The Classifier

by Wessel Ebersohn

  So far he had concentrated on the road, answering my questions without looking at me. Now he seemed startled, glancing quickly at me. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, Pa said Rocha tortured people and Sergeant van der Vyfer said Rocha did the same work that he does.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that Sergeant van der Vyfer tortures people.’ We had stopped at a traffic light and he looked at me seriously. ‘This is enough of this conversation, I think.’

  I had one more question. ‘Will we give Rocha residence?’

  ‘It would surprise me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll know when you see him.’

  That turned out to be the next morning. Snake Wilson brought him into the office. We had advance warning to ensure that my father had no one else with him. Snake took Rocha straight past Auntie Marjorie and me and into my father’s office.

  Rocha was dressed in a way that I suppose he thought would impress officialdom. He wore black trousers, a white sports jacket and a red cravat. In his buttonhole he had a carnation as red as the cravat. As soon as I saw him, I knew what my father meant. He had typical European features, but his colour and his hair were insurmountable problems. He was far too dark for our immigration laws, closer to black than brown, altogether unlike the light brown of the Zulus and most of the other indigenous people of our country. I heard my father say later that his face looked as if it came from a Portuguese father and his skin from a Ghanaian mother. The door to my father’s office closed behind them. My curiosity was so great that it could have burnt a hole in the door.

  For a long time there was no sound from my father’s office, then I heard Rocha’s voice raised in anger. I picked up the word ‘faithful’. Then only the indistinguishable rumble of arguing voices that belonged mostly to Rocha and Snake. My father did not seem to be saying much. ‘… many years … served this country—’ I heard Rocha say.

  Suddenly the door burst open and Snake, looking angry and indignant, rushed through our office, leaving the door to my father’s office slightly ajar. My father was speaking softly, but now Rocha was silent and I could make out the words. ‘I am trying to find a solution to the problem. Do you understand?’

  ‘Sim, general,’ Rocha said.

  ‘But the problem lies with your classification. I don’t think head office will accept you as a white person.’ To my father, it was all entirely reasonable. ‘Do you understand that my decisions are all ratified by head office?’

  ‘Sim, general, but after so many years—’

  ‘And please don’t call me general.’

  ‘Sim, sim—’ Rocha was searching for another form of address. He found it in ‘Sim, kommissar.’

  I could imagine my father wrestling with that, but he continued evenly. ‘I understand your position,’ he said, ‘but our laws are a problem. Do you want to live as a coloured man here?’

  ‘But, kommissar, the service I have given … and I love your country. I will fight for your country and my sons will fight for your country. I will give my blood for your country and make it my country.’

  ‘I know you will fight with us. Let us try to find a solution, perhaps a new identity, then passage to Brazil or Portugal.’

  ‘Kommissar, in Portugal they have sold us out. The new government and the Brazil government have no sympathy for me or my family.’

  Snake came back with a handful of computer printouts, his face as angry and self-righteous as before. He threw open the door of my father’s office and this time made no attempt to close it. ‘Here—’ I could imagine him thrusting the printout at Rocha. ‘Look at this, the money this country has paid you. You’ve been getting more than my salary. Don’t come now and say that South Africa owes you something.’

  ‘The door.’ My father’s voice had risen. ‘Close that door.’

  ‘After what we’ve paid you, don’t come and tell me—’

  ‘Get that door.’ My father’s voice had risen and the tone had become harsher, drowning out Snake’s sanctimony.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mister Vorster. I apologise.’ Now Snake’s voice was muted and chastened. A moment later the door slammed shut and I heard no more of the conversation.

  On the way home that afternoon I tried to question my father further about Rocha, but this time he would say nothing at all. ‘Chrissie, you forget about Mister Rocha and his problems. The whole matter has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘But is he going to Brazil now?’

  ‘Forget about him, Chrissie. This is not something for you to be bothered about.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Chrissie.’ The way he said my name contained sufficient warning. This was no time to be asking more questions.

  When we got home, Michie and Annie charged at me together. ‘Abraham’s back from the doctor in Johannesburg,’ Michie yelled. ‘You better go there.’

  Mama was already dishing up and I knew how she felt about us being late for dinner and the nice food she made getting cold, but she saw my face and saved me the trouble of begging. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Go quickly and don’t stay too long. I’ll warm your food when you get back.’

  I thought, thanks Mama, but I probably said nothing. I was out of the door in a moment and down the front steps in a single leap. I ran all the way to Abraham’s place. When I got there, instead of being sick in bed, he was playing darts with Uncle Stefan on the back stoep. He looked like the same old Abraham. In my view, he was definitely not dying. ‘Here’s Chrissie,’ Uncle Stefan said. ‘Come and join in the game, Chrissie.’

  ‘What did the doctor say?’ I gasped at Abraham. I was still out of breath from the run.

  ‘He said I must be careful.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  Abraham shrugged. ‘Ja. He said I must not exercise too hard. Playing darts is not exercising too hard. You want to play? We’re playing killer.’

  ‘Grab a set of darts,’ Uncle Stefan said.

  So I stayed and played darts with Uncle Stefan and Abraham. After a while Abraham’s mother brought vetkoek she had made, filled with bacon and mince, and I forgot about Mama’s supper. Auntie Virginia made the best vetkoek, even better than Ouma’s. I was surprised that all Mama did when I got home was ask me about Abraham’s illness.

  ‘He’s not supposed to get too tired,’ I said.

  ‘Does it have a name?’ Mama asked.

  ‘They never told me a name.’

  Michie and Annie had come closer to hear about Abraham. ‘And he never asked,’ Annie said.

  ‘Is that right?’ Mama asked. ‘Didn’t you ask them what Abraham’s illness is called?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me,’ I tried to explain. ‘We played darts.’

  ‘He’s hopeless,’ Michie said. ‘We can ask Auntie tomorrow.’

  Mama gave me that warm smile she always had for me in those days. ‘I’m glad he’s well enough to play darts. Now you go to bed. You’ve still got to go to work with your father tomorrow.’

  The next day was the last time I went to work before school restarted. It was also the end of the Rocha affair, at least as far as I was aware. My stint at the Department of the Interior was over and we were on our way home when my father’s short-wave radio phone rang. Few people had any sort of mobile telephone in those days, but Mister Brown had insisted that he be able to reach my father at any hour.

  After he had answered the call, he turned the car around and started back towards town. He had told me nothing, so I assumed that there was nothing he wanted me to know. My father did not like to be disturbed when he was in thought. I had learnt long before that there were times when disturbing him was not in my best interest.

  He directed the car to the docks, waved his identity card at customs and drove through. There were already two police cars parked at one of the quays near the sugar terminal and a car from passport control. Snake Wilson walked over to us as my father stopped our car. ‘Mister Vorster, I knew something like this was going to happen. The men i
n the water say it’s a gunshot wound.’

  My father said nothing to Snake. He did not even slow his stride as he walked towards the policemen at the edge of the quay. In the water, close to the quay, two men in wet suits were guiding the body of a man towards a dinghy rowed by someone from the harbour master’s office. The body was floating face down, but even without seeing his face, I knew his identity. He was still wearing the black trousers and white sports coat he had on the day before. When the man from the harbour master’s office turned him over, I could see the bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. His skin had become paler in death. The black seemed to have been overlain by a much lighter grey.

  All the time we were there, my father said nothing. Snake kept saying that it could as easily have been one of us. I only remember saying one word. ‘Rocha,’ I gasped on first seeing the body.

  On the way home my father spoke for the first time. ‘It’s clear, some of the people he tortured are in the city.’

  ‘Frelimo rebels?’

  ‘White ones.’

  nineteen

  The revolution in Mozambique and the flood of Portuguese refugees was the first real indication I had that the world I knew was changing beyond all hope of recognition. The second was the schools rebellion two years later. The year of the rebellion was also the year that a by-election was held in the parliamentary constituency in which we lived.

  By the time the school riots started, I was fifteen. For almost two years before that the people on the farms, including Oupa and Ouma, had felt vulnerable. We now had a hostile border in the north-east, close enough to Oupa’s farm for enemy soldiers to reach it by tank in a morning, and for saboteurs or murderers to reach it in a night and be back across the border before daylight. The friendly Portuguese had been replaced by a black government that my father said harboured terrorists who murdered farmers. Before the revolution in Mozambique, there seemed to be very little danger from a workforce that did not dare disobey orders. Now, in some parts, especially the strip close to the Mozambiquan border, the occasional land mine killed a farmer and sometimes his family too. At other times, men with repeating rifles appeared quietly out of the bush to carry out their sentence on a farmer they heard had been cruel to his labourers or simply one they thought would be a satisfactory object lesson. For many, Africa’s sleepy rural peace had become a waking nightmare.

  Oupa started spending nights with both a loaded rifle and shotgun under the bed. On the rare occasions that he was away on business, Ouma would sleep at a neighbouring farm. Sometimes when Oupa was in Durban, Mama would phone to see that Ouma was at the neighbours the way she had assured everyone she was going to be. Once Mama found her still at the farm after dark. ‘I had to talk sternly to her,’ Mama told Oupa and my father. ‘She can be so foolish. She told me that the cookies she was baking were at a critical point, so she couldn’t leave, but I did not have to worry, she had just finished praying and she was sure the Lord would look after her. I told her she should both pray and go to the neighbour’s farm.’

  Once the rebellion of black school kids had started, our single television station and other stations around the world carried images of angry, desperate young men throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at armoured troop carriers. At school our headmaster spoke of the ingratitude of those who had been given the opportunity to study and had resorted to violence instead. In church Dominee prayed that the Lord would show these young people the error of their ways and that the madness and barbarism would end.

  I remember that my father’s reaction to it surprised me. He seemed to see the anger of the pupils as a matter of little consequence. The marching columns of pupils rarely advanced beyond the limits of the townships, being turned back again and again by the riot police and the soldiers sent to support them. The rocks they threw bounced harmlessly off the troop carriers. To my father, and therefore to the rest of our family, the rebellion of the black school children was ineffective. Instead the obscure parliamentary by-election in Durban North that year that preceded it seemed to dominate his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. None of us knew that the riots that started that year would continue intermittently for almost twenty years, until there was no longer a need for them.

  Perhaps the by-election was a welcome distraction. For six months leading up to the event, the adults of the area spoke about little else. None of us had yet come to realise that the battles between our white political parties had been reduced to a meaningless sideshow, that Africa was beginning to shut out all the old illusions.

  Street pole signs, exhorting us to vote for the candidates, were up so long that they had to be replaced more than once. They had started to peel or the strings holding them to the poles had snapped or they had been enlivened by the additions of young local artists whose families supported other parties. The by-election was contested by three parties and an independent. We all believed that our party was certain to win.

  A party made up largely of English-speaking people, their leaders being members of old Natal families were taking part. They had run the province as long as anyone could remember and had always represented our constituency. An independent whose father had once been a minister in the cabinet, but who had been expelled from our party for being openly critical of its leadership, was also standing. The last of the four contestants was the candidate of the country’s main liberal party. They had made a few gains in wealthy English-speaking seats, but they held perhaps a twentieth of the seats in parliament and the people I knew all discounted their chances. ‘With their big houses, luxury cars, overseas holidays, and private schools, they buy their own apartheid,’ Uncle Stefan told Abraham and me. ‘I can’t see ordinary people voting for them. Ordinary English-speakers are not going to commit suicide.’

  Seen against the reality of bigger events since that day, the importance we all attached to our by-election seems absurd now. And yet, at the time, the result seemed to be the only thing that mattered. Fist fights broke out in the schoolyard between boys whose families supported different parties. Girls who had been friends for years stopped speaking to each other. An auntie that Mama visited in a local old age home and who suffered from dementia thought that the faces of the men on the street posters were entertainers. She asked if Mama would take her to the show.

  In support of our candidate, a steady stream of cabinet ministers and deputy ministers arrived in town to address meetings in halls and homes. The prime minister himself spoke at a meeting in the city hall. My father insisted that we attend as a family. I remember the prime minister saying that only a fool would vote for anyone other than our candidate, that people should support a proven party, one that had stood the test of time.

  After the meeting, our provincial leader had introduced my father to the prime minister. I stayed with my mother at the foot of the podium stairs to watch my father’s introduction to the most powerful man in the country. I could see how proud she was. So was I. None of my friends’ fathers had ever been introduced to the leader of our people. Not even Uncle Stefan.

  The prime minister, a man with a heavy face that, on reflection, may have been one of a heavy drinker, shook my father’s hand and spoke seriously to him for what seemed like a long time – at least a minute. My father said something, very briefly, then after a final handshake, he came down from the podium. I had never seen him looking so proud, not even after he shot the eland. On the way home, he was his usual reserved self, saying only that the prime minister was a very good man and that his visit to the city would put the by-election result beyond doubt.

  But perhaps the biggest honour was when one of the younger deputy cabinet ministers, who was in town to address a string of house meetings, accepted an invitation to have dinner with us. Mama was both excited and angry with my father. ‘I don’t know what to feed a minister,’ she said. ‘I just make old-fashioned boerekos. I don’t know how you could have invited a minister to our home. We’re not rich people. I don’t know what I’m going to put b
efore him.’

  ‘He will love your food,’ my father said. ‘Just make him the same food you always make.’

  And so he came, a well-built, suntanned man, a former rugby star, with a friendly smile and a very firm handshake. Instead of just making the usual boerekos, Mama spent the day cooking. We had four courses that night. There was soup with Chinese noodles, fish fried in batter that was crisp outside and soft inside, roast duck with orange sauce, and all of this followed by chocolate mousse for dessert. And Mama could cook, she really could cook. It was heaven, especially if you were fifteen.

  As for Mama, she kept an eagle eye on the deputy minister’s plate. If he paused in his eating, she offered him something else, until eventually he laughed out loud, saying, ‘Wait, mevrou, if I eat any more of your delicious food, I will not be able to walk to my car.’ Then, seeing her reaction to his words, he added, ‘I have not in my whole life tasted such wonderful food.’

  At that, Mama blushed, but she did slow down a little with the food she was pressing on him. As for the deputy minister, not only did he talk to my father, as we all expected, but he spoke to all of us. He asked me if I played rugby and said it was good that I did. Boys should take part in manly sports, he said. He asked Annie if she had an ambition and she said yes, she wanted to be a nuclear physicist. That was a new one on me. I had not heard about that particular ambition of Annie’s and I had heard plenty. And I never heard it again after that day. Then, with a little smile, the deputy minister turned to Michie. ‘And this young lady,’ he said, ‘with that gleam in her eye, the boys must be causing her father some problems.’

  Michie looked down at the table and bit her lower lip – to stop herself from grinning, I believe. The deputy minister had got it right. My father tried to joke about it, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I have my shotgun ready.’ But like most of my father’s jokes, it came out rather heavily and only the deputy minister laughed.

  After dinner, our social interaction with the politician came to an end. We were sent to our rooms and even Mama left the two men alone in the lounge. I thought briefly about slipping into the passage to try to eavesdrop on their conversation, but gave up the idea as being too risky. I would have been in serious trouble if Mama had suddenly come out of her bedroom and found me there.