“Bhuti, I don’t know how you expect me to tell you anything about Spike Maphosa,” I say. “Three weeks, a month, my first time in a mine, and I stopped believing in anything. Spike Maphosa. God. There’s only the earth.”
“There is Spike.” That obstinacy.
“Listen. I’ll tell you what I heard. But after so long, I don’t know if I can remember it all.” I stare blind into blackness, trying to put them all together, the pieces of story I know. “It’s a story like smoke, I think. No one can catch it because there’s nothing there. It changes all the time.”
“What you did hear?” There’s an eager note in Taiba’s voice now that he thinks he’s going to get something out of me, something to feed his thinking and wishing.
“Nothing true,” I tell him. “They say he was a young zama zama. South African, but stolen like us. Stolen here or there, put to work in this mine or that, Barberton or Welkom. Like I said, it changes. The only true thing isn’t even something that he did or something that he was. The only true thing is that he wasn’t one of Papa Mavuso’s recruits. The story I heard, he escaped from the mine he was in and told the right people about it. They say the big men from his syndicate were all caught, but that part can’t be true. The only people who get arrested are guys like us, the ones in the mines, when the security men catch us and give us to the police. The big shots – no one touches them.”
“It can be true.” I can hear how badly Taiba wants it to be true. “Regile, where Spike is now?”
“The legal owners of the mine he was in helped him – I don’t know, sent him somewhere or gave him money – and now he’s living . . . here or there, Mpumalanga or Free State, wherever. They say.” I make the words hard and ugly with my unbelieving. “They say he makes art about his time underground and about stolen children. They say he has sworn to give his life to trying to stop illegal mining. They say it’s for us that he’s doing it. Us stolen boys. Because he can never forget how it was for him.”
“For us.”
There’s something in Taiba’s voice that I’ve never heard underground before. I’m not sure what it is – a kind of deep, sure want-believing, I think. Or wish-believing. Hoping. Whatever you want to name it. I don’t like hearing it. It makes me feel as if I’ve lost something.
“You asked me about Spike Maphosa.” Feeling like this makes me angry. “Now I’ve told you. That’s all I’ve heard. Don’t ask again.”
Taiba doesn’t say anything for a while. I have one of those moments of being able to feel him thinking.
Then his voice comes at me from the darkness again. “How long ago this was? Today, how old Spike is, you know? A man?”
“Any age. He’s not a real person. Didn’t you hear what Faceman was screaming when he beat you? No person, no person! Leave me alone now. Rest.”
***
For our next shift, Mahlori and Takunda send Juvenal and Moreira, and then they send us. We’re working in the worst sort of place, the rock ceiling so close to our heads we must fold our bodies and work like that. The years underground have made me strong in some ways, weak in others. My muscles are hard, but still they burn like fire. Spasms run up and down my back when I get tired, until it locks and I feel I’ll never be able to unbend again.
Physically, it’s worst for me because I’m bigger, but the recruits are in terror. I can feel their fear, smell it in their sweat and hear it in their quick, panting breaths. We’re working close together, one getting in another’s way, knocking and bumping. A Swazi boy swears at the Zimbabwean. The Zim wants to hit him. I stop them, pushing them away from each other.
“Work,” I say. “Sebentani.”
The heat. My heart is hammering and there is an iron band closing round my head, tighter all the time. White lights and black specks slide and skip behind my eyes.
When they sent us into this cramped space, I wondered if it might be Aires’ hiding place, if we’d find him here, bat-blind from having no lamp, crouching terrified. There are shadows now we’re here with our lamps, but no one is hiding in them.
I look at Taiba beside me. All I can see of his face below his lamp is his mouth. The fat lip Faceman gave him has gone down, but the way his mouth curves is different from before. Faceman loosened some of his teeth so that when he talks there is sometimes this clicky, rattling sound.
I see that his lips are moving, and I think he must be praying.
Then I hear the word he is breathing so quietly you have to be close to him to hear it. The same word, over and over.
“Spike. Spike. Spike.”
I give him a rough shove. “Don’t waste your breath dreaming. Work.”
He is silent after that, but when I look at him again, his lips are still moving. I pretend I haven’t seen.
I wonder what it must be like to have something you believe in so hard. I have this idea that it might put some kind of light into our mine-dark, a light pale yellow like the sun.
It could make the creakings and crashes quiet.
Or it might simply make you strong, the way Taiba seems to be. He’s a boy, thirteen or fourteen, with his face mashed up and changed forever and his body twisted, but he’s still here. Still working. With his broken mouth shaping that word, that name.
Spike.
***
The other boys are starting to talk among themselves during our rest times. That’s not the way it is usually. The longer we’re underground, the more silent the zama zamas grow, boys and men.
I feel their restlessness. Sometimes it’s almost as if they’re excited about something.
I hear what it is one break when they’re crouched eating the bad food Papa Mavuso sends down for them. From under their lamps their eyes seem to be following my hand, carrying my own food to my mouth, and then watching me eat it. It’s food I buy from the hawkers who come down to sell to those of us who get paid while we’re still in here. I can’t know if the recruits are truly watching me, because I can’t really see their eyes, just the gleam of them. I just feel that they’re watching, or maybe I think they are because I remember how I used to watch others eating, the ones with money – the men, and Januario before Faceman killed him.
Their talk is a low rumble. I hear their different languages, and English. Taiba drifts between his own language for the Mozambican boys and English for the rest.
I haven’t tried to hear what they’re saying. The longer I’m here, the easier it is to shut others out. I don’t want to know anything about them, not their names, not the places they come from, not anything.
Also, I don’t want to think either. Last week there was a death, a man crushed. We didn’t see it. Moreira told us. The man was a Swazi. I want to shut it out, but in my head I keep seeing how it must have been.
I didn’t think I was even listening now, except that the way the recruits seem almost expectant must have caught my attention and focused my hearing.
I think it’s the Zimbabwean I hear first. He is saying something, speaking to a few others all at once. I don’t get most of it, but one word jumps out of the rest. The word Taiba was saying and still shapes with his mouth when we’re working in the small place.
Spike.
Some of them make mocking noises, the way I would if I was part of the group. But one of the Mozambican boys says a word that sounds like a question.
Now Taiba speaks in his own language. I hear the word again. Spike.
A great anger rushes up inside me. I want to scream like Faceman. No person. No person.
“Shut up with that story.” I push at the boy nearest me. “I don’t want to hear that name again. That Spike. No more talking when we eat.”
They look at me. Then they don’t look any more, bending their heads over their food. All silent. I have spoken as harshly as one of the men.
It has to be this way. I spoke right. Trouble comes when people are stirred up. They are my team. If they do anything – stop work, start a fight, try to run – I will be the one in trouble. With the men
down here, with those on the surface, with Papa Mavuso. Much more than when I was one of Papa’s stolen recruits, I need to please him now that he has put me in charge, or there’ll be no more money, no more freedom, no more walking home to Swaziland for a month, no more roaming around and going down to Barberton on my own or else with his daughter the times he won’t let me go home.
***
“Stop talking about Spike Maphosa with the others,” I order Taiba when he is working next to me. “They stopped believing in him the first time they worked underground. You should too. We do men’s work. Spike Maphosa is a story for children.”
“The others, I think they like to hear.” Taiba doesn’t seem to recognise my words as an order. “They like to hope.”
“Did Faceman’s beating block your ears?” I’m brutal. “I said no more talk about that person. It unsettles the others. I don’t want trouble.”
We’re working in the cramped place as usual. Juvenal comes to check that we’re doing the work. He says something to Taiba in their language.
Taiba is silent for a long time after he has gone.
I sense him doing his fierce-thinking thing again.
Then he says in a low voice, “Juvenal, he say Faceman is back.”
“So work,” I say, and repeat it louder for all the recruits to hear. “Work. All! Sebentani. Faceman is back.”
It’s not me. It’s the thought of Faceman that makes them gather their muscles into tight knots and work even harder. I know, because it’s the same for me.
I sweat, chipping away at the rock. I try not to think about Faceman, but then my mind goes back to the man who died last week. Next, when I chase off that thought, I start worrying about those old cables hanging loose in the area where the men are working. They’re left from the time when this mine was operating legally, but there’s something dangerous about the look of them.
I need to stop thinking.
A roar of loud, crackling sounds freezes me. The others too. For a moment I think it’s a fall and my heart turns into a madman’s drum. Then, as the sound goes on, I realise that it’s gunfire again.
I hope it’s just a syndicate fight, not the security guys.
“Regile, my brother?” It’s Taiba. “This time, who you think?”
I don’t answer him because Juvenal has come rushing back to us, stooping to look into our low place. He speaks to the Mozambican boys first. It sounds urgent. Then he looks at me.
“Security bastards. You stay here, all. You be quiet. You turn off lamps.”
The boys have already started to obey – all except Taiba.
Juvenal has turned and rushed away. Taiba tries to follow him. I catch his arms from behind and pull him back.
“No, Regile!” He twists violently, trying to get away. “This time security, you understand? Our chance now, my brother –”
“Don’t be stupid!” I snatch his lamp from his head and kill the light, holding on to him with one hand until I’ve done the same with my own lamp.
“They take us up, give us police and we tell them,” he’s shouting, but the gunshots are louder. “Me and Aires, they send us home.”
“Shut up!” I hiss, and find his face, covering his mouth with my hand.
He bites me. I give up trying to silence him and wrap both my arms around him from behind, lifting him off his feet. I hold him like that. In this lightless place stinking of sweat and rock, he’s still fighting me with everything he’s got, but I’m bigger and stronger and I haven’t been so badly damaged by Faceman.
Taiba is fighting too hard to go on shouting. It wouldn’t matter anyway. The shooting is still louder than anything. It fills my ears.
Then there’s a different sound. You can mistake other sounds for it, but when it really happens you know at once, even if you’ve never heard it before. Rock falling. Somewhere near where the shooting has come from.
It goes on and on. I don’t move. Taiba doesn’t move. There is only the hot darkness and that sound and our terror.
It feels like forever, the rockfall, until slowly it begins to get less. It stops. I work out that it didn’t really last so long. Seconds, not even a minute. I’ve heard other falls that have gone on longer.
Then the new fear rises.
Are we trapped?
I feel for my lamp, still holding on to Taiba with my other hand. I switch it on.
The gap where Juvenal stood is still clear.
That doesn’t mean we’re safe. We could still be trapped.
I don’t want panic among the zama zamas. This is the first fall for Taiba and some of the others.
I say, “That wasn’t so bad. I think maybe the shooting made some rock come loose. Listen. We stay here, nice and quiet. Don’t move too much. Then if the men don’t send someone to us, I’ll go and see what has happened.”
I hear Taiba’s breath catch.
“Aires!” He is upset. “The shooting, you say, Regile? Aires, he is there . . . I go!”
He slides away from my hand and with my lamp I see him go. He has snatched up his own lamp and is fiddling with it, trying to switch it on. He is crouched over so he doesn’t bump his head, and he is trying to sprint – a sideways, shuffling run.
Chapter 4
I don’t try to catch Taiba. He is one. The others are many.
I am doing my job.
“Save your lamps,” I tell them. “We don’t know what has happened. The tunnel could be blocked further along.”
We wait. Five minutes, ten. It is mostly silent, but sometimes there is a sighing sound, like the earth’s rock insides settling. Once we hear something like a small stone rolling, then falling. I hold my breath. Nothing.
Then in a second the mine is filled with deafening noise and one of the zama zamas cries out in shock.
The shooting has started again.
Anger fills me. Most of the men, zama zamas and security, must still be alive because I can hear that there are many guns. So soon after a rockfall and they’re doing this. They will wake the earth again.
It’s a running fight now. The shooting is getting further away. I try to stop the thought that there is no blockage, that we’re not trapped. Thoughts like that can turn things bad.
We sit in the darkness, listening. The shooting is still going on, but so far away now that I can hear when there is a new sound. Someone limping but hurrying. Panting, his breathing hard and rough.
Then there’s light from a lamp. Taiba is back. He comes right to the rest of us before he stops. He is crouched down, still breathing hard. I stretch out my arm and give him an angry push.
“So why didn’t you give yourself up to the security bastards?” I mock.
“I cannot.” He takes my question seriously. “Aires, the hole where he hides? There is big . . . dirt and rock. He can’t come out.”
“He’s probably dead.” I’m brutal.
“No, no! Not dead. I know it. I hear something.” His hand clutches at me and I jump back, not wanting to be touched.
“When will you stop with this thinking everything will be fine? Dreamer!”
“Please, Regile, my brother.” Taiba’s loose teeth click. “We must go there. Help him. Now. The men, they run away to another place with their guns. Now we go. Before they come back and see I have hide him. Maybe if he comes out he is strong to work again and they know nothing!”
That last sentence of his seems to float on something that’s a little bit desperate and wanting, but a lot believing. If it was only desperate it would be dark and heavy, but the believing part makes it light and somehow shining. At least, that’s the strange thought that comes into my head. It’s not the sort of thinking I usually waste time on.
I don’t know if it’s because of that thought or just Taiba’s want-believing, but I decide yes, all right, we’ll go and see if we can dig Aires out. See if he’s alive.
“Thank you, my brother.” Taiba’s voice is strong but shaking when I tell him we’ll do it.
I make al
l the others come too. I’ve been part of a dig-out team before. Most of them haven’t. I can teach them, the way Januario and others taught me. Then if it’s me trapped one day, they can free me.
And if Aires is still alive and no one else dies before we go up, Papa Mavuso should give me a bonus for bringing all his recruits back.
The entrance to Aires’ hiding place is hidden by fallen rock. When Taiba shows us the place, I’m surprised. We’ve passed it often, and all I’ve seen is a deeper darkness. I never thought it was anything more than a shallow cleft in the rock wall.
“It goes . . . to round.” Taiba shows us in the light of his lamp, holding out his hand and making it turn inward.
We can still hear shooting, but it’s far away in another tunnel. One way we get lucky is that the fallen rocks aren’t too big or small to work with. It’s still slow, careful work, and I grow angry as soon as we start.
Why did I agree to this?
“I can’t hear anything. He’s probably dead,” I tell Taiba. “From injuries. Or not being able to breathe.”
“No.” Taiba won’t listen. “Aires, he must live.”
I think to myself that I’m really only doing this because I’m curious to see what has become of Aires.
If he’s alive.
He will have seen light if Taiba has taken food and water to him, but for the rest of the time? Blind and alone in cramped darkness, with men passing close by all the time, working just outside, shift after shift. Hearing them at work, hearing them cursing the way they do, or else silent. Always the risk of being found. A cough, a movement would be enough.
Will he have turned mad, lost his mind? Become a creature of the darkness? He must belong to the earth after so long. Maybe he won’t want to come out. Won’t want to leave the mine.
Or he could be the same, still just a trafficked zama zama like the rest of us. When I think about it like this, I see that there’s not much difference between him hidden and us working. We mostly don’t know if it’s day or night, and we all come out bent and blind at the end of our underground months.
It’s the most I’ve ever thought about Aires. Before Taiba hid him, he seemed like nothing, a nobody. Now the thought comes to me that Aires has more importance than I have, in a way. He’s got someone down here who cares about him.
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