Glittering Gallows

Chapter 10

79 C Chapter 10 he morning was breezy and eerie, and the day, sun-flooded, typically African. As usual, the streets teemed with all sorts of people going about their businesses. Coming from the direction of Compol Buildings housing the Police Museum, Lerato Makgunda left Bosman St and walked onto the premises of Pretoria’s Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. In the cathedral’s rockeries and manicured gardens grew foliages of lilies and chrysanthemums, Floribunda roses and peons, the merry flowers appearing to tender a hint of heavenly beauty. But to Lerato, a woman who couldn’t recall the last time she smiled genuinely, the flowers reminded her of unstrained mourning and the funerals of dear ones, all Makgundas, but mostly their teenage children they had buried in recent years. A tableau of their funeral processions played in her mind. Like fire dragon flickers in the dark, she recalled the expensive caskets, hearses and wreaths the premier sourced for every Makgunda who died. Moagi, a chief suspect in the deaths, never bothered to find out why his relatives were perishing. Though she suspected him and could bet her life he was evil, it was the idolising praises from eulogists that soured her heart. By the graveside and in their unwarranted poetry and oration, they digressed from the dead and embarked on showering the rich man with praises as if he was the reason for the gatherings. “I curse you, Moagi,” she said between gritted teeth as she walked down a loose-cobbled sidewalk to the church’s main wooden doors reinforced with trellis and other foundry works. “For allowing yourself to be a tool in the Devil’s hands, I curse you to die painfully. Death and misfortune will haunt you. God, the Passover Angel is at Your disposal. Lance his heart as he has lanced the hearts of others. Quarter him like a butchery carcass.” Though the church wasn’t comparable in size and grandeur to the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Jesus Christ the King in Johannesburg, T 80 it was eye-catching and ornamental. Its double-pinnacle Gothic façade and the stained mica glass above the dual entrance showing a masterly mosaic of a shepherd and sheep, always grabbed her attention. As she approached the cathedral’s entrance, the atmosphere obtaining changed her mind. To wish the premier dead and to summon a dark angel against him meant she was in league with the Devil. The politician wasn’t her tutor in things satanic. Indeed her husband might be lying in his deathbed, but that didn’t warrant her to slide into darkness. A bronze fontal holding sanctified water was in the building’s anteroom . She dipped a finger in the water and crossed herself on the forehead, bosom and shoulders, mutely begging the Virgin Mary to ask God for forgiveness on her behalf. When she turned a knob in one of its two doors, she was relieved to discover the door wasn’t locked. The pews stood in neat rows, empty and inviting, the proportions of the building dwarfing her. She closed the door behind her and walked down the main aisle. Her footsteps echoed in the gallery and further in the eastern and western transepts. Grottos of Mary with Baby Jesus, human-size crucifixes and paintings of the Last Supper stared down at her. Without its silver and golden appointments, the altar looked strange. Being a strict Sunday-church-goer, she had never seen it bereft of its appointments and linen. It appeared like a counter in a butcher’s shop or a slab for mundane business. She wished she had come on a Sunday and seen the priest after Mass, when she would be sure to stand in the Holy of Holies and an audience with Father Hendrik van Vuuren meant an audience with God. On nearing the altar after emerging from a section of the gallery obstructed with gigantic pillars, she found the priest in silent prayer before a grotto of the Virgin Mother in the eastern transept. His back to her, hands clasped prayerfully, he was in a dark suit and white collar. Lerato sat in a front pew and waited, but she couldn’t help remarking wordlessly that without his customary robes the priest appeared ordinary and powerless. 81 After about fifteen minutes, the priest rose, crossed himself, genuflected before the statue and adjusted his jacket and collar. He...