Azanian Bridges

by Nick Wood

  The ward is quiet now though, all are out to eat.

  The doctor awaits me with his thought box tomorrow. I am hungry and the crushing blackness, like a beast inside me, hangs on the edge of my vision. I sit on thin, creaking mattress springs and think.

  Father.

  I know better than to go home; if Bongani talks, it will not be safe for my family. Shall I wait instead? Shall I give this Doctor Martin Van Deventer and his magic box a chance to drive these demons away?

  The darkness is seeping inside me, locking my bones with its cruel grip, like a mamba’s bite. It will be so easy just to lie back and wait for it to slowly suffocate me. Izinto zabantu, who bewitches me?

  So easy just to lie back…

  But my father never lay back; he still works his head and hands as a cattle-herd for baas Esterhuyze and a tax clerk for the induna, to feed all of us. “My turn to be looked after will come,” he used to remind us pointedly.

  Father!

  I stand somehow with gritted teeth. I rub my arms and legs, thrusting blood into them, like the doctor had done for me this morning. I need to move.

  The darkness is a beast, tearing at my insides, but I ignore it. A feeling from the morning’s box floats into me.

  Alone; cut off; dead. Loneliness.

  Are they the doctor’s or are they mine?

  In the end, does it matter? As for now, I need to keep moving.

  I need to get away.

  I pull my rucksack with difficulty from under the bunk. I will leave. The back door is open, as is the gate for walkers into the world, just a few curves of a dimly-lit path around past the dining hall.

  I’ve traced the route many times, only to stop short of the boomed gate, wondering: where shall I go? I know of no safe houses nearby. Outside, the world burns and the army and police kill us without thought. So it was for Mandla - and his brother. I have no wish to die, whatever this beast within me may say.

  This room at least is safe. Am I a coward?

  “What are you doing?”

  It is Chief Nurse Nhlapo, standing at the opposite end of the dormitory, watching me with my slung back-pack, standing near the back-door.

  What can I say?

  He looks angry for a minute and then his face softens. “Come talk to me, my boy. I can’t stop you going, they have not certified you, but it is your family who brought you here for your own good. I will be in the Station.” He gestures towards himself expansively and then leaves.

  My soul flares with excitement. Nurse Nhlapo’s large beckoning movement shrugs his sleeve ever-so-slightly from his thick right forearm. Underneath, I catch a glimpse of a hidden braided leather bracelet with black, green and gold beads. He turns and hitches his sleeves down in one fluid and muscular motion.

  I know now who masters his politics – and the Nurses’ Station is indeed private.

  I put the rucksack back under my bunk and reach inside the front pocket of my blue hospital dungarees. I pull out a sticky samosa I’d grabbed earlier with my left hand when placing the plate down flamboyantly with my right, distracting that witch behind the counter.

  I take a spicy bite and walk towards the Nurses’ Station. I will talk with the Chief Nurse of umlungus with magic thinking boxes, of canteen food and the pills he sorts so carefully for all of us.

  And next time I will insist on the curry.

  The doctor cancels our appointment, saying he will see me next week. He gives no reason, so my thoughts about him darken.

  Still, three days with Jabu, whispering together when moments allow us, does wonders for me, easing the bite of the Beast within.

  Saturday is here.

  Bongani is out; the police have let him free, he texts me, saying he has said nothing. He comes to fetch me for the weekend, but he is late, so I am already packed and ready to go with Nombuso.

  As usual, he walks in tentatively through the ward door, as if fearing to be attacked by a horde of madmen. I jump at him snarling and he shrieks and steps back into the door slamming shut behind him.

  “Ow!– What the fuck, Sib?”

  There is a guttural roll of laughter behind me – there is little femininity about Nombuso’s behaviour, but I don’t mind.

  Bongani notices the backpack hanging off my shoulders: “You ready to roll, brother?”

  Nombuso steps alongside me: “He’s coming with me this weekend.”

  Bongani eyes her warily: “But Sib always comes back to the college on weekends.”

  I tire of people talking about me as if I were not there.

  “I’m going with Nombuso today, Bongani,” I shiver as Nombuso slips her arm through mine. “Sorry bra, I couldn’t tell you in time to save you the trip – she just turned up a few minutes ago and… persuaded me. I don’t think college is safe anymore.”

  He scowls: “I wonder how she persuaded you, hey?”

  I feel my face burn a bit at his suggestion, but Nombuso only laughs: “You must come up and visit us, ’gani, I’ll text you the address.” He scowls. It seems he does not like the way she shortens names – or takes control.

  Nombuso pulls me past him, “Come on, Sib, I’ve got something to show you.”

  Outside, parked in the Medical Superintendent’s bay, squeezed alongside his black Merc, is a motorbike; a dilapidated 250cc Japanese bike.

  Two helmets hang off the front bars. “No need to lock it, hey – not many tsotis wonder into a lunatic asylum looking for stuff to steal!”

  She drives that bike like she belongs with me in Fort Napier!

  I hang onto her, sweating, oblivious to the nearness of her body, as she accelerates and bends over into the road corners. She is helmeted in black so no one knows she is black as she throttles past a yellow police van. It feels as if she is flirting dangerously with them, the road and the speed limit.

  She circles around town and then sweeps up a hill, with what looks like a set of neat houses off to the right. I see an Indian man walking towards one of the houses, so I assume it’s the Indian area of town.

  Nombuso takes a sudden sharp bend to the right and we drop down a dirt slope towards the base of a hill. Off to our left are sprawls of half-drowned trees, branches straining above a lake that must have pooled from the summer rains.

  In front of us is another hill, but blunted, with rock exposed and rubble at the base. White stone, almost like the limestone quarry on Robben Island, where it is rumoured Mandela has died. No one has confirmed this though, the government no doubt aware the country would boil, if this were so.

  Nombuso just revs her bike like an aggressive lion and surges up the bumping dirt-track curving to our left, past the lake and up past village huts perched above, cattle fields emerging to our right.

  Nombuso stands up to avoid the rat-tat-tat of the broken road thumping up through the seat, but I am too scared to do so. Instead, I groan at the ache in my balls.

  As the ground levels out, she brings the bike to a gravelly dusty halt and my face rams into her back.

  She kicks the bike stand down and I gratefully drop my feet onto solid ground. She sits and turns her head; our helmets knock with a hollow clunk. She lifts her visor.

  “You’ve got to get off first, ‘Biso. I can’t swing my legs over the bars in front.”

  I nod, clunking my chin with the helmet, tasting the salty iron sting of blood in my mouth from banging my helmeted face in her back – Nombuso herself barely flinched.

  Silly to nod in this thing, so I undo the strap, pull off the helmet and swing my leg over the back of the bike onto glorious solid ground. Nombuso swings her body off the bike with practiced ease, removes her helmet and shakes her near-bald head, as if in memory of what hair she may once have had.

  She’s stocky, straight faced and plain, but I feel a twinge in my crotch - she fills out her leather jacket very well.

  “Welcome to Hope’s Folly,” she gestures to her left.

  Behind a white and yellow frangipani tree slinks a long low dull white building
with a faded green corrugated roof. The bzzzz noise focuses my gaze on a hornet’s nest, hanging over the nearest window.

  Angled off to the left behind the building is a small outhouse and a rondawel, neatly circular, but white brick, not mud. To the right of the building a towering red bougainvillea drapes forward over wooden struts on a stoep, a wide verandah space gazing down into the valley.

  Nombuso gives a mock bow: “Welcome to Cell Hartebeest of MK. You have to come in now, ’Biso,” she laughs and swings her helmet in front of her: “Else we might have to kill you.”

  Umkhonto we Sizwe! Mandela’s armed wing of the ANC. I must have stepped backwards, because I almost trip over the bike’s stand arm.

  Nombuso doubles over with laughter: “it’s just a joke, ’Biso – man, you can be too serious. Come inside and I’ll introduce you to the others.”

  She saunters off to what looks like the back door behind the building, without looking back.

  I am aware of the tingling in my crotch becoming a throb, but my father always warned me against listening to my cock too much. I hesitate, knowing if I go inside that building, there is indeed no going back.

  Not only were MK most definitely banned – as the armed wing of the ANC they were most actively sought by the boere – police, military, Special Branch, the whole fucking – (inwardly I wince, Father would not approve the word, but it fits) – lot of the aggressive white forces.

  The ones who killed Mandla.

  I close my eyes, too frightened to move. Inside me, I sense the Beast pacing, a vague dark shape of fury, snarling and ready to rip at my innards.

  I am tired of this.

  Come on then, I shout, readying myself in my mind, what are you waiting for?

  The Beast needs no further goading and leaps suddenly, almost taking me by surprise.

  Almost.

  My mind-self drops onto my right knee and the black shape soars over me, but my hands have arced a mental loop around its neck. I straighten and brace my legs, hands twined around my mind-leash. The Beast almost rips the leash from my grasp and rears up, roaring, spinning to smack me with its huge paw, but I have lent backwards and it meets only air. Hot saliva spatters off my face.

  The Beast crouches, growling, but hesitant suddenly, as if aware of the taut band around its throat.

  I tighten the grip of my right hand. It’s a choke chain and I have the will to wield it.

  The Beast slowly subsides to the ground.

  It’s one fucking huge Black Panther.

  I open my eyes.

  Nombuso is watching me from the window under the hornet’s nest, standing a few respectful inches back from the buzzing traffic.

  “Hayi, ‘Biso, what are you doing?”

  “Just thinking,” I say, hiding my embarrassment. But my legs feel strong now and I have no qualms about walking forwards, angling around to the open, battered back door.

  I hesitate for only a moment before stepping into the cooler hallway shade of that old farmhouse, Hope’s Folly.

  Chapter 6

  Martin Rebuilds Pandora’s Box

  How do you recreate a masterpiece?

  I’m no engineer. As a neuropsychologist, I’m in touch with my shortcomings. I guess you do it the same way you did the first time, but this time, a hell of a lot more secretly – and with an awareness that this will have to be kept ‘in-house’. Do we have the resources?

  Dan will know.

  So here I am, sitting outside his house in my car, night already camped in, slumped down in the front-seat so that I am unobtrusive – and feeling faintly ridiculous. I watch my rear view mirror but see no one moving in the few scattered cars parked behind me. Most people have their cars securely locked away in their garages, even though white Hilton has been kept quiet by a phalanx of army barricades. They check your Books of Life instead of your skin colour, as they used to some years back. Ruth First and Joe Slovo may have been assassinated, but their list of white terrorists is no doubt longer than they would like.

  A dog barks in the distance, but it sounds bored rather than agitated. I wait for a man to walk well past with his dog before opening the door to slide out. I finger my phone, too frightened to text, in case it’s hackable. Dan may be surprised – to date, we’ve kept our co-operation and relationship firmly within work bounds, even though we’re old school friends (of sorts).

  I ring the bell, heart pounding.

  There is a clatter of locks and chains and I feel inspected by the peephole in the door. It is late, after nine, and I hope I haven’t woken their young daughter - eight or nine if I remember correctly.

  Dan opens the door, slightly bleary-eyed in a bright red dressing gown. “Wat die fok, Martin?”

  He swings his gaze from me to the street behind me. Ah, he’s been visited too, then! He waves me in with a discreet swishing of his right palm, stepping back to widen the door in order to allow me in.

  I creep in sideways like a crab, backpack scraping his cream hallway wall.

  Dan closes the door behind me and I think ‘very nice!’

  The hallway is wide, but studded with original artwork, an incongruous mixture of local seascapes and what looks like 3-D township art, shack scenes with background rolling green Midland hills, a few shacks fore-grounded in bent metal jutting from cheap plywood. It’s not the art alone that’s caught my eye – the hallway drifts into the distance, with a good few rooms pegged off, both left and right. They must rattle around in here, the three of them. I wonder whether he was born into money.

  Dan’s pushing me through into the first room on the right and we dip down a few steps into a lushly furnished lounge - black stinkwood suite, an original-looking Persian rug splayed on what looks like a yellowwood floor.

  A woman stands waiting for us as we step down. She’s small, fading brown hair and a face starting to line, but her strong green eyes fail to falter as she returns my handshake squeeze with interest.

  “Helen, this is Martin van Deventer, a colleague I may have mentioned. Martin, my wife Helen.” Dan stands next to her and they both eye me carefully. I notice they haven’t asked me to sit down.

  I open my mouth, but realise I’m not sure what to say. I have remembered her much vaunted mind-reading skills from Dan’s accounts and feel out-psyched.

  Helen laughs and seems to visibly relax, “It’s late, as I’m sure you are aware, Martin, so please don’t waste time gaping like a stunned fish. You have half an hour tops, so sit down and Dan will get you a drink.”

  Dan leaves the room without a word.

  I recall the way he slightly lowered his voice on the few occasions he briefly mentioned his wife and anxiety traipses inside me with songololo feet.

  “Well,” she snaps, “get on with it!”

  I glance at the empty doorway; this seems to increase her irritation.

  “Come on,” she growls. “Dan’s smart enough to catch up – you boys have obviously been busy!”

  “Well,” I say, “Perhaps you’ve also had a visit from a – a branch of the police.”

  “Ja,” she says, leaning back in a chair, plucking a cigarette out of a box she’s dug from the pocket of her full length, white dressing-gown, “The fuckers were here too – smoke?”

  She offers a box of Zimbabwean Zest, legalized low strength dagga. I shake my head as she lights up. “Ja, don’t tell me, drugs do anaesthetise the proletariat, I’ve heard it all before, Martin, from Dan...”

  I’m relieved when Dan walks in and puts a tray of rooibos tea down on their squared yellowwood coffee table.

  I take a sip, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the sweet puff of dagga smoke in the air. “Well, they wanted the – uh, Box Dan and I have been working on.”

  “Yes, your glorious Pandora’s Box that Dan finally mentioned – but only after the police came nosing around our house, taking our computers. I’m still trying to get them back, but the rule of law is not always straightforward in this country, as you may have noticed.”


  She leans back and takes another deep drag; the glow on the end of the cigarette seems to have been sucked from her belly. I see now why Dan sits timidly on the arm frame of her chair, sipping quietly. He obviously told her very little up until their... visit.

  “The bastards upset Jody, so I gave them the fruits of some suiwer Afrikaans,” she goes on, eyeing the zol in her right hand, small expert smoke rings escaping out of the side of her mouth.

  Despite myself, I smile, but Dan is leaning forward, looking worried.

  “You didn’t give them the Box did you, Martin?”

  I shake my head; the top of my mouth feels numb; I’ve been sipping the hot tea too quickly.

  “Is that it, in your backpack?”

  I nod, feeling a little ashamed. “Sort of.”

  He puts his tea cup down on the table carefully: “What do you mean?”

  I swing the bag off my back, pull it open and slowly place the box with its crushed casing on the floor. I scoop most of the components back inside its battered shell.

  “What the hell happened to it?” Martin jumps to his feet to join me, stares down in disbelief at the battered box next to my feet.

  “I… stood on it.”

  “You what?” He’s kneeling down, stroking the box, probing the crushed metal surface.

  I’m too embarrassed to speak.

  After a pause of several seconds, he cranes his neck around to look up at me: “You did this? Jesus, Martin, you seriously need to lose some weight man.”

  There’s a gasping, choking noise. Helen is doubled over, caught between pulling in smoke and laughing. It takes her a good minute to recover her breath, by which time Dan is back from the kitchen with a glass of water.

  It wasn’t that funny.

  “Is it fixable?” I ask.

  “Put it this way,” he says, “this isn’t an overnight job, it’s not a ‘Breakano’ Set.”

  “And the specs – do the cops have those now?”

  Dan taps his nose. “I deleted the sensitive records and they never found the external hard drive I loaded the red-prints on.”