Devil's Peak Read Free

one who would lead the state prosecution. She had to prepare him as a witness. Together they must convince the judge that the accused were guilty.

That would be easy, he said.

It is never easy, she replied, and adjusted her large gold-rimmed spectacles with the tips of her thumb and index finger, as if they could never be wholly comfortable. She questioned him about the day of Pakamile’s death, over and over, until she could see the event through his eyes. When they had finished, he asked her how the judge would punish them.

“If they are found guilty?”

“When they are found guilty,” he replied with assurance.

She adjusted her spectacles and said one could never predict these things. One of them, Khoza, had a previous conviction. But it was Ramphele’s first offense. And he must remember that it was not their intent to murder the child.

“Not their intent?”

“They will attest that they never even saw the child. Only you.”

“What sentence will they get?”

“Ten years. Fifteen? I can’t say for sure.”

For a long moment he just stared at her.

“That is the system,” she said with an exonerating shrug.
    * * *
    A day before the court case was to begin he drove his pickup to Umtata because he needed to buy a couple of ties, a jacket and black shoes.

He stood in his new clothes before the long mirror. The shop assistant said, “That looks sharp, ” but he did not recognize himself in the reflection—the face was unfamiliar and the beard which had appeared on his cheeks since the boy’s death grew thick and gray on the chin and cheeks. It made him look harmless, and wise, like a stalwart.

The eyes mesmerized him. Were they his? They reflected no light, as if they were empty and dead inside.

From the late afternoon he lay on his hotel bed, arms behind his head, motionless.

He remembered: Pakamile in the shed above the house milking a cow for the first time, all thumbs, in too much of a hurry. Frustrated that the teats would not respond to the manipulation of his small fingers. And then, at last, the thin white stream shooting off at an angle to spray the shed floor and the triumphant cry from the boy: “Thobela! Look!”

The small figure in school uniform that waited every afternoon for him, socks at half-mast, shirt-tails hanging, the backpack disproportionately big. The joy every day when he drew up. If he came on the motorbike, Pakamile would first look around to see which of his friends was witness to this exotic event, this unique machine that only he had the right to ride home on.

Sometimes his friends slept over; four, five, six boys tailing Pakamile around the farmyard. “My father and I planted all these vegetables.” “This is my father’s motorbike and this is mine.” “My father planted all this lucerne himself, hey.” A Friday night . . . everyone in a Christmas bed in the sitting room, jammed in like sardines in a flat tin. The house had vibrated with life. The house was full. Full.

The emptiness of the room overwhelmed him. The silence, the contrast. A part of him asked the question: what now? He tried to banish it with memories, but still it echoed. He thought long about it, but he knew in an unformulated way that Miriam and Pakamile had been his life. And now there was nothing.

He got up once to relieve himself and drink water and went back to lie down. The air conditioner hissed and blew under the window. He stared at the ceiling, waited for the night to pass so the trial could begin.
    * * *
    The accused sat alongside each other: Khoza and Ramphele. They looked him in the eyes. Beside them the advocate for the defense stood up: an Indian, tall and athletically lean, flamboyant in a smart black suit and purple tie.

“Mr. Mpayipheli, when the state prosecutor asked you what your profession was, you said you were a farmer.”

He did not answer, because it was not a question.

“Is that correct?” The Indian had a soothing voice, as intimate as if they were old friends.

“It is.”

“But that