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And she walked over to the blackboard on the wall, erased the engineer’s nonsense, and wrote the rate equation for an autocatalytic reaction of the first order.
When the engineer just stared blankly at the blackboard, she explained her reasoning by drawing a sigmoid curve.
When she had done that, she realized that Engineer van der Westhuizen understood no more of what she had written than any latrine emptier would have in the same situation. Or, for that matter, an assistant from the City of Johannesburg’s department of sanitation.
‘Please, Engineer,’ she said. ‘Try to understand. I have floors to scrub. The gas and the fluoride don’t get along and their unhappiness runs away with itself.’
‘What’s the solution?’ said the engineer.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nombeko. ‘I haven’t had time to think about it. Like I said, I’m the cleaning woman here.’
In that instant, one of Engineer van der Westhuizen’s many qualified colleagues came through the door. He had been sent by the research director to share some good news: the team had discovered that the problem was autocatalytic in nature; this resulted in chemical impurities in the filter of the processing machine, and they would soon be able to present a solution.
There was no reason for the colleague to say any of this, because just behind the Kaffir with the mop he saw what the engineer had written on his blackboard.
‘Oh, I see that you have already figured out what I came to tell you, boss. I won’t disturb you, then,’ said the colleague, and he turned round in the doorway.
Engineer van der Westhuizen sat behind his desk in silence and poured another tumbler full of Klipdrift.
Nombeko said that this certainly was lucky, wasn’t it? She would leave him alone in just a minute, but first she had a few questions. The first was whether the engineer thought it would be appropriate for her to deliver a mathematical explanation for how the team could increase the capacity from twelve thousand SWUs per year to twenty thousand, with a tail assay of 0.46 per cent.
The engineer did.
The other question was whether the engineer might be so kind as to order a new scrubbing brush for the office, since his dog had chewed the old one to pieces.
The engineer replied that he wasn’t making any promises, but he would see what he could do.
Nombeko thought she might as well appreciate the bright spots in her existence, as long as she was locked up with no possibility for escape. It would, for example, be exciting to see how long that sham of an engineer Westhuizen would last.
And all told, she did have it pretty good. She read her books, preferably while no one was looking; she mopped a few hallways and emptied a few ashtrays; and she read the research team’s analyses and explained them to the engineer as plainly as she could.
She spent her free time with the other help. They belonged to a minority that the regime of apartheid found more difficult to categorize; according to the rules they were ‘miscellaneous Asians’. More precisely, they were Chinese.
Chinese people as a race had ended up in South Africa almost a hundred years earlier, at a time when the country needed cheap labour (that also didn’t complain too bloody much) in the gold mines outside Johannesburg. That was history now, but Chinese colonies remained, and the language flourished.
The three Chinese girls (little sister, middle sister and big sister) were locked in with Nombeko at night. At first they were standoffish, but since mah-jongg is so much better with four than with three, it was worth a try, especially when the girl from Soweto didn’t seem to be as stupid as they had reason to believe, given that she wasn’t yellow.
Nombeko was happy to play, and she had soon learned almost everything about pong, kong and chow, as well as all possible winds in every imaginable direction. She had the advantage of being able to memorize all 144 of the tiles, so she won three out of four hands and let one of the girls win the fourth.
The Chinese girls and Nombeko also spent some time each week with the latter telling them all that had happened in the world since the last time, according to what she had been able to pick up here and there in the hallways and through the walls. On the one hand, it was not a comprehensive news report; on the other, the audience’s standards weren’t all that high. For example, when Nombeko reported that China had just decided that Aristotle and Shakespeare would no longer be forbidden in the country, the girls replied that this was sure to make both of them happy.
The sisters in misfortune became friends by way of the news reports and the game. And thanks to the characters and symbols on all of the tiles, the girls were inspired to teach Nombeko their Chinese dialect, upon which everyone had a good laugh at how quickly she learned and at the sisters’ less-successful attempts at the Xhosa Nombeko had learned from her mother.
From a historical perspective, the three Chinese girls’ morals were more dubious than Nombeko’s. They had ended up in the engineer’s possession in approximately the same way, but for fifteen years instead of seven. They had happened to meet the engineer at a bar in Johannesburg; he had made a pass at all three of them at the same time but was told that they needed money for a sick relative and wanted to sell . . . not their bodies, but rather a valuable family heirloom.
The engineer’s first priority was his horniness, but his second priority was the suspicion that he could make a killing, so he followed the girls home. There they showed him a patterned pottery goose from the Han dynasty, from approximately one hundred years before Christ. The girls wanted twenty thousand rand for the goose; the engineer realized that it must be worth at least ten times more, maybe a hundred! But the girls weren’t just girls – they were also Chinese, so he offered them fifteen thousand in cash outside the bank the next morning (‘Five thousand each, or nothing!’) and the idiots agreed to it.
The unique goose was given a place of honor on a pedestal in the engineer’s office until a year later when an Israeli Mossad agent, also a participant in the nuclear weapons project, took a closer look at the piece and declared it to be junk within ten seconds. The investigation that followed, led by an engineer with murder in his eyes, found that the goose had in fact been produced not by craftsmen in the province of Zhejiang during the Han dynasty approximately one hundred years before Christ, but rather by three young Chinese girls in a suburb of Johannesburg, during no dynasty at all, approximately one thousand, nine hundred and seventy five years after Christ.
But the girls had been careless enough to show him the goose in their own home. So the engineer and the legal system got hold of all three of them. Only two rand were left of the fifteen thousand, which was why the girls were now locked up at Pelindaba for at least ten more years. ‘Among ourselves, we call the engineer “鹅”,’ said one of the girls.
‘The goose,’ Nombeko translated.
What the Chinese girls wanted most of all was to return to the Chinese quarter of Johannesburg and continue producing geese from the time before Christ, but just do it a bit more elegantly than last time.
In the meantime, they had as little to complain about as Nombeko. Their work responsibilities were, among other things, to serve food to the engineer and the guards, as well as handle incoming and outgoing post. Especially the outgoing post. Everything, large and small, that could be stolen without being missed too much was quite simply addressed to the girls’ mother and placed in the out-box. Their mother received it all gratefully and sold it on, pleased with herself for once having made the investment of letting her girls learn to read and write in English.
Now and then they made a mess of things, though, because their methods were sloppy and risky. Like the time one of them mixed up the address labels and the prime minister himself called Engineer Westhuizen to ask why he had received eight candles, two hole-punches and four empty binders in his package – just as the Chinese girls’ mother received and immediately burned a four-hundred-page technical report on the disadvantages of using neptunium as a base for a fission charge.
* * *
Nombeko was irritated that it had taken her so long to realize what a fix she was in. In practice, given the way things had unfolded, she hadn’t been sentenced to seven years in the engineer’s service at all. She was there for life. Unlike the three Chinese girls, she had full insight into what was the world’s most top secret project. As long as there were twelve-thousand-volt fences between her and anyone else she could tattle to, it was no problem. But what if she were released? She was a combination of worthless black woman and security risk. So how long would she be allowed to live? Ten seconds. Or twenty. If she was lucky.
Her situation could be described as a mathematical equation with no solution. Because if she helped the engineer to succeed in his task, he would be praised, retire and receive a gilt-edged pension from the state, while she – who knew everything she shouldn’t know – received a shot to the back of the head.
If, however, she did her best to make him fail, the engineer would be disgraced, get fired and receive a much more modest pension, while she herself would still receive a shot to the back of the head.
In short: this was the equation she could not solve. All she could do was try to walk a tightrope – that is, do her best to make sure the engineer wasn’t revealed as the sham he was while at the same time trying to prolong the project as much as possible. That in itself wouldn’t protect her from that shot to the back of the head, but the longer she could put it off, the greater chance there was that something would happen in the meantime. Like a revolution or a staff mutiny or something else impossible to believe in.
Assuming she couldn’t find a way out after all.
In the absence of other ideas, she sat at the window in the library as often as she could, in order to study the activity at the gates. She hung around there at various times of day and made note of the guards’ routines.
What she quickly discovered, among other things, was that every vehicle that came in or went out was searched by both guards and dog – except when the engineer was in it. Or the research director. Or one of the two Mossad agents. Apparently these four were above suspicion. Unfortunately, they also had better parking spots than the others. Nombeko could make her way to the big garage, crawl into a boot – and be discovered by both guard and dog on duty. The latter was under instructions to bite first and ask master later. But the small garage, where the important people parked, where there were boots one might survive in – she didn’t have access to that. The garage key was one of the few that the engineer did not keep in the cupboard Nombeko was responsible for. He needed it every day, so he carried it with him.
Another thing Nombeko observed was that the black cleaning woman in the outer perimeter actually did set foot within the boundaries of Pelindaba each time she emptied the green rubbish bin just beside the inner of the two twelve-thousand-volt fences. This took place every other day, and it fascinated Nombeko, because she was pretty sure that the cleaning woman didn’t have clearance to go there but that the guards let it go in order to avoid emptying their own crap.
This gave rise to a bold thought. Nombeko could make her way unseen to the rubbish bin via the big garage, crawl into it, and hitch a ride with the black woman past the gates and out to the skips on the free side. The woman emptied the bin according to a strict schedule at 4.05 p.m. every other day, and she survived the manoeuvre only because the guard dogs had learned not to tear this particular darky apart without asking first. On the other hand, they did nose suspiciously at the bin each time.
So she would have to put the dogs out of commission for an afternoon or so. Then, and only then, would the stowaway have a chance of surviving her escape. A tiny bit of food poisoning – might that work?
Nombeko involved the three Chinese girls because they were responsible for feeding the entire staff of guards and all of Sector G, both people and animals.
‘Of course!’ said the big sister when Nombeko brought it up. ‘We happen to be experts in dog poisoning, all three of us. Or at least two of us.’
By now, Nombeko had ceased being surprised by whatever the Chinese girls did or said, but this was still exceptional. She asked the big sister for details about what she’d just said so that Nombeko wouldn’t have to wonder for the rest of her life. However long that might be.
Well, before the Chinese girls and their mother started working in the lucrative counterfeiting industry, their mother had run a dog cemetery right next to the white neighbourhood of Parktown West outside Johannesburg. Business was bad; dogs ate as well and as nutritiously as people generally did in that area, so they lived far too long. But then their mother realized that the big sister and the middle sister could increase their turnover by putting out poisoned dog food here and there in the surrounding parks, where the whites’ poodles and Pekinese ran free. At the time, the little sister was too young and might easily have got it into her head to taste the dog food if she got hold of it.
In a short time the owner of the dog cemetery had twice as much to do. And the family would probably still be making a good living today, if only they hadn’t become, to tell the truth, a bit too greedy. Because when there were more dead dogs in the park than living ones, those white racists had pointed straight at the only Chink in the area and her daughters.
‘Yes, that was certainly prejudiced of them,’ said Nombeko.
Their mother had had to pack her bags quickly, and she hid herself and her children in central Johannesburg and changed careers.
That was a few years ago now, but the girls could probably remember the various ways of dosing dog food.
‘Well, now we’re talking about eight dogs – and about poisoning them just enough,’ said Nombeko. ‘So they get a little bit sick for a day or two. No more than that.’
‘Sounds like a typical case of antifreeze poisoning,’ said the middle sister.
‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ said the big sister.
And then they argued about the appropriate dose. The middle sister thought that a cup and a half should do, but the big sister pointed out that they were dealing with large German shepherds here, not some little Chihuahua.
In the end, the girls agreed that two cups was the right amount to put the dogs in a dreadful condition until the next day.
The girls approached the problem in such a carefree manner that Nombeko already regretted asking for their help. Didn’t they realize how much trouble they would be in when the poisoned dog food was traced back to them?
‘Nah,’ said the little sister. ‘It will all work out. We’ll have to start by ordering a bottle of antifreeze, otherwise we can’t poison anything.’
Now Nombeko was twice as regretful. Didn’t they realize that the security personnel would figure out it was them in just a few minutes, once they discovered what had been added to their usual shopping list?
And then Nombeko thought of something.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Don’t do anything until I get back. Nothing!’
The girls watched Nombeko go in surprise. What was she up to?
The fact was that Nombeko had thought of something she’d read in one of the research director’s countless reports to the engineer. It wasn’t about antifreeze, but ethylene glycol. It said in the report that the researchers were experimenting with liquids that had a boiling point of over one hundred degrees Celsius in order to gain a few tenths of a second by raising the temperature at which critical mass would be reached. That was where the ethylene glycol came in. Didn’t antifreeze and ethylene glycol have similar properties?
If the research facility’s library was at its worst when it came to the latest news, it was at its best when it came to more general information. Such as confirmation that ethylene glycol and antifreeze were more than almost the same thing. They were the same thing.
Nombeko borrowed two of the keys in the engineer’s cupboard and sneaked down to the big garage and into the chemicals cupboard next to the electrical station. There she found a nearly full seven-gallon barrel of ethylene glycol. She poured a gallon into the bucket she’d brought along and returned to the girls.
‘Here you go – this is plenty, with some to spare,’ she said.
Nombeko and the girls decided that they would start by mixing a very mild dose into the dog food to see what would happen, and then they would increase the dose until all eight dogs were off sick without causing the guards to become suspicious.
Therefore the Chinese girls lowered the dose from two cups to one and three-quarters, upon Nombeko’s recommendation, but they made the mistake of letting the little sister take care of the dosing itself – that is, the one sister of the three who had been too little in the good old days. Thus she mixed in one and three-quarters cups of ethylene glycol per dog in the first, conservative round. Twelve hours later, all eight dogs were as dead as those in Parktown West a few years earlier. Furthermore, the guard commander’s food-sneaking cat was in a critical condition.
One characteristic of ethylene glycol is that it rapidly enters the bloodstream via the intestines. Then the liver turns it into glycolaldehyde, glycolic acid and oxalate. If there is enough of these, they take out the kidneys before affecting the lungs and heart. The direct cause of death in the eight dogs was cardiac arrest.
The immediate results of the youngest Chinese girl’s miscalculation were that the alarm was sounded, that the guards went on high alert, and that it was, of course, impossible for Nombeko to smuggle herself out in a rubbish bin.
It was only day two before the girls were called in for interrogation, but while they were sitting there and flatly denying involvement, the security personnel found a nearly empty bucket of ethylene glycol in the boot of one of the 250 workers’ cars. Nombeko had access to the garage, thanks to the engineer’s key cupboard, of course; the boot in question was the only one that happened to be unlocked, and she had to put the bucket somewhere. The owner of the car was a half-ethical sort of guy – on the one hand, he would never betray his country; on the other hand, as luck would have it, he had chosen that very day to swipe his department director’s briefcase and the money and chequebook it contained. This was found alongside the bucket, and when all was said and done, the man had been seized, interrogated, fired . . . and sentenced to six months in prison for theft, plus thirty-two years for an act of terror.
‘That was close,’ said the little sister once the three sisters were no longer suspects.
‘Shall we try again?’ the middle sister wondered.
‘But then we’d have to wait for them to get new dogs,’ said the big sister. ‘The old ones are all gone.’
Nombeko didn’t say anything. But she thought that her prospects for the future weren’t much brighter than those of the director’s cat, who had started having convulsions.
CHAPTER 4
On a Good Samaritan, a bicycle thief and a wife who smoked more and more
Since Henrietta’s money was gone, Ingmar had to do most of his hitchhiking from Nice back to Södertälje without eating. But in Malmö, the dirty, hungry junior post office clerk happened to meet a soldier of the Salvation Army who was on his way home after a long day in the service of the Lord. Ingmar asked if the soldier could spare a piece of bread.
The Salvationist immediately allowed himself to be governed by the spirit of love and compassion, so much so that Ingmar was allowed to come home with him.
Once there, he served mashed turnips with pork and then settled Ingmar in his bed; he himself would sleep on the floor before the stove. Ingmar yawned and said that he was impressed by the soldier’s friendliness. To this the soldier replied that the explanation for his actions was in the Bible, not least in the Gospel of Luke, where one could read about the Good Samaritan. The Salvationist asked Ingmar if he would mind if he read a few lines from the Holy Book.
‘Not at all,’ said Ingmar, ‘but read quietly because I need to sleep.’
And then he dozed off. He woke the next morning to the scent of something baking.
After breakfast he thanked the charitable soldier, said farewell, and then stole the soldier’s bicycle. As he pedalled away, he wondered whether it was the Bible that said something about necessity knowing no law. Ingmar wasn’t sure.
In any case, he sold the stolen goods in Lund and used the money to buy a train ticket all the way home.
Henrietta met him as he stepped through the door. Before she could open her mouth to welcome him home, he informed her that it was now time to make a child.
Henrietta did have a number of questions, not the least of which was why Ingmar suddenly wanted to get into bed without his damned box of American soldiers’ condoms in hand, but she wasn’t so stupid as to deny him. All she asked was that her husband shower first, because he smelled almost as bad as he looked.
The couple’s very first condom-free adventure lasted for four minutes. Then Ingmar was finished. But Henrietta was still pleased. Her beloved fool was home again and he had actually thrown the condoms into the bin before they went to bed. Could this mean that they were done with all the foolishness? And that they might be blessed with a little baby?
Fifteen hours later, Ingmar woke up again. He started by telling her that he had in fact made contact with the king down in Nice. Or the other way round, really. The king had made contact with him. Well, with his forehead. Using his cane.
‘Good heavens,’ said Henrietta.
Yes, you could say that again. But actually, Ingmar was thankful. The king had made him see clearly again. Made him realize that the monarchy was of the devil and must be eradicated.
‘Of the devil?’ said his startled wife.
‘And must be eradicated.’
But such a thing demanded both cunning and patience. And also that Ingmar and Henrietta had a child as part of the plan. His name would be Holger, incidentally.
‘Who?’ said Henrietta.
‘Our son, of course.’
Henrietta, who had spent her entire adult life silently longing for an Elsa, said that it could just as easily be a daughter, if they had a child at all. But then she was informed that she should stop being so negative. If she would instead serve Ingmar a little food, he promised to tell her how everything would be from now on.
So Henrietta did. She served pytt i panna with beetroot and eggs.
Between bites, Ingmar told her about his encounter with Gustaf V in greater detail. For the first but by no means last time he told her about ‘messenger boy’ and ‘scoundrel’. For the second but by no means last time he described the silver cane to the forehead.
‘And that’s why the monarchy must be eradicated?’ said Henrietta. ‘With cunning and patience? How do you mean to use the cunning and patience?’
What she thought – but didn’t say – was that neither patience nor cunning had historically been salient traits of her husband’s.
Well, when it came to patience, Ingmar realized that even if he and Henrietta had created a child as recently as the day before, it would take several months before the kid arrived and, thereafter, years before Holger was old enough to take over from his father.
‘Take over what?’ Henrietta wondered.
‘The battle, my dear Henrietta. The battle.’
Ingmar had had plenty of time to think while he hitchhiked through Europe. It wouldn’t be easy to eradicate the monarchy. It was something of a lifelong project. Or even more than that. That was where Holger came in. Because if Ingmar died before the battle was won, his son would step in.