Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  The time my mother stayed with me, I nearly went crazy. Her over-protectiveness and sudden displays of love and caring tended to irritate me more than anything else. When I was high on marijuana I could just about tolerate her, but when I wasn’t I would experience extreme mood swings. When I was straight or sober, I simply couldn’t cope with her. Her incessant questions – where was I going, what time would I be back – to say nothing of the continual advice that poured out of her mouth, drove me mad. Eventually, it got so bad I threw her out of my apartment.

  It was soon after this that my mother was introduced to a Hungarian man by the name of Mike, whose wife had committed suicide by dousing herself in petrol and putting a match to her clothes. Two days after they met, Mike sent my mother an air ticket to visit him in Durban, where he lived. It turned out that they were a match made in heaven; my mother moved down to Durban, and they got married.

  My mother hated my motorbike and was always warning me of the dangers, but she was happy to see me when I showed up at her door, and she insisted that I stay over that night and join her and Mike for dinner. To make sure that I would come, she promised roast chicken with stuffing.

  I met up with Brett and Dennis back at his sister’s flat around 5.30pm. I was the first to arrive and I waited outside, sitting on my bike. A woman who was probably in her early thirties, who lived in the same block of flats, walked up to me and asked who I was waiting for. We got chatting and I learnt that she was a divorcée and a high school teacher. When I was at school, I often used to fantasise about fucking my teachers. It was clear that she was interested in me, and so I asked what her flat number was. Then I asked her if she’d like to spend the next day with me at the beach. Just then, my mates arrived, and she quickly leant forward and whispered her flat number in my ear. Just the warmth of her breath on my ear aroused me.

  Dennis and Brett seemed awfully pleased with themselves. They had met up with a guy called Flattie and his friend Twigs. Flattie wanted to do a deal: he was willing to buy the entire packet of 1 000 Mandrax tablets, but told them he needed a sample first. I became suspicious and expressed my reservations. I asked them if this Flattie was from Joburg. He was, but Dennis and Brett claimed to have had dealings with him in the past. Still, I felt uneasy. I knew Flattie, too, and I was certainly not as trusting as they were. Anyway, we agreed that at no time would we part with the drugs without money changing hands. I went to the boot of the car and took out a few tablets for them to give to Flattie as samples and off they went to meet with him. I went upstairs to get an education from my new high school teacher. I rang the bell and she opened the door. I started to explain about how I wasn’t sure that I could make it to the beach the next day after all when I found myself wrapped in her arms. We didn’t even make it to the bedroom, nor did I catch her name. Actually, I don’t think she told me.

  Somehow I still made it on time for dinner at my mom’s place.

  Over coffee on Sunday morning, Dennis explained that the deal was set for that night.

  My instincts were still telling me that something was wrong. I knew better than to trust Flattie, or his mate Twigs for that matter. Although I didn’t know Twigs personally, in the early 1980s he had been a member of Jeffrey Anthony’s gang. As a precaution, I insisted that Dennis and Brett show me where Flattie lived with his brother, so they drove me to a high-rise block of flats in the suburb of Morningside. Then we split up and I drove down to the beachfront and spent the day catching a tan and bodysurfing.

  Back at the Durban flat, as soon as I saw the expressions on Dennis’s and Brett’s faces, I knew something was wrong. ‘What the fuck happened?’ I demanded. They both spoke at the same time. Twigs and Flattie, they told me, had pulled one of the oldest con moves in the book on them. What was even worse was that they had both fallen for it. It turned out that Twigs was acting as the middleman, claiming that the buyer wanted to see the Mandrax before handing over the money and saying that the buyer would only deal through Twigs. Dennis, being a guy who could handle himself pretty well, trusted that Twigs wouldn’t dare con him.

  Once Twigs had the drugs, he left Dennis in the car and walked into a block of flats deep in Redhill, one of Durban’s coloured areas. He never returned. After waiting for over an hour, in an unfamiliar neighbourhood where people were starting to stare at them, they decided to leave and contact Flattie. On the phone, Flattie sounded panicky. He told them the police had raided the Redhill flat and they had locked Twigs up, along with everybody else who had been there. He advised Dennis to keep a low profile. Worried that they might also be apprehended by the cops, Dennis and Brett thought it best that they head straight back up to Joburg.

  I told them to go, but said I would stick around in Durban a bit longer. Once they’d left, I thought I would try and investigate what had really happened. I drove to the flat in Morningside where Flattie was supposed to be staying with his brother. The brothers looked nervous when they opened the door to my knock but they invited me in. There were a few of Flattie’s friends there. They seemed quite surprised that I had chosen to stay in Durban, but they were very friendly and even offered to let me sleep over if I wanted to, which I actually agreed to do.

  In the early hours of the morning, Twigs pitched up. When I confronted him, saying I thought he’d got arrested, he spun me some story about how he’d managed to get away and had come over to Flattie’s to celebrate his close shave. He had brought something to smoke. Out came the marijuana and a broken bottle neck. Twigs crushed three Mandrax tablets in with the weed, folded in a piece of paper.

  Flattie and Twigs both had a reputation for pulling moves. I knew they were unlikely to have R10 to scratch their arses with, but I held my peace. I didn’t ask Twigs where he’d got the money to buy the Mandrax. When the pipe was loaded, I was given the honours of busting it and having the first hit.

  The taste was too familiar. I knew, right there and then, as I was rushing out of my mind, that I was smoking my own tablets. We finished smoking the three buttons and Twigs pulled out another two. Before he could crush them this time, I asked to see them. I held the two pills up to the light and said, ‘Fuck, you guys, these are my pills.’

  Twigs and Flattie looked at each other and then both of them looked at me. It was an uncomfortable situation. Flattie, being the smooth talker, eventually confessed to having pulled a move. My share of that stash was a third anyway, and he ended up convincing me to stay and join up with them. Once we’d sold the Mandrax, he persuaded me, we could move down to the Transkei, where he had a great connection for marijuana. We would use the Mandrax money to purchase a couple of sacks and move the weed in Joburg. Once sold, we would reimburse Brett and Dennis.

  To me that seemed fair, so I agreed. Flattie, however, had no intention of following through. In the end we sold about half the stash and used the money for our living expenses. The rest we smoked ourselves.

  Having spent most of my teenage years in Johannesburg, I fell in love with the beaches on the South Coast. Living there, I thought, would be the closest thing to living in paradise and I decided to stay on for a while. Flattie and I decided to see if we could find a place on the beach to rent together. We were in luck. I contacted a woman called Mrs Ling, whose daughters had spent some time in Arcadia and had been childhood friends of mine. Rather reluctantly, she agreed to rent us the downstairs playroom of their double-storey house on the beach, but insisted on a deposit and three months’ rent in advance. As far as first impressions went, I don’t think we did much to convince her that we would be the ideal tenants. Flattie had deep, dark, sullen eyes, sunken cheeks, and long, greasy black hair. In his heyday, standing at over 1.8m tall and extremely well built, he could knock somebody out just by delivering a flat-hand across their face – hence his nickname. But that was long before he became a Mandrax addict. Now he was thin and weak and spent most of his days looking into a broken bottle neck.

  Nevertheless, we moved into our new hideaway. Mrs Ling’s was the only double-
storey house in the area and it commanded a panoramic view of the bay and the shoreline. To gain access to the property, you had to negotiate an almost 90-degree turn in the driveway, which was shaded by a gigantic mango tree. The playroom occupied the entire west end of the house and was divided into two sections by a bar made from bamboo. There was a lounge area with a three-piece lounge suite and a wooden coffee table, and here and there were indoor palms in bright, colourful vases. It also had a three-quarter-size pool table.

  From my bed in my corner of the room, through tall arched windows, I had a magnificent view of a large expanse of sea. I would lie there for hours, lost in thought, mesmerised by the sound of waves breaking on the shore. My thoughts often drifted to my childhood and the innocence of my youth. In my final year of high school I had been a lively, energetic young man, who, if I had put my mind to it, could have achieved anything. I had been an all-round sportsman and totally against drugs. Back then, I would never have condoned young people who were involved in the illicit trade, whether using or dealing. And yet, here I was – not only using drugs myself, but also dealing. Cynically, I thought how Janos, my stepfather, would have been proud of the son he never had. I wondered how long it would be before I ended up in prison, or met the fate of so many drug addicts. Death was the ultimate price for this way of life. Then I would think to myself, fuck it, what’s the difference whether you die young or old? I mean, we are born and then we die. Whatever transpires in between, in comparison to the frailty, the transience, of human existence, our time on earth is really of no relevance.

  At that stage of my life, I hadn’t achieved very much. Looking around my new room, my only possessions were my revolver, my motorbike and a suitcase containing a couple of pairs of jeans, some T-shirts and a few pairs of sneakers. Flattie, on the other hand, had acquired two three-litre Ford Cortina bakkies through his unscrupulous shady deals. The older model had a hidden compartment built into the chassis on either side of the rear wheels, where he could safely hide up to 20kg of weed; the other customised vehicle, which had fitted mag wheels and Michelin tyres, actually belonged to one of Flattie’s ‘friends’.

  I was quickly learning that my new friend and partner in crime only had enemies. He seemed to have fucked over every person he had ever made a drug deal with, myself included. Besides his dubious nature, there was nevertheless something about him I liked. Whether it was his I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude or his tendency to do everything to extremes (like getting fucked out of his head on drugs), he had this ability to manipulate, extort or steal money so convincingly that you simply had to admire his audacity. I wished to fuck I had his balls.

  Flattie’s most prized possession was a metallic-purple Ford Capri Perana V8 convertible with a supercharger protruding from the bonnet. Fuck, she was a beauty! The only problem was that she guzzled petrol like a thirsty camel that had just crossed the Sahara, so invariably he couldn’t afford to drive the thing. When we did take it for a spin, I would practically shit in my pants. What made it more scary was that Flattie was shortsighted, but his ego prevented him from wearing glasses. He often said he’d rather crash than look like a nerd.

  His least prized possession was a 750cc Suzuki motorbike that rattled so much it was falling apart. For two guys who were not employed, it probably wasn’t difficult to work out that we were involved in some underhand line of work.

  After three months living in that beach paradise, it was time for me to go home, and so Flattie and I parted company.

  I got back on my motorbike and headed north.

  Some of the abuses I suffered as a child at the hands of my depraved stepfather and my victimised mother are still, even now, too painful for me even to think about, let alone talk about. Only now, four decades later, have I, for the first time, spoken openly about that part of my life and attempted to examine the impact those abuses had on me. That frightened little boy still remains imprisoned, crying out, begging to be freed. He calls out to me through the tears I shed whenever I am reminded, by some incident that triggers memories, of a terrifying moment in my childhood. This can happen at any time. I can be reading a book, watching a movie, or watching an affectionate interaction between a child and a parent. I get a knot in my stomach, I start to tremble, tears well up in my eyes, and, once again, I become that same small boy hiding in a dark corner, quivering with terror.

  There was a time when this anguish would turn to hatred, anger and resentment. I found myself acting out by being defiant, unpredictable and at times even violent. I didn’t care about myself or the consequences of what I did. I was fearless. I was capable of killing. I hated the world and welcomed death. Death, as I saw it, was the ultimate freedom. I was completely incapable of making sense of the cruel and vicious hand life had dealt me – nobody who might have cared enough to listen could have understood. I was alone. It was easier just to block everything out. With practice, I became an expert at disguising my feelings and disconnecting from reality.

  My earliest memory of how I reacted to being mistreated as a child was that I would climb and hide in trees. Trees offered a safe refuge for me from the world below. I would imagine myself as a bird, in particular as a swallow, a migratory bird. As a kid I was fascinated by how swiftly they would swoop through the air. Their long, pointed wings and forked tails only heightened their majesty. In one movement they would dive down on insects and feed while in flight. I would visualise myself as a swallow, effortlessly soaring through the vast skies.

  One day, when I was about five years old, I decided that the screaming, shouting and the needless beatings were enough. I couldn’t take them any more. I climbed to the highest branch of a tree in our front garden, closed my eyes, stretched out my arms like a swallow’s wings, and leapt from the top of the tree, wishing with all my heart that I would fly. Instead I landed on our lawn, spraining my ankle and elbow. I cried silent, bitter tears, not from the pain of falling, but from the harsh realisation that there was no escape from the world. I was too scared to tell my parents what I’d done, so I was forced to conceal my injuries. My ankle swelled up so much that I could barely fit my school shoes on and I had to leave my laces untied.

  At first, walking without a limp was difficult, but luckily our school was just across the road. With every step I took, it became less painful, and in the end I could walk normally. My arm was another story. Noticing my discomfort, my teacher asked what was wrong and then instructed me to roll up my sleeve. My arm was inflamed and bruised. Hesitantly, I explained that I had fallen out of a tree. The teacher quickly escorted me to the sickbay, where the school nurse bandaged me up, gave me some pills for the pain, and insisted I lie down for a while. I slipped into a deep slumber and only woke up at the end of the school day.

  I remember one occasion when Janos and my mother were having an argument in the kitchen. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. The open-plan design allowed me to witness everything. I saw Janos take a fair-sized piece of frozen steak and hit my mom across the face with it. There was a thud, followed by a shriek. My mom was crying hysterically, blood pouring out of her nose, as she begged and pleaded with Janos to leave her alone. By this time Janos had both his hands around her throat. I began trembling and crying, but I ran into the kitchen where I wildly punched and kicked Janos from behind, shouting, ‘Leave my mother alone! Leave my mother alone!’ and trying to free her at the same time.

  Janos released his grip. I was pulling desperately on his trousers as he turned around, swinging his arm. He caught me on the head. I tried to flee towards the front door, which was ajar, thinking that was the best way to avoid his clutches, when he kicked me in the arse so hard that I literally became airborne. I landed against the stair railing, somehow grabbing on and managing to stay on my feet. The pain in my arse was excruciating. After that, I ran for my life and took refuge at the back of the building, near the parking lot, where the rubbish bins were kept. I curled up, crying and holding my backside.

  ‘Hoekom huil die kleinb
aas?’ (Why is the little boss crying?), the night watchman asked as he came over to me. Before I could answer, he had his arms around my shoulders and was hugging me. I hugged him back and just cried and cried. His arms felt strong and his slightly tobacco breath gave me a strong sense of comfort. Here was an elderly man, who knew me by sight but had never engaged in conversation with me, showing me that he cared. This simple gesture of intimacy was something I never experienced with my stepfather. I instantly bonded with that man and I remember wondering why whites and blacks couldn’t or weren’t allowed to mix. I mean, here was a man showing me compassion like any other normal human being, a man whom white people would refer to as ‘boy’. I couldn’t understand it.

  During those early years, I used to have the most terrifying nightmares. There was one particular dream that stuck with me right into my late teens. I would be walking somewhere at night and there would be this ‘thing’ lurking in the darkness, always close behind me, almost as if it was waiting to pounce on me. I would begin to run, but, with every step I took, my legs grew heavier as if they were sticking to the ground, until eventually I couldn’t run any more. My heart would be pounding. I was too afraid to turn around but I could feel this presence there, almost on top of me. It was at this point that I would wake up screaming.

  It was also around this time that I was first introduced to the distinct sweet odour of marijuana. By chance one day I walked into the bathroom, where I found Janos sitting on the side of the bathtub. There was a piece of newspaper unfolded on top of the toilet seat with what looked like dried green leaves on it, mixed with these small greenish-brown seeds. In one hand Janos held a magazine, and with the other he was crushing the leaves and separating them from the seeds.

  He ordered me to come in and close the door. Then he meticulously emptied the tobacco from a cigarette, mixed some of it with the leaves and placed the filter in his mouth. He held the magazine close to his face and sucked up the mixture of tobacco and leaves. I was fascinated by the whole ritual. After making sure it was tightly packed, Janos lit up with a match and inhaled deeply. Then he slowly exhaled, and while he did so he grabbed my arm, pulled me closer and blew the smoke in my face. It had a strange sweet scent and I recognised it. I’d smelt it before on numerous occasions behind the school where some of the ‘boys’ were responsible for disposing of the rubbish.