Die Dubbel

Die Dubbel¹

Home after a long, hard day at work, Pieter Bakkes took a quick shower, pulled on some civvies, turned on the television, switched on the news, grabbed the day’s newspaper from an end table, and plopped down on the couch in his family’s living room. When a commercial about Lion Lager came on, he hopped up and headed into the kitchen to get a cold bottle of the beer. Returning, he plopped back down on the couch and idly watched as the broadcaster commented on this and that bit of local and national news.

As he half listened to the broadcast he skimmed the pages of the sports section of the newspaper. Suddenly, he caught the words, “Police in Pretoria today broke up agitators at an anti-apartheid protest sponsored by the South African Council of Churches.” He set aside the newspaper and focused on the report by the broadcaster. “Such anti-apartheid notables as Beyers Naudé, a white South African theologian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a black South African Anglican cleric, among many others, had assembled to protest,” the newscaster reported. Live shots of the action on the ground were shown. Shaking his head, Bakkes emitted a guffaw and took a long swig of his beer.

Moments later, Bakkes erupted with, “What the hell?”  and as he did beer spewed from his mouth all over his clothes, the couch and rug. Wiping his mouth and chin with his forearm, he leaned forward staring at the telly. An individual being pulled away by the police was a dead ringer for him, Pieter Bakkes.

Exactly like himself: just over six feet tall, stocky and muscular, a full head of neatly cut blonde hair, clean shaven, and a mole on his right cheek. Bakkes sat staring at the telly, dumbfounded.

The guy even wore the same civilian clothes Bakkes found particularly comfortable after being in uniform all day long:  khaki trousers, a short sleeve button-down shirt, an old pair of scruffy clodhoppers. “Naw, this can’t be,” he mumbled to himself.

Just as he was about to get up and turn down the volume of the television and call his wife, the phone rang. Quickly turning the sound down on the TV, he picked up the receiver of the phone, said hello, grabbed the cradle of the receiver, shook it in an attempt to untangle the wire, and carried it over to the couch.

Speaking partly in Afrikaans and partly in English, Bakkes said, “Ja! Ja! I agree, the bastard looked net soos ek. Ja! Ja! Hy kan my verdomde broer wees!”²

He listened for several minutes to what the caller had to say.

“Nee. Ah miskien. Ok. Ja, baai!”³

It was the first of what would be over a dozen calls that evening, primarily from close family friends, his parents, and numerous fellow officers.

“Wat ‘n nagmerrie! Wat ‘n nagmerrie!”⁴

That night he sat up late talking to his wife about the situation, swearing like a teletype machine. He was so beside himself he loathed the thought of going to work in the morning.

II

As soon as Bakkes arrived at work the next morning, he was hit with a rash of razzing and expressions of befuddlement by his colleagues in the National Intelligence Service (NIS) over the striking resemblance between himself and the kaffirboeties⁵ (which was the least offensive term the men used to reference the anti-apartheid activist) who had been arrested the day before. Bakkes was in no mood to chitchat with anyone.

The first thing he did was put in a call to the desk sergeant at the jail. He was informed that “the mompie⁶ is on a 90-Day⁷,” referencing the fact that security police could detain individuals for up to 90 days. Bakkes explained the situation and that he wanted to interrogate the brak⁸ in about a half hour.

Shortly, Bakkes entered the Pretoria Central Prison, a colonial-like red-brick turreted building, flashed his NIS badge, and grunted when the desk sergeant chuckled that “there’s an odd looking kaffir-lover waiting for you in I-45.”

“Dankie⁹,” Bakkes said brusquely, heading to the interrogation room.

As Bakkes ripped the door open and entered, he not only scared the hell out of the prisoner, but shocked him into an even paler shade of white when he got a look at Bakkes. Without a word, Bakkes strode over to the chair on the other side of the desk from the prisoner, who was dressed in typical prison garb (baggy shorts, a tunic, and sandals), sat down, and glared at his look alike. The man across from him stared back, but he was in such a state of shock it looked as if his countenance were disfigured.

“I’m Commander Bakkes, what’s your name?”

“Peter...Peter Bakkes,” the man says, his voice quavering.

“Bullshit!” Commander Bakkes screamed. “Moenie met my skroef nie!¹⁰ I’m in no mood! I’m warning you, you kaffirboetie, you screw with me and I will have your ass worked over to the point where you’ll wish you’d never been foking born. Now tell me your name!”

“Commander, please. I beg you to understand that I am telling you the truth. My name is Peter Bakkes. You can look it up in the arrest report. You can look at my license, my...”

“Shut up!” the commander shouted.

Again, Peter Bakkes flinched at the fury and loudness of the commander’s voice.

Continuing to glare at his counterpart with scorn, Commander Bakkes said, “So, you’re out there with all of those kaffirs, eh? Well, I’ve got news for you, we’re going to beat that shit right out of you! When you get out of here – if you get out of here – you’ll be a lot foking whiter!”

"How little humane feeling is to be found in men's hearts; how much coarseness and cruelty is to be found even in those who are well-regarded, at least by some.”

“Don’t spew your crap around here! We don’t buy it!” the commander shot back.

Standing up, Pieter Bakkes continued to glare at Peter Bakkes as he said, “The boys and I will be visiting you in your cell later this morning. Get ready for something you’ll never forget!” With that he exited the room.

III

When Pieter Bakkes and “the boys” from NIS finished with Peter Bakkes, his nose and right eye socket had been broken, his spleen ruptured, and his liver lacerated, resulting in pulsating and excruciating pain. Peter Bakkes was left in a puddle of his own blood.

When the mealiepap¹¹ was brought around at 3:45 P.M. for supper, Peter Bakkes was discovered dead. In their zeal, the men’s punches, kicks, and wielding of their sjamboks,¹² along with the electric shocks from cattle prods, had gone too far.

Having figured out that Peter Bakkes was largely unknown in the anti-apartheid movement, Pieter Bakkes and his superiors concluded that in the end it would be better all the way around to simply get rid of the corpse versus contacting his next of kin.  Subsequently, Peter Bakkes was wrapped up in brown plastic sheeting and loaded into the back of a bakkie¹³ by two NIS officers and was driven out to the platteland¹⁴. Along the way, the men joked that the kaffirboetie was about to become boerewors¹⁵ for any braks¹⁶ that came across him.

In fact, the two men drove Peter Bakkes’ body to a farm called Vlakplass, where a secret counterinsurgency unit took the body and cremated it in a barbeque pit. When the ashes cooled, they shoveled them into a box and drove out to a river and dumped therein. In the vernacular of international human rights organizations, Peter Bakkes had been “disappeared.” When any official was questioned about the presence of Peter Bakkes, the common retort was, “He was released on his own recognizance.” And that was that.

IV

That evening as Pieter Bakkes sat in front of his television with his wife, she asked him how his day had gone. That was exactly what he was dreading. He was already on his fourth beer, and he was in no mood to talk.

“Argh! A killer!” he said, sounding weary.

 “What the hell did I just say?” he thought to himself, shocked.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Bladdy hell¹⁷, no! Do I look like some babbelbekkie¹⁸?”

“You’re an old dikbek¹⁹ tonight, aren’t you?”

“Watookal²⁰!” Pieter Bakkes said, as he chugged the last bit of beer.

His wife immediately clammed up.

He got up and trudged into the kitchen for another Lion Lager.

Five minutes later, Pieter Bakkes said, “I’m sorry. I’m just worn out, and don’t want to think about work.”

“You should have just said that.”

“Well, I just did, eh?”

The rest of the evening the two didn’t speak. They weren’t mad at one another, but Penelope feared he was a bit too testy to converse with, and Pieter feared that he’d let something slip about Peter Bakkes and his demise.

At ten, he turned off the television, and they both got ready for bed. Almost as soon has his head hit his pillow he fell asleep and was snoring.

Around 2:00 A.M. Pieter Bakkes began thrashing around and shouting.

“Pieter! Pieter,” his wife called out, shaking him.

“Huh? What?” her husband asked, in a state of confusion.

“You were having a nightmare. ... What was it about?”

“I have enemies, Penelope, I have enemies; I have malignant enemies who have sworn to ruin me . . .,” Pieter said, in a hushed and frightened whisper.

“It’s just a nightmare. Just try to get back to sleep. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“I doubt it,” he thought to himself.

He was right. It wouldn’t be. Only he had no idea what he was about to face.

V

Pieter Bakkes always felt under great stress at work. Everyday was an endless series of dealing with one headache after another. As soon as he dealt with one issue, there were four, five or more stacked up in need of attention. Over the past year he had begun drinking more than ever. After work he often joined the boys for several beers, and when he got home, he’d down another two or three, and sometimes four or five.

Nearly every morning he woke up with a bit of a hangover and a nasty metallic-like taste in his mouth and an even nastier smell in his nose. Over time he got used to the irritations of a hangover, and simply put up with them. He wasn’t about to give up his beer as it was the only way he could dial back his stress and actually begin to relax.

Relatively soon after the killing of Peter Bakkes, though, he found that beer proved ineffectual; that is, four to six or seven beers hardly eased the stress that was eating away at him. As a result, he began drinking vodka and orange juice. Once at home he fixed his own drinks, filling a highball glass to the brim with an even portion of vodka and orange juice, along with a few ice cubes.

Late one night, having to urinate, he crawled out of bed and wobbled down the hallway. Half way down the hall he did a double take at the sight of a shadowy human figure at the end of the corridor. Brushing it off as a result of being extremely drunk, Pieter Bakkes stumbled into the toilet. As he urinated, he concluded that the flickering light from the massive candle his wife kept lit at night in the bathroom was casting shadows into the hallway, which was what caused him to think he had seen a human figure.

After relieving himself, he entered the hall and glanced towards the living room. “Ah, just as I thought, it was only my imagination.”

Turning to head back to bed, there he was again — Peter Bakkes standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

Pieter Bakkes bellowed in sheer fright.

His wife bolted upright in bed, reached for her husband but seeing he wasn’t in bed, jumped up and hurried down the hallway.

“What is the matter? Are you...”

“Nothing. It’s nothing,” Pieter Bakkes said, shaking. “I...ah...just got a cramp. I’m OK. Let’s go back to bed.”

Back in bed, Pieter Bakkes leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

“I’m just glad you’re OK.”

“Hmm.”

Pieter Bakkes flipped his pillow over, as he always liked to feel the coolness of the cotton material against his face as he prepared to go to sleep, plumped it, and plopped his head down on it. This time, though, he did not fall immediately to sleep. In fact, wide-awake he didn’t get to sleep for several hours. He was absolutely positive he saw Peter Bakkes. No doubt about it. And not once, but twice.

“I know I saw him! I know that he was here. Possibly still is. But how could that be? He’s dead. Dead!”

Pieter Bakkes was a straight-laced, hard-nosed commander. The paranormal was not something he believed in, never had an inkling of interest in, and/or ever thought about, for, as far as he was concerned, ghosts were for children’s fairy tales and comic books.

“Am I going crazy?” he wondered to himself, actually worried that he might be.

“Is the alcohol causing me to hallucinate?” he wondered.

“At least I’m not hearing voices, yet!” he mused.

Pieter Bakkes finally fell asleep, but when the alarm went off in the morning, he felt like he hadn’t slept at all. He hurriedly dressed, skipped breakfast, and as soon as he got to work and checked in, he left for the city library where he located several books on the abuse of alcohol, alcoholism, and alcohol and hallucinations. Wasting no time, he immediately sat down and thumbed through them. What he located was both a relief and frightening: “Chronic alcohol use can lead to both hallucinations and other forms of psychosis. Heavy abuse of alcohol for a long time will change fundamental structures in the brain. This can induce psychotic conditions. ... Alcohol hallucinosis: These hallucinations are typically auditory but may manifest as visual or tactile.”

Immediately he thought, “Whew, alcohol can induce hallucinations!” He was actually somewhat relieved that he was not going crazy.

But his very next thought was, “Wait, wait now. I don’t drink enough to induce hallucinations. No way! And I did not hear any voices!”

That thought was followed by, “But then again, I did throw back a lot this past month, and so maybe...just maybe it was a hallucination.”

Driving back to work he felt a bit better than he had earlier. “Maybe I need to cut back on the juice a bit,” he told himself.

Pieter Bakkes actually followed through on cutting back on his consumption of alcohol, for a while. Initially, he cut out all spirits and returned to drinking beer, and he cut his consumption of beer down to a mere two cans a day. His effort, though, lasted all of three weeks. At the end of the third week, as he exited an interrogation room in which he had taken part in torturing a prisoner – an African member of the ANC – there was Peter Bakkes glaring at him, Pieter Bakkes.

In his disbelief, Pieter Bakkes blinked his eyes several times, but Peter Bakkes’ figure was still there, still glaring at him, only this time Peter Bakkes was glaring at him, menacingly. Quietly,  but a certain force, Peter said, “You are going to pay for your actions, and I am the one who is going to see to that.”

“Ag man, fok off!”

 Rushing in the opposite direction of where Peter Bakkes stood, Pieter Bakkes returned to his office and plopped into his chair, shaking. For the rest of the day he remained behind his desk unable to complete any work due to being so undone by the reappearance of Peter Bakkes.

That evening he begged off joining the boys for a drink at the local pub and drove straight home. His wife had left a note that she was out shopping for dinner.

Before even getting out of his work clothes, Pieter Bakkes mixed himself a screwdriver in a tall tumbler — 12 ounces of Vodka and four ounces of orange juice — and chugged it down. He then hurriedly fixed himself a second and third drink before his wife returned home, as he knew she would not only look askance at his returning to his old ways but harp on him all evening long.

By the time Penelope walked in the front door, Pieter Bakkes was well on his way to being tanked. He tried to act natural, but he was so inebriated he was way beyond the ability to do so.

“Hi Pieter, dear, how are you?”

“Howwzzi’²¹ my rip’ lil’ plum...p,” he mumbled, slurring the words.

“Pieter, you’re gesuip²², aren’t you?”

“"Ek drink mos²³!"

“Pieter!” As she carried the groceries into the kitchen, she whispered loud enough for her husband to hear her, “Moegoe²⁴!”

Stumbling towards the toilet, Pieter Bakkes nearly bumped into Peter Bakkes. Shocked to see the visage of his nemesis, Pieter Bakkes shouted, “Kak!” and stumbled into the toilet, slamming the door behind him and locking it.

Rushing from the kitchen Penelope knocked on the bathroom door, asking, “Pieter, are you alright?”

When he didn’t answer, she knocked and called out again. “Pieter, are you alright? Pieter, answer me!”

Reaching for the doorknob, she was taken aback that it was locked. She couldn’t remember a time when her husband had ever locked the door of the bathroom.

Knocking on the door with more force, and then pounding on it, while calling her husband’s name, it was all to no avail. Screeching in fear that he had fallen and badly hurt himself, she pounded and kicked the door as hard as she could.

Pieter Bakkes finally managed to force something out of his mouth that was a cross between a growl and slurred speech that sounded like, “Ahm hea. Wha’ nee?”

“Pieter, unlock this door immediately!”

“Ontoile’,” he gurgled.

“OK, I’m waiting for you to come out. Hurry up!”

Pieter Bakkes managed to utter something approximating a combination of a groan and  a growl.

Eventually, Pieter Bakkes managed to stand up, unlock the bathroom door, and, with his wife’s assistance, go to bed. She pulled his trousers off which were soaked with urine.

Disgusted, Penelope covered him up, turned out the light, grabbed a blanket from a hall cabinet and spent the night on the couch in the living room.

In the morning neither one of them mentioned the events of the night before. Penelope knew that it wouldn’t do any good. As for Pieter Bakkes, he was in no mood to talk about anything at all for all he could focus on through his mental fog was the reappearance of Peter Bakkes.  The meanderings of  his mind solely recapitulated the encounters he had had with Peter Bakkes, the shock of such, whether his alcohol intake had resulted in the hallucinations, and his anxiety over the very real sense that he might be going crazy. And the latter possibility horrified him.

No matter what, it was obvious to Pieter Bakkes that Peter Bakkes, one way or another, was out to extract a pound of flesh or more from him, Pieter Bakkes. The situation was not merely nightmarish it was a living, breathing nightmare that Pieter Bakkes had absolutely no idea how to extricate himself from.

VI

Peter Bakkes may as well have moved into Pieter and Penelope’s home, he was there that often. He had certainly set up home in Pieter Bakkes’ mind. Pieter Bakkes tried, as hard as his liquor-soaked mind allowed, to control his nerves and responses to Peter Bakkes’ appearances, but no matter how hard he tried, with each new appearance his adrenaline surged like mercury in a thermometer on a sweltering day. His series of hormonal and physiological responses were as jumpy and fraught as a driver of an automobile who had just crashed into and run over a bicyclist.

What exacerbated his miserable state of mind is that with each new appearance of Peter Bakkes, Pieter Bakkes increased the amount of his alcohol consumption. Gradually, it got to the point where he was under the influence most of his waking hours. In not a few cases, when he awoke in the morning following a particularly nasty binge, he felt drunk versus merely hungover. It was as if the booze were pumping through his system and brain like blood through his heart. Craving alcohol as soon as he awoke, he’d frequently fix a stiff drink for breakfast, and then made sure to hit a pub at lunch and immediately after work, topped the day off with countless highballs once he reached home.

In quick succession, due to his heavy drinking, Pieter Bakkes lost his capacity to do his job, was fired, and spent days on end drunk at home. His attempt to drink himself  into oblivion proved futile. A series of arrests for drunken driving, along with a massive amount in fines, and three overnight jailings added insult to injury, as it were.

Despite his wife’s pleading, Pieter Bakkes refused to enter counseling for his alcoholism, and for his “weirdly bizarre behavior,” as Penelope labeled it, vis-à-vis his “relationship” with Peter Bakkes. It got to the point where Pieter Bakkes spoke more about Peter Bakkes than he did he and his wife’s lives, let alone the lives of their grown children and grandchildren. He had, in a word, become a monomaniac. According to his simplistic and alcohol-soaked, and self-righteous way of thinking, he, Pieter Bakkes, was the victim, and the only victim. Conveniently, he completely forgot about — or forced himself to forget about — the original cause of his current torment.

The combination of his drinking and ever-increasing agitation and violent reactions to Peter Bakkes’ appearance finally landed Pieter Bakkes in a groendakky²⁵, where he, initially, ended up in a straitjacket for several days.

He was more or less forced to go cold turkey, and as a result suffered terribly: delirium tremens, a combination of grand mal convulsions and delirium resulting in confusion, hallucinations, extreme agitation, tremors and frighteningly high fevers. On top of that he suffered nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Throughout the entire process, Peter Bakkes was a regular visitor to Pieter Bakkes’ room, talking up a storm: mocking, ridiculing, harassing and threatening Pieter Bakkes, all of which drove Pieter Bakkes ever deeper into a state of mental distress. For days on end Pieter Bakkes howled that Peter Bakkes was driving him mad, and that if the nurses and doctors continued to fail to eject Peter Bakkes from his, Pieter Bakkes’, room he would murder Peter Bakkes.

Peter Bakkes had Pieter Bakkes’ number. He knew exactly how to drive Pieter Bakkes ever deeper into a state of madness, and he took every opportunity to “twist the screw” ever tighter — and did so with relish. Peter Bakkes’ intention was to turn Pieter Bakkes into a gibbering, drooling fool who howled in terror every waking hour of the rest of his life.

Peter Bakkes appeared daily in exactly the same sort of hospital gown Pieter Bakkes wore. He even mussed his hair up and made sure that he had the same dark, puffy bags under his eyes as Pieter Bakkes. The only characteristic that was different was Peter Bakkes’ leering grin. And to infuriate Pieter Bakkes even more, Peter Bakkes actually dared Pieter Bakkes to throw the plastic drinking glasses, plates, and utensils at him.

“Come on you fool, fight back! Throw those cups and glasses at me, that book, that empty bedpan,” Peter Bakkes taunted Pieter Bakkes. “I dare you, you insane moron! You coward! You Afrikaans bully! You nasty little man who is bound for eternal hell, which will make this little tête-à-tête in this cuckoo’s nest seem like mere child’s play.” In response to that last thought, Peter Bakkes burst out in raucous laughter.

In a rage, screaming so loud and for such an extended period of time, Pieter Bakkes turned nearly plum purple. He grabbed at anything and everything within reach and flung them with all his might at Peter Bakkes. Despite the fact that none of the items would’ve harmed him in anyway whatsoever, Peter Bakkes made a head game out of it, darting this way and that so as to antagonize Pieter Bakkes and frustrate him all that much more. His goal was to make Pieter Bakkes sound and appear even more insane than he already was.

“I’ll kill you! I will! I’ll kill you!” Pieter Bakkes screamed.

Dancing a jig across the room, while ducking with ease as various objects flew towards him, Peter Bakkes sang

Jumping out of bed, Pieter Bakkes charged Peter Bakkes, but in doing so he ran straight into the sharp edge of a table, fell and hit his head on a table. Blood spurted from his forehead as Pieter Bakkes screamed in fury and pain. Getting to his knees, Pieter Bakkes leaped at Peter Bakkes, but he slipped in his own blood and went down hard.

As several attendants and nurses flooded through the doorway to Pieter Bakkes’ room, Pieter Bakkes made one last frantic attempt to grab Peter Bakkes, screaming “I’ll kill you, you bloody kaffirboetie!” but he, once again, slipped in his own blood.

The entire time Peter Bakkes taunted him, waving a towel in the air, playing toreador to Pieter Bakkes’ hapless bull. Pieter Bakkes saw red, but it was his own blood.

Within minutes, Pieter Bakkes was placed in a strait jacket. Once it was cinched up and he couldn’t move a muscle, he broke down weeping. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I am truly sorry!”

But, Peter Bakkes wondered, was Pieter Bakkes truly sorry? Or were his tears and babbling more a cry of pity for himself, instead of expressing genuine repentance for his brutal and deadly actions that were carried out in a mindless and racist manner ending with his incarceration in a mental hospital wrapped tightly and motionless in a straitjacket?

Consequently, Peter Bakkes considered two options: first, he could, if he wished, not only continue to terrify and drive Pieter Bakkes madder and madder not only in this life but in the beyond or, second, he could drive Pieter Bakkes into such a state that he killed himself. He, Peter Bakkes, could purchase a pistol, load it, and simply leave it on the table next to Pieter Bakkes’ bed or bring in a supply of over-the-counter sleeping tablets and leave it on the table next to a pint of bourbon. Or, perhaps...The options were countless. Or, he could continue to drive Pieter Bakkes into a permanent state of madness.