STOEP TALK denis beckett A fairer, squarer country
HISTORIC. We pressed the Panic on purpose. Not even in our private crime wave – seven incidents in the first seven weeks of 2007 – did that happen. Though I bet we’re into three-figures of false alarms.
Third week of 2018, at 4am, I hear a human tread. Maybe three times a year a bump in the night, maybe a human tread, and I do sentry-round, inwardly anticipating the answer JAM, Just Another Mystery. But this time, I know it’s human.
I look down the passage, and there is the human. Instinctively, I storm the passage demanding “what are you doing here?” Somehow, he doesn’t seem to feel the need to answer. Indeed he retires from the scene. He’s been in 20 percent light, he vanishes into a wholly dark room. Murphy’s Law has arranged that the room’s light switch is behind him.
Barging in on him – perhaps with friends, perhaps bearing unfriendly metal objects – would block his/their exit route. I’d like to say I make a fast strategic calculation and implement the optimum option decisively, but truth would be injured. In fact I am discovering, possibly not anew, that I may not rank high in that category of persons who rise to crisis in calm decisiveness.
I yell to the sleeping beauty, who has a bedside Panic button, “the alarm, the alarm”. By that I mean “press your Panic button”, but I can’t think up those four crisp definite words. She takes it I need the alarm deactivated to deal with a cat fight, and obliges.
I’m now trying to get by another route to the relevant light switch. Plus to get to get to my remote to press its Panic switch. Plus to open an outside door to set off the main alarm, which seems important, though it’ll rend the night and give the neighbours their turn to put pillows over ears and curse Joburg’s infamous but popular nocturnal symphony. Plus to install eyes in the back of my head in case someone has an injurious wish not to be seen.
The night is rent well asunder. Alarms, security, police, torches, flashing roof-light 4x4s, searches, inspections.
Person or persons have created their own departure gate, owing gratitude to a truth of which we are sharply reminded. Wooden fittings weaken somewhat when they are closing in on their hundredth birthday.
A laptop has gone, delivering a new emotion. This time the pain of its loss is a fraction of last time’s, when the obliging Cloud was not yet compensating for the backup failings that we always know we’re going to rectify tomorrow-for-sure.
I’m struck by re-exposure to the mind-teaser of being an outsider at home. Before dawn we’ve had double-figures of security personnel discussing our break-in, our burglar, our perimeter, our computer, in languages that leave us out. Which is by no means a gripe; more in awe. There’s nothing offhand about it, it’s simply natural: “We who are dealing with this do it in our language, from time to time we give this owner fellow a bit of polite infill, as if he was a foreign visitor”.
Statements are taken, duly formal. The fingerprint guys arrive not long after the sun. Goodwill of the African brand, something more than businesslike, abounds.
We end with different perspectives on next time; whether to obey instinct or obey what prudence allegedly says, duck out the back, away from where stray bullets may buzz about. We also end with a sorrowful salutary reminder: a “next time” is quite a likelihood.
Which stiffens the sinews.
It’s not about more police, more beams, more armed response. It’s about a fairer, squarer, country.