Those Who Love Night

by Wessel Ebersohn

  Yudel knew that they had drawn close to something, but not what it was or how close they were. “You don’t know what made Tony the way he is?”

  Something close to anger flickered across the old woman’s face. “I don’t think it’s wrong to be like that. I know many men do not like it. They see shame in it, but I don’t think it’s wrong. I don’t think he could help it.”

  Yudel was trying to grasp this new idea; that there was something deeply wrong with schizophrenia, something men hated. He looked at Abigail, but she looked equally puzzled. “Do you think he was happy at home, before his parents were killed?”

  “Oh yes, he was happy. Wally was a very good man. Tony loved him.”

  “Didn’t he love Janice, his mother?”

  “Yes, I think he did.”

  Loise had gone back to eating the chicken and potato chips, finishing her portion with a smacking of lips. She leaned toward Abigail. “I am tired, my child. It’s very late. Perhaps you and your friend can come to see me some other day.”

  Abigail had seen Yudel’s interest in Janice. “Why didn’t he love his mother as much?” she asked.

  “Boys have special love for their fathers, my child.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  Again a brief moment of anger appeared in the old face. “Janice was a good woman, and very beautiful. I have a picture. I’ll show it to you.” She opened a small cardboard box, the top one in a pile next to the bed. She scratched inside it, but closed it almost immediately. “It’s too dark and my eyes are not good. But don’t think your aunt was not a good woman. She died trying to protect her children. They found the children with her body the next morning. And it’s not true that she was a bad woman.”

  “We never thought she was a bad woman,” Abigail said.

  She continued as if she had not heard. “You have to know that Wally was not a strong man. He didn’t have much manly strength. And in some women the flame of being a woman burns too fiercely. But now I am tired. I can’t talk any more. Come back another time, my child, and we will talk again.”

  Abigail again laid a hand on Loise’s. “Mama Loise, when did you leave Matabeleland to come here?”

  “Long ago. I wanted to get away from the Gukurahundi. Janice and Wally were killed. My husband was killed, my only child, my sister. I thought they wanted to kill us all. I could speak Shona well, so I left. I went first to Madikwe Falls, then I came…”

  “Madikwe Falls?” Yudel echoed her.

  “I lived there for a few years before…”

  “Mama Loise…” Yudel used the form of address he had just learned from Abigail. “Mama Loise, were the children with you in Madikwe Falls?”

  “Yes, yes. But I am Ndebele and I grew up in Matabeleland. My husband was a Shona. That’s how I came to have the name, Moyo. That is, of course, not my childhood name.”

  Yudel felt a tingling that filled every part of him. He knew there was no rational reason for his excitement, but containing it was not easy.

  “Now you must please go.” The old woman slid into a horizontal position on her back and closed her eyes.

  “Will you bring more food?” The young woman and her children were all looking inquiringly at Abigail.

  * * *

  On the stairs, Abigail stopped Yudel. “Jesus Christ, Yudel. What the hell is going on here? What does it all mean?”

  She could see the intensity of concentration in his face. But she saw confusion too. “I don’t know,” Yudel said. “But it’s not far away. I can feel it. It’s only just out of reach.”

  “Jonas Chunga knows everything. He holds the key.”

  “He’s not going to tell us.”

  “Perhaps he will tell me.”

  “No. Stay away from him, at least for now. Please stay away from him.”

  41

  It was comforting for Abigail to have Yudel in the room next to hers. She was still afraid, but she was no longer alone in her fear.

  Too much had happened in just one evening. In her mind, her meeting with Chunga at the country club, her confession to Yudel, the deal with Mpofu and the revelations, whatever they meant, of Mama Loise, had become a churning maelstrom of unstructured information.

  Yudel had told her what Mpofu had said. He had also said that they should be prepared that the CIO man might try to take the money and not fulfill his end of the bargain. That had also been her thought. She had nevertheless told Yudel that she would try to get the money from Robert’s paper in exchange for an exclusive. It was not a lot of money if the paper wanted it. She corrected herself—if Robert wanted it.

  Abigail switched on her cell phone. Except for the brief periods in which she had been making calls, the phone had been switched off since she had last spoken to Robert. Now it showed that he had tried to reach her three times during the evening. She keyed in his number. The answer was immediate.

  “Abigail.”

  “How are you, Robert?”

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Your phone has been switched off.” She knew Robert better than anyone else she had ever known and the anxiety she heard in his voice was real.

  “Robert, I need money.”

  “Money? Of course. How much?”

  “One thousand U.S. dollars. And I need it not later than mid-morning tomorrow.”

  “I’ll get it to a bank there by not later than ten-thirty. Leave your phone on. I’ll call you to tell you where.”

  Hearing his immediate agreement, she recognized for the first time the sound of relief in his voice. “Aren’t you going to ask what I need it for?”

  “I wasn’t going to, no. I’m just happy to be talking to you.”

  “I’m glad to be talking to you too. I’m going to use it to pay a bribe.”

  “A big one. I should think a thousand U.S. dollars will go far in that country.”

  “Pretty far.”

  “But please keep your phone switched on. Will you do that now?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you? Tell me how you are?”

  “I’m fine, Robert.”

  “And Yudel. I know he’s there. Is it helping that he’s there?”

  “Very much. Rosa’s here too.”

  “Rosa too?”

  “She came with Yudel.”

  “Abigail.” He waited while he searched for a way to continue. “The things I said at the Sheraton … at the launch of the exhibition. I don’t know…”

  It was wonderful to hear his voice. It was even more wonderful to hear him talking to her in words that had real meaning. “It’s all right, Robert.”

  “It was my relationship with that girl. That’s what was talking.”

  “I know.”

  The relief she heard in his voice was no stronger than her own, but it was difficult to find words to convey feelings too complex for either of them to express so soon. “I’m glad,” she heard him say. “I’m glad to be talking to you.”

  “Me too, Robert. I’m also glad.”

  Later, after she had hung up, she thought about what Yudel had said. That Robert was a good man and that she should forgive him, and that Jonas Chunga was not a good man and that she should be rid of him. Perhaps Yudel was right. She knew he was right about Robert. But Jonas, it was impossible to be sure about Jonas. Perhaps it was not as simple as Yudel made it seem. After all, men fighting in wars killed others. The world did not see them as criminals.

  Oh God, she thought, where is my mind going? This is not a war. According to the information that came from Freek, Jonas had killed because his victims had chosen not to obey him.

  Robert was again in her thoughts; a good man, endlessly reliable, an unbelievably good provider, her rescuer from a brand of fear that struck whenever she was alone with any man except him and, in recent years, Yudel. He was the only lover she had ever known. He was everything she knew she should desire. And yet, he had not come. Under these circumstances, he had stayed in the relative safety on the other side o
f the border.

  Shouldn’t he have come? she asked herself. She did not even expect it of him, but if he had come, it would have been wonderful. Had it been unreasonable to hope for that?

  And there was Jonas Chunga, a man of power who had released an unexpected torrent—no, a cataract of passion in her. People around him, from waiters to women, rushed to meet his every desire and to do it immediately. He was also the man who had the restraint not to take her when he so easily could have.

  And I still have unfinished business in his territory, she reminded herself, in the heart of the country he thinks of as his own, this place where nothing is refused him.

  Sleep did not come easily to Abigail that night. While on other nights in this place her thoughts had been filled only by Chunga, now Robert’s presence was the source of still greater confusion. She believed him that the affair was over and that the girl had gone back to the agency. But did it have to be that kid’s decision? They were friends again. But it was still too early to know whether they would ever be lovers again.

  But most confusing of all was the matter of Mama Loise Moyo. She had become tired too suddenly. Had her weariness been brought on by the thought that perhaps she had already told them things she should not have? Perhaps she thought there may be things they should not know. And had she told them the truth all the time, in every detail? That was unlikely.

  And Yudel? On the way back from Mama Loise, he had fallen silent. Barely responding to anything she said. She knew this meant that his facile mind was hard at work, but he had shared nothing with her. “Tomorrow we meet Mpofu,” he had mumbled as he left her at the door of her room. Working with him was not always easy.

  A visit to the window on the landing between floors revealed a police guard inside the fence at the back of the hotel. Was he something new, or had she just not noticed him before? From the window of her room she saw the guard on the pavement in front. Within the limited range of vision the window provided, she could see no sign of a CIO double-cab or of Agent Mpofu, who had arranged that tomorrow he would sell them the whereabouts of Tony and the others.

  Turning to go back to bed, she stubbed the toes of one foot against something hard. She had to open the curtain wider to see the battling tiger and elephant. From that angle, the tiger was certainly the aggressor, a thought that seemed reasonable given their respective public-relations images and appetites.

  42

  He thought he had dismissed the memory of that morning in the village permanently. Perhaps he would have, if it had not been for Abigail. If he had been able to bury the incident, out of reach of his conscious memory, the way he had always tried to, perhaps then he would have been free of it. He knew this was not true, though. It was not just Abigail who had brought the memory to life again. Since that day it had never been far from him. The grave in which that one morning in his life had been buried had been a shallow one.

  A whiskey bottle was open on the kiaat tray, an empty glass next to it. The morning in Matabeleland, twenty-seven years before, was everywhere. For the moment, nothing else existed. Not even the whiskey helped.

  He remembered the police truck and the long drive there. He also remembered the place in the reed-fringed hollow where he had stopped. The other officer, twenty years older than he was, but his junior in rank, had refused to enter the village. It had not helped to assure him that Five Brigade had left hours before and that they were already in Solusi. Word had come from the people there. “They will not be the ones to die if that information is wrong,” the other man had said. “In any event, I know what we will find and I can’t go into the village. I’ve seen it before and I can’t see it again.”

  Making the decision to go had not been difficult. “I must go,” Jonas told the other officer. “They are my people. I have friends and relatives there. I must go.”

  “Are you sure there is no danger now?” the other man had said. “Maybe there’s still danger.”

  “No,” he had said, “there’s no danger. They’ve left. I’ve heard it from people in the area.”

  “I’ll come with you.” That had been his intention and his will had only failed at the sight of the first body. They were still a few hundred meters from the village. The body was that of a teenage girl. It was clear that she had been fleeing whatever had happened in the village. She was lying face downward and her body was cold. There was blood, and there must have been wounds, but he did not look for them.

  Why he had stopped there to continue on foot was never easy for him to explain afterward. He felt somehow that by driving into the village he would be desecrating it, like walking over a grave.

  From the place where he had left the truck, he could see the roofs of the huts. They were partly obscured by the scrub and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was true that there was no sign of cooking fires, but the morning was well advanced and the time for cooking was over. If they had torched the huts, the thatch grass would still be smoking, but there was only the silent scrub, the blue sky and the girl’s body.

  Everything was so silent that perhaps the girl’s death was an isolated incident. Perhaps the reports had it wrong. Perhaps the people who had phoned in had confused one village with another. Perhaps when he reached it he would find that all was normal. Perhaps people were going about their leisurely business today, as on any other day, and perhaps the girl who had died was part of an altogether separate matter.

  Let it be so, he prayed. Let it be that the report was a mistake. I will do anything, if it never happened. I will devote myself to the service of humanity. I will give my life. Just let it be so.

  And yet he knew that this was unlikely. The night before, they had already heard that Five Brigade was on the move. When they traveled at night it usually had only one meaning.

  The people here know every village and every person in them, he told himself. There can be no mistake. Such a mistake is not possible.

  It was only when he reached the flat, straight section of the track immediately below the village that he got his first clear view of the huts. He had been walking, but now he broke into a trot. The other man had already fallen behind. If it had not been for two bodies toward the far end of the village in the center of the track, the place would have looked innocent. But the bodies, even from a distance, were clearly lifeless. Before that time of his life, he had little experience of death, but the untidy spread of the limbs set them apart from any living creature. There was no creature, human or animal, that slept with so little concern for how its limbs were spread.

  He slowed again. The trotting became a walk, then even the walk slowed. Over to his left, at the edge of the huts, a burned-out car was leaning at an angle the manufacturers could never have intended. Behind it, another body lay facedown, much like the girl he had passed on the track.

  To his right was the house where the woman had lived with her husband and the children. The front door stood open, but there was no sign of movement. The pickup truck, too, was gone. That’s what had happened, he thought. They had fled in the truck, and she was still alive.

  He climbed the steps of the house slowly and stopped in the front door. Then he made his way slowly from room to room. As far as he could see, there was no sign of disturbance. The beds had been slept in, but otherwise nothing had been disturbed. Certainly no one had died there.

  They’re alive, he thought. They got clear away. It’s obvious they’re alive.

  Going back to the veranda, he looked into the house one last time. Somewhere he could hear the buzzing that he recognized as being made by the big bluebottle flies.

  That the truck was gone was a sure sign. If they had a start of just thirty seconds and had headed into the bush, no one would have found them, certainly not a bunch of soldiers. If they were out of sight by the time Five Brigade entered the village, then there would be no stopping them. And her husband knew the bush and he knew how to handle the truck on bush tracks. When they ran out of track they would continue on foot, and be safe
. He was not much of a man, Jonas thought, but he could drive and he knew the country for many kilometers around.

  Jonas had not wanted to see it. At the first glimpse, he had turned his head away, but it was there, protruding from the door of one of the huts ahead. The hand was perhaps half the size of one of his. Its owner must have been no more than five or six when he died. Was it a boy? He would have to go closer to look. He would have to know sooner or later who the child was. But not now. For now it could wait. She and her family had gotten clear away. He was sure of it.

  Ahead the track dipped and he came to a stop at the edge of a slight rise. The dip in the track had hidden the bodies. Bluebottle flies rose from them, but only for a moment.

  It was then he saw the truck. It had ridden high against the sloping trunk of a thorn tree. There was no one on the back. The people who may have occupied the back as they tried to escape were spread around it on the ground. Their limbs were trapped in the ungainly contortions of death. Hanging partly out of the driver’s cab he could see the body of a young man. His shirt was stained by his own blood. Without going closer he knew that it was her husband.

  He made his way slowly round the tangle of bodies, staying clear of them. He saw no children, and only two women. Both looked older than she was. But there was the truck, and there was her husband. Now he could see stab wounds. Each wound looked like a small mouth, the tissue puckering up like lips where it burst through the slit made by a bayonet. Hands too were damaged, as the people had tried to defend themselves.

  In the distance, beyond the last line of huts, a man was approaching. He was wearing a shirt that was torn and shorts that came down below his knees. He was walking very slowly and wandering from side to side as he made his way in the general direction of the village.

  “Hello,” Jonas called. “Hello.” Then he recognized the man as old Makaleka who lived with his daughter. “Father,” he called. “It’s me, Jonas.”

  The old man showed no sign of having heard him, turning away, then sitting down heavily in the grass. To reach him, Jonas would have to pass next to the bodies around the truck.