by Philip Roy
We went down the coast very slowly, hugging the shore as closely as possible. Los wanted to hide the plane on land, somewhere where no one would ever find it. And it had to be reachable by car or truck. His plan was to borrow a truck, or a car with a trailer, and come and retrieve it. It also had to be a spot that he could find again.
After several hours of searching, he chose a spot. There were three palm trees close together at the mouth of a tiny river. Between the trees was a long narrow depression in the ground. It was very isolated. With wrenches from the sub, we removed the wings and rudder from the plane and tucked them in on top of the rest of it, and covered the whole thing with driftwood and palm tree branches. It wouldn’t be the easiest place to reach with a car, but the plane could be carried out in pieces. Los was satisfied. We fixed the spot in our memories, and left.
Back on the sub, we headed south. Los sat on the floor in the bow and was quiet for a while. I could tell he was thinking about something. Finally, it came out.
“Alfred. Will you show me how to work the sub? Will you tell me how you built it? I want to know everything. I want to build my own submarine.”
Oh boy. He didn’t know what he was asking. “Well, I can show you how it works. And I can explain how we built it, but there is so much more to it than that. It would take you years to build one. And you would need special tools, and a place to build it, and hide it, and so many materials. I don’t see how it would be possible by yourself. Where would you build it? And you would need a large tank. Do you know where you could get a tank?”
“Maybe. I have a friend in Ladysmith. She has a barn behind her house. That is where I build things, and where I sleep. It’s my workshop. There is a junkyard outside of town. Maybe I could find a tank there. I have tools already. I could do it. I know I could. Would you come to Ladysmith and help me get started?”
“Come to Ladysmith?” My first thought was no. I didn’t see how Los could build a submarine by himself. Yes, he had built his own plane, and that was pretty amazing, but a submarine was so much more work, and would take a lot more material. Ziegfried was able to build one not only because he was a genius, had years of experience working with metal, and owned every tool there was to own; he also had his own junkyard filled with metal and machinery. What he didn’t have, he traded for. All of this just didn’t seem realistic for Los.
And yet, as I listened to him, and saw the eagerness in his face, I remembered the feeling I had when I first spied the old tank in Ziegfried’s junkyard through a hole in the fence. I was only twelve. And when I asked Ziegfried—a complete stranger to me then—if we could turn that tank into a submarine, unbelievably, he didn’t laugh at me and say no, like anyone else in the world would have. He thought about it first. Then, once he started thinking about it, he couldn’t stop. Two and a half years later, I went to sea in my own submarine. Here, now, Los was asking me to help him with the same dream. Many things were different, for sure, but it was more or less the same dream. How could I say no?
“Where is Ladysmith?”
“Not far. Two hundred and fifty kilometres.”
“That’s a hundred and fifty miles. How would we get there?”
“We could walk.”
“No way! It would take forever. Besides, I have my crew. And where would I hide my sub?”
“We could buy a car with your stolen money. An old car. They are very cheap if you have money.”
“I’ve never driven a car before. Have you?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know. I have to think about it. What is the land like from here to there?”
“It is flat at first. And green, like here, with swamps and trees. And there are elephants and hippos.”
“Elephants?”
“Yes. Then the ground turns dry and brown, and there are zebra and ostrich. Near Ladysmith there are mountains.”
“It sounds interesting.”
“It is very interesting. And my friend Katharina is there. She is the most wonderful woman in the world. She has saved me many times.”
“From what?”
He hesitated. “From other people.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. First, we have to sail to South Africa.”
Los smiled as if I had already agreed. “You will be happy you came.”
“I didn’t say yes yet. I don’t even know if we could find a place to hide the sub.”
“We will. You will see. You will be happy you came.”
I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t feel confident about hiding the sub. The water was so shallow everywhere. And what about the pirates? On the other hand, I’d love to see some of the land. And I’d sure love to see elephants.
“Alfred?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“What?”
“Will you make more pancakes?”
“Yah, sure.”
Chapter Thirteen
RICHARDS BAY WAS two hundred miles further south. It was a full day’s sail, though we sailed it mostly at night, a few miles offshore, with the hatch open and the stars above our heads. The stars hung so low it felt as though you could reach up and touch them. There were lights on the beach, too, where people were sitting around fires. It was a hauntingly beautiful night, and reminded me of how much I loved being at sea.
After a few hours showing Los how to run the systems of the sub, how to surface and submerge, and how the driveshaft hooked up to the engine, batteries, and stationary bike—things he already had experience with—I made a pot of tea and peeled three oranges while he sat on the bike and told me why I should stop burning diesel fuel. It wasn’t something I expected to learn in Africa. I knew Africa only from geographic magazines. It seemed to me they showed only wars and famines, and kids without shoes or toys, running long distances to schools without books. I never expected to find someone like Los, who could design and build his own airplane, and who cared so much about saving the world that he was willing to risk his life for it. That was why he had made his flight—he was testing if a plane could fly without fossil fuels. He knew a lot more about global warming than I did, and was doing everything he could to solve the problem before it was too late.
“Vegetable fats burn just as well as diesel, Alfred. You just have to attach a converter to a diesel engine to make it work. You can’t use a gas engine because the bores are too small. The fat builds up and clogs everything. I learned that the hard way. Burning fossil fuels, like diesel, or coal, throws carbon gasses into the atmosphere, and that makes the temperature of the Earth rise. Global warming is melting the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, raising the level of the oceans, which are already starting to cover small islands and forcing people to move to higher ground. But millions of people will never be able to move because they have no money and nowhere to go.”
He stopped to take a breath, but it was more like a gasp. “Carbon gasses also put more acid in the oceans, and that is killing the creatures who live there, especially the plankton, which produces half of the oxygen on earth. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, we’re going to destroy all life on this planet.”
I handed Los an orange, and he ate it without even looking at it because he was concentrating so hard. I wondered if I had handed him a rotten apple if he would have noticed the difference. Probably not.
“Once we use up all of the fossil fuels though, there won’t be any more to burn because they are not a renewable energy source. By the time that happens, it will be too late anyway. The oceans will be dead. Most of the creatures on the planet will be dead.” He lifted his cup and took a drink of tea. “But vegetable fats are renewable. We grow them in our fields.”
“But . . . doesn’t burning vegetable fat put gasses into the atmosphere, too?”
“Yes, it does, but the carbon gas it makes is matched by the carbon that the vegetables take out of the atmosphere in order to grow in the first place. It’s a fair trade. One evens out the other
in the atmosphere.”
“Oh.”
We sat quietly for a while and drank our tea. Then we went outside. I was thinking about everything he had said. He wasn’t the first person to tell me that the sea was dying. I had met an old man in the Arctic, an Inuit elder, who told me the same thing. He was passionate about it too, though he seemed to think it was already too late. Los was more than passionate; he was trying to do something about it. He really wanted to save our planet. So did I; especially the oceans.
As I leaned against the hatch and watched for lights on the horizon, Los sat on the hull behind the portal, and dangled his feet over the side as we cut through the waves at eighteen knots. He was wearing the harness and a ten-foot rope. Now that his plane was well hidden, and we were on our way to South Africa, he was wearing a smile. He really was a likeable person, I thought, though not an easily likeable person. He was so committed to what he believed in, he didn’t care if you liked him or not. I wasn’t sure he cared that much about himself. If we were fighting in the trenches of the First World War, I was pretty sure that Los would be the first one over the wall to fight the enemy. My grandfather would have approved of that.
We passed three vessels coming from the other direction—large freighters, heavily loaded and low in the water—the first sign that South Africa, unlike Mozambique, was a developed industrial nation. As we watched the night pass, and chatted, we learned about each other’s life.
Los was from Soweto, a township outside of Johannesburg, the biggest city in South Africa. He had been born and raised there, and went to school until he was fifteen. He spoke five languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Swazi, and Sotho. But his mother died when he was fifteen, and he and his sister, Suzi, had to leave school then. He said he helped sell small sculptures, watches, and jewellery on the street corner for several years. But every night he went to a library in Johannesburg, studied books on science and mechanics, read magazines and newspapers, and went to lectures whenever they were offered. After his mother died, he looked after Suzi. They never knew their father.
We had a lot in common, except that my mother died when I was born, and I had met my father, and my sister, Angel, for the first time last year, in Montreal. Los said that he loved Soweto, his home, but that it was too dangerous for him to return.
“Why?”
He kicked at the water and hesitated. “Because of mob justice.”
“What is mob justice?”
“It’s when your community punishes you for committing a crime.”
“Did you commit a crime?”
He shrugged. “Sort of. I didn’t think of it as a crime at the time.”
“But . . . why would your community punish you? Shouldn’t it be the law?”
“It should be, but it isn’t.”
“Is it legal for your community to punish you?”
“No. But nobody cares what is legal. It doesn’t stop anyone from doing anything.”
“What about the police?”
“The police cannot do anything. There are too many people.”
“How many people?”
“Three million, maybe four. No one knows for sure.”
“They don’t know how many people live there? Can’t they count them?”
“Who would count them? Nobody cares how many people are there. Whole families live in little shacks. It is very crowded.”
“How do they punish you?”
“They beat you until your muscles are like mush, until you are almost dead. Or they kill you. If they don’t kill you, they often cripple you.” His eyes shone in the dark. “They didn’t catch me.”
“But why would they beat you? What did you do that was so bad?”
“I stole something, just like you.”
“I didn’t . . . oh, yah, okay . . . what did you take?”
“A battery from a car. I didn’t really steal it. I just borrowed it.”
“Did you bring it back?”
“I was going to bring it back. Now, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it went to the bottom of the sea. Now, it is ruined.”
“Oh.”
“It wouldn’t have been so bad except that the car was owned by Bandile Buthelezi. Of all the people in Soweto, I had to take his battery. I didn’t know it was his car. He’s so proud of his cars. That was unlucky. He is determined that I suffer mob justice, even if I don’t deserve it. He has many connections. It is easy for him to get what he wants. I don’t think they will kill me, but they will probably cripple me.”
“That’s horrible. What if you brought him a new battery? Would he forgive you?”
Los kicked at the water as if he were kicking at a soccer ball. “No. Buthelezi would never forgive anyone. He wanted to show off his car to people from another country, important people, and it wouldn’t start. They laughed. He was embarrassed and ashamed. He would never forgive me. I can never go back while he is still there.”
“But . . . what about your sister?”
“I haven’t seen her for almost a year.”
“That’s too bad.”
“She understands. She lives with a nice family. She knows I will try to see her when I can.”
“Soweto sounds like a dangerous place to live.”
“It is not somewhere you should ever go if you are a stranger. If you do, you must know people there, and you must know where you are, which neighbourhood you are in. There are no police to help you if you get lost or fall into trouble.”
“Yah, that sounds dangerous.”
“It is. But it is also the most famous township in the world. Nelson Mandela has a house in Soweto. So does Desmond Tutu. Their houses are on the same street. It is the only street in the world where two people have both won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Cool. Are they rich houses?”
Los laughed. “No. The same as everybody else—plain houses. Mandela’s house is a museum now.”
“Wow. Didn’t Nelson Mandela go to prison?”
Los spoke with deep respect. “For twenty-seven years. Then, when he came out, he became president of our country.”
“That’s amazing. That would never happen in Canada. A prisoner could never become the leader of the country. It would be impossible.”
“But you never had Apartheid in Canada. In Canada, everyone is equal, right?”
“More or less. We still have rich and poor.”
“Rich and poor is everywhere. Apartheid was inhumane and corrupt. Black people were treated like slaves, or worse, like animals. We couldn’t leave our townships without special papers, or we would be beaten. We couldn’t own good houses or have good jobs or go to good schools, or we would be beaten. We had no leadership in government, and no medical care. We had to live where the government told us to live, and take the worst jobs. And if we complained too much, we were beaten. The white leaders made sure we were always poor.
“But Nelson Mandela fought Apartheid to make South Africa free and equal for everyone. So, the leaders took him and threw him into jail, on Robben Island, where nobody can escape. But they could not stop him. Because you cannot kill the spirit of such a great man. It is impossible. And the rest of the world finally listened to Nelson Mandela, and they said, no, this must not continue; and the jaw of Apartheid lost its teeth. When I was a young boy, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison.”
“He must be a brave man.”
“He is the greatest hero of Africa. He is my hero. He has always been my inspiration.”
“What about Desmond Tutu? What did he do?”
“He was the Archbishop of Cape Town. Now, he travels all over the world and fights poverty, AIDS and racism. He is a very great man, too. I am incredibly proud that the two most important people in Africa have houses where I was born.”
He paused and kicked at the water rushing by his feet. “There is only one time that I can go back to Soweto.”
“When?”
“When the national football comes t
o the big stadium.”
“Football? What difference does that make?”
“The government built a huge stadium in Soweto. When national football is played there, everybody goes. Then the streets of Soweto are empty. Anyone can walk into Soweto then, take anything, and not be afraid of getting caught. But it doesn’t happen often. Maybe a couple of times a year.”
“It sounds kind of risky.”
“It isn’t. Everyone watches the football.”
“Everyone?”
“Except for the oldest people.”
“It must be crowded at the stadium.”
“It is insanely crowded. There are so many people, you cannot breathe. The yelling will make you deaf for days. South Africans love football more than anything else. Don’t Canadians love football?”
“We like hockey more.”
There was a splash in the water on the port side. Then another. Then a few more. I knew what they were. I recognized the sound. Los stood up. “What was that?”
“Dolphins. They love to follow ships. You’d better sit down. They’ll jump right over your head.”
Did they ever! And when they were in the air, we could see the light of the stars on their sides. I tried to count them, but there were too many. It was the biggest school of dolphins I had ever seen. There must have been hundreds. Los got excited. He started yelling loudly. “Weeeeeeeeeeeeooohhhhh! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeooohhhhh!” Then he tried to touch the dolphins as they went over his head.
“You’d better sit down, Los.”
“This is great!” He yelled at the top of his lungs as he tried to reach them. I ducked my head inside the portal to listen for the radar. I heard one dolphin splash very close to the sub. “Did you see that one, Los? . . . Los?” I raised my head, but he was gone. Oh boy. I jumped onto the hull, pulled on the rope, and helped him grab hold of a handle on the side. He was coughing up water.
“Los?”
“Yah.”
“You’ve got to learn how to swim, man.”
“Yah. I know.”