Last Train to Retreat by Gustav Preller Read Free Book Online

them.
    Screeching tyres broke up Zane’s thoughts. A car jumped the red light at the intersection of Aliwal and Church causing another motorist to slam on brakes. ‘Fucking asshole!’ the one shouted. ‘Up yours!’ the other shouted back. Even on the privileged side of the track violence lurked, Zane thought. It merely had a civilised veneer. Was that what he was acquiring at the dojo – the capability to kill cloaked in nice-sounding maxims in an alien language? Could he ever punch or kick
through
the point where his training had conditioned him to stop, with one thing in mind – to kill? Was scoring an
ippon
refereed by Sensei Simon and bound by the rules of Shotokan – his style – true courage? Or was it fending off a murderous attack in an alley on the Flats when your dry mouth and shaking hands told you to run?
    As he entered his building he knew that the boy who had held his tongue during Hannibal’s brutal initiation rites had crossed the line with him to Wynberg.
    •
     
    Bernadette’s intoxicating fragrance was wafting from the bedroom as he walked into the flat. She was waiting in his bed, not the lounge, as she often did. There were signs in the kitchen that they would eat later – it was first things first with Bernadette – the pot on the stove, the chopped garlic, onions, and tomato on a plate, the spaghetti on the counter. She was from a wealthy family in Upper Constantia, her father, Derek Booysen, having made his money in property during the boom of 2003-2007. He had bought her a car to run around in while she was ‘finding her feet’ in advertising. ‘Why choose me, Bee?’ Zane asked many times, ‘I can’t take you to my home and you can’t take me to yours. We have to hang out in places your parents will
never
go to. And I got nothing.’ They avoided Constantia, where her parents lived, the southern suburbs from Rosebank to Kenilworth, and the Atlantic seaboard, and frequented instead hip, arty spots like Woodstock which her father still thought of as a sleaze hole from the 1990s. Bernadette would toss her plaits around – finely knotted like rope but not as dull, more a lively red – and say, with her thumb up, ‘But you got so much, baby. Bernadette
likes
this!’ She’d stroke his sleek head – hair cropped with no parting, snugly fitting his skull like a dark-brown swimming cap – and she’d run her hands playfully down his hard chest and arms, down his legs and groin as if checking for concealed weapons.
    They had met at the AAA School of Advertising in Cape Town where their agencies had enrolled them, he by Barnard, Ainslie, Theron, or BAT as it was known, and she by her agency on the other side of town. His mother, Gloria, wanted him to join the Arthur Murray School of Dancing in Plumstead. ‘Now
there
you’d meet the right kind of girl – a
nice
Coloured girl,’ she said. Bee thought it hilarious, ‘Look what you got instead – something wild, and white! Live for today, Zane, tomorrow might never come.’ But like clockwork after love-making his mind would switch to the future and he’d talk about it while she lay in the after-glow of her orgasm.
    ‘Baby, come here,’ she called out.
    His body shook with anticipation. He was glad he’d showered at the dojo. He ripped off his tracksuit and shoes, left the bike at a crazy angle against the wall, and went into the candle-lit bedroom. She lay naked in the flickering light twirling her kinky plaits. For a while his future would be suspended, as would all thoughts of Hannibal on the other side of the tracks.

Six
    A few nights later Sarai tried again to make love to Lena. Lena, having showered first, was in bed dozing off after a hard day at The Centre. It was the girl’s turn in the shower. The sounds of cascading water interspersed with vigorous soaping were comforting to Lena – it felt as if the exotic girl-woman had been in Lena’s house for months.
    Sarai came from the bathroom under cover of darkness and