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Jaz & Miguel

Page 19

by Raven, R. D.


  TWENTY-FOUR

  Miguel felt the burn of hot tar under his knees as he kneeled beside Sandile just inside the Wits main gate, his hand on his best friend's chest, waiting, for the ambulance. At one stage he slid his hand gently to his friend's—his brother's—hand. It was getting colder now, despite the scorching heat.

  Miguel looked only forward at the ironwork gate—newly fitted only six months earlier for situations just like these—vaguely apprehending what was happening outside. People were chanting and singing and saying something or other. How could so many people fill such a short space in so small a time?

  He heard a siren, not constant, more like a burp. It was a burping siren, as if the siren was a horn and its owner was trying to make its way through the mass in front of it—a red flamingo wading through thick, muddy water.

  Then it was there, its red lights lighting the ground ahead of him. Red. There'd been so much of that today, hadn't there?

  No one opened the gate for a moment, and the ambulance started hooting.

  But there was no rush. His friend's hand ... was cold.

  Miguel could swear he was staring straight at the vehicle, but he wasn't really seeing it—or anything else for that matter. All he was looking at now was a picture in his mind, a series of events which had just transpired: Tsepho, eyes frenzied with a high which must've been going on for three days at least; a gun; a shot; another shot; a third; a car; an escape; that reporter; Sandile.

  Eventually, he felt Sandile's hand leave his, and saw him being carried away in a stretcher. That Indian girl that Jaz was friends with was also on a stretcher. Had she died as well?

  Miguel sat there, on his knees, looking outward.

  At nothing.

  Miguel. Baby, listen to me, Miguel. It was a voice he recognized. A sweet, caring voice that he'd heard some time before—a few days ago, actually. And then he felt someone run something—a finger?—through his hair and a chill ran down his spine.

  Miguel, baby, we should go. Come now. Miguel.

  That was a sweet voice. He loved the owner of that voice.

  And then, as if he had come up from under water, he heard the voice and all the commotion around him, and the knobkerries hitting the gate.

  "Miguel!" It was Jaz. She was next to him, and now all the sounds were clear around him. There was a riot on outside—no doubt sparked on by Tsepho's murder of Sandile, as if it had any relation whatsoever to the protest at all (which it didn't—not in the slightest). From the periphery of his vision, he saw Jaz by his side, also on her knees, her hands folded on her thighs, talking to him.

  Then he heard a popcorn sound in the background, and the owners of the knobkerries started running again, and just like that, there was no crowd anymore: that's how it had gone for the last—how long had it been?—three minutes, five, ten? He knew they'd be back—ebbing and flowing until the end of the day when it would all be reported in the news. And some would even say, We were there! Maybe some of them would even die today—hit at close range by a rubber bullet, maybe.

  At close range, those things could be deadly.

  But, so what? People die in this country. They die all the time. That's the way it is down here.

  That's why Jaz must leave.

  "Miguel." Her voice again.

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," he said. He looked at her. "I'm fine. Let's go."

  Jaz was confused at his reaction, but she played along. Miguel had been sitting there, staring into nothing for the longest time and then, as if someone had dropped a glass of water on his face, he got up, and told her ... he was fine?

  He turned and walked away from the gate, as if going somewhere, but also going nowhere. And, truth be told, where would they go? They'd have to wait it out inside the gates before the insanity outside fully subsided. Then, surmised Jaz, probably the best thing for Miguel would be to get him home.

  She walked behind him as he idled around randomly across the campus—to the International House, the College House that was being renovated, the hockey field, the soccer stadium, outside the planetarium, the sports hall, the library, back to the International House—on and on and on and on, ever silent, only occasionally throwing a stone at nothing, not a tear in his eyes, not even a tremble of his chin, just a vacant glare.

  He must be in shock.

  "Baby?" She called him baby because that's what he was to her—still. She knew she loved him. She knew it didn't mean they would be together now—but this term just felt right to her now. "Baby, um, are you OK?"

  "Of course. Of course I'm OK," he said, not a tone of anger or fear or sadness ... or even joy in his voice. Nothing. Deadness.

  "Um—OK. Look, Miguel, let's ...." She wasn't sure what she should do. She saw a concrete bench. "Miguel, let's sit."

  "Sure, good idea."

  He swayed over to the bench as if he was drunk and kept looking around, his eyes flicking to a plant, a car, a window, to Jaz, to the bench, the street, that same plant again.

  They said nothing.

  Miguel put his hands on his lap and looked around.

  "On second thought," he said, "I think I'd like to ... walk, actually." He got up and they walked some more.

  They walked for three hours.

  Eventually, when Miguel said he was now ready to go home (equally as distant and as if nothing at all had occurred), Jaz took him to the International House where Thandie was and asked her if she could drive them home.

  There was no ways she was going to let him drive home alone.

  Abbey sucked on a bottle of Johnnie Walker as he sank his aching body into a chair, ready to write his Pulitzer Prize winning article. If he didn't get called up by the CCB to be their official correspondent to South Africa after this, then he'd at least get a raise or a bonus for his work from The Daily. Heck, he'd even settle for Official Correspondent for The Daily—one had to start somewhere.

  Abbey had never been very lucky. It had all begun with that unfortunate incident in school when he was ten, with that girl on the floor, and then the name calling. It seems his bad luck had continued on into his later years, never really making it happen with the opposite sex, two failed marriages, one alleged illegitimate child (the lying bitch).

  But today he had been lucky. The right place at the right time. And then that riot! And photos of everything!

  This country was raw, passionate, alive! Blimey, he was beginning to love these fucking South Africans.

  He'd heard of that Tsepho character, deeply involved with some or other Nigerian Drug-Lord (who liked to call himself "God" of all things) and selling crack-cocaine and tik (why didn't they just call it Crystal Meth like the rest of the English world?) to the students. Abbey had seen from the glare in the man's eyes before he shot that Sandile bloke (an unfortunate incident, really) that this Tsepho had been high on something. The man's eyes had been rolling in confused delirium.

  Now that he thought about it, maybe it hadn't been luck at all. Abbey had hung around a little after seeing this Tsepho character lurking around the school. And he did follow the guy as well—an innocent observer, just letting the story take place.

  A finer example of the journalistic code of ethics there had never been!

  And the fact that he'd taken that Sandile bloke's phone after he'd left it lying on a wall surely had not influenced the story. Abbey threw the phone in the trash now. There was nothing useful in there—not even an SMS to that Elize girl!

  Abbey thought of words—of all the words that could be selected to portray this unfortunate incident alongside the expertly juxtaposed photos of those protestors, and the final moment of that gunshot; both incidents linked by general location, like a scene in a movie. But could they have been linked by subject matter as well? And what had been the subject of that protest? Had it not been based on ongoing wage disputes? And were wage disputes not simply another remnant of the Old South Africa, favoring one class over another? And was the fact of Tsepho—a South African citizen getting involved in th
e drug-trade—not merely another result of that inequality? Was he not, perhaps, simply trying to make a living in a country which does not pay many of its workers a decent enough wage for them to live on? Could that not have been the deciding factor in forcing him into a life of drug-abuse and crime?

  Inequality. Racism. Prejudice. Abbey could almost hear them rhyming with the word "South Africa" in his mind. What poetry.

  And then there was this Sandile, with a white girlfriend from a neighborhood known for its racist attacks. What a fortuitous turn of events! Abbey could see his photos being syndicated to all the major news networks across the world. And all this from a "tabloid" (hah!) journalist. Kevin Carter, step aside, there's a new member of the

  Bang Bang Club in town—and he's starting a whole new club of his own!

  Abbey sat there, his left arm gripping his broken ribs, his right shaking in the direction of the bottle. Now was not the time to go to hospital. Now was the time to start selecting. He'd been doing his homework, placing the appropriate "GSM-goodies" wherever he could. Now was payoff time.

  But who would've thought that bastard would've pulled out a blooming gun and shot the bugger!

  Right Place. Right Bloody Time. (No pun intended).

  The mantra had begun to repeat in his mind like a war cry from someone who had never known anything but the losing side of war: Right Place. Right Time. Right Place. Right Time. Right Place. Right Time!

  If he could only do that again ....

  Ahhh, but he would. Which is exactly why, despite broken ribs and an aching head, he'd taken the time to find this Miguel Pinto's car and deposit one of his trusty friends underneath the chassis. The way that boy had reacted to Sandile's murder (a truly unfortunate incident, truly) Abbey just knew the stone of this Pinto guy's story had not yet been fully bled. More was going to happen with this Pinto boy, he could feel it in his bones.

  Right Place. Right Time!

  If there was one thing Abbey had taken away from that whole phone-tapping incident ("scandal" was such an ugly word; he preferred "incident") it was this: how many newspapers had they sold? And who gave a cat's whisker if The News of The World had closed down? The world got news from it all—and that was the important thing. Yes, there'd been that unfortunate situation with that thirteen-year-old girl. A pity, really. But, in perspective with all the rest, had it really been that bad? It was not in Abbey's mind to answer such philosophically deep questions (they gave him a headache—such things—to be quite frank). He was a reporter, after all—and a reporter reports. A true reporter doesn't get involved in the philosophical rights and wrongs of a story. His job is to be impartial, not to take sides (Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman movie). So he'd left that part of the "incident" open to discussion, preferring (as always) to be a spectator (taking notes) whenever it came up in conversation.

  Abbey sat back and groaned, a grimacing smile on his face, dreaming about the life he would soon have, and about all the news that was about to be disgorged from the jaws of this good-for-nothing country.

  The veld fire had been lit, and Abbey had not even had to light it—not really.

  He chuckled briefly, but then his ribs began hurting, so he stopped.

  The drive home to Miguel's place had been unnervingly quiet.

  And lonely.

  It was as if the roaring tumult at the university had at least added some level of comfort to the atrocity that had just occurred, like a protective blanket of sound that had kept them free from the douse of acidic liquid which had been the truth outside it. But now, there was only silence.

  When they got to Miguel's house, Thandie told his father what happened while Jaz took Miguel to his room and sat with him. But he didn't want to stay there long, so they went out into the garden.

  The routine continued at his place much as it had been at the campus: meandering in the garden, sitting, standing, walking, Miguel acting as if nothing had happened, like he'd disappeared into a world so far from anything that Jaz could call reality that he was basically unreachable to her. Finally, at three a.m., Thandie long since asleep in the guest bedroom, Miguel's eyes began to close, outside in the garden. Jaz walked him up to his bedroom—like leading the living dead itself—and watched him fall asleep on his bed, her knees to her chest, on the floor next to him, waiting.

  His sleep was broken—asleep for twenty minutes, then another stroll around the room—all the while practically unaware of her or anything else around him.

  And he still hadn't eaten.

  He said nothing, admitted nothing, evinced nothing by his facial expressions, cried … nothing.

  Jaz fell into a rhythm as well, sitting with her back to the wall and dozing off as he dozed off and then waking up when he woke up, as if they'd grooved into some mutual rhythm in each other's minds. Because of what was happening with Miguel, she never allowed herself—not even for a moment—to think of what had happened that day; not yet; her time to mourn would come. She had a new problem on her hands: Miguel.

  He was just ... too quiet.

  In Miguel's world—a world of hazy thoughts and blood and running for the main gate and hearing the shots and watching Sandile fall and seeing Tsepho screech off in a vehicle afterward—there were only two things that existed in the whole universe: the .357 Magnum in his father's drawer, and the man who'd taken the life of his best friend. The two of them would soon meet.

  There was nothing else.

  Nothing. Else.

  There was no basketball, no Sandile, no Elize, no Jaz, no Thandie, no Toyota, no Mozambique, no Durban, no Cape Town, no US of fucking A, no Britain, no earth, no moon, no sun, no stars, no life, no death, no hope, no joy, no friendship, no happiness, no kindness, no freedom, no peace, no calm, no love—but hate.

  There was ... hate.

  He had to stay calm. He needed to walk. Every time he sat down, things started running through his mind and they were horrible and painful and shouldn't have happened and they scared him and worried him and freaked him out.

  And Sandile.

  He walked.

  Ahhh, yes, that was better. Walking, breathing, walking, throwing stones, breathing, Jaz. Jaz. Jaz.

  Jaz.

  Jaz kept him calm. He hoped she would not leave him. She needed to stay with him. She couldn't leave him.

  Jaz.

  Jaz was here. He knew it. Every time he looked, she was here. Yes, she was.

  He closed his eyes. He dozed off.

  Nightmares. Blood. Gunshots. Falling!

  He opened his eyes!

  Jaz. She was still here.

  He needed to walk.

  Walk.

  Walk.

  Walk.

  Walk,

  Walk. Around the room.

  Walk.

  Walk.

  Breathe.

  Jaz.

  She was here. She was here. She was here.

  He breathed.

  .357 Magnum. Tsepho. Bang.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  PART IV

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE DAILY

  Britain's Most Reliable News Source

  BLACK BOYFRIEND OF WHITE GIRLFRIEND SLAIN IN JOHANNESBURG. TWO FOREIGN NATIONALS IN HOSPITAL AFTER STAMPEDE—PICTURES

  by Jonathan P. Abbey, Official South African Correspondent

  BRAAMFONTEIN, SOUTH AFRICA — Fri, 20 September 2013

  Summary:

  Black boyfriend of Afrikaner girl (who is from the neighborhood of this year's earlier murder of Dumisane Ndlovu and Rina Coetzee—allegedly due to racial prejudices) slain on Jorissen Street outside Wits Theater, Braamfontein. Today's alleged murderer (known only as "Tsepho" to locals) is a known drug-dealer with ties to a Nigerian Drug Cartel based in Hillbrow (only a few minutes away from the campus). Wage-strike turned violent as a result. Reporter of this story personally attacked by mob of students. Three students in
jured in ensuing stampede as a result of rubber bullets and teargas fired into crowd: one American, one German, one South African. Investigations opened up into possible excessive use of force by police. Travel warnings issued by USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, all Scandinavian countries, Australia, and New Zealand. All current vacationers in South Africa from the above countries urged to head home by their local governments because of "the unstable situation."

  Full story on page two – PICTURES

  Also on Page Two:

  - FOOTBALLER, WESLEY RYAN, NUDE ON SALINE BEACH WITH PORN-STAR, KANDY SANCHEZ—PICTURES!

  - MEGAN DANIELS SEX-TAPE—WAS IT A HOAX? YOU DECIDE.

  - EXPOSÉ: IS OPRAH REALLY AS CARING AS SHE MAKES HERSELF OUT TO BE?

  jazinsa.blogspot.com

  I'm safe

  Posted on: Fri, Sep 20th, 2013 at 08:13am, South African Standard Time

  Posted by: Jaz

  # Comments: comments closed for this post

  Dear mom, dad,

  As I'm sure you know, things have gone a little crazy down here. Before you ask: I am fine. I don't even know where to start ....

  Sandile ... is dead. It's hard for me to even say it just like that—simply and without description. But that's how death is, isn't it? Sudden, quick, decisive. I have not told you much about him before, and I won't now. He was a friend—a good friend. A great friend.

  The newspapers this morning are mixing up a bunch of facts and relating the murder (God, it's still so hard to believe it) to the protests and to Sandile's girlfriend.

  Whatever.

  It had nothing to do with any of that. It was an unfortunate attack by some guy high on crack or whatever these fucking assholes smoke around here.

  I'm sorry about the swearing—but I really don't care right now.

  Stefan (the German guy) is in hospital, along with Candy and Nita. I know I haven't introduced Nita to you—just know that she is my friend. Nita is on life support. Stefan has a collapsed lung and a few broken ribs. Candy also has a few broken ribs, two broken fingers and a shiner.

 

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