Free Those Who Love Night by Wessel Ebersohn Page A

more.”
    â€œCould you tell me, have I been eating?”
    â€œA little. When you didn’t eat, some of the others took your food. You get better food than us and…”
    â€œI know. It’s all right.”
    â€œMe also, I took some of your food too. I hope you don’t mind. None of us are strong anymore.”
    â€œJake?”
    â€œYes, my brother.”
    â€œWhy are you here?”
    â€œArmed robbery. Awaiting trial.”
    â€œWhat did you rob?”
    â€œA supermarket.” Tony waited too long, thinking about the reasons a man robs a supermarket. Big Jake spoke again: “Not to feed my family or anything like that. Wife and children died last year. I was just tired of all this. I wanted to take the money.”
    â€œI understand.”
    This seemed to surprise Big Jake. “You feel like that too, an educated man like you?”
    â€œSometimes. We all do.”
    Big Jake seemed to think about that for a while, but when he spoke again his mind had been seized by something altogether different. “Tony?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou see the man in the corner, over there on the other side?”
    â€œThe old man with the gray hair?”
    â€œYou see him? He lies very quiet.”
    â€œI see him.”
    â€œHe died yesterday.”
    â€œDo they know?”
    â€œI told them.”
    â€œAre you sure he’s dead?”
    â€œI went up to him to see. He’s not breathing. Heart’s not beating.”
    Tony looked at the body of the gray-haired man for a while, then he closed his eyes to cut out the sight.
    â€œTony?” It was Big Jake again.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIf we stay here, we’re all going that way.”
    For Tony, there was no point in taking the matter further. Conversation was both pointless and too great an effort. Everything was.
    Eventually the fog again rose from the ground until Tony could see none of the other men or even the far walls of the cell. Nor could he hear Jake’s voice when the big man spoke again.

11
    The exhibition was at the Sheraton, directly across the road from the gardens of the Union Buildings, the same place where, according to Abigail’s anonymous friend, Robert had dallied with the PA , the pretty blond temp with the milky-white breasts.
    These were Abigail’s thoughts as they neared the hotel, Robert driving the BMW four-by-four, while she sat silently, her hands folded in her lap. He had tried to make conversation a few times but, with little response from her, had given up.
    Abigail had been surprised at the invitation to what she thought was an all-Jewish affair. “No,” Robert had told her. “They’re looking for donations wherever they can get them. And the work they’re doing is genuinely good.”
    Joshua Berman, the chairman of Tikkun SA, eighty years old and near the end of an active business career, greeted them as they stepped from the lift. He was wearing a tuxedo and smiling warmly at all new arrivals. He read their registration tags very skilfully without them being sure that he was doing so. “Robert,” he said, beaming, “and Abigail, I’m delighted you could come.”
    Berman’s speech, delivered a few minutes later, was short. The artists had donated their paintings and the money was all going, every last penny, to an antipoverty initiative in an impoverished part of the Eastern Cape. The hotel had donated the venue and Tikkun SA’s donors had picked up the administration costs.
    The paintings were not being auctioned. Like any other exhibition, they carried prices, personally inflated by Berman, “for a cause that is second to none for social impact.” The guests, perhaps a hundred representatives of the region’s wealthier families and most profitable businesses, milled among the works of art making appreciative sounds. Berman, who had little interest in art, but much interest in publicizing his efforts to