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She has never been called anything like that before;
she is not certain if she heard correctly.
‘Blonde what?’
The voice becomes hesitant.
‘Is that not the escort service?’
The voice has lost its honey-coated slickness. It is a
bit embarrassed.
‘This is the office of the Roodepoort magistrate,’ says
the magistrate, ‘and I am the magistrate.’
‘Oh, my gosh!’ cries the voice—it has now become
panicky. ‘Sorry. Wrong number.’
She puts the phone back and ponders what has just
happened. Perhaps there is nothing to it. Just a misdialled
number. Men! And the bastard may be someone’s hus-
band too. The wife thinks he is at work when he is busy
calling escort agencies.
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The phone rings again. At first she hesitates to
answer it. After a few rings she reaches for it. It is a dif-
ferent caller asking for the Blonde Bombshell, breathing
heavily and promising to give her such a great time she
will never want to be fucked by anyone else ever again.
A cold sweat runs down her spine. She can feel the
presence of the callers as if they are in the room with her.
They have invaded her space, just like it has been invaded
at her home but in a different manner. The office had
become the only refuge where she could feel in control.
Now the calls are infringing this sacred space. She feels
so violated she wants to take a bath—wash away the
slime that has dripped from the voices on to her body.
OK, OK . . . she must calm down now . . . regain her com-
posure. This may just be a mistake. Perhaps a typo in an
escort-agency advertisement in some tabloid or porno-
graphic magazine.
She is not going to answer the phone again. But what
if it’s important court business? What if it’s the chief
magistrate? She decides to leave it off the hook and con-
tinues writing the judgement.
After a while her cellphone rings. It is Krish Naidoo.
‘Where are you? I have been calling your office.’
‘I’m in the office. I left the phone off the hook.’
‘What on earth for, Kristin?’
‘Because it is my phone and I am busy.’
‘We’ve got to talk, Kristin.’
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The last thing she wants to do is talk to Krish Naidoo.
It can only be about the Visagie case. She does not want
to be explaining to him why she hasn’t touched that file
since the last time they discussed the matter. But she her-
self needs to talk to someone. And Krish Naidoo is the
only one left of the people who knew her in the past and
with whom she and her husband used to socialize—well,
at least at those events that had something to do with the
legal profession. Since her divorce she has pushed every-
one away. He is the only one who could not be totally
pushed away because his practice is in Roodepoort and
he occasionally has to appear before her.
They arrange to meet for coffee at Mugg & Bean. The
nearest is located a number of kilometres away at the
Town Square Mall in Weltevreden Park. The whole of
Roodepoort is so run-down and is now so downmarket
that there is not a single Seattle Coffee Shop or Mugg &
Bean in the whole town. Only fish and chips cafes and
stores that sell cheap clothes, mostly factory rejects, and
the ubiquitous furniture stores. And, of course, the
sleazy sex joints. But there is no place for a decent person
to relax with a latte and a muffin as there are in the sub-
urbs. It is the same story with all inner-city districts on
the Rand. Life has migrated to the suburbs.
They drive in separate cars because from Town
Square she will go home, which is just three streets away.
Krish Naidoo is already waiting at the table for two
in the coffee house. As soon as she takes her seat, even
before the waiter takes their orders, Kristin tells him
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159
about the calls she has been getting this morning and
accuses Stevo Visagie of being behind them.
‘My client is in jail, Kristin,’ says Krish Naidoo. ‘Why
are you blaming him for this?’
‘He has people outside. I will get to the bottom of
this,’ she says. ‘And if I find that the Visagies have any-
thing to do with it, someone will be very sorry, Krish.’
‘I still don’t understand why you won’t involve the
police. I’m sure they would have caught whoever is
harassing you by now.’
‘I don’t want the publicity, Krish. That should be
clear by now. I don’t want every scumbag in Johannes-
burg thinking that they can intimidate me in my fight
against prostitutes, their pimps, their madams and their
brothels.’
This exasperates Krish Naidoo. He pounds the table
with both hands, which startles both Kristin Uys and the
waiter who is waiting patiently to take their orders. The
white men and women in the cafe look askance at the
lovers’ quarrel between a white woman and an Indian
man. Old South Africa finds it difficult to rest in peace in
places like Weltevreden Park. Sometimes it rears its head
in the guise of the old white-haired woman who looks at
the couple with disgust and hisses, ‘ Sies!’
The waiter takes their orders. He will have an
espresso and she a mocha.
‘Give it up, Kristin, will you?’ says Krish Naidoo, but
softly now. ‘Your problem is that you don’t want to forget
the past.’
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‘I know that you qualified as an attorney, Krish,’ she
says. ‘But I didn’t know you also qualified as a shrink.’
‘Your sarcasm doesn’t impress anyone but you,
Kristin. All I’m saying is just because Barend fell into dis-
grace is no reason for you to go out on a moral crusade.’
‘A poor excuse for a shrink, I must add. I divorced
Barend. We went our bloody separate ways. Why do you
want to make him an issue in my life?’
‘And it’s no reason to push your old friends away.’
Barend left town a broken man. The scandal with
prostitutes destroyed his career as a local government
politician who had been so highly respected that he was
slated to be the next mayor of Roodepoort that year. He
was also stripped of his position as an elder of the church
and later the Law Society struck him off the roll after it
was discovered that he had used funds from his trust
account to service his addiction to prostitutes. Whatever
one may say about him, Krish Naidoo is certain that he
moved on. He did not push away those who wanted to
help. He picked up the pieces, as the cliché goes, and
glued them together. He was not deterred by the fact that
the cracks could still be seen. Instead he got himself a
clerical job at a platinum mine in Rustenburg and
immersed himself in a new life. Ordinary and less presti-
gious, but a new life all the same. Kristin should move on
too. She must not be afraid to get involved with people
on a personal level. That’s not the way to protect herself
from being hurt again. She should move on.
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161
‘Who says I haven’t moved on, Krish?’
‘No, you haven’t. You used to be a nice person.’
At this he chuckles. She breaks into guarded laughter.
‘So I’m not a nice person just because I’m strict in the
courtroom and I rule without fear or favour? I’ve always
been like that, even when I was still married to Barend.
He has nothing to do with that.’
‘I’m not talking about the courtroom, and you know
it. You used to be outgoing.’
‘A social butterfly, hey? Well, tough luck, Krish
Naidoo, I grew up.’
Indeed she was one of the popular socialites at uni-
versity. After graduating from the University of Pretoria
with a BIuris she went on to do an LLB at Wits Law School
against the wishes of her parents and other relatives who
couldn’t understand why a girl from a good Afrikaans
family would want to study at an English university. That
was where she met Krish Naidoo, who was there for a
BProc degree. They shared some classes and got to be
friends, to the extent that when Krish Naidoo got married
she was one of his special guests at a Hindu ceremony
and occasionally was invited for the Indian dishes that
his wife cooked. That was an extremely liberal gesture for
a woman brought up with strict Calvinistic values. After
she married the more conservative Barend, Kristin and
Krish didn’t see much of each other, except when they
appeared on opposite sides in some civil matter (she was
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still an attorney then) and would then meet for lunch and
a drink afterwards.
‘Now I keep to myself by choice,’ she says defiantly.
‘Because you think your former society friends are
laughing at you? Well, I have news for you—they have
their own problems.’
For the first time we see the magistrate getting emo-
tional, with glassy eyes and a teary voice.
‘Do you know how it felt when I saw on television
that a brothel had been raided by the Hillbrow police . . .
and there was my husband . . . my childhood sweetheart
. . . among the regular patrons who were caught with their
pants down . . . right there on the TV screen . . . hand-
cuffed to a whore!’
Krish Naidoo holds both of her hands to his chest.
He would like to give her a warm hug and tell her every-
thing will be all right, but he knows that she would find
that humiliating. She hates to display any sign of weak-
ness if she can help it. She is ashamed of herself for break-
ing down like this as it is and tries to brush everything
aside by changing the subject.
‘So, Krish, what did you want to discuss with me?
We didn’t come here to talk about my marriage to Barend,
did we?’
He wanted to talk about the Visagie case, to find out
why it is taking so long for the judges of the high court
to review her summary judgement. He also wanted to tell
her that if he does not hear from the judges within the
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next seven days, he will lodge his complaint directly with
the chief justice. But this is not the time.
‘Never mind,’ says Krish Naidoo. ‘It can wait.’
Back at the magistrate’s house Don Mateza is in an
apron and is busy cooking in the kitchen. In the morning
he followed the magistrate to work, went to his office to
check on things and then was struck by the brilliant idea
of surprising her with a candlelight dinner. So, he drove
to the supermarket at Palm Court to buy a few ingredi-
ents and then back to the house to transform them into a
samp-and-beans wonder that sings in the mouth in a
completely different tune from that of the traditional
Xhosa dish. His is cooked with shoulder mutton and an
aromatic mixture of cardamoms, mixed masala, cinna-
mon, fennel seeds, bay leaves, curry powder, crushed
garlic, crushed ginger root and fresh coriander. If this
does not melt her heart, then nothing on earth will ever
do so.
One thing wonderful about this dish is that you cook
everything in one pot.
He plans on returning to the courthouse at about
four-thirty to accompany the magistrate back home. He
will set the table before he leaves for Roodepoort.
The dish still has to simmer for a few more minutes.
It would have been ready by now if it were not for the calls
he had to answer as he was beginning to chop the mutton
into tiny pieces. When the phone rang for the first time
he rushed for it hoping it was Tumi but then remembered
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that Tumi has never called him on the magistrate’s land-
line. She calls him only on his cellphone.
It was a strange voice.
‘Hi, Blonde Bombshell, I need your services,’ it said
chirpily.
‘You need my services, hey?’ responded Don, just as
chirpily. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’
‘Hey, is that not the escort service?’
‘Where do you get that idea?’
‘In the newspaper,’ said the voice. Now it had lost its
cheeriness. It named the newspaper and the date and con-
tinued, ‘In the personal classifieds. Blonde Bombshell will
give you the time of your life. And there are two telephone
numbers.’
‘Are you sure one of them is this number?’
‘ Ja, man,’ said the voice impatiently. ‘It must be a sick
joke. I called the first number and they told me it’s a mag-
istrate’s office.’
Don broke out laughing.
‘Yeah, it is a sick joke,’ he said. ‘I suggest you try
another escort agency, my friend.’
After this he went to the BP Garage at Palm Court and
bought the tabloid. And indeed the advertisement was
there. He immediately phoned the classified section and
took them to task for publishing the telephone numbers
of the magistrate. He demanded to know who had placed
the classified ad but the woman at the end of the line was
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165
not forthcoming with that information. When he threat-
ened her and her sleazy paper with the full force of the
law, she asked him to hold while she checked the files. A
minute or so later she came back with some name and
address, which were obviously false. There were no other
details on record. Not even a telephone number. The
advertiser paid in cash for only one insertion.
‘Don’t you verify the identity of whoever places a
classified ad with you?’
‘We have no way of verifying identities,’ said the
woman.
‘So you are just happy to grab the money and run? If
you ever publish that advertisement again my client, who
happens to be the magistrate of Roodepoort, will sue
your pants off. I want you to publish a retraction or what-
ever you call it. The magistrate must not receive dirty
calls again from your sleazy readers.’
After fielding a few more calls from horny men, he
decided to leave the phone off the hook.
He is laying the table and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is
playing on the stereo. He has observed that’s what the
magistrate plays when she returns home, bushed after
work, and relaxes with a glass of warm wine and a thera-
peutic caress of the cat. Suddenly she arrives. He did not
expect her so early. She stands at the door and sniffs at
the aroma. She has a puzzled look on her face.
‘You didn’t tell me you run an escort agency on the
side,’ says Don jokingly from the dining room.
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166
‘So they phoned here as well?’ she says as she unloads
some documents from her briefcase on to the coffee
table.
Don joins her in the living room and winces at the
thought that she is again messing up the place he has
tidied. He doesn’t say anything about it though, but
shows her the classified in the tabloid.
‘Oh, yes, Blonde Bombshell owns both your home
and office numbers.’
As he returns to the dining room he tells her not to
worry, he has handled the matter quite effectively. The
paper won’t publish the trashy advertisement with her
telephone numbers again. She follows him to the dining
room and tells him he shouldn’t have taken it upon him-
self to meddle in her business. It is however very obvious
that she is relieved that he took the trouble to protect her,
but she must pretend otherwise if only to show that she
is still in control.
She stops in her tracks when she sees the table set
with candles and all.
‘And what is this all about?’ she asks.
‘A peace offering. I want us to be friends.’
At this he goes to the kitchen and returns with a
steaming serving bowl of samp and beans. He gingerly
puts it in the middle of the table, and waits for the acco-
lades with a broad smile. None are forthcoming. Only the
snarl of a wounded cat.
