by Ekow Duker
‘You can stay in Ghana,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It is obvious you cannot bear to be parted from this violin. Just see how intently you clutch it, so close to yourself. To give it back now would be as painful as cutting off one of your limbs.’ He touched André on the arm. ‘And for what? Your Mrs Summerscales need not know. You should have learned by now that things have a way of arranging themselves in Ghana.’
Yes, for what? Fleeting throes of violin-induced ecstasy interspersed by anguished bouts of longing? A relentless search for an imaginary refuge that sent him hurtling halfway around the world? And all for what? André’s face still tingled where the angel’s moist breath had caressed his skin.
He bent low and embraced the chief superintendent. ‘I must go now,’ he said.
The chief superintendent stepped back with a smile. ‘I said earlier that we were not brothers but in a strange way I believe we are. So if ever you want to talk through your decision, Mr Potgieter, remember I am only a telephone call or a short taxi ride away.’
André left him and strode across the carpark to where Bediako was waiting. He placed the Guadagnini on the back seat of the Daihatsu, then folded himself in after it. The engine chattered into life. As Bediako pulled away, André rolled down the window and called out to Chief Superintendent Larbi.
‘I know what I need to do.’
Teacher, Precious and Karabo arrived at the house in Labone just before dark. The house was as grand as Karabo had expected. It stood imposingly behind a painted brick wall. She looked for the dog but it was nowhere to be seen. She’d decided his name was Jack.
The black gate creaked open and a wizened head looked out at them.
‘You have come,’ the man said to Teacher. He looked annoyed, as if their arrival had disturbed his rest. Karabo thought it wasn’t very nice of him to speak to the master of the house in such a peremptory manner but Teacher didn’t seem to mind.
Teacher paid the driver and led them into the yard. Karabo was climbing up the stairs to the front door when Teacher tapped her on the shoulder.
‘No, Karabo. Come this way.’ He jerked his head towards the back of the house.
Teacher must have forgotten the front door key. She followed him down the passage between the side of the house and the perimeter wall. There were orchids everywhere, many in clay pots and others nestled in the crook of low-hanging boughs. Orchids were temperamental. Karabo knew how difficult it was to grow them and she felt a burst of pride. Growing orchids was just the sort of unconventional pastime Teacher would indulge in.
But they didn’t go in at the back door either. Teacher stopped outside a small, squat building a little distance apart from the main house. A thick stripe of black paint ran around the base of the building and the walls above it were a mottled shade of white. It bore an eerie resemblance to the prison but Karabo pushed the thought out of her mind.
Teacher fumbled with a key and the door swung open. The entrance led directly into a bedroom, a kitchen and a curtained shower all at the same time. Was this where Teacher lived? It was even smaller than their house in Mthatha.
‘Hawu, Teacher,’ Precious said. She could not hide the disappointment in her voice. ‘You left me and came all this way to live in a back room?’
A woman’s shoe lay on the floor, the sharp heel pointing accusingly at Teacher. Karabo kicked it under the bed and hoped her mother had not seen it. There was only one chair in the room and Precious sat down on it. She looked up at Teacher and her eyes were large and questioning.
Teacher reached under the pillow and took out a piece of paper. He shook out the folds and held it in front of Precious.
‘Read this,’ he said and as she did, her eyes brimmed with tears. She bit down on her fist and her face creased with anguish.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Teacher said softly.
Precious began to inhale rapidly. It was as if someone were telling her to breathe.
‘Have you shown this to Karabo?’ she asked.
Teacher held the paper out to Karabo. It was a laboratory report of some kind with four columns of numbers running halfway down the page. Below it was a closely typed paragraph and just looking at it made Karabo tired.
‘Do I have to read this?’
Teacher nodded and Karabo noticed how tightly his lips were clamped together. She sighed and began to scan the paper quickly. She stopped when she got to ‘the probability of paternity is 99.9996%’.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
She could hear the butcher man urging her to be still. Then her voice rose in a shrill crescendo. ‘Teacher, what is this?’ she cried.
Teacher’s voice was so soft Karabo had to strain to hear him. ‘You are my daughter,’ he said.
Karabo looked at him blankly. Why on earth was he telling her this? She’d always known she was.
Acknowledgements
What led me to start writing this novel was a remark by the then Police Minister of South Africa, Fikile Mbalula. Speaking at an official function in 2017, Minister Mbalula commented on the murder of a young woman, Karabo Mokoena. He lamented the killing of ‘such a beautiful girl, [a] yellowbone’. It puzzled me why Karabo’s complexion would be of such significance that a cabinet minister would choose to mention it at all. While I never met Karabo Mokoena, her tragic and brutal murder was really the genesis for this book. I hope that in death, she finds the peace that eluded her in the latter part of her life.
That careless remark by the Police Minister led me to want to find out more about the different ways in which we evaluate and respond to shades of colour. My sincere thanks to the Mpholle sisters, Relebohile Valerie and Reitumetse Vanessa, who shared a first-hand account of what it means to be a light-skinned black woman in South Africa today. Much of what they spoke about, the random advantages and hurts that are a result of the lottery of their skin colour, hold true in many parts of the world.
Violins have a large role to play in this story and I’m extremely grateful to Serge Cuca and Albertus Bekker for sharing their experience of playing and making these instruments. Both men were a treasure trove of the most wonderful stories about violins and I hope that in Yellowbone I’ve managed in some small way to convey the magnificence of the instrument. Any lingering inaccuracies in these pages are entirely my own doing. I should have listened better to Serge and Albertus.
My thanks to Richard Beynon and Jo-Anne Richards for working through a very early and rather incoherent draft of the story with me. I trust this version is a more measured and confident version of the rambling draft you first saw.
Thank you to Cathal Long for helping me portray Siobhan, the Irish landlady in the book. She is a minor character but for some reason she occupies a large space in my mind.
A big thank you to Dr Jessica Summerscales in Johannesburg for graciously lending her surname to Susan and Nigel Summerscales, the mother and son in London who together do so much to bend the arc of the story. I must add for those who tend to unwarranted extrapolation that Dr Summerscales is nothing like her fictional namesake.
My thanks as well to Eloise Wessels and the entire team at NB Publishers for taking a chance on me. I’m particularly grateful to Carolyn Meads, my publisher at Kwela, for her total dedication to this book and for working tirelessly to hone and prune the manuscript to the point where it rests in your hands today. And to Alison Lowry for her matchless editing of the script. This is our fourth collaboration together and I think it gets better every time. I’d also like to thank the anonymous Reader whose written review challenged me to delve deeper into the underlying themes of the narrative. You have an incisive turn of phrase and I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed one of your comments as I could not have put it better myself.
I’d also like to thank Wyna Modisapodi and the Between the Covers Book Club for being avid readers of my work. If every book club in the world was like yours, I’d be a very wealthy man. And, of course, to Geruza Nzongo for being so wholeheartedly invested in the evolution o
f the story and for making me think about the characters anew.
In writing the London scenes, I often thought back to when I lived and studied there. For that I must thank my parents, Sophia Duker and the late Kodwo Duker, for making the steep sacrifices that allowed me to live in London for several years.
I’m grateful to my niece Femi Adetola and the inspirational legal outreach work she is doing at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison in Ghana. Her organisation, the Fair Justice Initiative, works to help men and women in prison navigate an opaque penal system that leans with disproportionate severity on the poor and the weak. The insight I gained into life in prison permeates much of the latter part of this book.
And so I must thank especially the women at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison for allowing me a fleeting glimpse into your lives, your losses and your hopes for the future. I was struck above all by your grace and humanity under conditions that ordinarily would lend themselves to despair.
Thank you to Brenda Matyolo for helping me wrap my pen around isiXhosa terminology.
And finally my thanks go to my children, Nathan and Noemi, and particularly to my wife, Bridget, for allowing me the space to write at absurd hours when I should have been present with you.
Johannesburg
December 2018
Summary
Karabo, a light-skinned girl living in Mthatha, grew up with the hurtful cry of ‘yellowbone’ ringing in her ears. She hears her parents argue, not realising that questions surrounding her paternity are the cause. To Karabo, there can be no greater bond than the one between her and ‘Teacher’, as her father is called.
With her exotic appearance, people expect Karabo to coast through life on her looks alone, but she moves to London to study architecture. At a private recital, a priceless antique violin binds her fate to that of virtuoso André Potgieter, who fled to London to hide a secret – though no saint himself, he sees angels. And he’d do anything to keep seeing them.
Spanning three countries – South Africa, Britain and Ghana – Yellowbone is a powerful, enthralling story exploring belonging and identity, justice, deceit and truth.
About the Author
Educated in Ghana, the UK, the US and France, Ekow Duker has worked as an oil field engineer, a banker and as a corporate strategist. His current profession is in data science, helping organisations use data to make better decisions. He has published four novels: White Wahala (2014), Dying in New York (2014), The God who Made Mistakes (2016) and Yellowbone (2019). White Wahala was a finalist in the 2011/12 EU Prize for Literature. He lives in Johannesburg with his wife, Bridget, and two children.
Kwela Books,
an imprint of NB Publishers,
a division of Media24 Boeke (Pty) Ltd,
40 Heerengracht, Cape Town 8001
www.kwela.com
Copyright © 2019 Ekow Duker
All rights reserved.
No part of this electronic book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording, or by any other information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
Cover design by mr design
E-book design by Wouter Reinders
Available in print:
First edition in 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0885-5
Epub edition:
First edition in 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0886-2 (epub)
Mobi edition:
First edition in 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0887-9 (mobi)
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Mthatha Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
London Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Nsawam Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Book Summary
About the Author
Imprint Page