of a burglar alarm.
The dark house smelt stale and mouldy. He inspected the rooms by the light of his torch. He found the surgery in which he had sat while strange fingers probed his face. He looked round, found a box of latex gloves on a cabinet. He pulled on a pair and switched on the computer, dropping the box into his plastic bag.
The cabinet contained patient files. He searched for L, found a file labelled LOMAS, and placed it in his plastic bag as well, along with the doctor’s personalised prescription pad.
On the computer Abel found the photographs of his former face. For a moment he stared at the familiar features. Then he sighed, and deleted the photos. Next he deleted the electronic file containing details of Patient Lomas’s reconstructive facial surgery. It was plain sailing. He used an advanced software programme himself when he recorded his cosmic observations.
Finally he picked up the doctor’s state-of-the-art digital camera and made sure that his photos had been deleted from the memory card after they were loaded onto the computer.
He began to search for the safe. He knew the doctor would have one for his personal documents and money. Despite the heavy burglar bars in front of the windows, a safe was essential in Bujumbura. Because of regular unforeseen power cuts, the residents in the old houses could not rely on burglar alarms; yet they saw no need for installing generators if there was a reliable, cheap alternative, such as a safe.
Abel found it bolted to the concrete floor inside a wardrobe in the bedroom. It was an old Chubb with a lock, not a digital code that relied on electricity. He found the safe key among the others on the bunch.
He had no interest in the wads of banknotes in Burundian francs; he was not a common thief. The personal documents aroused his interest though: the ID document and, in particular, the passport. A maroon Belgian passport with silver letters embossed on the outside: KONINKRIJK BELGIE ROYAUME DE BELGIQUE KONIGREICH BELGIEN.
He opened it at the page displaying the identity and photograph of the passport holder. AUGUST GODELIEVE LIPPENS. In the beam of his flashlight he studied the face, in particular the nose and chin. Though the passport was valid for four more years, the photo seemed to have been taken some time ago. It would do, Abel thought.
Before he left, he created a Microsoft Word document on the computer and saved it on the Desktop, where the icon – simply labelled MESSAGE – would catch the eye of anyone who switched on the computer.
Back in his room, he recalled everything he’d done, every step he had taken in Dr Lippens’s house. He’d been careful. There would be no sign of a break-in.
Now he no longer needed to be Mr Lomas, he thought. Now he could be Lippens.
When he woke up later in the morning, he would attend to the prescriptions. He had faith in Diprivan, one of the drugs his mother had been treated with when she had fallen ill. It was a white emulsion, like milk, made of soya oil and propofol. Doctors – often fond of insider jokes – jokingly referred to it as “milk of amnesia”.
Propofol was a strong sedative, usually administered as an anaesthetic, but in Diprivan, propofol was a quick-acting tranquilliser. Within forty seconds of being administered, either by intravenous drip or by injection into a large vein in the forearm, the patient fell into a coma. He would use Dr Lippens’s pad to write a prescription for Diprivan Injectable Emulsion with 10 mg/mL propofol per vial.
His mother did not survive her stroke. The pop singer Michael Jackson did not survive the overdose of propofol he had taken either. But Diprivan had never let Abel down. He had tested it on his skin donors and the results had been most satisfactory. He planned to write more prescriptions, which he would take to different pharmacies, to augment his supply. Dr Lippens, cosmetic surgeon, would be familiar with Diprivan. His prescriptions would not be suspect.
He now had three passports in his possession: a South African one, issued to Abel Lotz; the latest one, in the name of Dr Lippens; and Mr Lomas’s Portuguese one. The Lomas passport had not been difficult to acquire. En route to Bujumbura, in Mozambique, Abel had obtained it in Beira, from the real Mr Lomas.
Abel had been roaming the streets of the port, ill at ease. He was not a social creature. He was unused to strange places. He had grown up in a sheltered environment, under the vigilant eye of his mother. She had guided him along the path she had laid out for him. He had run every decision past her, seeking her approval and permission. Shortly before his fiftieth birthday his whole life had been turned upside down. In the course of a single night everything had changed. He’d had to leave behind his home, his gallery, his mother, and flee.
In Beira he had sat in his 4X4 bakkie, fearing the unknown future. Behind him were the hunters. He couldn’t stay, he had to carry on. In Bujumbura, with his friend Jules Daagari, he would be safe. Not as safe as with his mother, but Jules would help.
Abel scoured the backstreets of Beira’s waterfront. From his bakkie, watching the doors of restaurants and bars, he saw women seduce drunken men with their sinful bodies, the wantonness of the flesh that his mother had always warned him against, their bodies mutilated with tattoos and trimmings. He looked closely at their complexions, at the visible degeneration and neglect, and shuddered. These women’s skins were abhorrent to him.
He tore his eyes away from them. He was not looking for a woman, but a man. A middle-aged man, with a baby face. But the men who came stumbling out of the bars and taverns carried in the grooves and wrinkles of their faces the traces of hard lives, and Abel’s anxiety increased. He had to get away, out of Mozambique, across the border to Tanzania on his way to Burundi. But at roadblocks and border posts they would have the model and registration number of the bakkie on their computers, and they would recognise Abel Lotz’s name when he tendered his South African passport.
Then, on the day he turned fifty, he met Mr Lomas. Abel had been sitting in his bakkie late at night when, with a knock on his window, Lomas offered himself as a birthday present. Abel wound down the window and inhaled the familiar smell of brandy on a man’s breath. The smell of his father and brother. But they were in their graves, and Abel stared at the face at his window, the round baby cheeks, the full lips.
“Você pode me ajudar?”
The man was drunk and spoke in tongues.
“I’m sorry,” Abel answered in English. “I don’t understand.”
The man tilted his head, focusing his eyes on a spot somewhere behind Abel in the dark interior of the bakkie. With the back of his hand he wiped the dribble from his unshaven chin while with the other hand he steadied himself against the door of the bakkie.
“Você Inglês?”
“What?”
“Meu carro … ” With a mucus-coated hand the man waved at a car, old and rusty, leaning against the pavement near the door of the bar. “Minha bateria … ”
“The battery of your car?”
“Sim, sim.” The man nodded excitedly. “Bateria, bateria.”
Abel looked at the imploring face, the round, slightly bulging eyes.
“Get in. Where do you live?”
The man stumbled to the passenger door, got in. He patted Abel’s shoulder, leaned over and spoke confidentially against his cheek: “Você é meu amigo. Muito obrigado, obrigado, amigo.”
He
