The Lazarus Effect by H. J Golakai Read Free Book Online Page A

the winds of change were blowing through apartheid South Africa, but not hard enough to keep up with the tornado of ambition swirling inside Ian. His aura of ‘more-ness’ had him destined for greater things than what the restrictive government had mapped out for ‘non-whites’. Bright herself, Adele was perfectly content with her horizon and vacillated between nursing and teaching. Highest on her list of priorities was to adore her secret boyfriend. Ian was immensely intelligent, but – like many talented men – lived under the thumb of an insufferable matriarch.
    ‘It’s amazing how powerful men can be such shrivelled assholes in their mothers’ presence.’
    Vee started a little at an expletive dropping so comfortably out of the mouth of such a collected, well-spoken woman.
    ‘Ian’s family didn’t have much more than mine, but watching his mother carry on you’d think they were rolling in it. Every time I came by, that crabby old bat had her face scrunched uplike I had come to steal something. In a way, I guess … I guess I had. We were both so young and didn’t think for a second that we wouldn’t end up together. Naïve first love.’
    ‘What made you stop seeing each other?’
    ‘We didn’t. We never actually broke up, not formally. He left in December of ’81. One day he was here in Cape Town, the next he wasn’t. They had family abroad, in Europe. His mother hadn’t wanted him to leave the country to study medicine, but once he’d started up with me, it became the best idea she’d ever heard. I knew Ian wouldn’t pass up the chance in a million years. Not that our relationship didn’t matter: Ian’s just like that, always has been. He had a fire to climb, still does, nothing ever stood in his way. Personal relationships, love and the like, just have to work their way around his grand plans.’
    Bitterness left her voice and she looked up with softer eyes. ‘He isn’t all cold, ambitious bastard. Ian’s a good man, he truly is. He protects and provides. I think so much is expected of him by so many people that it gets hard balancing success and keeping everybody happy.’
    She still loves him . Something, fear maybe, coiled around Vee’s heart. Given time, would she deflate and petrify into an Adele, a woman blindly defending a man who had, for all intents and purposes, moved on with his life? What the hell was love worth, then, if you could be abandoned without a backward glance?
    ‘We stayed in contact as much as we could. We didn’t talk much about where our relationship was going, or whether it was going anywhere at all. Ian avoids confrontation when it matters most and being apart took a huge toll on his studies, soI stopped asking. There was nothing either of us could do about it. After a while, we just grew up. I, for one, started feeling extremely stupid waiting for a man who’d be so different when he returned – that’s if he ever did. He’d be a doctor and I’d be a teacher, you know? Politically, things were taking drastic turns. Apartheid was on its last legs and we were on the brink of new opportunities. But at the end of the day, he’d still be a doctor and me a teacher. I started thinking …’
    That his mother was right.
    ‘Maybe his mother had a point, much as I hated to admit it. And you know how long-distance relationships can go and what men are like. Who knows what they get up to? I was young still, and if I didn’t look forward, my whole life would pass me by. So …’
    Adele shrugged, an encyclopaedia of history in the movement of her shoulders. She’d done what she had to, and damned if she didn’t look ashamed and apologetic about it. Her hunched posture spoke of a woman who believed, to her own bewilderment, in one true love in a lifetime.
    ‘We fell out of touch eventually. It got easier. There were other men. Some were wonderful and I tried to take the relationship seriously. But … have you ever been in love?’
    Vee dropped her eyes to her