The Serpentine Road Read Free

gunpoint by men and women who harboured terrorists. We defended ourselves, confiscated weapons. No one will recall differently.’ He backs away and then struts towards De Vries anew.
    ‘One word from me and you’re gone. When the new regime comes to power they will exploit any weakness to gain control. So, you decide, De Vries. Stay with us, or be our enemy. See how many friends you have then. You won’t live to see the new fucking kaffir South Africa.’
    ‘I’ll see it rather than start a bloodbath.’
    ‘ Ja , that is what you would do. You and fucking De Klerk and the Nats who’ve sold every one of us down the fucking river. And that fucking kaffir terrorist, fucking saboteur, Mandela. You think he will bring peace to this country? He’s a fucking bomb-maker. You think men like me will let him become the fucking messiah?’
    Kobus Nel struts in a circle, still blocking De Vries’s exit. He is shrieking.
    ‘You know what will happen? The police force is over; they’ll disband it because there’ll be no fucking rule of law. They’re going to take our jobs, our houses, our land, destroy everything we have done to build this country into the great nation that we are. They’re going to fuck us all up, and with the whole world watching, cowards like you are going to let them.’
    De Vries baulks, knows that over brandy and cokes with his friends he has drunkenly debated the future, acquiesced to the ugly fears of his colleagues, the hateful proselytization, but he has never fully accepted it. His new wife, Suzanne, younger and more enlightened, more informed, has tempered his insistent gnawing fears and argued to accept the inevitable, to gauge a reaction, not to allow knee-jerk ignorance to rule his heart, and to believe in hope for their daughter’s future in the new Republic of South Africa.
    De Vries says quietly:
    ‘You know what’s frightening about people like you? I am angry, I feel betrayed, fear for my country, but you know what? You make me sound so fucking reasonable.’
    Nel laughs bitterly, shakes his head.
    ‘We’re all fucked, whatever you pathetic liberals, you fucking apologists think, but I’m warning you, you threaten my future and I will bring you down. So, right now, you better do your duty, Captain. Don’t do it for yourself. Do it for your wife and child.’
    He turns, and in the split second Nel’s back is to him, the thought comes to De Vries to jump the man, to bring him down, to beat the life out of him.
    When the door to the locker room finally closes, leaving him alone, he bows his head, his weight still on the steel doors against which he had been trapped. He pretends that he hasn’t yet decided what he will do but, deep inside, he already knows. He wonders whether the shame will allow him even to stand upright to leave this place, to dress, to type up his lies and cajole the frightened Constable Mitchell Smith, to walk through the station to the exit, to travel home to his wife and baby.

 
     
    3 April 2015
    Colonel de Vries rides De Waal Drive as far as the Mill Street slip road, sees one plane of the tower blocks in the CBD bright with white sun, the Waterfront lit by watery rays of sunrise, turns left up towards the face of the dark Mountain, encounters only gradations of grey, from grey tarmac, through the thick layer of smoke, up the staggered, unending growth of mountain, to dark white cloud above it. He guns the puny engine up the steep incline, inhaling rich, choking smoke through the ventilators, presses on, almost in darkness, awaiting the moment when he crests the deep haze and finds daylight again. He locates the turnoff onto Serpentine Road, swings the car parallel to the coastline. The smoke follows him, lies on his rear window. For three months now, the fires have blazed. More of the famous posters have appeared on billboards, those which scold and beg simultaneously, the design decades old, a cartoon for adults: the vast, delicate Springbok head, wide eyes