by Nick Wood
“Yes…” I say warily, waiting for a punch-line, alerted by her use of my title.
“They have him on a serious charge. They may well kill him, trying to extract information.”
I can’t speak.
“Doctor –?” her voice has regained its sharpness and assertion, “We have thirty seconds before they can trace this. I’m sure they have a lock on your phone.”
I finger the memory stick in my pocket and an idea shoots up my fingers and into my brain; but it’s a long shot indeed. “Uh, Sally, do you have anyone who’s good with the internet? I’m talking really good.”
There’s the shortest of pauses. “I can think of just the man,” she says.
“I’ve got something I need to get onto the external World Wide Web, through the State firewalls. It’s valuable – and dense, very dense, a heavy file indeed.”
“Say no more,” Mamma says. She hangs up, but not before I feel the buzz of a cell-phone in my pocket.
The ‘emergency’ phone she gave me when we last met.
I pull it out, memorise the address displayed on the screen and then delete the text.
This trip, I make on my own.
I am frightened, but know it is nothing compared to what Sibusiso faces.
Address keyed into my satnav, I drive towards Imbali Township. The roads darken as electrification from the white suburbs recedes behind me.
I swerve to avoid a stray dog scuttling across the road. To the side of the road, hovering at the edge of my widest headlight beam, shacks and then small but more solid brick houses flash past in the gloom around me. There are only a few men walking the dusty track on the sides of the streets, as if everyone fears the dark.
Not though, it seems, the car behind me. It has followed me at a discreet distance for a while now, but given there is little traffic in the township I cannot miss its dipped beams.
I pull over and wait.
So does the car behind me, switching its lights off.
Darkness drops a black cloak over it.
I see nothing and no one.
I hit the accelerator in terror and swerve back onto the road, swinging down a narrow alley that almost seems too small for a car. I see headlights flash onto the road behind me, but I have swung randomly right, then left, then right again; the lights have disappeared.
The roads have opened into what appears to be a small market area, and I pull my car behind a large container, with a cell logo – VodaGaan – daubed on its side.
I switch off my lights and engine and wait.
Silence.
No one walks these streets at night it seems.
Sweat sticks my shirt to the back of my seat – I sit forward and peel myself off with a slow and sticky wrench.
I jump as the Satnav clicks at me in what sounds like Xhosa, the language facility evidently bounced off Afrikaans by the swerves and bumps in the road.
The satnav has rerouted itself and I see I am not too far off from a chequered flag on the screen.
Thank the Gods for GPS!
Still silence.
There is no sign of any car lights, so I pull off slowly and turn down a side street, switching off the satnav so that the car rolls to a halt near a small house, one window glowing with light.
I see a large woman standing at the foot of a few stairs leading up into the house.
I switch off my lights and shiver. My car is locked, my windows rolled up. I can’t quite believe I have not been jumped from the darkness by white men with sjamboks and pistols – or black men with AK-47 rifles.
I start as Sally Jones knocks on my window. She has a torch in her left hand.
“Come on, Martin, get out of there, we have too little time.”
I step out of the car and she bounds up the few stairs, waving me on with an impatient shimmy of light from her left hand.
I remember the small entrance hall and seating space, lit by gas-lamps, but she guides me into the room on the left without hesitation.
It’s a deceptively big room, with a large bed to one side, a small child-like figure sleeping on the bed. Across from the bed though are a set of jury-rigged computers, chaotically connected with plugs sprouting through the floor.
A man is sitting there, but gets up as I walk in. He is short but stocky and powerful, dressed in anonymous trousers and unmarked T-shirt of uncertain colour in the flickering light.
“Xolile, this is Martin – Martin, Xolile.” She steps aside so that we can shake. I am not sure I can pronounce his name properly, so say nothing.
The man drops his hand with distaste: “Now that is what I call a wet handshake.”
“I think I was followed, but lost them,” I croaked.
Sally barks a command behind me and a woman with a rifle, perhaps Nombuso, rushes past the door.
I turn to Xolile.
“What have you got for me?” His voice is a growl, but sounds surprisingly relaxed and friendly.
I hand him the stick and he plugs it into a port.
I whistle and wave at the set up.
“Informally sponsored by the white Council’s power grid,” he grins at me, “…and was that a job to get done.”
He turns to the screen and his mouth opens at the file that pops onto the screen.
“What sort of shit is this?”
“It’s Sibusiso,” I say, “Or a few of his thoughts at least. Reckon you can get him onto the outside web?”
He frowns. “Maybe, maybe, maybe… One hell of a job though, it’ll take time. There’s going to be lots of bridges to build.”
He locks his fingers together and splays them against each other, cracking his knuckles.
“You got a close of day score at Newlands, Martin?”
I am incredulous, “You follow white provincial cricket?”
“No, Doctor.” He turns to the screen and sits down. “I just follow cricket.”
Sally laughs softly behind my left shoulder.
My heart sinks with a stark thought, “No one will be able to read the file.”
Xolile doesn’t even look up from his screen, “That’s why I’m sending the free Chinese neural app with it.”
Sally throttles another laugh beside me.
As I’ve said before, I’ve given up believing I know everything – or even anything at all.
I watch Xolilie’s fingers fly over the keyboard, but am really listening to the sound of a few crickets outside and the distant yammering of dogs.
And I think of Sibusiso as his brain waves are sent across the world, a man who I had once thought of as ‘just a young Bantu man’ – and I am ashamed, very ashamed.
They allow me ten minutes with him.
Ten freaking minutes.
I’d called Helen, who’d rung them up, but even their lawyer had bounced her. They were apparently gathering double murder evidence. Two policemen apparently, so no legal wiggle room on that at all.
But not Sibusiso?
He sits the other side of a small glass peephole; a metal barrier between us. We talk as if we both know we’re being recorded, so there’s no way I’m relaying anything from ‘Sally Jones’. I have no intention of digging myself in any deeper.
His face is tired, drawn and he looks as if he’s in pain. “You look like shit, Doctor,” he says, though. “Were you beaten up by a new girlfriend?”
I smile, although both eyes sting. Keep a lid on it, van Deventer.
“What have they done to you, Sibusiso?”
“Taking information.” He winces. It looks as if each word costs him energy too.
Perhaps even ten minutes is more than he can manage in his current condition. Bastards – fucking, fucking bastards!
“It’s absurd; they say you’ve been involved in a double murder.”
“Not true,” he says, but I spot the brief eye flicker. Fuckit, he’s in much deeper than me.
I know better than to touch that topic again. “You’re still under the hospital,” I say. “Professor Pillay, ou
r Principal Psychologist, is filing for an emergency psychiatric transfer.”
“Thanks,” he says; but every word seems to diminish him just a little more, his face sinks slightly lower.
“Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime, Sibusiso? Anything?”
He looks at me; his eyes are puffy, his face swollen. And then he starts to cry; just very big, very slow drops. “Just my father,” he says. “Please just call my father.”
I cannot touch him. The glass is a dumb impenetrable barrier between us.
“Sure... sure, Sibusiso.”
“And Doctor?”
“Martin,” I say.
“And Martin, they were – uh, very cross to find your machine is not perfect. I found a way to… to manage it.”
Dan had no doubt handed our Box over without a word.
But Sibusiso carries on speaking, squeezing his words out. “You just think of one thing very hard, Doctor, just hold one vital thought that keeps everything else away. My father...” He does not finish his sentence; he has sunk too low, he’s sobbing too hard.
He flashes a wave at me through the glass – and is then gone.
It is several minutes before I can move. I don’t give a fuck about any hidden cameras.
I know for certain I will not be able to visit Sibusiso again.
Not unless I had the smallest of hopes to offer – perhaps a legal reprieve, perhaps the gathering of outside aid, if Xolile is able to get Sibusiso’s thoughts out onto the free world wide web.
For now though, I have nothing.
I snarl at the warden who asks me to leave.
Chapter 19
Room 619 and Sibusiso’s Cell
Room 619 again.
I have heard more of it since I first came here.
This is a hard room indeed, a room high in the skies where nothing or no one can be heard.
And no one leaves room 619 – everyone knows that.
At least, not without spilling all of their secrets – along with their soul…
…And just a little bit of blood, gristle, and (I’ve heard) bone.
The metal door clangs behind me and my heart sinks at the rusty red vinyl floor, designed not to need a frequent wash. I smell the stale stink of shit, my good left eye flickering across the flat looking room in vain search of anchors of hope, before my own bowels dissolve. The walls stay a stained yellow, marred with a few darker scrabbling fingerprints.
There is just a small wooden desk in the middle, a lone light bulb hanging overhead and two chairs on either side. One is a comfy looking leather chair, but I am not fooled, I see the straps hanging from its armrests. The second chair is small and has its wooden back to me; it is filled with a small, lithe looking white man. I just see the back of his crew-cut blond hair, as he bends over the desk, typing into his flickering O-Pad. He wears a grey suit.
Me, I wear nothing but handcuffs.
Shall I rush him and club him with my cuffs? Does he even know I am here?
The wooden chair swivels and the man smiles up at me. I recognise Brand again, chief of the local Special Branch.
My bowels threaten to evacuate, but I hold them firm with a fierce clench of my teeth and anus. I will show this man nothing, not even my waste.
“Ahhh, Sibusiso,” he stands and smiles, “Sorry to see my colleagues have been a bit – uh – firm in their handling of you. Never fear, I will look after you much better.”
I turn my head to allow my left eye to scan the shadows. We are alone together in this small cell, the security policeman and I.
Is he a fool?
I lift my arms, but with one quick motion he has levered me across the floor and swung me into the chair. Dimly, I feel him strapping my arms down, remembering the injection they gave me this morning and how hard it has been to move and think thereafter.
The man stands and smiles again and I feel all hope evaporate into the shitty air around me.
He tells me that Mandela has died an old and broken man on Robben Island and no one else cares about our struggle. It is time for me to tell him who my accomplices are, what we know about the police and the army – who are now camped in our townships. What are the names of our informers, what it is we plan to do… And what sorts of things do my sisters like?
He smiles again when I stir at the last one. He’s not a nice man; a blond man, an ice man, suited in steel grey. His blue eyes are dead to me.
But for sure he is no fool.
Still, I can see he is tiring from my lack of response, “You see this Box again?”
It is the doctor’s Mind Box. The Box is a foot square and squats between us like an ugly toad. I see two switches, a dial and a gauge on its one side. On both sides of the Box lie a set of coiled leads attached to a thin hair-net.
He must remember I can block my mind.
He picks up one of the nets and rubs it softly, “Electrodes my boy, all primed to relay your thoughts directly into my head – all of your deepest darkest secrets.”
“Why can’t secrets be light?”
“Eh –?” He looks at me with a moment of bafflement and then barks a short laugh, just like a brown hyena. “Funny man. Shall we see if I can suck your soul, boy?”
I am no boy. I am eighteen.
Does he joke with me? It is clear he cannot yet hear my thoughts. I must be careful now, all fuzzy headed as I am.
Brand steps forward and wraps the net over my head, fastening it tight and painfully with sticky suckers underneath my ears.
He steps back with distaste and wipes his hands with a white handkerchief from his left breast pocket. Theatrically he drops the cloth and grinds it underneath his heel. He then picks up the other lead and clips the set of electrodes onto his short boere-cut blond head. Brand flicks the switch on the Black Box from a standing position, leads pulled away from the table and coiling into the laced cap on his head. He stands as far away as he can, as if I smell of kak, of dog shit even – but perhaps he just thinks that of all black men.
As for me, I have no choice. The chair is bolted to the floor, my forearms strapped to the armrests.
“Again, who are your comrades?” He barks at me, trying to lance me with his eyes, but I close my good eye and join the blood-stained darkness.
He laughs then; “This time will be different boy. We’ve drugged you, to the point of unconsciousness, where there is no defence… There can be no resistance when you are almost fokking asleep.”
My thoughts are swirling up like papers on a black breeze, I cannot control the wind.
All I can do is shape what is found on those papers. I focus on one paper, zooming in, enlarging the picture. The pixelated picture steadily sharpens within me – and I am lost in reality.
I sit… beside Father (?) as we fish a stream near the Ukhahlamba Mountains. He bends his carved rod playfully, laughing that he has caught a shark. For brief seconds I scrabble at the grassy bank beneath us, trying to get away, but I stop at his guffaws of laughter.
He grabs my leg and pulls me back down again. I see by his face it is yet another of his jokes.
I smile and relax, picking up my rod again.
“See, my boy!” Father points up, as a large brown bird circles above us, swooping in to land on the other bank. It is an ugly bird, with a wedge shaped head and strutting manner.
“Uthekwana,” he says, “Lightning Bird – the boere call it the Hamerkop. A bad bird, perhaps sent by a witch – and a powerful one indeed, as it can burn a place down with its lightning bolts.”
The bird looks vaguely familiar but I still laugh, for I am well educated and have lost belief in such magical things.
The bird stands on the far bank and watches us with keen interest. There is something strangely familiar – yet distant – about those eyes, as the bird tilts its big bill to peer across at us. Father has stood and throws a rock across to the other side. The bird shrieks, leaps and takes flight.
I stand up to hold back his arm, my heart strangely tu
gged skywards by that peculiar bird.
Father only asks, looking ahead: “So, who are your comrades, my boy?”
I turn to look at him and catch his sidewards glance. Surely Father does not have blue eyes?
I pick up the rod and cast. “Shall we catch a whale instead of a shark?” I ask him.
The breeze picks up around us and I avoid looking at the urgent scraps of debris flying past us, afraid of what they might reveal.
All I see is the green rippled surface of the stream and smell the sweet smell of a dagga pipe he has lit up, as he stands beside me.
“I am proud of you, my boy.” He pats my arm. “Who are your best friends at college?”
I turn and look down at him, realising with sudden vertigo how much he has shrunk. Still, his eyes are now reassuringly brown. Perhaps I did not see correctly? What is bothering me?
He drags on his pipe and offers me the stem.
I shake my head and the sweet giddying smoke coils between us.
The wind is rising and my rod has caught nothing.
Father looks so small and shrunken and I have a sense I have not seen him for a long time – and a fear I will never see him again.
I drop the rod and hug him.
He pats my back: “I am indeed proud of you – I am guessing you have good friends to tell me about, my son.”
I open my mouth as we release each other… and stop. He is looking at me, perhaps just a little too closely?
“First… Tell me about my mother, Father.”
He pushes me away with surprising strength for such a small, frail looking man. “What? Why?”
I look down at him. His creased face is crumpled with surprise. “I miss her so badly, Father, even though I have only shadowy memories of her. Please tell me more about her, what was she like? How did you meet?”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
I am so sad.
It is as if he won’t… or perhaps can’t tell me.
All I remember is mother holding me close and calling me ’Biso, telling me how much she loved me, after she became ill.
That’s when her swearing got worse too – Father always remonstrated with her about this, even when she was too sick to eat… But this father can tell me nothing.