remove the plates.
‘You make it sound like an interrogation.’
Helena’s dark eyebrows formed two ‘v’s in her
forehead.
‘Yes,’ Mother said, raising her glass, with a
beatific smile to Uriah. ‘This is an interrogation.’
Uriah raised his glass and returned the smile. ‘I
understand you, Frau Lang. She is your only
daughter. You are entirely within your rights. Well,
I would say it is even your duty to be absolutely
clear about what kind of man she has found
herself.’
Frau Lang’s narrow lips had formed into a pout to
drink, but the wineglass stopped in mid-air.
‘I am not well-off,’ Uriah went on. ‘But I am keen
to work. I have a good head on me and I will
manage to feed myself, Helena and undoubtedly
several more. I promise to take care of her as well
as I can, Frau Lang.’
Helena felt an intense desire to giggle and at the
same time a strange excitement.
‘Oh my goodness!’ the mother exclaimed and put
down her glass again. ‘You’re going a bit too far
now, young man, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Uriah took a large swig and stared at the
glass. ‘And I have to say again that this is a really
good wine, Frau Lang.’
Helena tried to kick his leg, but she couldn’t
reach under the wide oak table.
‘These are strange times though. And there is so
little of it.’ He put down the glass, but continued to
hold it in his gaze. The tiny hint of a smile Helena
thought she had seen had disappeared.
‘I have sat talking with my comrades on evenings
like this, Frau Lang. About all the things we would
do in the future, what the new Norway would be
like and all the dreams we would realise, some
great and some small. A few hours later they lay
dead on the battlefield, without any future.’
He raised his eyes and looked directly at Frau
Lang.
‘I move quickly because I have found a woman I
want and who wants me. A war is raging and all I
can tell you about my future plans is so much
eyewash. I have an hour to live a life in, Frau
Lang. And perhaps that is all you have too.’
Helena shot a rapid glance at her mother. She
seemed stunned.
‘I received a letter from the Norwegian police
today. I have to report to the field hospital at
Sinsen school in Oslo for an examination. I’ll be
leaving in three days. And I was thinking of taking
your daughter with me.’
Helena held her breath. The wall clock’s
ponderous tick boomed in the room. Mother’s
diamonds continued to glitter as the muscles under
the wrinkled skin of her neck tightened and
relaxed. A sudden gust of wind from the garden
door caused the flames to lie flat and the shadows
to leap between the dark furniture. Only the
shadow of Beatrice at the kitchen door seemed to
stand completely still.
‘ Apfelstrudel,’ Mother said with a wave to
Beatrice. ‘A Viennese speciality.’
‘I would like you to know that I am really looking
forward to it,’ Uriah said.
‘Yes, and so you should be,’ said Mother, forcing
another sardonic smile. ‘It’s made with apples
from our own garden.’
32
Johannesburg. 28 February 2000.
HILLBROW POLICE STATION WAS IN THE CENTRE OF
Johannesburg and looked like a fortress with
barbed wire on top of the walls and steel mesh in
front of windows, which were so small that they
were more like gun slits.
‘Two men, black, killed last night, in this police
district alone,’ Officer Isaiah Burne said as he led
Harry through a labyrinth of corridors with peeling
white walls and worn linoleum. ‘Did you see the
big Carlton Hotel? Closed. The whites moved out
to the suburbs a long time ago, so now we only
have each other to shoot at.’
Isaiah hitched up his pants. He was black, tall,
knock-kneed and more than a little overweight. The
white nylon shirt had dark rings of sweat in the
armpits.
‘Andreas Hochner is usually held in a prison we
call Sin City out of town,’ he said. ‘We brought
him in today for these interviews.’
‘Are there others apart from mine?’ Harry asked.
‘Here we are,’ Isaiah said, swinging open a door.
They went into a room where two men were
standing with folded arms and staring through a
brown window.
‘Two-way mirror,’ Isaiah whispered. ‘He can’t
see us.’
The two men in front of the window nodded to
Isaiah and Harry and moved away.
They looked into a small, dimly lit room with one
chair and one small table. On the table there was
an ashtray full of cigarette ends and a microphone
on a stand. The man sitting on the chair had dark