Yawning, Max Ziegelstein stumbled out of bed in his baggy winter pajamas to answer the telephone ringing in the hall. It was 3 a.m., and he thought that someone he knew must have died.

His mother-in-law was a frail and sickly woman, and his father was an elderly man, retired after a minor coronary like many businessmen in Johannesburg. He prayed that they were well and that all of his children were safe.

Steven, the oldest, was a reckless individual, who had already experienced two motorcycle accidents, though, thankfully he had not been severely injured. Intoxicated on an assortment of uppers and downers, he had tumbled off a friend's 1000cc on a joy-ride along Death Bend, the week he had completed military service, and once again at the exact same spot one year later to the day; fortunately, he had not been traveling fast enough to suffer anything more than a few scrapes and grazes. He was still wild enough to do something similar, but, at 3 a.m., he should have just returned from cashing-up at the steakhouse--a recent and so far successful venture--and he should be falling into bed at his apartment in Yeoville, probably with a woman. Michael, the youngest, the serious intellectual of the family who was at university in the Cape, would still be awake, alert at his books; he always preferred to work late at night when the campus was quiet. Even during his final year at high school, when he had gained four academic distinctions, he had been a night owl. A thermostat of steaming coffee would be at the corner of his desk, bulky files and textbooks would be lying open all around him like a paper sea. It was a secret source of pride for Max Ziegelstein, who had not completed a degree, to know that his son's study-lamp was still burning miles away, even at this hour. And--at this hour--it would be two o' clock in the United Kingdom, and Ziegelstein's only daughter, Debbie, would be in a one-bedroom rental in England with her husband, Jonathan, a talented architect who had take a position as a draftsman somewhere in the Midlands until he found his feet in his new country; she was still struggling to find work; but now, when it was already 3 a.m. in Johannesburg, Debbie and Jonathan should have both been fast asleep.

Ziegelstein's wife, Carla, of German-Jewish ancestry, to whom he had been married for almost thirty years, was sleeping soundly upstairs. He did not want to wake her, in case it was a crank call--an obscene caller had bothered her some years before--and that was why he had not answered the telephone on the night table beside the bed.

He did not turn on the lights in the entrance hall.

He knew his way around well enough: the wooden chest, the hard-backed chair by the front door, the telephone table with the directories and the notepad, and the potted plant under the window. They had been living in the same suburban house for approximately seventeen years; it was too big now, of course, but it held too many memories for them to ever consider selling, though they knew they could obtain a good price. The house had looked slightly different when they had first moved in, as a young family, and it was smaller then. They had to add a room when the boys had become too old to share. Max Ziegelstein had been a more handsome man then, with a head of thick dark hair, which had grayed and thinned over the years, and dark lively eyes, which needed spectacles, as he grew older. But he was still in good physical condition, except for a slight paunch resulting from years of Eveline's solid nourishment. Eveline was the maid who had been with the Zigelstein family since Max had first started out as a salesman for a shoe company, long before he had ever imagined having his own business. Carla had taught Eveline to make gefilte fish when she was a naïve farm-girl from the Northern Transvaal, who still believed in a magical imp called the tokolosh, and went superstitiously to visit the witchdoctor every month when she menstruated. Now she knew a few words of Yiddish, though she could hardly speak English when they had first given her a job. That had been so long ago that it seemed like a dream.

He picked up the receiver. "Hello," he mumbled, his mouth full of phlegm.

"Mr Ziegelstein?" inquired a youthful voice.

He could hear that it was a long distance call.

"Yes," he said thickly, trying to clear his throat, "This is Ziegelstein."

There was a vacant silence on the other end of the line.

Ziegelstein blinked in the darkness. The square windows flanking the front door admitted no light; no moon or stars were in the sky. Furniture creaked in the stillness. He felt his cordless pajamas begin to slip around his waist. With one hand, he held onto his trousers, bunching the fabric, with the other hand, he gripped the receiver tightly.

"Hello. This is Max Ziegelstein. Who is calling, please?"

"My name is Bob Stanton," the young man replied hesitantly.

"Yes, Mr. Stanton," Ziegelstein said, puzzled. A sudden fear chilled his heart. "Where are you?"

"I'm calling from the Cape," said Stanton, "I'm a friend of Michael's."

In the dark hall, Ziegelstein tried to stretch across to the light switch. The telephone, abruptly jerked, crashed noisily from the high table onto the floor.

Ziegelstein lurched out for it blindly. "Hello, hello, hello," he babbled, becoming panicky.

There was a hollow pause, then Stanton said, "I'm still here." He paused again, and then he blurted out, "Mr Ziegelstein, I'm afraid there's been some trouble."

"Is it Michael? Is he okay?"

Stanton said, "Michael's fine, Mr Ziegelstein." But it did not ring true.

Ziegelstein got down on his knees in the darkness, scrambling with one hand for the telephone on the floor. "I don't understand, Mr. Bob," he said confusedly, raising his voice slightly, "Where is my son? Let me talk to him"

"You can't talk to him, Mr Ziegelstein."

"Why not?" he pleaded, the instrument heavy in his grasp.

"At half-past two this morning," Stanton declared solemnly, "The security police came and placed him under arrest for terrorism."

Ziegelstein turned so pale he thought he would be sick.

"Why?" he whispered, as he struggled to his feet.

But his son's friend had no answer.

Carla came into the hall in her loose nightgown, and turned on the lights. She touched his arm. He did not know what to say to his wife.

* * *

At exactly 9 a.m., as Eveline was slowly carrying a tray of buttered toast and coffee into the living room, Ziegelstein stood in the same spot in the hall in his striped gray suit and telephoned the office of his lawyer, Simmy Berkowitz. He had to leave a message with the secretary because Simmy had not yet arrived for work. Ziegelstein had already spoken to Steven who was on the way over to the house; he thought that he would wait a few hours before telephoning his daughter overseas to tell her the news; there was nothing that she would be able to do to help, anyway.

Then, grimly, he went to sit down beside Carla on the L-shaped sofa in the living room. His wife passed him a cup of coffee when Eveline put the wide tray down on the low grainy table, but the electric taste of nausea was still in his mouth and Max pushed the cup away; Eveline offered to make him a plate of scrambled eggs but he said no.

"I'm just not hungry, Evvy," he explained.

The maid nodded understandingly. "It's a bad business with Michael," she declared, shaking her head from side to side, "It's no good."

She bent over to pick up the tray again, but Carla said, "Oh, leave it, Evvy. Steven will eat the toast."

"That Steven is always hungry," she said, trying to be cheerful, and then she went back into the kitchen, which was her domain.

They heard her starting the washing machine and taking the ironing board from the kitchen closet.

Carla held her husband's hand. "The police probably only want to ask him a few questions, that's all," she said, squeezing his palm.

But Ziegelstein knew that his wife did not really believe what she was saying.

A million notions had been swarming in his brain. He kept insisting to himself that the whole incident was a mistake, trying desperately to convince himself. Crime was so bizarre, imprisonment unthinkable. He was a hopeful, wistful man. He wanted passionately to believe in bureaucratic errors, in mistaken identities, in groundless suspicion, but, deep down, his bones were crumbling with the pressure of the truth, and he knew that his wife was feeling the same miserable heaviness.

The doorbell rang, startling them both, and a few moment's later, when Eveline answered the door, Steven came striding in, looking as if he had not slept well either; he had not even shaved, or combed his long untidy hair.

"Where the hell has Michael landed himself now?" he asked stormily, in an oblique reference to a phantom pregnancy which had disrupted the family when Michael had lost his virginity at the age of sixteen without the benefits of a condom. Steven--who had been grooming him for the event since his own initial experiences with the opposite sex--had shouldered all the blame. Later, he made a million jokes about it, but at the time, he spent two weeks in Hillbrow, trying to track down a back-street abortionist; when the girl ultimately confessed that she had been on the Pill since she was fourteen, Steven claimed that he had guessed it all along, and had been spending his afternoons playing pinball at Highpoint, with a Portuguese. But, by that stage, the entire family--even Debbie and Carla--knew the real story.

He kissed his mother on the cheek, and then kissed his father, before he sat down wearily in a soft roomy armchair near the window, overlooking the garden and the tennis court. The net across the all-weather court hung slackly, strands brushing the cracked green surface in the breeze. A wooden swing, roped to the stiff bare branch of a knotted tree at the far end of the lawn, moved gently.

"I can't make this thing out," Steven said bitterly, shaking his head.

Ziegelstein tried to explain. "I've been on the phone making inquiries from his friends all night. Apparently, he wrote something in a pamphlet. A journalist article about some conditions in the township." He touched his dark-rimmed spectacles with one finger and took a deep breath. "According to this Stanton boy who phoned, Michael shouldn't have even been in the township in the first place. So they had him for the Group Areas Act, if they wanted."

"But, what did he want in there in the first place, anyway?" Steven blurted out in frustration, but then, trying to picture his brother in a cell, he regained his composure. "Do you know if they took his fingerprints?" he asked, in a lower voice.

Ziegelstein shrugged heavily. "They took him."

Steven wiped the sleep from the corners of his eyes. "I suppose it was you who had to get up to answer the phone?" he asked his father, though he already knew all the details.

"At first, I thought that somebody had died," Ziegelstein noted, chuckling to himself, "Who calls up at three in the morning with good news?"

"Could have been Debbie with a baby," Steven smiled, "You never know."

Ziegelstein shrugged again, for no real reason, and Carla took hold of his hand once more.

"We're waiting to hear from Simmy Berkowitz," she announced, "Max spoke to his secretary already. It was the first call of the day. For them, I mean. Not for us." Then she said, pointing, "Help yourself to a piece of toast, Steven. Evvy just made it."

Steven leaned forward and popped a triangular slice into his mouth.

"I'm pleased you came, Steven," his father said, pushing up his spectacles and rubbing his eyes.

It was a strong tradition in the Ziegelstein household for the family to rally around in times of crises. They had supported each other through two bereavements, a patchy phase of the marriage, an ugly series of threatening and malicious incidents after Steven had been thrashed by two mechanics for springing to Michael's defense in an argument in a parking lot, and once, when the children were very young, Max had made them sit up all night with him, while he contemplated declaring bankruptcy. No logic or persuasion could have inspired him to persevere as much as the tacit faith of his three small children, futilely trying to comprehend his pile of ledgers and balance sheets stacked all over the dining-room table. Things had picked up, in time, and they had always stayed close and loving. When Debbie and Jonathan had emigrated, the two brothers had wept without shame at the airport.

"What do you think?" Ziegelstein asked his eldest son.

He brushed some fallen crumbs off his jeans. "The first thing, Dad," Steven said reassuringly, "I think, let's see what Simmy has to say. Maybe he can bail him out already on some legal point. Improper arrest, or whatever they have. You know what lawyers are like." He pressed a button on his digital watch. "It's a little early," he commented, "But, in the meantime, I can telephone Pretoria." He stood up. "Maybe some of the guys that I know in the army can give us a hand. At least, we might be able to find out where they are keeping him, and for how long it will be."

"It's nothing to do with the military, Steven," said his father gingerly, "This Stanton boy said that it was the special police that took him."

"I know, dad," Steven said impatiently, "But they are all in cahoots. It's a family over there." Then he grinned. "Special branch, Dad."

Ziegelstein nodded. "Don't use the phone yet, Steven," he said quietly, "Maybe Simmy is trying to get through."

Steven took another piece of toast from the plate and sat down again.

"Okay," he declared, "I'll wait." Then, regarding his father, he pointed out, "Don't worry so much. He writes exams in two weeks, doesn't he? They have to let him out."

Carla said, "I hope you're right."

"Of course," Steven said, with his mouth full, and leaned back in the chair with one leg up over the armrest. He looked out of the window into the garden with perennial flowers, trying to think of a casual remark. Then, in a conversational tone, he mentioned, "By the way, did I tell you that I was called up for another camp?"

It was his third call-up to the military reserves in the last eighteen months.

"Can't you get transferred to another unit?" his mother asked, but, just then Eveline came into the room with a mug of coffee for Steven, and he shook his head, hardly even considering the question.

"Evvy, can you get me a glass of water, please?" Ziegelstein asked.

But then the telephone rang and he had to go into the hall again.

Simmy Berkowitz--on the line--was not only Ziegelstein's lawyer, but he was an old friend of the family and a golfing partner until Ziegelstein gave up the game. But Max still used to have a drink with Simmy at the clubhouse once in a while. Simmy had done a few small legal favors for the family; he had helped Jonathan with currency control regulations when he left the country, and he had drawn up Max's last will and testament. He was an honest and reliable man, always ready to help, but now he told his friend that he could do nothing.

Michael had been arrested under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. There were, in fact, other methods by which the police could have legitimately held him in custody. If he understood the details correctly, Simmy said, when Max had poured out the whole story, they could have charged him under the Group Areas Act, since Michael had apparently admitted to actually being present in the township, which was off-limits to whites, or they could have detained him under one of the various provisions of the Criminal Procedures Act. The very fact that they had chosen to use the Terrorism Act, as they had, suggested only one possible conclusion.

As a lawyer and a friend, it was his duty to explain the implications fully, but, Simmy said, it was a distasteful business. He wished--for the first time in twenty years--that Ziegelstein had someone else representing him, someone not connected with the family; they had even discussed it one Sunday evening at the golf course. At the time, over a Scotch on the rocks, and the sun sinking, and the greenery of the links becoming purple with twilight, there did not seem to be any reason to favor a stranger. Now there was a reason, Simmy noted, obviously upset. He had no desire to be the harbinger of bad news, he told his friend.

But the bald facts were this: Michael had no access to his family, to a lawyer, or even to a court. All that he had access to was the security police. Effectively, in terms of the law, they were entitled to hold him without trial for an indefinite period of time. What it boiled down to was simple. The police had no intention whatsoever of releasing Michael Ziegelstein in the immediate future.

What they would do with him while he was in detention, Simmy was not prepared to even discuss.

A lawyer could do nothing with these laws, he said.

You were on your own.

* * *

A week later, Max Ziegelstein, dressed in a sober suit, sat for an hour on a hard bench in a small spotless waiting room, within a busy shopping mall in Pretoria, at the headquarters of the South African Security Police. The entrance to their offices was so unobtrusive that he would surely have missed it and walked right into a ladies' boutique, if the lieutenant with whom he had spoken on the telephone had not given him such precise instructions.

It had been five days since he had talked with the officer, after Simmy could not help, and all Steven's contacts in the Defense Force had proved useless, and, as he sat waiting for so long, Ziegelstein wondered if the man had forgotten he was coming.

The uniformed constable at the desk, who had searched him and made him empty his pockets before issuing him a temporary visitor's permit with a large number printed on the front to keep clipped on his jacket, assured him that the lieutenant would summon him shortly. One had to be patient; it was rare that they would see the parent of a detainee at all, under the circumstances.

There was no-one else waiting, and very few people had come through the door. Most of them, in uniform, had simply delivered packages or papers to the policeman at the desk, waited for his signature of receipt, and left.

Ziegelstein tried to read the newspaper which he had bought on the way to Pretoria that morning, but he kept re-reading paragraphs. He had selected the pro-government daily The Citizen because he did not want to antagonize the police by reading the Rand Daily Mail right in the middle of security branch headquarters. His only use for the paper, however was to fan himself for it was so stuffy with all the heaters warming the cramped room that his suit was crumpled with perspiration and beads of sweat shone on his brow.

He kept taking his spectacles on and off. After a while, the constable, who was just standing and watching him, asked if he could see the sports results, and Ziegelstein told him that he could keep the newspaper. He seemed very grateful, spreading out the pages methodically on his desk, and a few minutes later, a clean-shaven, broad-shouldered man, slightly jowly, but otherwise handsome, and attired in an immaculate olive suit with wide lapels, appeared and introduced himself as Lieutenant Malan.

"Please come with me, Mr Ziegelstein," he instructed in a polite, soft-spoken manner, and Ziegelstein followed him through an electronically-controlled steel door, and down a long, smoothly-polished corridor to his office.

It was a clean and spartan room. There were no windows, and it was illuminated by bright neon rods, humming on the ceiling. There were two framed photographs on the white walls--one of the Prime Minister in Parliament, and one of the lieutenant and a bloody impala, taken on a hunting expedition. He held a rifle in his hand, in the picture, and there was an open, almost boyish, expression on his face.

"Just take a seat," he invited, gesturing amicably, and sitting down himself behind the simple wooden desk, full of official papers and black telephones and wire trays of correspondence. A brown docket upon which was scrawled, ZIEGELSTEIN, Michael Isaac, lay sealed with a rubber band, on the blotter in front of the officer.

Nervously, Max Ziegelstein sat down on one of the two green office chairs. "Mister…I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Malan," he began, anxiously leaning forward on the uncomfortable seat, "How is my boy?"

"Oh, he's well, he's well," the lieutenant responded nonchalantly, lounging back in his chair behind the desk.

"I must thank you again for agreeing to see me," Ziegelstein said tentatively, trying to gain the policeman's confidence, "I understand that this is not something you normally do."

"Well, in fact, Mr Ziegelstein," Malan said in a chatty way, "I was hoping you might be able to give me some help." He laughed, then he said, "But first matters first. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

Ziegelstein shook his head. "No, thank you," he said, though his throat was dry.

"A cup of tea, perhaps?"

"Thank you, no. About Michael, lieutenant…"

"Yes," the officer said briskly, "I was coming to that."

He picked up the dossier, glanced at the cover and pensively flicked the wide rubber band. He leaned so far back in his chair, skimming over the document, that Ziegelstein could see his brown slip-on shoes, as he tilted. Then he leaned forward again, tossing the docket back onto the desk, and rested his elbows on top of it.

He looked at Max sympathetically. "But first, Mr Ziegelstein," he requested earnestly, "Tell me something about yourself." He paused, and then, careful not to offend, he asked, "You're Jewish, aren't you?"

Ziegelstein swallowed. "I'm a Jew," he affirmed simply.

The officer pressed his fingertips together. "You know," he said informally, "When I was still in the uniform branch, as a young sergeant, we came upon a bad case of anti-Semitism once. Desecration of a synagogue. It truly upset me." He pursed his lips and nodded his head for emphasis. "Some hooligans had smashed their way into the building in the middle of the night. It was not difficult, of course. No-one expects anyone to break into a holy place. They had torn down all the curtains, just for spite, and built a bonfire on the altar." He stopped, and after a moment's thought, he said quizzically, "But it's not called an altar, you people have another name for it…"

"The bimah," Ziegelstein informed him.

"That's it," Malan said triumphantly, snapping his fingers, "The bimah." He picked up a cheap plastic ballpoint from a cylindrical container and jotted the word on his blotter. "The bimah," he repeated, rolling the pen across the desk and then snatching it up in his fingers again. "We caught the youngsters who had done it, in the end. A bad bunch." Then he smiled, "After the court case, the rabbi gave me a bottle of Passover wine in appreciation. Delicious."

Max Ziegelstein shifted on the seat, the flat metal castors of the chair scraping harshly on the bare floor.

The lieutenant laughed again. "Oh, I have a reason for mentioning it," he revealed, "I'll come to it in a moment. First things first."

"Of course," Max said, his heart pounding.

"Hell," said Malan, shaking his head in wonder, "You people have a marvelous country."

"What country is that?" Ziegelstein asked, unsure of his drift.

"Israel," Malan declared, "How I admire those Israelis." He wrote down the word 'Israel' on the blotter, struck it out absently, and then leaned back in his chair once more. "My wife and I took a church pilgrimage one year to Jerusalem. What a beautiful place. Those old stone streets, the bustling markets, the hills, the ancient temples. Such tranquility. But I suppose you know it well."

Ziegelstein shrugged. "Actually, we've never been. We will go one year, I hope, but..."

"You must," said the officer, "It's well worth the trip. But anyway, why I bring up this question of Judaism is as follows. You folk are very close, aren't you? I mean, the family, it plays a large role, doesn't it?"

" My family is very important to me," Ziegelstein said humbly.

The lieutenant tossed his ballpoint down on the blotter. "Would you say that you were very close to your son?"

"We're close," the father said in a low voice.

"Very close, would you say?"

"Yes," he said gently, feeling a lump swelling in his throat as he thought of Michael, "Very close."

"Has he ever, say, discussed his friends with you, for example?" the officer inquired slyly.

"Oh, no, no," Ziegelstein said hurriedly, "I don't really know what he gets up to at the university. In a way, that's why I'm here. What has he done that is so terrible, lieutenant? What has happened to my son? Where is Michael now?"

Malan chuckled. "Well," he affirmed, grandly waving his hand around the office, "As you can see, he's not here."

Max Ziegelstein, his fingers clasped in his lap, stared down at the floor for a moment. The policeman waited for him to speak.

Then, hesitantly, his eyes sparkling with optimism, he asked, "Is there any way that I could see him, lieutenant?"

The officer sat up abruptly. "I am afraid that is out of the question," he observed somberly.

"What about this document that he is supposed to have written? Could I see that?"

"Now, look here, Mr Ziegelstein," Malan said sharply, "You must understand that this document, we consider subversive literature. The point is that a few factual errors were made in his article. That is why we have him. We could, of course, have him for contravening the Group Areas Act, you understand?" He held up a finger, his accent gradually becoming more noticeable, although his English was perfect. "You understand that. But we don't really give a damn about that. Not in the security branch. Group Areas have their own squad. We don't give a hoot that he was in the township, not in itself. That's his business. Though it is a crime, of course." He folded his arms on the desk, and said with an air of mystery, "What we want to know is why." He leaned forward, posing rhetorical questions. "What was he doing there? Who did he see? Was he simply engaged in gathering material for an article? Well, there were errors of fact in the story. If he made a few mistakes, completely by accident, well, then, he will have learnt his lesson. But, if he was deliberately distorting things for the sake of propaganda, then, let me tell you, Mr. Ziegelstein, your son will be in a heap of trouble." Then, uncrossing his arms, he said mildly, "Are you sure you don't want a cup of coffee with me, Mr. Ziegelstein?"

Tears filled Ziegelstein's eyes. "Lieutenant," he asked, in a hushed voice, "How long are you going to keep Michael?"

The officer smiled. "Just as long as it takes for him to give us the information we want from him."

A steely shudder ran down Ziegelstein's spine. "Please, lieutenant," he implored, almost in a whisper, "Don't torture my son."

The policeman laughed. "Mr. Ziegelstein, where on earth do you get an idea like that? What do you suppose we are going to do to him?"

Ziegelstein took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He could hear the steady humming of the lights above him. Then he announced in a slow, wavering tone, "Lieutenant Malan, I have heard of things. I have heard how you stand your prisoners up against whitewashed walls for hours at time, how you deprive them of food and of sleep. I have heard that you strip them bare and whip them with rubber hoses in a brutal fashion, and that you attach electric cables to their young bodies. I have heard that you threaten them with death." He put his spectacles back shakily. "That is what I have heard," he said softly.

"You are missing the point here, Ziegelstein," the policeman uttered, growing angry, but with taut control, "We see your son as potentially dangerous to law and order in this country. An instigator, a trouble-maker, a communist, perhaps, a terrorist." Malan raised his voice slightly, allowing an edge of finality to creep into his words. "We see him as a threat. We will act as we see fit." Then he stood up, resting his palms lightly on the desktop for a moment. "I had better show you out now."

Ziegelstein nodded, without speaking or standing.

Malan stepped around the desk and deftly removed the permit from the visitor's lapel.

"I suppose Michael is in a cell full of hoodlums," Ziegelstein said, as he got to his feet.

"Oh no," the lieutenant said innocently, "Not at all." He opened the door for the father to walk out first. "As a matter of fact," he declared with only the slightest trace of sarcasm, "Michael is all by himself."

Numbly, Max Ziegelstein walked with the lieutenant down the shiny corridor, through the steel door, past the constable at the desk, out of the building into the street, and he howled.

He had to sit in his car, trembling and weeping, for a long time until he felt steady enough to drive back to Johannesburg. Even so, he could not find his way out of Pretoria, circling around and around the bronze statue of Paul Kruger at Church Square and up and down past the Union Buildings a number of times before he reached the highway.

His hands quivered on the steering wheel. He had to pull over to the side of the road twice on the way back just to take a deep breath and to blow his nose.

He was still shaking when he took the exit at Jan Smuts Avenue, and when he drove past the Zoo Lake, he decided to park his car and walk under the trees for a while to compose himself before returning home where Carla and Steven were waiting.

He had promised to telephone Debbie in England that evening, but he did not know what he would tell any of them.

It seemed--somehow--that he owed them all some sort of apology, though he could not say for what.

His head bowed in thought, he began to step down the gentle grassy slope towards the shallow lake, conscious of a bitter sense of sorrow and helplessness churning inside him, and he tried to piece together some fragments of hope, as he trod languorously beneath the empty branches. He waited for some whisper from his soul, a deep illuminating revelation rising from his grief, but there was only confusion.

A breeze blew through the stark trees, and he pulled up the thin collars of his suit, and dug his fists into his pockets.

He tried to remember a crime or a sin, which he had kept secret from the world, as if the punishment for his guilt was being passed upon his future generations, as the Torah warns, but he did not know what it was that he had done wrong. He was a kind and charitable man; everyone said he had a heart of gold. All his pleasures were simple, his devotions sincere. Every Sabbath, since he could remember, Carla lit the slim white candles on the dinner table, he chanted the traditional blessings and each member of the family present would drink a sip of wine from the same solid silver goblet. He had instilled goodness in all of them, and in himself, broken no commandments.

He stood still at the lakeside. Gusts swirled randomly about him, but the water, reflecting the wintry sky, was gray and placid. A few young couples were rowing in small wooden boats around the tiny islands, overgrown with shrubs and bushes, where youngsters sometimes played pirates or shipwreck. It must be cold out there now, Ziegelstein thought, gazing across to the other side.

Swans glided by obliviously.

Ripples bending the reeds, a stone fell in the lake. From nowhere, it had sunk so suddenly that Ziegelstein looked up as if it had plopped like a raindrop from the clouds. But it never rained in winter in Johannesburg, and it never snowed. Welcome summer showers stormed almost daily in a sunset symphony of passionate thunder and lightning, and the sweet aftermath of rain soothed the city for evening following the swelter of the driving day. But the winter was dry; no rain would fall.

The lake lulled again-deceptively--for as soon as it was calm, more stones pelted down, extending widening concentric circles in the water. Schoolboys were skimming stones from the far side, each plash a tiny explosion on the liquid battlefield.

With all the rocks and bricks and bottles thrown in the unrest in the townships, the irony of their activity was so grotesque to him that Ziegelstein shouted out for them to stop, as if he were protecting the ducks, but they were too far away to hear him, and they flung.

His hoarse voice sounded so insignificant and futile.

Then all the stones and bombs of destiny fell about his mind. The frozen image of a crumpling young soldier, torn by a bullet through the shoulder, appeared to him all at once. Ziegelstein could not recall where he had seen the picture, but is was so vivid in his imagination that he could see the scarlet stain on the khaki webbing, and the expression of despair and astonishment on the man's face, though his cheeks were caked with the camouflage of earthy grime and smears. Thorny plants were in the background, and it occurred to Ziegelstein that he had seen the picture in a magazine or a dream. But he had to shut his eyes to think of something else.

Bulls charging into a flapping flag, horns down and the sound of stampede; a straw basket containing a glittering heap of jewels, a stack of cash and passports, disguised as laundry or eggs; the whine of an abandoned child searching for his parents in a forest full of legs; full of flames, concrete towers burning lower and lower like dying wax candles; a man holding a grandfather; a tearful woman running along jagged ground with her skirts high in her hands; the smell of salt; hunger; he thought of flight.

Lately, Ziegelstein had been wondering about the stranded moments of humanity, before great battles and executions and blasting volcano peaks, before the frantic momentum of one event sweeps up another in its path like impatient breakers scavenging for seashells on the lustrous shore, or headlong lava, before things become complete. He thought of how powerless one grows in the helter-skelter of history. It was like trying to draw a bucketful from a bottomless well; all one ended up with was a breath of air between attempts. He thought of all the panic suddenly let loose, the thumping fear, and he thought of the horror, which lurks in the middle of the night.

He had been dreaming of a beach, perhaps, or a forgotten monastery on a crystal mountaintop, some place of cool crisp sanctuary, when the ringing had begun. Of course, the summons did not have to be a telephone, he knew; there were knocks on doors and rattling locks and the icy scratch on a high-pitched window pane and shrill sirens and whistles that shook one out of innocuous sleep; all noises at that hour are alarms.

The bell that clangs on revolution night must sound the same, he thought. The bell that wails hysterically in wartime, or in floods to river folk, must have the twin echo in its timbre.

He did not know what he would do, hearing the time has come to bundle up his property and get out in the dizzy night and run, somewhere, nowhere, anywhere far from here.

He did not know what he would do on such a night, but his ancestors, stealthily escaping from a frosty Baltic port, had come penniless by ship from Russia to Africa where there were rumors of diamonds and freedom, and Carla had been born on another continent and she had fled once, as a young girl; her father had died naked in a muddy field somewhere in Poland. Max had recited the mourner's prayer for him, though he had never met the man. He was a hardy individual, by all accounts, who had refused to board the iron train to Auschwitz.

The wind rose gently through the drooping willows, and a few of the rowing boats in the distance turned, returning one by one. Then the wind dropped.

He thought of all the ancestors he had known, and he thought of his three descendants, of all the generations which had been, and which would come still, and where.

Another time, years and years before, Ziegelstein had brought his family here to watch the spotlights coloring the spray of the fountains at night. It had been summer then, and they had all bunched together on a rickety jetty for hours, and scattered bread crumbs from a paper bag into the water for the ducks; Michael, about five years old, was terrified by the splash of webbed feet and the quacking and the sibilant chaos as the birds clustered around the weeds and rushes for food; but, fascinated by the gushing jets of liquid color, he had wanted to stay at the edge of the lake all night long, watching the arcs of water and the insidious movement of the spreading ripples and the gleam.

Carla had to promise him a chocolate milkshake on the terrace before he would come away from the bank. A white-jacketed waiter with a sash had served them underneath a big canvas umbrella and afterwards the three children had fallen asleep, wrapped up in one another, on the back seat of the old Cortina on the way home. Arms full of sleepy children, Max and Carla had carried them into the house on tiptoe and tucked them into bed.

He could not think where all those years had gone, swept away so cleanly. Before he knew it, he would be an old man and his tender wife would be an old woman, and their children would soon be parents too. Yesterday, they were in playpens themselves.

To remember it all so perfectly now seemed like nothing, after all, so much as death. The next time that they met--whenever it would be--Michael would be as scrawny as a skeleton, and as pale. Max felt the flutter of a momentary emotion, as if he wanted to say some kind of kaddish for his son.

If it were possible, through solemn prayer or barter or mercy, Max Ziegelstein would have traded himself for Michael in an instant, and taken his child's place in any prison or on an arching rack or a creaking scaffold with such a joy he would have danced to hang.

A hush crept over the water, for all the light was fading now, the birds had vanished and all the lonely boats out on the lake were coming back, but Ziegelstein stared out motionlessly across the stillness and the haze.

All our happiness and all our miseries were as windy specks of dust blowing in the sunlight, he thought; the sheerness of heroism or of holocaust overshadowed life, like the chilly moon gagging the stars, which speckled the dark lunar face. Our capabilities exceeded our dreams, our range mocked our most hideous nightmares.

Limitlessness had always been the pride of man; we had ripped the roof off heaven, and we had tunneled the earth all the way down to the gold foundation at the base of Johannesburg.

Eveline had a son who had trodden the lowest man-made point on the planet. He lived in a compound full of sturdy men from all across Africa and he worked underground shifts in the mines; apparently, he never even knew if it was day or night. Once, she had revealed to Carla that every time there was the slightest earth tremor on the Reef, she dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor or in the servants' quarters, and prayed to all the saints and angels that Joseph was playing soccer; he was a goal-keeper. She would also pray for Michael now, he knew, and Max would pray for both their sons as well, though he did not know what he would say to God.

He felt as if he wanted to say some kind of kaddish for his country too.

A solitary oar floated by before him, formless in the dwindling light. Well, all the boats were in now, thought Ziegelstein; the only boatmen on the water must be ghosts.

He peered across the trickling silvery surface, keen like a woman watching a sailor's farewell from the quayside, or a soothsayer before omens, or a man condemned to blindness savoring his last glimpse of the dropping sun. Wordless murmurs and looming actions filled the air, as though random spirits were traversing dimensions, but it was like scanning the future, or a mist, because he could mark nothing.

For now, the afternoon light was melting into darkness all across Africa, across the coastal stretches and the jungles and the plains, across Kilimanjaro and Sahara and Zimbabwe, and across the white wards at Groote Schuur hospital in the south where we have extended life, and the eerie tombs at Giza in the north where we have extended death. Evening, and all its shapelessness was approaching, and the cold, pervasive wind was rising again through the trees and through the city.

And, through his mind, there was a wind howling and straining. He could feel the force of it, gathering all his memories and his tragedies, like a thunderous rushing river dragging unwilling swimmers to a distant sea, but it was nightfall now and he knew his wife was waiting. With all the courage he could scrape together, he tried to form a few positive phrases he could tell her, thinking purely about the marvels and achievements of men, as though brutality was only an accident of circumstance.

But the brutality had been there for thousands of years, Max realized, in Troy or in the twentieth century. One day, he thought, glory would triumph gracefully over the pack, but there would be bloodshed now. As the gentiles say, man is in a fallen state. Perhaps they were correct, he concluded, though personally, he would not lay the blame so much on Adam as on Pilate. On Pilate, and on Ferdinand, and on Goebbels, well, the list was almost endless

These thoughts from a Jew, who had seen his daughter married under a chupah and the barmitzvahs of both his sons.

These thoughts, and these, finally: That Michael had done a brave thing with his words, and there was no doubt that whatever he had written was the truth; his father believed in him and he loved him. That wherever there was injustice, where there was oppression and division, there was heroism, and there was love, somewhere in it all. Maybe there was more love when there were these dangers. That he had testimony of love. That he had lived a loving and a peaceful life, with malice toward no one, and that he did not believe that he had made any enemies.

But it seemed to Max Ziegelstein, as he turned away from the tranquil water, where the last splintery boats were being chained against the banks for night, and he walked along the shimmering winter grass back to his car, with one son in prison for truth, his only daughter fled to a foreign land, and another son who could perish fighting in a pathetic skirmish in the Namibian desert or on the Mozambique border, or even in Johannesburg itself, sooner or later, that wherever there was a flicker of hatred in the world, wherever there was tyranny, wherever there was a single act of cruelty to one man, all mankind suffered. Yes--he thought, starting for home--in the face of these acts, we are all guilty and we are all victims. We are all victims.

---

Stuart Stromin is a South African-American writer and filmmaker, living in Los Angeles. He was educated at Rhodes University, South Africa, the Alliance Francaise de Paris, and UCLA. His work has been published by Jalada Africa, Fiction on the Web, Macabre Ladies, The Raven, Temptation Press, The Yard, Blood Puddles, Ooligan Press, Widespread Fear of Monkeys, etc. His latest novel is Wild Cards (Close2theBone Publishing), and his collection of short stories subspace (EMP Publishing) is about to be released.