Azanian Bridges

by Nick Wood

  But empathy comes from within – sometimes it may be better not knowing what is inside another person. Our words eventually slowed, as we grew to know each other more – and perhaps a little more than what we felt was comfortable.

  Even now, as I see a white strip of beach sand come into focus, a South African beach – home, but not fully ours, we stay quiet, saying nothing.

  We each have backpack bags with a hundred EmPods in them – and that’s just the start. We gather others will be equipped to bring these small machines into South Africa too. They have been rigged so that you get scores for how many people you empathize with – you plug in demographic details through a wireless keyboard and it gives you even more points for empathizing with someone from another so-called race or culture. There are also additional points for empathizing with a different gender, more for the greater the age difference etcetera, etcetera. Empathy is measured by how accurately you think back the image or words you have received; the machine detects and calibrates the accuracies of these reflected brain patterns.

  The Chinese have turned the doctor’s mind-reading machine into an addictive video game, but without the video. “It will make a killer app, too,” said Chung Li when we left, but he failed to give us further details on this. Knowing the Chinese just a little bit, it may already be waiting for us as we arrive back in South Africa, hanging in the illicit cyber-clouds that the government fails to fully deseed.

  As for the EmPod beta version, it just has an accumulative points read out with no other pay off. But it seems points alone can be utterly addictive. Chung Li has told us the follow-up version may contain a neurally invoked emotional payload, to deepen available game rewards.

  As for us, we played each other until it got too scary.

  Numbers is full of numbers; to help hide the blood he has seen or spilled, I think. I never managed to get a clear glimpse, the blood hovered on the edge of things, smearing all his thoughts – it appeared to be wilfully covered by his constant calculations. Xolile is torn between word-visions of his friends in Zambia and his home near Port St. John, where his family still lives. The sadness for his split life hangs heavily on me. What I did increasingly better with, however, was decoding Xolile’s thoughts on cricket.

  The taller Chinese man is winding the boat’s speed down as the shorter man scours the beach with a pair of binoculars. The palms are draping down towards the beach, which looks both beautiful and deserted.

  The other two haven’t told me what they’ve made of my thoughts. As the games fizzled out when we approached Maputo, so too did our conversations. Xolile won by a huge margin, but at least I didn’t come last.

  Numbers cracks his knuckles with a sound that makes me think of a cracking neck.

  The boat has drifted to a standstill, just a few metres short of the empty beach.

  The shorter man talks: “It is good to walk from here, only a small bit of you will get wet. Car is on other side of trees.”

  I am not tempted to try EmPodding either man with our Empathy game, no matter how many points I may accrue.

  We remove our donated sandals and step out of the boat into warm, knee-deep water and wet sand, which sinks slightly underfoot. Numbers leads the trudge ashore.

  Home soil, land of our birth, where we have yet to claim our full and due citizenship rights.

  The boat roars off and a wave laps at my heels. No one has bothered to say goodbye to anyone.

  A woman appears through the dense leaves at the head of the beach. She is large, with a mane of black hair that sprouts from her, as if she were a male lion. There is nothing male about the generous curves of the rest of her body, though, her rainbow blouse is attractively stretched, her wide hips wrapped in a bright red kikoi.

  I know who she is straight away, as do the others, I’m sure.

  It’s Numbers she greets first, though.

  He kisses her hand, “Mamma!”

  She smiles at us, “You must all be tired, it’s been a long journey for you all – and within the space of little less than a week, too.”

  Xolile and I nod, but Numbers remains impassive, as if he doesn’t know what she is talking about. She chuckles and asks, “You have the Box and the Chinese copies, then?”

  Numbers taps the bag on his back with his right hand.

  “Good, come,” she says, turning to push her way through the leaves.

  Numbers muscles himself around and ahead of her, in order to untangle the narrow, covered path. Both Xolile and I put our sandals on, but Numbers has not bothered. He has secured them on top of his swinging backpack.

  His bulk bursts through the last of the foliage and we see a small and battered minibus vehicle parked on the verge of a gravel circle. A wiry woman leans against the side of the passenger seat, smoking. She drops the cigarette and stamps it out as we emerge from the strip of strandveld forest, making her way around to the driver’s door, clicking it open.

  “A typical taxi,” says Mamma, “We will attract a lot less attention that way, than if we had secured one of those large government Mercs to travel in. When we get into power, I am sure we will keep our vehicles small and light on the planet. We will not be seduced by excess or money.”

  All three of us look at her. She had said ‘when’ and not ‘if’.

  The driver opens the door for her, by leaning across the gears and handbrake. Mamma slides in with apparent ease, muscles working well, despite her bulk. “I’m sure you boys don’t mind sitting at the back.”

  I am the meat in the middle of the human sandwich on the long seat. We sit as if expecting more passengers. The driver grunts and engages her gears, skidding slightly on the dusty gravel for several minutes before grinding to a halt. She jumps from the front and strides towards some tape tied between two trees. It’s blue and yellow police ‘do not cross’ tape. She cuts the tape free and spools it into her pocket.

  “We got that from a useful contact,” says Mamma, “and it was one way to try and ensure our privacy here.”

  “You said ‘when’ we are in power, Mamma,” says Xolile. “Has anything changed while we have been away?”

  Mamma swivels to look at us. She is not so filled with her own importance that she would speak to the air in front of her. “Things always change. This time, though, they are changing faster. Obama is now putting pressure on the apartheid government – and with Russian peace talks, the old anti-communist arguments for supporting this government are falling. Sanctions have already weakened the will of many of the white people here.”

  “It’s a matter of time,” says the driver, in a rough tone, swinging carefully onto the large tarred road.

  “Yebo, Mandisa, it is indeed just time and...” Mamma turns again and fixes me with her gaze. “The white government now feels like a fragile pack of cards stacked up, ready to collapse – and your doctor’s box may be one of the flicking fingers that helps to topple the lot.”

  “Really, Mamma,” I ask, “How?”

  “I’ll tell you soon enough,” she says. “He came looking for his Box too, you know, the night before last. Nombuso brought him to my house...”

  This stuns me, but Mandisa is swearing as the traffic is particularly heavy and slowing us down. She ignores four young men with football shirts, as well as an old woman signing at us from the side of the road, wanting a trip in to town. Instead, she grinds her gears angrily.

  Mamma shoots her a reproving look: “Calm down girl, we won’t miss the collapse of this government if you drive a little more slowly.”

  Mandisa just grates her teeth and hoots at the car ahead of us. “I’ve got to look like a real taxi, Mamma!”

  We laugh – even Numbers chuckles.

  “Sobukwe may be an old man, Mamma,” he says, “But he told me in Kitwe that the PAC wants to rename the country.”

  Mamma grunts and turns to me, but a little less easily and I see strain lines on her face. It seems that she too is feeling the pinch of a journey. “I’ll tell you soon enough, Si
busiso,” she says, “But first, we’ve got to do a deal with some low-lifes.”

  “Fuck!” Mandisa’s face is thrust forward, staring hard through her windscreen. It is no wonder the traffic is slow. We are approaching the Lower Umgeni River Bridge and a police vehicle is parked facing us by the side of the road leading onto the bridge.

  A cop is waving us off for inspection. He’s small for a boere, clean shaven and wearing a cap that looks too big for his prickly scalp. His partner, a larger and darker looking man, perhaps a ‘coloured’, is making notes into his cell, leaning against his passenger door. He flashes his cell at us, as if taking a picture.

  “Take it easy, Mandisa, perhaps they just want to ask a few questions.” Mamma is focused forward now, but her voice remains cool and even. She winds down her window, as does Mandisa, slowly slipping the kombi off the road, rolling it to a halt in front of the cop car. The traffic begins to roll past as the white cop saunters over to Mandisa’s window.

  He swings his blue eyed gaze across us all and I feel Numbers tense to my left, although we have carried no weapons from the boat.

  The cop turns his gaze to Mandisa: “Trrravelling a little light, aren’t we, considering the big soccer game today?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t pick up football fans who look like tsotsis.”

  “Hmm....” he looks across to Mamma.”Howzzz about you all step outside, so we can check your vehicle.”

  The bang hurts my ears. The cop looks surprised and staggers back a few steps, his cap falling off. Then I see blood spurting down his face, from a hole above his right eye.

  There is a bang from the side of the road and the window shatters to my left. I scramble down, into the open bench space in front of me. Then there is a rattling series of bangs from the front seat and, suddenly, a painful silence.

  Mamma’s voice drifts over my head from the front seat. “Both cops are down. Drive like hell, Mandisa.”

  The kombi revs up and with a sudden roar, it swerves forward onto the bridge, pushing me back against the seat I’d left. A heavy weight tumbles onto my back and head and I fall forward again, face grinding against the floor.

  There’s another loud bang from the front seat. “No one follows,” says Mamma, “and they pull over ahead of us. My AK has warned them.”

  “Mamma...” it sounds like Xolile’s voice, although also not quite like him.

  “Yes!” she snaps as we swerve again: “Get off this road the other side of the bridge as soon as you can, Mandisa, I’ll rig the satnav to take us up the back routes.”

  “Mamma...” calls Xolile again, in his weird almost not-him voice.

  I can’t sit up, the weight is too heavy, crushing me, and something is trickling down my neck. Oh shit, have I been shot? Has my body gone dead and heavy on me, because I’ve been shot?

  “Mamma, Numbers is dead.” It is Xolile’s voice. A large hand and arm with tattooed numbers flops down near my face. I realise there is a body on my back. A big body.

  I scream.

  I never knew Numbers had a family.

  For those few hours we had mind-read each other, I had not glimpsed that at all. In our terse conversations, there had been no hint of any others he may have cared for.

  And certainly not this large weeping woman, with two small children tugging at the hem of her dress. We stand bowed around his body, laid out on a bed in a small house, creaking with a cheap and temporary aluminium room extension. Some neighbours have come in too, gaping behind us.

  Mamma raises her hands: “For the spirit of Numbers. May he rest in peace and not need to lurk anywhere nearby. May the amadlozi guide him in good company.”

  The woman sobs even louder, one child clutches her mother’s dress tighter and the other drops like a small stone onto the dead man, her face streaked with silent tears.

  “I have called a doctor sympathetic to our cause, Mamma,” says Mandisa, moving alongside her.

  Mamma nods, muttering so that only the closest can hear, “And for the families of those other two men.” She turns to leave, the gathering crowd behind her spilling out and before her by the door and outside, onto the street.

  “Those cops who killed him?” hissed Mandisa at her shoulder.

  “Have families too,” says Mamma shortly. She bows respectfully at a nondescript old man approaching the house, “My greetings, sir.”

  He nods at her, but stiffly: “More dead in your wake, Nqobile?”

  She stiffens slightly, “For a future in which only the old and ill need fear death.”

  He laughs, “Like me, perhaps?”

  She bows and turns, as if empty of words. I catch a glimpse of her face – her cheeks are wet too.

  Four of us climb into a small battered car and sit silently for moments.

  “Not all agree with our methods, even here,” says Mamma.

  But there is no need to say anything.

  I am sitting at the back again and stare out of the window at smoke rising behind the trees. The kombi had burst into flames immediately when Xolile threw the match, after it had been doused in petrol. But it smokes as if burning still, more than an hour in, as if finding the blood on its seats hard to digest.

  9-1-1 were the most recurring numbers I’d seen in Numbers’ head – the emergency call for help.

  Mamma sighs. “Let’s go and meet those tsotsis, Mandisa. I feel like leaning heavily on some people who deserve it.”

  My body still feels heavy, as if a larger body sprawls upon it. Inside me, though, I feel the Beast stirring again, growling softly as it wakes.

  She is growing even more in strength, so I must handle her both well and with care. She?

  And why do I also catch a glimpse in my mind of a ghostly bird I saw at Hope’s Folly, flashing across my vision with its funny wedged shaped bill?

  It is a big house in what looks like the better part of Imbali township. The walls are new, fresh and lean well, smacking of money. Lots of money. There’s even a swimming pool in the back garden, I spot it from a window as we climb the stairs to meet the boss-man on the next floor. This house is a double story, nogal!

  Ahead and behind us walks a man with a cocked gun, but no one else seems afraid. Mamma leads our group up the stairs with a quiet assuredness and silent steps. Mandisa brings up the rear for us – we men are in the middle, lacking weapons I guess, although Xolile is humming to himself. He has his cell radio plugged into his left ear, listening to a cricket commentary of Australia v India.

  The room at the top is plush, carpeted and furnished with soft leather couches of different colours – four wide ones, pink, purple, green and yellow. The carpet itself is a mélange of abstract colours and swirls that makes me feel giddy for a moment.

  We stop, but it takes me a further moment to spot the small man fixing himself a drink at a bar counter on the far side of the room. I hear the clink of ice on glass but all I see is the back of a sharp grey suit and shiny black Italian looking shoes.

  The man turns to face us with a glass of whisky perhaps, swirling like liquid gold in his crystal glass. He has a narrow face and an even thinner smile, underlined by a forked goatee beard.

  “Hey man,” he speaks English, “How are you dudes hanging?”

  His speech is strange, affected, but I know better than to laugh. His two bodyguards have fanned out to the other corners of the room, guns still alert.

  Mamma spreads her feet, as if straddling this new space with her authority. She has long removed her bright kikoi. Underneath this, her camouflaged military style trousers carry a sterner but silent message. Her strapped boots match well, but she still wears her rainbow blouse - and wears it proudly. She replies in isiZulu.

  “Another one has died for change, Tsepo...”

  “You must change your business, Mamma – mine is safer, as I’ve always said, why not join me?”

  She smiles, but it’s a fleeting flash; this is all clearly part of an older dance of words between them.

  “Numbers is
gone,” she says shortly. I see she must have dried her face before entering the building.

  Tsepo startles and the glass clinks in his hand. He takes a quick sip. “I thought that big bastard was built to last forever.”

  “None of us are.” She gestures at us and all three of us remove the bags from our backs.

  The two men at the corners of the room level their guns, but Tsepo waves them down. “What’s your merchandise?” he asks.

  “Three hundred units, to be delivered as free sweeteners with your drug route into the white areas.”

  “Free?” Tsepo looks incredulous: “Since when has anything been free?”

  Mamma takes a small brown box out of Mandisa’s bag and tosses it to Tsepo. He catches it neatly with one hand. Xolile gives him a short clap, but then I notice his ear pod is still inserted, so perhaps the clap is not for Tsepo, but for an Indian batsman or bowler.

  He puts his glass down on the copper table and thumbs the box open, pulling the slim EmPod out. “What is it? It doesn’t look like it can be smoked or snorted.”

  “An involuntary gift from a white doctor – and a voluntary gift from the Chinese government. It’s a game that will help dissolve apartheid barriers. We have runners bringing lots more in, as we speak. We need you to spread them as widely as you can, amongst your white clientele.”

  He throws it high in the air and catches it. Xolile claps again and I notice that he has taken his ear pod out.

  “Payment for our services?”

  “We don’t shut you down right now.”

  He hisses; taking a step forward and the men at the two corners of the room level their guns. “You’re not the police; you have no authority here.”

  “No, we’re not the police – yet, Tsepo. Do you really want to cross MK?”

  They level their gazes at each other. Tsepo is the first to look down. He steps back and tosses the light box in his hand thoughtfully, “Our rates for dagga have dropped, even for the best of our Durban Poison, perhaps these boxes will help add to our prices.”