Dreaming of Light

by Jayne Bauling

  “I am happy to see you safe, bhuti,” she tells me after first greeting her father and the driver.

  I have seen her smile, but never when her father is around, so her happiness wears a sad face.

  “Yebo, sisi,” I answer her. “Kunjani?”

  “Kulungile.”

  “Tea,” Papa snaps at her, and she serves him first, then the driver, and me last.

  We sit at the table. It feels as if I’m doing some special thing, just sitting on a chair. The first tea out of the mine is always good, hot and strong with lots of sugar.

  It’s good that the men have things to discuss. I can be quiet, concentrating on tasting every mouthful of tea properly, and looking at Katekani. It doesn’t matter that she’s not pretty, and one leg is very thin, the foot on that side much smaller than the other. To walk more than a step, she needs two sticks, but here in the house she manages the cooking and cleaning in small moves, only ever taking one step at a time, with just the one stick for support.

  When she has to take the recruits’ morning food to the shed, she carries it in a big bag, stretching her hand to get it round both her right-hand stick and the bag’s handles. They only get bread in the mornings, so I don’t think it is too heavy.

  The sticks are made of dull wood, straight except for a few knobbly bits. The curved handles aren’t quite identical. They were made by a local man who sells walking sticks on the roadside just outside Barberton.

  After so long in the mine, all girls and women look beautiful to me. The crying woman outside the mine was beautiful even with her mouth open in a wet gape of sadness. Katekani is even lovelier with her shy eyes always checking to see that no one’s cup is empty. She doesn’t sit down with us. There are beans and samp cooking on the stove and she is busy seeing to that between watching the level of everyone’s tea.

  “Can I give you more tea, Babe?” she asks her father as he and the driver push back their chairs and start to stand up. “For you, nkhosi?”

  “No, he must go now. Nansi imali.” Papa hands a roll of money to the driver. “Hamba kahle.”

  “Yebo, sala kahle.”

  When Papa comes back inside, it’s time for me to make my report. I don’t tell him everything. I mention the gunfights and the story about that first man who was crushed and died. I’m careful to include things like that because I know he’ll probably already have heard about them.

  I complain about Faceman making the zama zamas unfit for work with his beatings, but he doesn’t want to hear.

  “My recruits must obey orders and do the work properly. You think he doesn’t tell me how useless and lazy they are? You’re too soft with them.”

  I don’t say anything about Taiba and Aires except to tell him that one boy has come up badly injured in a rockfall.

  “The smallest boy,” I add, hoping he’ll think only Aires was hurt because he was working somewhere too small for the rest of us. “We dug him out.”

  “I’ll look at him.”

  I don’t say anything more. I’m busy thinking that by covering up for Taiba and Aires, I’ve proved myself as soft as Papa thinks I am.

  The thing is, I’m a different person when I’m not underground. Not very different, just a little.

  I might as well give Taiba and Aires a chance. That’s the way I see it. It’s not as if I’m really doing anything for them. I’m not doing – just holding back from making things worse for them. That doesn’t count as a favour.

  Papa Mavuso is also silent. He knows I’m waiting to hear about the rest of the money due to me. The only sound is the click of one of Katekani’s sticks as she washes our tea mugs.

  After some time, Papa says, “It’s too soon for you to go to Swaziland again. I’ve got my agent going there recruiting. I’ll send the money for your mother with him, same as the other times. So she doesn’t know you’re here.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  It’s what I was expecting, but I’m still disappointed. Not to go home, catch up, see how much my brothers and sisters have grown this time. I remember the shock of seeing how big they’d become the first time I went.

  “You should write her a letter. I’ll give it to my agent.”

  Writing. Writing and reading are two of the things that seem strange to me at first, when I come out of the ground. It’s as if I’ve forgotten them in the dark and need to remember again. I’m not very good at them. They make me think of the boys who were my friends at school. They’ll be far ahead of me if they’ve stayed on, but I’m guessing many will have dropped out to look for work. Our village has always been poor. That’s why I was looking for well-paid work when that first man came with his promises of big money and men’s work. With my father dead, I had to be the man looking after my family.

  I’m still the man. That’s why Papa knows he can trust me not to slide off home to Swaziland if he doesn’t want me to. I can’t risk this job.

  “Next time you come out,” Papa says. “Then you can go home.”

  “Ngiyabonga,” I say. Thank you.

  It sounds dull in my ears. I see from the look Papa gives me that he doesn’t like my tone.

  “Remember I’m trusting you. You can do whatever you want to all day while you’re out of the mine – go to town, lie around here, only don’t let anyone find out you’re an illegal and don’t get yourself thrown in jail or deported. I want to see you back here every night to take the recruits their food. When you’ve locked the shed again, you bring the key to me. Katekani will give them food in the morning, everything the same as the other times.”

  “Yes.”

  I’m remembering what it was like to be one of the recruits, locked in that shed most of the time. About twice a week, some friends of Papa’s would come up from Umjindi with sticks or sjamboks. Then we’d be let out and forced to do exercises to make us fit to go down the mine again. They said the man in charge had been thrown out of the South African police for doing something illegal. He was even more brutal than Faceman.

  The fresh air and sun on your back and shoulders made up for the beatings and screaming muscles.

  I don’t suppose anything has changed. It’s probably even the same man. I don’t know. I try not to hang around here since Papa gave me my freedom, if that’s what I can call it.

  Papa doesn’t like the flat way I’m answering him. His faded brown eyes grow cold.

  “You are ungrateful,” he accuses me. “You hurt me. Do you know why I am so generous to you? Why I give you my trust? It is because I think of you as my son.”

  I don’t believe him. I know he must have said the same things to Januario when he was in my position. He’ll say them to the next boy too, if I get killed like Januario or when the syndicate let me become one of their men, whichever comes first.

  Katekani is giving me nervous little looks, as if she’s worried I’ll say something wrong. No – worried I won’t say the right things, the things Papa wants to hear.

  “Papa, I thank you for the special treatment you give me. Please forgive me. I’m still . . . My head is wrong. From being in the mine, you know?”

  I hate saying it, but it’s what he wants. I’m not stupid. Underground, power lies with Faceman. Hidden away here in the mountainlands, all the power is Papa’s. He could discard me, chase me away and pass the word to the syndicates not to employ me. Or betray me to the police and get me deported.

  Then I won’t see the pride in my mother’s smile when I take money home to her. I haven’t got enough education to get other work as well paid as this.

  Papa makes an ugly sound full of contempt. He knows that behind the words I’m hating him, but they’re the right words so there’s nothing he can do.

  They’re not even a lie. I am grateful to be earning money to send to my mother. I’d be even more grateful if I could take it to her myself.

  Next time.

  “Get out now,” Papa says. “Come back later.”

  I go to my room and fetch the bucket. I fill it with cold water
from the outside tap and use it to wash. Katekani would give me hot if I asked, but I want cold after the heat of the mine. Then I lie on my mattress until it’s time to fetch food for the recruits and take it to them.

  “Papa, he come see Aires,” Taiba tells me.

  I look at Aires and see that all his wounds have been smeared with the burning black paste I remember from when I came out of the mine with my head cut open by a bouncing rock during a dig-out. When it started to smell and the skin underneath grew itchy, Papa said I was healed. There is also a huge, stiff bandage round Aires’ more injured leg.

  “All fixed soon-soon, I think.” Taiba is smiling, too happy to worry or wonder about being kept locked in.

  I eat my own food sitting outside my room. When I’ve taken my plate and mug to Katekani in the house, I go back and pull my mattress outside like I always do, my first night above ground.

  In September the night air is still stirred with coolness, especially up here in the mountainlands. I shiver, but that’s all right. After months in the heat of the mine, I want to shiver.

  I lie on the mattress and stare up at the sky I haven’t seen for so long. The trails of massed stars look like swirls of foam.

  Chapter 6

  My first few days out of the mine, I go wandering around wherever my feet or a thought in my head lead me. I pull fresh air into my lungs as if I’m eating it, drinking it. My eyes stop hurting and I can look up at the sky. At the end of the winter dryness, with summer rain a month or two away, there are no clouds to spoil its polished blue. I like the sun on my face, although I would also welcome clouds and a mist-rain to remind me of home.

  I stay away from places where there might be people. Clumps of long, pale grass brush against my arms and legs. I pull small new leaves off bushes and other plants to crush in my fingers so I can breathe in their green smell.

  I try not to think about the boys in the shed. Papa Mavuso is right. I’m too soft. I need to get tougher, train myself to be so hard that there’s not a crack or a slit for a soft thought to sneak in.

  Some days I stay in the Barberton mountainlands. Others I roam further, towards what they call Wild Frontier country. I have been this way before – both exploring and passing through the second time I went home, when I crossed the border a short way along from the Jeppes Reef/Matsamo post.

  One day I cut through some veld to join the R38 where it runs between Barberton and Kaapmuiden, and begin walking along it. I’ve tried the R40 before, the other times Papa hasn’t let me go home, but it’s too busy, full of traffic. I’m not looking for a lift. There are no fences on either side of this road, so if a car does come, I dive into the bush. I’m not going anywhere either. I know I’ll turn back, but for now it’s good to pretend this freedom is real and that I’m walking towards a new life somewhere, beyond the distant N4. I know all these roads because I asked Katekani to get me a map from the tourism and information centre in Barberton last time I wasn’t allowed to go home. I can’t remember why I wanted it. Maybe there was still some small part of a boy a bit like Taiba left inside me, stupidly dreaming of escape. He’s gone now, that boy.

  The next time I came out of the mine, Katekani said she had found the map in my room and that she still had it if I wanted it. I haven’t needed it. I remember the roads.

  The R38 would be a good road to use if you were up to nothing good, busy with something you didn’t want anyone to know about. It’s wild and lonely. Off to my right as I head north is true Wild Frontier country, that odd-shaped stretch of untamed land wedged between Swaziland, Mozambique and the N4 where it heads for the Lebombo/Ressano Garcia border post.

  You could dispose of anything in the bush. A body even. Once I passed a burnt-out car hidden in the bush about fifty metres from the roadside. It was still smouldering. There was no one in it, no burnt bodies, so it must have been the car someone had wanted to get rid of.

  The road surface is bad in parts, and sometimes trees lean over from either side to make a tunnel. The green growth smell is strong in my nose, sharp and strong or else occasionally fresh and sweet.

  The sun’s slide down the sky tells me when it’s time to turn back if I want to be in time to fetch the shed boys’ food and take it to them.

  Papa Mavuso never asks me where I’ve been. I only see him to return the shed keys. Katekani usually gives them to me together with the food and tea cooling in bottles.

  This evening she has a message from her father.

  “He has sent the money and the letter you wrote to your mother.” She looks up from tightening the cap on one of the bottles. “How will she answer your letter?”

  “She can’t,” I say. “Unless Papa’s man goes in person and tells her he’ll take a letter back. He knows he musn’t tell her where I am if she asks for an address. I don’t want her knowing I’m here.”

  She wears a worried look, but I can’t tell if the concern is for me and my mother, or if her mind is on the big bucket of food and the tea bottles.

  “There’s a boy in the shed,” she says as I start putting the bottles into a big checked bag so I can take everything in one go. “A Mozambican boy. The friend of the boy who is hurt.”

  “Taiba Nhaca.”

  “Yes.”

  “He draws attention to himself, that one.”

  “He has been asking questions,” Katekani tells me.

  “He has also been asking me questions. Every night.”

  “He wants to know why they are kept locked in. I don’t know what to say.” She reaches for her second stick now that I’ve taken everything from her.

  “I’ll tell him to stop troubling you.”

  “No, it’s no trouble. It’s just . . . I can’t make myself say the truth to him. He has so much . . . I don’t know what to call it. So much hope, maybe. That not everything is bad, and that everything will be all right, he will get help and he and the other boy will go home.”

  “Crazy, hey?”

  “No. I like it. I like him. He makes me think that maybe it’s true and things will come right for me too. I’ll find a way to make a life away from my father and learn something or get a job.”

  I shrug. I don’t think it’s just Taiba. Before he came she also used to talk about improving her life, and sometimes she really seemed to believe she could do it. I don’t know how.

  I go to the shed, thinking about Taiba. The truth is, I haven’t been giving proper answers to his questions about why they’re being kept locked up. I’ve brushed him off, pretending I don’t have time to talk, or I’ve muttered something vague about Papa having his reasons.

  I suppose I haven’t wanted to see what he looks like when his hope is killed.

  I really am too soft.

  I decide it’s time to hit him with the truth.

  “You’re slaves and prisoners,” I tell him as soon as he says my name in the way that lets me know the questions are coming. “That’s all there is to it. Papa Mavuso will send us down the mine again when it’s time for the other recruits to come up.”

  He only looks thoughtful, not destroyed as I’ve been expecting.

  Then he says, “For how long this will happen, Regile?”

  “Until you get killed or injured too badly to be any use in the mine. Then he will throw you away. Or if you make it, then he might use you the way he uses me. But don’t think it’s freedom. By then you won’t want to leave and do other work.”

  Now he doesn’t even take time to think about what I’ve said.

  “No.” His eyes shine with his ridiculous faith and his voice is determined, but still cheerful. “Me and Aires, we must go home. Regile, you will help us, this I know. You are good person. You must help us to go.”

  “Us?” I’m harsh. “It doesn’t look like Aires is going to be walking well enough to make an escape any time soon.”

  “Me only then. I will run, so fast, down to the town. Find a big police person and tell him. Then they come save Aires and send us home.”

  Just
thinking about it has gladness rising in his voice.

  “I was right to tell Katekani you’re crazy,” I laugh, careful to make the sound hard and mocking. “Papa and the syndicate have friends in the police. Men and women they pay not to know what’s happening.”

  “Please?” Now Taiba is puzzled. “Not all police taking money? Some police, plenty, they are good people?”

  “And how will you know which are the good guys and which aren’t? Do you think they wear labels?”

  “This, it is right.” Taiba thinks for a few moments, uninterested in the food I’ve brought although the others have been coming forward with their plates for me to fill. “Yes, Regile, it is better we find Spike Maphosa. Spike, I trust him.”

  “You trust someone who doesn’t exist. He’s not real. Here, take your food.”

  As usual he has two plates, the extra for Aires, who still can’t walk easily even though he has got a stick from somewhere. Katekani gave it to him, probably, an old one of hers, unless Papa thinks he will recover well enough to work in the mine again. I can’t see it. Even Katekani gets around more easily than Aires, as long as she has both her sticks.

  “Spike, he is real man, Regile. This, I am sure. If we find him, he make things right for us. He must.”

  I scrape the big spoon round the sides of the food bucket and slap the last of the food onto the two plates he holds out.

  “You are a fool,” I say.

  “No.” It’s not angry or rebellious; he says it so calmly. “Regile? Why he is called Spike? What name is that?”

  “How should I know? If there was ever such a person, it was probably so long ago that the true name got lost or changed. That is the way it happens with the old stories, people telling them differently every time, adding and taking away.”

  I don’t think Taiba is really listening to me because he is smiling, not just with the mouth Faceman uglied for him, but with his dark eyes too.

  He says, “When we see Spike, then I will ask him.”

  “Yes, right.” I let him hear my disbelief as I drop the spoon into the empty bucket. “Get back to your mattresses, all of you.”