The Story of the Cannibal Woman

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Cape Town always slept in the same position, curled up in the muzzle of a gun. After hours of grim silence as heavy as a great fur coat of a former Soviet leader, the sound of engines began to sputter and roar throughout the city. In the distance, like the cries of cormorants, the horns of the first ferries split the clouds of mist grazing the sea as they left for Robben Island, once a concentration camp, now transformed into an international tourist attraction. Then the brakes of the overcrowded buses, arriving from the wretchedness of the shantytowns and converging on the splendors of the city center, screeched to a halt at the same stops. The feet of thousands of blacks in cheap shoes tramped toward the subaltern jobs that had always been their lot. All these sounds were preceded by the throbbing rounds of the police helicopters as their eyes pierced the dawn, searching to oust the criminals from their rat holes. For Cape Town at night oozed with all sorts of foulness and rottenness, a nightmare from which the city awoke completely drained, its storm channels churning bile and pus, its head of medlar trees and maritime pines bristling with fright.

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