The Kia Picanto breezed in and a mouse of a man bounced out, with a goatee and chinos and Harry Potter glasses. His wispy hair ruffled in the breeze from underneath a green woollen cap that looked hand knitted. Jacintha had never thought about it before but if she had, she’d have felt that the business of snake catching would want a six foot fifteen Afrikaner called Johan van der Something who drives a twin cab Toyota bakkie and wears khaki, or camo. And a bush hat and a gun. She didn’t feel it should be the side hustle of a French house painter named Louis.

She showed him the photo she managed to snap before the snake had disappeared behind the wardrobe, and he said right away it’s a Cape Cobra. Will kill a person dead inside of an hour if they don’t get to a hospital right away, he said. Does anybody still get to a hospital inside of an hour these days? Maybe those who can still afford private medical, but that fell by the wayside when Henry was finally affirmative actioned out of Standard Bank ten years ago.

‘Beautiful coat,’ Louis said, while she led him into the house, ‘it brings out the colour in your eyes. Sorry, I am not being forward, but I am a painter so I notice colour.’

‘Thank you, I’ve always liked turquoise.’ As they passed the hall mirror, she caught a glimpse of the new shade of brown she’d been using to cover the grey that seemed to have become ever more invasive since she turned fifty last year.

‘How often are your called out for snakes?’ she asked while he rummaged under their bed. ‘Be careful with those golf clubs, they were expensive.’

‘Not so often that I could live off it.’ His voice was deeper than you’d imagine from looking at him; a rich treacle that spoke of theatre and classical training. He eased open their wardrobe and poked around the shoes, upending her old show jumping boots like he was simply checking for scorpions. She eyed the hangers and imagined that one of Henry’s shirt sleeves was leaning in for a nibble.

‘How do you kill them? My grandfather used to lob their heads off with a spade when I was little.’

‘Oh no, we don’t kill them. I release them directly somewhere out of town.’

‘Ja, but we’re out of town here, so…’

‘Yes, you are very remote. I hope you are not living out here all by yourself; it is not safe.’

‘My husband’s away for the weekend at some family thing.’

Henry. He’s been up to something again; she could feel it. His cash stash, the one he thinks she doesn’t know about, has ten thousand Rand missing from it and he’s been looking at the Old Mutual statements on the QT. She thought he’d forgotten about the life insurance – the one they’d needed for a mortgage once.

He pulled the bookshelf away from the wall and crouched down on all fours, looking like he was ready to pounce. Henry’s mother now lived in a stinkwood box on this bookshelf here in Jacintha’s living room, still lording it over her house and her husband. This box was now the receiver of Henry’s prayers, and the reason they used hushed voices when speaking of unpleasant things in the house. Another ornament for her to dust.

‘Have you ever been bitten?’

‘Only twice.’

She laughed. ‘Only twice! You make it sound like it’s nothing.’

‘Aww, it was not a big thing. The emergencies at Milnerton Medi-Clinic have all the correct anti-venoms. It is your nearest hospital as well, no?’

‘We don’t have medical anymore, so we’d have to go provincial. Probably Groote Schuur.’

‘You would not make it, better you go to Milnerton.’

‘I won’t be going anywhere this weekend ‘cause my husband’s away with the car. And we often say we hope there’s never an emergency while the power is off because we’re so far out of town here that there’s no cell phone signal and we can only use the landline here’.

‘Allez, we better make sure we find it then.’ He ruffled the curtains and looked up to see underneath the pelmet. ‘I found one halfway up a curtain once.’ Two of the hooks at the end of the rail were missing from before they’d started renting the house and Jacintha felt embarrassed that this man should see it. She looked past the sagging curtain and noticed that Henry’s tomatoes had started to ripen and she made a mental note to go pick the damn stuff later on. Beyond the tomatoes was the half-built greenhouse from when they were going to grow microgreens, apparently. Its tatters winked at her in the cool mid-morning breeze. Next to it was the new bed of onions that Henry had been working on for this month’s project because they were now going into the chutney business, apparently.

‘Do you ever sell them on? Like, to animal collectors and stuff?’

‘Mon Dieu! That that would be unethical, no? People would get themselves killed and also it is illegal.’

‘I don’t imagine it’s anything a few notes in an envelope couldn’t fix.’

‘That is true,’ he replied. ‘There is a Chinese man in Langebaan who will get you anything you want – rhino horn, perlemoen, animals. He even has a groovy phone number, I think it’s something like 082 MIDDLEMAN.’

And that’s when Jacintha knew what Henry was up to. The missing money. The life insurance statements. The business card with the Year of the Rabbit lucky fortune and a groovy phone number on it, used as a bookmark in a copy of DIY Hydroponics in the drawer of Henry’s nightstand. The family reunion alibi.

She followed Louis into the lounge and watched as he lifted her throw pillows off the couch. Without apparent concern he hooked his fingers down by the backrest and pulled off the cushions before going down on his knees again and poking underneath. He looked so sure of himself while he was dismantling her furniture.

‘I saw the water heater on the roof when I came in,’ he said, pulling the bookshelf away from the wall. Your husband made it himself, no?’

‘Yes, he’s busy working on getting us off the grid.’

‘We are also looking to be living off the grid but it is still expensive even if you make it DIY. Painting does not make too much money.’

Living Off the Grid –that phrase again. Living Off the Grid in The Rainbow Nation, Jacintha always said to Henry, was like the passengers on the Titanic telling themselves they’d taken up rowing for sport. But she didn’t say this to Louis.

‘Have you always been a painter?’

‘No, I was safety officer at the council for twenty years. But you know…’

‘Ja, I know, you got The Letter. My husband got his from the bank. Why don’t you go back to France?’

‘I have lived here for too long, this is my home now.’

‘Ja, but you have a French passport, you can leave.’

‘Yes, but I cannot eat my passport. Even in France I have to work, and I have nothing there; everything I want is here.’

‘I don’t imagine you’re living in a mansion like this,’ she said, sweeping her hand around the living room.

‘I wish! We are living with my in-laws now.’

‘Oh. There really is no hope for us anymore, is there?’

She thought of the life insurance again. Two million Rand would easily put solar panels on the roof.  But would it buy absolution though, because something like that would matter to Henry and to his mother. Or is absolution overrated when you live by candlelight and the bills are piling up on the counter?

Suddenly there was a soft scuffle and furniture scraped heavily across the tiles.

‘Whoops, almost. Gotcha!’ Louis appeared from behind the dresser in the dining area, holding the head and tail of two metres of spitting indignation. ‘Don’t be afraid chérie, we are not going to hurt you’.

‘I hope you’re taking it far away from here, hey?’

‘Don’t worry, I will take her away directly and you will never see her again,’ he replied, smiling reassuringly.

And just like that, he was gone. She stood in the front yard watching the Kia bump its way out of sight and for the first time that weekend, Jacintha felt lonely.

She went about her business gingerly for the rest of the afternoon, because even though the snake was gone she still felt twitchy, like when you find a flea on a dog and for the rest of the day you have imaginary itches everywhere.

When Henry phoned later that day, she didn’t tell him what had happened, or about Louis. He asked the usual questions about how her day had gone and she said fine, she’d picked his tomatoes. He said the family had spent the day by the pool and he’d forgotten his swim shorts so had to borrow a pair from his brother. She reminded him that it’s in the wash because he’d worn it in the garden the other day. It was just as well Henry had mentioned the swim shorts, because with all the commotion she’d forgotten to do the laundry.  He didn’t sound like he was fishing for information, she thought, and after a few more minutes of chatting about small stuff, they rang off.

Afterwards, in the kitchen, she contemplated the stockpile of tomatoes on the counter. Henry used his granny’s old cast iron meat mincer to puree his harvests before canning them for the cupboard. It was authentic, apparently. All he ever did with it was nag her to make him tomato bredie – his mother’s recipe. She screwed the contraption to the counter and an hour later the fruits of her husband’s endeavour lay frothing in the bucket. She was going to leave it for him to sort out the next day but while she was pushing down the lid, the warm sour-sweetness of the pulp gusted up at her and she gagged on it. In the dimness of this kitchen that belonged to someone else and in which she cooked recipes that belonged to someone else, for a husband who no longer belonged to her, Jacintha took a stand. She removed the lid and manhandled the bucket outside to what was left of the lawn after the drought a few years back. There, she cupped her hands and scooped deeply and bestowed the red pulp onto the lawn, like a blood offering. She drained the bucket and watching each handful foam around the withering blades before finally soaking away into a scatter pattern of damp clay. Her home cut hair swirled around her cheeks and the dry air scratched at her throat. Then she went back inside and returned with the stinkwood box from the bookshelf. When delivered high overhead, Henry’s mother’s smithereens whirled on the wind, darkening in the gathering dusk as they dissipated across her son’s rented kingdom. Having thus established dominion over this house, even if only for this night, Jacintha went inside and made tea.

She spent her final hours before going to bed on the internet arranging her affairs, and it felt good to be making decisions for herself.  Just before ten o’clock she brewed her bedtime rooibos and headed for bed. Even though the intruder was gone, she still threw off the duvet and poked at the pillows, just in case, before remaking the bed. Like every other night, she checked in on the Ambien stash in her underwear drawer but tonight, unlike every other night, she took the boxes to her bedside table and slowly and deliberately she popped the pink tablets into a neat pile. Outside the wind had whipped itself into a frenzy and it hissed and rattled through the gaps where important parts of the house no longer met where they should. This dirge would prevail all night, she knew, or at least until the small hours.  She was still contemplating her stockpile when she remembered the laundry. She stood up on the mattress and jumped as far away from the bed as she could, like the little girl who was once afraid of monsters under it. The laundry basket was a tallish plastic thing with a wicker design and a lid. She quickly flicked open the lid and jumped back, laughing at herself for still being so skittish so late in the day.

The bite, when it came, happened when she stuck her hands down to the bottom to collect a load of clothing and disturbed the snake that had burrowed down underneath it. For all her affected precaution, it had never occurred to her that there really might be a second one in the house, but there she was, contemplating the double punctures on the ring finger of her left hand just as the power kicked off again.

Half an hour later she was still lying on the bed thinking, and watching the candles flicker in the draught. They were taught at school to keep the victim as immobile as possible so she was keeping as immobile as possible while reflecting on her day. It was during the second bout of vomiting that her own mother joined her at the foot of the bed.

‘So it’s true that our dead people come to us at the end. Are you real, or am I hallucinating you?’

Does it matter? I’m here, and you won’t have to do this alone.

‘So I’m crossing the bar then? Without sadness or farewell? Is now the time when my life flashes in front of my eyes and I make peace with everything?

There is power in making peace.

I can almost admire him. Henry. Who knew he’d have it in him to scheme up something like this, and the balls to see it through?

What are you going to do?

‘You mean like forgiveness and stuff?’

Yes.

She looked at the pills. ‘At least this way, the absolution can be mine.’

What about his absolution?

‘He will live with this forever.’

What did you do?

Earlier, when I was on the… the… net. The Internet. I cancelled the…

Take a deep breath, it’s almost over.

I cancelled the life insurance. The cash value will be in his account in three working… days. Working days. Twenty-seven thousand Rand won’t buy… absolution or roof… roof stuff.

Solar panels.

Yes. But it will replace the R10,000 he paid for… the… the…

The snakes.

Yes.

But he won’t go to jail.

Jail. He will be here, in this house. With his candles and his tomatoes. And his dead… his dead…

Microgreens.

Yes. And me on the bookshelf.