Chapter 9
Did he hurt you badly?” I ask when Katekani has taken her place on my bench and I’m squatting in front of her.
Her face has a bruised look, dark and heavy, and her puffed-up bottom lip is beginning to split. Then I look into her swollen eyes and I think that the real hurt is inside.
“I will be fine,” she says, lowering her eyes. “Regile, I feel so much . . . shame. I feel shame. For telling about Taiba. That he is looking for Spike. I was afraid. Of . . . of the pain and of ending up even worse than a cripple. He hits so hard.”
I put out a hand, pull it back. I want to comfort her, but I don’t know how.
I say, “It won’t make any difference. Taiba will get into trouble the first time he asks someone to help him find the way.”
“No.” She looks up again, and suddenly her eyes are less troubled, as if she’s just beginning to feel something good, and that something is shining out at me. “There are things I didn’t tell my father. I need you to hear me, bhuti.”
“Yes?” I feel I need to be cautious.
“I told Taiba about Spike and Kabokweni, but I didn’t let him know you didn’t want him to know. I said you only found out after lock-up last night, and that’s true.”
I open my hands, palms up. “So? What does it matter? Especially now he’s gone. Although I suppose he could be back if one of Papa’s associates sees him wandering about.”
“No,” Katekani repeats, the same way she said it before. “He’s not lost. Not running. He is waiting for you.”
“What?” I don’t understand what she’s saying. “
“He wanted the other boys to go with him. Not all. One, maybe two. But they were all afraid. They said they were zama zamas; they talked about making big money when they are finished as recruits.”
“Because they’re sensible.”
She takes no notice. “So I told him a place to hide. I said he must wait for you, because you’ve got a map and you know the way. You need to go with him, Regile. He has no siSwati, no Afrikaans. And his English is not good . . . people will know he’s an illegal if he speaks –”
“No!” I jump up. “No, Katekani! You can’t – you don’t . . . play with me like this.”
“You know that old mine entrance? The one near here, where you walk in straight, not down?”
“That’s where he is?”
It makes sense, I suppose. These abandoned mine entrances are everywhere in the hills around Barberton – like gashes on the earth’s surface. Adits, the men said they’re called.
“Waiting for you.”
“No.”
“You have to go, Regile.” She’s not pleading with me; rather her voice is quiet and firm except for the little lisp from having her mouth hit by Papa, and she’s telling me what to do.
It sounds as if she believes I’ll do it, the way Taiba always believed I’d help him. Katekani and Taiba. It’s strange that I should know two people like that.
“No,” I say again.
“Think of him, bhuti. Hiding there, waiting for you. Hoping you’ll come. Trusting you.”
“Taiba and his stupid high hopes.”
But I am thinking of him, hiding and waiting, even though I don’t want to. I’m thinking of Taiba, back in a dark place, waiting and waiting for me to come, and when I don’t, still waiting, with his hope fading . . .
No. I know Taiba. His hope won’t fade.
Except if I never come?
“His hope is in you, Regile.” Katekani’s voice drops into such thoughts like the first plop of rain into the dust at the end of the dry season.
I stare at her. It’s true, I realise.
“I don’t understand why.” My voice is harsh in my ears, like coarse sand or rocks.
“Because he is like me, that young boy.” Katekani is calm and confident. “He knows you are a good person.”
“I’m not.” Anger roars up inside me because good is nearly the same as soft and good people don’t become successful zama zamas.
“You are – the way you tried to help me earlier, shouting for my father to stop the beating and telling him lies for me. Thank you, Regile.”
I don’t like being thanked, but I don’t know what to say. What I tried to do still feels right, even if it was soft, so how can I believe it was wrong or crazy?
“You, maybe. But Taiba Nhaca isn’t getting any help from me.” I pick up the plate with the food I stopped eating when Katekani came out to me. “I’ll finish this in my room, and then I’m going to sleep. I’ll bring the plate and things in the morning.”
She looks at me through the dying evening light.
“I will sit here until you tell me you’ll help Taiba.”
“Then you’ll be here all night.”
I go into my room and shut the door hard. I try to finish my food, but it’s as if there’s something stuck in my throat stopping me from swallowing.
I lie down on my mattress but I’m not tired enough to sleep. I try to think about things, a hundred things, only not Taiba, but it doesn’t work. There’s this picture of him in my mind where he’s still waiting, still believing I’ll help him, the way he’s always believed Spike Maphosa will help him.
Spike Maphosa probably would help him if he got to Kabokweni safely.
And what would become of me if Spike got Papa Mavuso’s operation shut down? The whole syndicate put out of action?
There will always be other syndicates. I’m eighteen. That’s a man. I can work for them directly.
Taiba in the dark. Waiting. Hoping. Believing. In me.
A groaning sound comes out of me. I get up and go outside. It’s dark now, but it’s not mine darkness. I can see Katekani, still on my bench.
“All right, I’ll go,” I say. “I’ll go to Kabokweni with Taiba.”
I know she’s smiling at me with her broken mouth. I want to bend and kiss it, but it would probably hurt her.
“When I come back I’ll buy you more paint for that other stick,” I tell her, and my heart is beating very hard. “Maybe even new sticks from that man who sells them.”
“I would like that.”
“And maybe you’ll be my girlfriend?” Now I can hardly breathe.
“See, Regile?” she says softly, and there’s a laugh in it. “Hope works. Yes, I will be your girlfriend. And when you come back with Spike you can take us all away – me and the recruits.”
“That’s a hope too many,” I say roughly, because I don’t want her hoping for things I can’t do. “Listen, I think I should leave now. I’ll take my mine lamp that Papa gave me. Then Taiba and I can start walking as soon as it begins to get light.”
“Yes, but first let me fetch the map I’ve been keeping for you and bring you some bread and water, and something to carry them in. My father won’t see – he’s always asleep in the chair about this time.”
While she’s gone, I decide what else to take with me. It’s not much. Apart from my lamp and my other shirt, the most useful thing will be the cash I have left after buying my deodorant, plus the seven rand from today. I decide I might as well take my toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant. Taiba can use the deodorant too if we get a chance to wash.
When Katekani comes back, she brings my map and a child’s small nylon backpack with food and a bottle in it.
“I used this bag for my books when I went to school,” she says, and then a huge sigh puffs out of her. “I wish I could run away with you and Taiba, but I can’t even walk. But it’s all right. I know I’ll be seeing you again. And if I think about you on your way to Spike . . . it will make me feel so good.”
For about the millionth time in my life I don’t know what to say. I just touch her on the shoulder and then I push my deodorant and tooth things down next to the bread in its plastic packet. When I pick up the backpack it feels so light.
“See you,” I say at the last minute. “Sala kahle.”
“Yebo, hamba kahle.” Go well.
Then I start wa
lking, away from the shed and my room and the house, into the darkness of the veld at night that is never true darkness, even on nights when there’s no moon and the clouds hide the stars.
Not if you’ve known the darkness inside the earth.
Tonight the stars are bold and sharp. It is still too early in summer for much moisture in the air.
***
I only need to use my lamp once, in a place where the ground gets very uneven.
The entrance to the old mine is still a bare scrape, as if nothing wants to grow near it, not even weeds.
There’s no sound, but the silence has a listening quality. Has Taiba heard me?
“Taiba!” I call, low but loud.
“Regile!” His young boy’s voice swoops upward and I can hear his joy.
He’s only just inside the mine entrance. I switch on my lamp and see that he is standing up.
“You make trouble for everyone,” I accuse him. “Katekani. Me.”
“Sorry, my brother. But Spike, he will make good things for us. This I know.”
“Not for me. Now listen.” I’m harsh with him. “We need to start walking as soon as it gets light. Across the veld until we get on to the R38. We can’t use the R40. Papa said that he and his friends will catch us before we get to Nelspruit. That means he thinks we’ll use the R40. He knows we’re going to Spike Maphosa. He beat Katekani badly and she told him.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Regret shakes Taiba’s voice. “Maybe Spike help Katekani also –”
“Shut up about him. The R38 is a lonely road, not too many cars, and we can jump into the bush and hide if one comes. It’s too close to Barberton for us to hitch a lift. One of Papa’s friends might be on the road. Or Faceman . . . Getting rides, we could reach Kabokweni in, I don’t know, an hour, less than two hours for sure. But walking . . . I don’t know. You’re not better yet and you’ll be slow. So . . . it could take days. I think we must cross straight over the N4 when we get to it, and then . . . we’ll see.”
“You will know the right thing, Regile.”
Taiba is his usual confident self. It angers me, especially because he bases his confidence, like his hope, on me.
I don’t want this responsibility.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “Katekani sent bread and water.”
“Not so hungry. Is better we save it.”
“Then go to sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to leave.”
“Yes. Regile, I thank you –”
“Don’t.”
His thanks make me as uncomfortable as Katekani’s. I don’t deserve it.
I hear him sigh as if I’m the difficult, stubborn one, not him. Then he lies down and I think he does sleep. I can’t.
There’s a new worry. There are always accidents in mines, especially old mines that are supposed to have been shut down. It’s still some time before the other recruits come up, but if something happens to them Papa Mavuso will have to send down my team in the shed. Then they’ll be gone when Spike Maphosa arrives.
And Aires with them. Papa must think he’ll mend, or he wouldn’t have kept him. I’ve seen it: broken boys taken away in the truck. I don’t know what happens; if they get dumped or if Papa gives them to his crooked police friends so they can show they are catching illegal immigrants.
If Aires goes into the mine a second time, I don’t believe he’ll come out again. Especially without Taiba there to watch out for him.
I decide I won’t share this new worry with Taiba. I don’t know why. Once I would have rushed to show him yet one more grim possibility.
Maybe he has worn me down. Maybe they both have, Taiba and Katekani, always so sure that things will turn out right.
Or it could simply be that I’m in it now. Part of their dreaming. The same way Spike Maphosa is.
Chapter 10
Every morning we start walking when the first crack of pale light paints the bottom of the sky.
After the first two hours it’s hot and hard going. It’s not the hell-heat of inside the mine, but it makes us thirsty and the sun scorches our skin.
Rivers and streams are dry or else just dirty trickles after the months without rain. I worry the water might make us sick, so we steal from taps where we can. There aren’t many, though. This is wild, empty country, just bush and not much else, especially after Low’s Creek. Sometimes there’ll be a small house, with chickens scratching around, or vegetables growing. That’s all.
We make our bread last as long as we can. Taiba doesn’t seem to feel hunger. For the first hour every morning, he walks as if he weighs nothing, bouncing lightly along the roadside with his face shining full of the thought of Spike Maphosa. But I was right about him not being fully mended. The walking tires him after a while, and I think it also hurts him, though he never says so.
“We can rest,” I sometimes offer, but he always refuses.
“We must walk. Sorry, Regile. Sorry I am a long time walking.”
And however much I think he needs to grow up and get real, physically he’s just a kid, I remind myself. He’s small, and his diet in the mine and up in the shed hasn’t been the best. All those hours locked up won’t have helped his health either, even with the exercise sessions.
We sleep in the bush mostly, or half-sleep, hearing night noises that alarm me. I don’t know about Taiba.
We also rest through the worst heat in the middle of the day. That’s when Taiba will fish out the piece of paper from the pocket of his filthy shorts and ask me to read it to him again.
It’s the story about Spike Maphosa. Katekani tore it out of the newspaper and gave it to Taiba. The paper has grown soft and smooth with all our handling, and the print is slightly blurred.
I read it so many times that I know it by heart. I even start half-believing the things Taiba says.
“Spike, he is hero for us. Our life, he will make it better.”
“Yours maybe,” I usually say. “As soon as I’ve got you to Kabokweni, I’m turning round and going back to Barberton. I’ll make things right with Papa Mavuso if I can –”
“No! Spike, he will lock up Papa, like he lock up us.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, there are plenty syndicates. I’m eighteen. They’ll take me on as a zama zama.”
Sometimes we come across a place with a fruit tree, but the fruit is mostly still hard and green, so we don’t know what it is. We eat it anyway, and both have terrible twisting stomach pains through the night. I’m fine in the morning, but Taiba is weak.
“We don’t have to walk today,” I say.
“We walk.” He’s as obstinate as ever.
I don’t argue. I’m impatient to get this crazy journey over.
At last we reach Kaapmuiden and wait for a chance to cross the busy N4 that goes through to Mozambique.
“You could just turn right, follow the road and find a place to sneak over the border back into your own country.”
He shakes his head, smiling at my stupidity.
“Aires. I must tell Spike about Aires.”
Over the road and into Matsulu we’re among people again. It’s probably dangerous, but after the emptiness behind us it feels good. Women sit behind trestles at the end of one road. They’re selling all sorts of things – live and dead chickens, cabbages, stuff in jars for women’s faces, sweets and individual cigarettes. I use some of my bird-spotting money to buy bread and two hard-boiled eggs from a great pile in a tin basin.
We sleep behind a Matsulu house and nearly get caught by a man using the outside toilet in the middle of the night. Dogs bark at us when we start walking again in the early morning. I smell porridge cooking and my stomach growls.
My map doesn’t show the small back roads and tracks between Matsulu and KaNyamazane, but they’re easy to find. I don’t let Taiba do any talking when I ask someone if we’re still going the right way.
I decide walking is taking too long, but it’s difficult to get a lift. One old man lets us ride in the back of his beaten-up truck. Th
e fuel cap is missing, a screwed-up rag in its place, and the fumes make us feel sick. When the man drops us at the track where he’s turning off the road, Taiba starts vomiting. I worry that he’s dehydrated, but we keep walking.
In KaNyamazane we spend the night in the entrance to a big church. There’s a faint smell of incense that makes me remember the church my mother sometimes took us to at home.
That starts me thinking about her. I know she would be upset and frightened if she knew I have become a zama zama. She would say she would rather live on less money than have me doing something so hard and dangerous.
I don’t want her to live on less.
What else could I do?
I grow angry. These are arguments I used to have with myself when I was a new recruit.
Soft.
***
In the dark early morning I unfold my map. It is starting to split along the creases. I shine my lamp on it and show Taiba the road we must take up to Kabokweni.
“Not so far,” he says.
“Far to walk. I don’t think I’ve got enough money for us to go in a taxi. We’ll try get a lift and keep the money for food.”
KaNyamazane is already waking up when we start out. Lights shine behind closed curtains and the sound of a radio reaches us from one of the houses. The early morning air has the coolness I imagine and then try not to imagine when I’m in the mine. It’s as if soft fingers are stroking over my skin, which is tight and dry from all our walking in the sun.
“I want to get there today,” I tell Taiba.
“Yes. It will be happy, Regile. Spike, he will know we are zama zamas? When he see us?”
“I don’t know.”
“What he will do?” Taiba always has to talk. “Aires, even today, tomorrow maybe, we go get him?”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I warn him.
“Hope – you have to do it, my brother. Or how you do anything? No hoping, you just sit down – lie down – do nothing. Like dead.”
I want to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about, only I do. Like dead. The way most zama zamas become.
The way I am. I suppose I’m dead in that way, except since Katekani said she’d be my girlfriend.
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