programme of indoctrination and mind-control. Yes, to answer your question, he was badly abused as a child.

ETV: Do you know what caused him to snap?

Horry: No. It was probably an accumulation of factors. His father was killed; he was disappointed in love; he came to believe that his mother and uncle had murdered his father; he was the victim of a violent break-in, in which he killed two of his attackers with a garden spade; he was also accidentally responsible for the death of his ex-girlfriend’s father. And then there was his psychiatric condition, which had been misdiagnosed and incorrectly medicated.

SABC: So, in your opinion, was the alleged killer mentally unstable?

Horry: Jesus! This oke’s already asked me that question. Weren’t you listening? Of course he was mentally unstable. You don’t go ’round killing people left, right and centre if you’re psychologically sound. Or do you?

SABC: Well, was he very sensitive, then? Like an artist or something?

Horry: Hell no. But he was fucking depressed and pissed off with things in general. He wasn’t all that bright, but he was intelligent enough to know that life had dealt him and his generation - my generation - a really kak hand. He was well aware that not only was his personal life a mess, but that the world around him was exploding in fireballs of blood and shit. He must’ve asked himself what kind of future was in store for him and the rest of his verminous species. Let’s face it, the picture’s pretty bleak. Global warming is an irreversible catastrophe that’s just beginning to gain momentum. Political and economic models used to structure human activity are creating greater inequality, more and more misery, and mounting frustration and anger. Not everybody’s stupid, you know. Some of us can put two and two together. There are nearly 7 billion humans on the planet. They’re all greedy and ruthlessly selfish and they breed like rats. If they all consumed and wasted like Americans, we’d need five planets. What’s the solution? Is the developed world prepared to give up its opulent lifestyle? Ha, ha. Is the developing world prepared to remain in poverty? No ways; the violent revolution is already under way. This is the worldview that filled Matt Dreyer with dread. And he was unable to distract himself from his despair by embracing some ideology or by immersing himself in an artistic pursuit, because there was nothing of any value to choose from. He found himself living in a cultural wasteland where everything had been trivialised and turned into a commodity of no intrinsic value. No wonder he lost it. No wonder he succumbed to the pressures of this dehumanising system and went berserk, trashing everything, including himself. The story of this guy’s life and death should be a lesson to us. We have to find an intelligent way to regulate human behaviour. And it’s for this purpose that the Fifty Fifty Foundation has been set up. The Foundation’s aims are based on concepts of… Hey, fuck you man, I’m still talking. Fucking bunch of morons!

The reporters, the cameras and the crowd had all turned away. The first corpse, wrapped in white plastic, was being stretchered out and loaded into an ambulance. In ghoulish fascination they all stared, mesmerised by the iconic scene, knowing that they were all privileged to be in the presence of death. Not the death of pulp fiction and bad movies. Real death.

Disconsolately, Horry turned and began to walk away, knowing that his friend had died for nothing, but that there was something heroic in his going. Yah, he’d gone out with a bang - literally - and one day somebody would write a semi-fictional account of his stupid life and turn the random details into a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end, and with a corny message underlying the narrative, too. Then they’d make a movie of the book and Matt Dreyer would join the legendary ranks of Robin Hood, Ned Kelly and Bonnie and Clyde. Matt the useless fuckup would be transformed into Matt the heroic rebel. But it took a crazy kind of desperate courage to qualify for that status, and he, Horry Horowitz, just didn’t have it. He’d probably end his days in the obscurity of geriatric squalor. Or die a lingering and messy death in the disagreeable company of anonymous billions, wiped out by some pandemic systematically obliterating the entire verminous species. Ah, but what the fuck.

END OF STORY

TO THE READER

Before you go, how about posting a comment? Even a full-on review.

There was an Engen One Stop the other side of Mossel Bay and he pulled in there to fill up. The sky was cloudless and a warm berg wind was blowing. Now for the 300 undulating kilometres across the arid plain. Then over Sir Lowry’s Pass and down into Cape Town. He should be there by mid afternoon.

Rose’s cellphone was worrying him. He’d only thought about it after he had passed through Knysna. He hadn’t noticed it in the chalet - not that he’d been looking for it - but she must have used it to contact Claude. The success of his plan depended on surprise, and now it was highly likely they’d be expecting him. They might even have contacted the cops. And behind him the police machinery would be grinding into action as an alert went out to stop the fugitive murderer. The ‘dustbin killer’.

The road began to snake its way down into a canyon. The Gourits was coming up. What had the sangoma said to him? ‘Beware of the three high places.’ Well, he’d survived two high places so far, and this was the last high bridge on his journey. Maybe he’d have a blow-out as he was crossing, and he’d crash through the railing. Superstitious bullshit.

The road began to climb away from the canyon. On no, this was just too much of an anti-climax. He pulled over, waited for the road to clear, and did a u-turn.

Putting his foot flat he sent the big car leaping forward. It roared back across the bridge and he even drove on the wrong side of the road; but there was no on-coming traffic. He braked hard and swung into the car park.

Bungee jumping was from the old iron girder bridge a couple of hundred metres upriver from the concrete structure he had just driven over twice. He bought a ticket and hurried out to the launch platform at the halfway point.

Fortunately there was no one ahead of him. No, he didn’t want a video, or special music, or any of that crap. What he wanted was to experience the sensation of committing suicide from a bridge. He wanted to find out what he had missed back at Bloukranz. What it was like in those last few seconds. Would there be time to regret the decision?

They strapped him into the harness and gave him instructions. Maybe Godknows Tshabalala had put a curse on the equipment and some part of it would fail. He didn’t care all that much - it would save him the hassle of going all the way to Constantia to shoot cunt Claude and bitch Trudy.

He was in a hurry but now he must calm down, savour the moment. He stood with his toes over the edge and looked down. This was pathetic. Sixty-five metres down to the riverbed. Bloukranz was more than three times this. Oh well, fuck all of humanity, and fuck this lousy life. He slowly let himself lean and then fall forward.

At the critical moment of no return he expected to feel terror. Instead he felt the detached objectivity of an observer. The wind was in his face and the rocks rushed up to meet him. In place of the jerk on the harness he would have preferred the extra metres of free fall and the exquisite intensity of that last moment before his stupid existence was plunged into eternal darkness.

*

While Matt was busy jumping off bridges his uncle and his cousin were busy plotting his downfall - ha, ha.

Larry Apollis blamed Matt for the death of both his father and his sister, and Claude had turned to him, hoping to exploit the young man’s psychotic hatred. He phoned and asked him to come over immediately.

“He’s already killed Gilbert,” Claude said. “And now I’m really worried about Rose.”

Trudy joined them in the study, handing Larry a glass of Coke.

“You should be worried about us,” she said, her voice loud with recrimination and anxiety. “Your stupid plan to get him to commit suicide has gone all wrong. Now he’s on his way here to kill us.”

“Alright, alright.” Claude struggled to keep his temper. He wanted to shout at her and tell her to shut her fucking mouth. “The plan didn’t work and now we must come up with something else.”

“Any idea when he’ll get here?” asked Larry. He produced a pistol from inside his jacket, removed the clip and started working the bolt and pulling the trigger. Then he replaced the clip and returned the gun to its holster.

“The last I heard from Rose was an SMS last night to say he was totally crazy and was coming for us. Since then there’s been nothing. He could be here any time this afternoon.”

“What about the cops?” asked Larry.

“No,” said Claude, shaking his head. “The cops are too unreliable, and also they might try to take him alive. We don’t want that, do we?”

“No ways,” said Larry, his eyes cold and pitiless like those of a great white shark. “The sooner this fucker’s in hell, the better. Er… sorry Aunty Trudy.”

“No, that’s alright,” said Trudy. “He might as well be dead. My son has turned into a mad monster, and the only way to deal with an evil monster is to destroy it.”

“What I propose,” said Claude, getting to the point, “is that you intercept him on the N2 as he comes into Cape Town. It looks like you know how to use that gun of yours.”

Larry’s vacuously handsome features twisted into a smirk. It was like the unpleasant expression on the face of a professional wrestler who has just thrown his opponent out of the ring.

They agreed that the best place to wait would be at the Ultra City this side of Somerset West.

“How much were you going to pay Gilbert and Rose to get rid of him?” Larry asked.

Claude looked surprised, then shrugged his shoulders. Of course this little creep would want to be paid.

“Two fifty thousand,” he lied.

“Make it half a million and I’ll hit the road. Time’s running out, the maniac’s on his way.”

*

Larry was driving a brand new Half-Past-Three, or BMW 330i. He had paid for it with some of the insurance money from his father’s life policy. So in a way he had Matt to thank for this extravagant vehicle. It suited his style, which was brash, arrogant and aggressive.

When he pulled into a parking bay facing the highway, the filling station behind him, he realised that this might not be the most brilliant of ideas. It was only two o’clock and he may have to wait an hour or more. There was a lot of traffic heading into Cape Town and it meant he couldn’t take his eyes off it for more than a few seconds.

After half an hour he concluded it was actually an incredibly dumb idea. This was exhausting. He needed a cooldrink but with each passing minute it became increasingly important for him to remain alert. He glanced longingly in his mirror at the door to the shop, restroom and restaurant. Jesus!

Parked at the kerb, illegally, was a big saloon, dark blue in colour. A Lexus. Fuck it, man, could this be his quarry? Yes, there was no doubt about it. Emerging from the shop was the slob himself, limping heavily. He’d probably been inside taking a piss in one of Shell’s state-of-the-art urinals.

Larry started the car, engaged reverse, groped for his pistol. But the golden opportunity had been missed, for Matt was already driving away as if he had urgent business to attend to. Instead of drawing alongside and putting a bullet in the middle of that bloated moon-face, Larry was obliged to put his foot down and chase after the fast disappearing saloon.

Matt cruised at 150, sometimes overtaking on the grass, sometimes weaving from lane to lane. While going over the mountains and down the pass he’d been listening to Leonard Cohen. Now he was playing Tom Waits. Hold on, hold on. The music was saturated with the bitter-sweetness of futile hopes, inevitable failure, and impending death.

Only when they were getting close to town and the road had widened into four lanes was Larry able to make a move. Because of the heavy traffic Matt had been forced to reduce his speed to a sedate 100. Larry saw the gap and the silver Beemer drew alongside the Lexus. Pressing a button on his armrest he lowered the front passenger’s window and took aim. Matt glanced sideways and found himself looking into the gaping barrel of a 9 mil. In the background was his cousin’s familiar face, contorted and snarling with hatred. He saw the finger tighten on the trigger and knew that he was dead.

But if either of them had been keeping an eye on the rear-view mirror he would have seen an angel of hell, hooded and clad in black, coming up fast behind them astride a mighty Kawasaki charger and galloping along at 140 km/h.

Matt winced as the imagined bullet struck him, then realised he hadn’t been hit at all. In the road ahead the motorcyclist was already tilting away from the vertical and drifting to the left. Matt put his foot down hard and pulled away from the enraged assassin in the BMW.

*

Past the cooling towers and the golf course, and under the bridge at Mowbray. Then he broke away from the N2 up onto Edinburgh Drive. Mostert’s Mill on the left, UCT to the right. Matt weaved his way through the south-bound pack, managing to keep several vehicles between him and his pursuer.

The traffic lights at the Kirstenbosch intersection were against him. He would have jumped the lights but there was a wall of cars blocking his way. Larry was only six vehicles behind him and he was leaning out of his window trying to take aim.

The traffic began to move. Larry’s shot missed the Lexus completely and found another mark instead. This was a pregnant young woman with a toddler strapped in the back, and she died instantly. Out of control, her car ran down the hill and crashed into the back of a car driven by an elderly gent who suffered severe whiplash and was destined to spend the rest of his days in a neck brace popping pain killers until his ulcer burst and he died from the loss of blood through the anus. Very tragic.

Through Bishop’s Court and over Wynberg Hill they went. They raced down towards the start of the Blue Route and there were only two cars separating them. Matt took the Constantia off-ramp at speed and only just managed to prevent the car from sliding into the sweep of crash barrier. He jumped the first set of lights and Larry was forced to stand on his brakes and take evasive action before resuming the chase.

Constantia Village went by on the left and again he jumped the lights at Parish Road. Now he was heading away from his loathsome family neighbourhood and taking the tree-lined twists and turns up to Constantia Neck. He was stuck in the middle of a slow-moving procession of nine cars with Larry’s Beemer bringing up the rear.

A mad scheme had popped into his head. If he could break loose and get to the Neck well ahead of his homicidal cousin he could take the traffic circle on two wheels and come hurtling back down the pass, gun blazing.

Now was his chance. Or so he thought. There were four cars ahead of him. He pulled out and put his foot flat. He had overtaken two cars but the white line was solid and the road was curving sharply to the left.

There was still one more car to pass when he crashed head-on into the bread truck. The driver was standing on his brakes and so was Matt, but nevertheless the impact was devastating.

For a moment everything had gone blank, but now he had regained his senses. Thank God for airbags, and thank God his door had been thrown off its hinges as the vehicle shell collapsed and crumpled like cardboard. He managed to drag himself free, fall over a low stone wall and roll down an embankment.

The truck driver and his mate weren’t so lucky, having smashed their faces against the windscreen