The Insanity
I have become completely insane over the last year. I don't know exactly why, but I think it is because I have been living in the old man's house for more than a year now. Living in his house, caring for him, caring for the house, seeing that everything runs smoothly made my go insane. Or maybe...maybe it was something else, but I just can't think what it could be. I am too busy planning how I was going to kill the old man. Somehow I think that killing him will get the noises out of my head. I came to Cape Town in 1999 to find work. Everybody was always saying how easy it was to get work once you are in Cape Town and this encouraged me to go try my luck there. In my home town of De Doorns the only work to be found was on a farm or as a domestic worker for one of the white families. And the pay for both was no good and not enough to live on. I don't have much education, but I always considered myself intelligent enough to earn a good living. And staying in De Doorns was definitely not going to help me in achieving that. That was why I decided to come to Cape Town. Once I was in the city I found out it was totally different than how people described it. I am sure that the people of my home town, who was always telling how grand it was in the city, was never here themselves. In the first place it is not easy to get work. The city itself is very dirty and the people are unfriendly. Cold and unfriendly. There is a emotionless, unwelcoming atmosphere engulfing the whole city with all it's suburbs. It is as if the people who stayed here all their lives can't feel it...I don't think they even know it is like that. The only place where I found a bit of warmth was in the squatter camp – or informal settlement, like the government-people like to call it -that I made my temporary home after a while. All the people living in the squatter camps are from the rural areas, just like me. They are not over friendly, but they are helpful. Here everyone is poor and by helping your neighbour, you are also helping yourself. Some men built me a little shack and I made this shack my temporary home while I was looking for work. And looking for work in the city was a job on its own. I had very little money and I walked to the places of possible employment most of the time. Standing in front of the factory gates early in the morning, before the regular staff even arrived, hoping...just hoping that today I would be lucky and I would be picked out of the group. What could I do. I only completed grade eight at school and most of the other people also looking for work had Matric. I don't particularly think that they were more clever or intelligent than me, but they were always the ones who were chosen whenever someone came out to look for fresh workers. When the recruiters heard I left school in grade eight it was as if I didn't exist anymore. Could I help it that my grandmother got sick and I was taken out of school to look after our house, while my mother went to go look after my grandmother...was it my fault? I wanted to complete school but I couldn't. After standing fruitlessly at the factory gates, I would go into the white suburbs looking for work from door to door. But people were not taking on domestic servants anymore. The government made the rules for taking on domestic servants so strict that employers could go to jail if they didn't comply with even one of the rules.. This scared people to take on domestic servants and people like me couldn't find work. But what did the government care? They cared only in looking good to the outside world and the people of the country had to take second place. So by two o' clock I usually went home, becoming more despondent every day. And then, one Monday afternoon, my neighbour, Nosipho, came with the good news that she found a nice job for me. Nosipho was working at a shop in Gatesville. That day friends of her employer came to visit them. During the visit they said they were looking for a girl to look after their father. The old man was living in his own house not far from them. He didn't want to move in with them. Both the husband and wife hade their own professions that took most of their time and they just wanted someone to be with the old man for safety's sake. They asked Nosipho if she knew anyone reliable and she told them about me. The next morning I went with Nosipho. I looked my best that day and both the family and the old man was satisfied with me. From that moment on everything went very smoothly for me. The house was in Rylands, one of the most affluent areas in the Western Cape. Mostly Indian people live in this area. The house was very big and I think my whole squatter camp could have moved into that house and there would still have been enough space for the soccer field. In any case the conditions were that I had to sleep in. This was no problem for me, because my shack at the squatter camp was only temporary in any case. I decided to rent it out to someone else. Thus I would get money from two sides now. I could take days off, but I just had to inform the old man and his family beforehand. The old man wasn't an invalid or a sickly person. He was seventy four years old and still going strong. I just had to make his food, clean the house and see that everything runs smoothly. If any problems came up that I couldn't resolve on my own I could just pick up the phone and phone his family and they would be there in no time. The work there was very easy and the old man was no problem at all. He was totally independent, but there were some things he didn't consider doing, because he was a man. So like I said, from then on everything went very smoothly for me. I now had more money than I ever had. He paid me a very decent salary. I could buy all the things that I always wanted, like a portable CD player and nice clothes and make-up and nice stationary on which I wrote long letters to my mother at home. I could also afford to go out at night now. The Galaxy - one of the best nightclubs in the Western Cape -is not far from where I worked and I could go there whenever I wanted to. But it was too wild for me. The guys that I met there just wanted to get me drunk so that they could have sex with me. Although I did enjoy the attention, it was not for me and after a while I stopped going. I was never actually one for socializing much. And then I stayed in the house more and more. The house was so big, one could never get bored. I cleaned everything and everywhere. I found a recipe book and started making Indian foods for the old man from the book. I experimented and soon became such an accomplished cook that I was always invited to help out at his family's house with the cooking whenever they had a function. Not to peel potatoes and wash the dishes, but to actually help cook the food. And everybody loved my food. I was also paid for this and in six months time I had a very solid bank account. Later I stayed in the house even on my off-days. Then, when I was working for the old man for eight months, I felt the madness taking hold of me. I could actually feel it settling over me like an evil mist. It is usually said that people who are insane don't know or realize that they are insane. I don't know about other people, but I knew that I was mad. And I enjoyed it. My senses became open now and I could hear and see things I couldn't hear and see before. I don't now what made me insane. There is no history of insanity in my family as far as I knew. And I was always considered to be normal girl. Maybe it was the old man. He was doing everything in a slow manner. He had a slow way of talking, like he had a million years just to say one word. And the slow way that he was walking...or rather shuffling. He didn't lift up his feet when he was walking, he would just shuffle his feet forward. Why couldn't he just lift his feet a few centimetres from the floor when he walked, like all of us do, why did he had to shuffle, like doing some weird dance? And the slow way he would eat his food, like he was chewing every molecule of the food, before swallowing it. I never considered myself to be stupid, but my madness made me more clever. The more the madness grew, the harder I worked and the more friendly I became towards the old man. One day I even overheard him telling his daughter on the phone how glad he was that they found me to look after him. I especially like the part where he told her that he wouldn't even know that I am in the house, but the minute he needs me for something I am there. My madness drove me to do more for him than I had to, because I was planning on killing him. Like I said before I could hear and see things now that I couldn't before. This doesn't mean that I was seeing spirits or invisible people who told me to kill the old man. No - I decided quite on my own to kill him. What I could hear was the grass grow. I could hear the chirping sounds the flowers made when I watered them. And strangely, flowers actually like it when you cut them. When they are cut they make a soft coocly sound like babies make when they are content. I could also hear the subsonic ways that insects communicate with each other. I could hear all that and with it my knowledge grew. I was planning the murder of the old man very carefully. I wanted to get rid of his slow shuffle. His slow way of talking, like a retarded child. I wanted to get rid of him. Understand me, I wanted nothing from him. He was very rich, but I didn't want any of his wealth. I had more than enough for myself. I even got myself a flat in Rylands. Because I never had to stay there I also rented the flat out so someone else. I was getting money from three different sources now; my shack in the squatter camp, my salary and from the flat. With all the extra money I had, I bought myself a little car. Believe me when I say I didn't need anything from anyone. So I didn't need anything from the old man, except his death. I kept on planning the way that I was going to kill him. The more I planned, the nicer I became. No one would ever suspect that I killed him. I could already see myself at his funeral. How I was going to cry and maybe even try to jump into the grave. And then it was the night of the murder. His children was on holiday in Durban. He would also go to Durban, but only in a week's time. The evening was totally quiet. Not even the dogs were barking. The noises of the invisible insects and rodents that resides in the house were also quiet. It was as if the whole Universe was waiting on something major to happen. This was a sign to me that what I was going to do was right and now is the time to do it. This is what the Universe wants me to do. This was what I was born for. When I was sure that the old man was asleep, I went to the kitchen, where I switched off the electricity at the mains. This was so that he couldn't switch on his light if he should wake up when I was in his room. I lit a candle and walk barefoot on the soft carpet of the passage to his room. With the light of the candle I looked at his sleeping face. I had the big scissors in my hand, ready to bring it down on his face and drive it into his left eye. From all my planning of the murder I knew that it will go straight into his brain, killing him on the spot. His face was gentle and relaxed. His grey hair was hanging a bit over his face. And then...I couldn’t do it… I couldn't murder him. I couldn't bring the scissors down into his eye. I couldn't kill the old man. I went back to my room, totally disappointed with myself. The following night was a normal night with all the dogs barking like mad and the insects chirping away inside the house in their nests. Luckily all the plants were asleep otherwise the noise would have been overwhelming in my head. This was not a night for murder. I knew that my instinct would tell me when to try again. At about one o' clock that night I woke with the urge to kill the old man. The urge in me was very strong. I could even hear sounds now that I couldn't before. I could hear the beating of his heart. I could hear it from my room. Like a huge drum. I went to the kitchen to switch off the main power and then I went to his room again with the candle. He's door was ajar and I must have opened it too wide in my excitement, because it knocked against the hat stand with a loud bang. The old man immediately woke up and sat upright in his bed. I could hear his heart beating faster and faster. It became louder in my head. I was turning to run away from the noise and then I heard his heart stop. The drum beat of his heart in my head suddenly stopped. The silence was almost overwhelming. It felt so good. I turned around and saw that he was flopped down on the cushions. I went to him. He wasn't breathing anymore. I couldn't feel his pulse. He was dead. It must have been a heart attack. The sudden waking up in the middle of the night. The noise and seeing me with my white nightdress and the candle lightning my face in the darkness, must have been too much for his heart. He died of a heart attack and I never had a change to kill him. Damn him. How dare he take this away from me, by dying on his own? I will show him. The madness took complete hold of me. I'll show him. He is nothing. I took his lifeless body from the bed to the big bathroom where I lay him down in the huge bath. Then with the electric carving knife I systematically cut him up there by the candlelight. His head, his arms, his legs and I also split his torso into two parts. All these part fit separately very nicely in a green bag. I put them in four of these bags and the head I put into a green bag that was already half filled with grass and old leaves. Then I simply put the bags with the other refuge bags at the back of the kitchen. They would be taken away and would be on the rubbish dumb, before there is any smell. By the time it stared to smell it would be under tons of other refuse. After I cleaned the bathtub of the blood there wasn't even one sign of what happened in that house that night. I switched the power back on. I then made up the old man's bed with fresh linen. I put the old linen in the washing machine and switched it on. The whole murder - if you can call it that - didn't even take two hours. I took a nice shower. It was five past four when I was done and went back to bed. I fell into a very comfortable sleep. I think the madness left me when I chopped off the old man's head. I could only hear the normal sounds now. I think when the old man's heart stopped, my madness also stopped. I was woken from a very nice dream by the doorbell that kept on ringing. My alarm clock showed it was a quarter past five. I went to the door. I was feeling exceptionally good now. I don't think I ever felt like this before in my life. I felt exhilarated. There was nothing to be afraid of. I had lots of money, the old man was dead and I can go back to De Doorns. And the main thing the noises were out of my head and I felt sane again. It was the police. A sergeant and a constable. They were checking up if everything was alright, because of a phone call they received from someone living in the road. The people saw the lights going out and then a little light moved through the house. (It must have been me with the candle). They were too afraid to investigate themselves and so they phoned the police. As usual the police arrived hours after the report was made. No wonder that crime is flourishing in this country. I welcomed the policemen into the house and told them that I am sure nothing is wrong. I have been asleep the whole time and didn't hear anything. I requested them to go through the house with me as I was alone there. I told them the owner of the house was on holiday in Durban with his children and that they would be back only at the month's end. I took them through the whole house showing them everything. The constable inspected the outside premises, that was now well lit. He came back satisfied that nothing was amiss. I requested them to have some hot chocolate with me in the kitchen. We pulled up our chairs with the kitchen door open and enjoyed the hot chocolate and some biscuits, that I baked myself. After a while we were chatting and joking like old friends. And then my madness returned full force. I could feel the cold grey feeling taking hold of me. The noises were back in my head. I really wanted the policemen to go now, but I couldn't just tell them to leave out of a sudden. I knew that they were near the end of their shift and they just wanted to sit it out comfortably. The noise was becoming unbearably for me. It was not only in the middle of my head, but all over me. It was so loud I was sure that they could also hear it now. They were looking strangely at me. I don't know why. Maybe it was because I was speaking so loudly. But I had to, to get my voice heard over the other noises that was surrounding us in the kitchen. I had to speak at the top of my voice. And then I heard it. I could hear the insect climbing into the old man’s head. I could hear them as they started eating his brain. The sound was too terrible. It was a horrible wet sound. It started slowly, but loudly. And then, as more and more insects got into the head, it became worse. All of them were chirping subsonically , while feasting on the brain. It became louder and louder right in the middle of my head. Louder and louder. I jump up, making the chair fall to one side. “What's wrong?” They said as I put my hands over my ears. Putting my hand over my ears didn't help, because the noise was inside my head. “What's wrong?” I paced up and down with my hands over my breasts. Pacing up and down in time with the beats of the heart. The noise. Stop eating his brain...stop eating his brain.... The policeman could hear them eating his brain...they could hear it. They were looking very strangely at me. Their eyes told me that they can hear it. They know now. There is no escape. No escape. “What's wrong?” “Here it is...” I screamed as I rushed out by the kitchen door and took out the green bag with the head in it. They came after me. “Here it is...” I showed them. I was screaming at the top of my voice now to make myself heard above the commotion in my head. “You knew all along...didn't you...you were just teasing me...you didn't want to give me work...I had to stand in the bitter cold all morning and then you gave the work to someone who came after me just because she had a Matric...you all hate me...and I greeted you when I got on the bus, but everyone was just staring at me...as if I was some kind of fool.” ...and as the words bubbled from my mouth the old man's head was smiling with me. A gentle slow smile. A smile that showed he had all the time in the world... |
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