The October Killings

by Wessel Ebersohn

  Yudel reached yet another gate. Commissioner Joshua Setlaba and two other officers that Yudel recognized, without knowing their names, were waiting for him in the block’s shift office. They rose as Yudel entered.

  9

  “So, Yudel.” The commissioner held out a large hand, enveloping Yudel’s smaller one and holding on tightly. It was an altogether friendly gesture. “How are you?” This too was not just a formality. He waited with real interest for Yudel’s reply.

  “I’m well, Mr. Commissioner,” Yudel said. “I hope you are too.”

  “I’m very well.” The other officers both offered the firm handshakes that are part of the makeup of uniformed officers everywhere.

  Yudel shook their hands, nodded at them, then waited. He was the one who had been invited.

  “How are things going with you?” the commissioner asked.

  “All right.” Yudel wondered where this was going.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I wanted to meet you here.”

  “No,” Yudel said truthfully. “I’m wondering why you want to see me at all.”

  “Ah,” the commissioner nodded. “I wanted to meet you here because I want to talk about this place.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you making a living?”

  “I’m getting by.”

  “Some private practice? Old white ladies who feel unsafe in the new South Africa?”

  “Sure. And some white businessmen who have given chunks of their businesses to black partners and are now regretting it.” The last part was not entirely true. There were many such cases, some of them known to Yudel personally, but he had no patients in that category. They went to see their attorneys, not their psychologists, the objective being to draw up contracts that would give away as little as possible to their new empowerment partners.

  The commissioner grimaced slightly. Yudel had a way of raising awkward subjects. “How did you spend your retrenchment package?”

  “Ah, Mr. Commissioner,” Yudel waved an admonishing finger at him. “You’re going into the financial advisory business.”

  “No, Yudel, certainly not. I only…” Then he read the look in Yudel’s eyes and returned the admonishing finger with a throaty chuckle. “Ah, Yudel, you got me there.”

  “I paid off my house bond and bought a car.”

  The commissioner nodded. “Tell me, are you getting any criminology work?”

  “Not much.”

  “Want to get back into it?”

  “Mr. Commissioner, what is this about?”

  The commissioner turned to the two officers who had come with him. “You two wait for me outside.” To Yudel he said, “Can you call me Joshua? You’re not on my staff anymore. Otherwise I’ll have to call you Mr. Gordon. It seems a bit silly.”

  “All right,” Yudel said. “I’ll call you Joshua.”

  The two officers had left. “Good,” their boss said. “Now, do you want to get back into prison work?”

  “Are you offering me my job back?”

  The commissioner opened his mouth wide, as if taking a deep breath, before answering.

  “If so, will I have an equal chance of promotion in future?”

  The commissioner waved a hand impatiently. “You know the answer to these questions Yudel. No, I want to offer you something different.” He waved a hand at the cells that occupied both sides of the passage beyond. “You’ve been here before…”

  “Once or twice,” Yudel said.

  The commissioner threw back his head and his laughter came roaring out. Before it had eased altogether, he began again. “That’s what I like about you, Yudel. Understatement. That’s right, isn’t it? Understatement. Once or twice? One or two thousand times, I think.” The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started. He pointed a finger at Yudel in what almost seemed to be an accusation. “Do you know how many prisoners I have?”

  “In all our prisons? One hundred and fifteen thousand, six hundred and forty-five, last time I saw the figures.”

  “What a memory. But that figure’s not right anymore. It’s now one hundred and sixteen thousand, two hundred and twenty.”

  “I’m out of date,” Yudel said.

  “And how many psychologists?”

  “Twenty-eight before you retrenched me. Twenty-seven, I suppose. But that figure’s probably out of date too.”

  The commissioner shook his head briefly, ridding it perhaps of Yudel’s repeated references to his retrenchment. “The remaining two white psychology officers, two colored officers and the last Indian have resigned. And I’ve hired two new youngsters and an academic from UPE. You’ll get on well with him, a highly educated man. He’ll be invaluable to you. So I’ve got twenty-four now.” He paused for dramatic effect that was not needed on Yudel. “Twenty-four psychologists and one hundred and sixteen thousand…”

  “… two hundred and twenty prisoners,” Yudel completed the number for him. “So what do you want from me…” He paused for a moment before experimentally using the commissioner’s first name. “… Joshua?” he finished.

  “I want you to train selected, ordinary warders to use your system. I want you to coordinate the program nationally and Lesela to be in charge in this province.”

  “Lesela?”

  “The academic. We can call the warders you choose parapsychologists, like paramedics.”

  “I understand, but we’ll need a different name. Parapsychology is something else. We could call them psychology interns.”

  The impatient hand was waving again, but the beginnings of a smile were in the commissioner’s eyes. “Any name, I don’t care. But I think you are not against the idea.”

  “It can be done,” Yudel said. “We’d need to select the men carefully, both interns and prisoners. It doesn’t work with all prisoners.”

  “I know. You’ll have to do it all.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Yudel said. Despite always having done some private work in his own time during his years in the department, he had always been embarrassed about discussing money. Three years without his monthly paycheck had cured him of that. “I need to make a living,” he said.

  The commissioner had thought of that. “I’ll give you a year’s contract and I’ll pay you three times what you earned when you were with us. I will also not expect you to come in for the usual forty hours a week. I know I’ll get my money’s worth from you.”

  Yudel considered the matter briefly, very briefly. He tried unsuccessfully to restrain his right hand from shooting out in the direction of the commissioner. He was still trying to avoid looking too enthusiastic when the commissioner started shaking his hand, a lot more vigorously than their earlier handshake.

  “I need to do something about my psychology section, Yudel. Right now it’s a joke. And the country is suffering because of it.” Yudel had always seen him as a man who was determined to do his job well. Holding that view of him had made Yudel more surprised and disappointed at his retrenchment than he would otherwise have been. “And I like your methods. I believe in them.”

  In several long meetings in the past Yudel had told the commissioner that teaching a criminal to lay bricks did not turn him into a bricklayer. It made of him a criminal who knew how to lay bricks. Yudel’s thinking was that, while teaching crafts to criminals was not a bad thing, it did nothing toward rehabilitating them. To Yudel, criminals were a subculture in rebellion against mainstream society. Their code of morals was different from that of other people. For them, to give evidence against other criminals was immoral. One of them who ratted on another was an outsider to be shunned. In extreme cases they were lowlifes to be killed. Anyone who had dealings with criminals knew that they did possess a moral code; it was just that it was an inverted form of the one that applied to regular society. Straight society was out to get them and they had to fight back.

  It was this basis of the criminal culture that had to be confronted before rehabilitation could take place. In Yudel’s view, until
the criminal had come to the realization that the rest of humanity was not the enemy, there could be no reconciliation between them. And rehabilitation, ultimately, was a matter of reconciliation. He agreed with the commissioner that the department did not need trained psychologists to apply his principles. Interns, taken from among the brightest and most empathetic warders, would be able to do the job.

  Looking at the commissioner, Yudel was so excited by the prospect of getting this opportunity to apply his ideas that he did not trust himself to speak. The commissioner was offering him something he had never had while employed by the department. And he was getting paid for it—three times his old salary. Suddenly it seemed to him that the new South Africa was not all bad.

  “So you accept?” the commissioner asked.

  “Damn right,” Yudel stammered.

  “Oh, one other thing. You don’t have a black partner yet?”

  “No,” Yudel said. “I don’t have a partner at all.”

  The commissioner seemed to reflect a moment. “I’m sure we can manage it anyway. You may need one for future contracts. I’ll tell them you’ve entered negotiations with various black psychologists.”

  * * *

  The thought of facing Marinus van Jaarsveld again, twenty years after the night in Maseru, was more than repulsive to Abigail. But he had been there. He had been one of the inner circle of the apartheid regime in a way that an innocent like Leon Lourens could never have understood, more even than most apartheid politicians could have understood. They had done the regime’s talking. Van Jaarsveld was one of those who had done its killing.

  It was likely that he would have kept contact with some of the others who had entered the house in Maseru that night. Abigail believed that there were things he would be able to tell her about the way the other members of the squad had died in the years since then, and how they had died.

  She had spent much of the previous afternoon and more than an hour this morning calling senior people she knew, trying without success to arrange a meeting with van Jaarsveld. Fransina had advised her against even trying to see him. But Fransina at least had some of the right connections. Abigail phoned her again. “You must know somebody who can help me,” she said when Fransina came on the line. “Anyone with some old-fashioned guts.”

  “Please, Abby.” Fransina sounded distressed. “You’re going to get us both into trouble.”

  “Listen to me,” Abigail said. “Listen.”

  Something in the tone of Abigail’s voice got through to Fransina. “Speak then. I’m listening.”

  “I believe a man I know well and whom I value is in danger.”

  “And mad old van Jaarsveld can help you?” She sounded skeptical. To Fransina, this was clearly a ridiculous idea.

  “It’s just possible.” Fransina was silent for so long that Abigail thought she may have hung up. “Are you still there?”

  “I can think of only one. He’s a strange one, Abby. He’s been in the department all his life, under both governments, like me. In the old days he was often in trouble, apparently because he did not agree with the way the old government treated prisoners. It seems he lost out on promotions because they were unsure about his loyalty.”

  “He sounds all right,” Abigail said.

  “Maybe. He’s also been in trouble in recent years for the same reason.”

  “Surely we treat our prisoners better than the apartheid regime did?”

  “Not according to Mr. Gordon.”

  “Gordon?”

  “Yudel Gordon.”

  “Who Gordon?”

  “Yudel. Y–U–D–E–L. A lot of people say good things about him. Although he was apparently sympathetic to the liberation struggle, he worked for the old government throughout those years. I suppose he needed a job, like I did.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Abigail said. She was getting ready to hang up.

  “Abigail?” Her friend’s voice was suddenly urgent.

  “Yes.”

  “He was retrenched some time ago and is being brought back as a contractor.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t know if he will want to help and I don’t know if he can.”

  “All right.”

  “He’s a funny-looking little man—wild hair going gray, stoops a little when he walks. And you can never predict what he might do.”

  After she had hung up, she looked up Gordon, Y. in the telephone directory. It listed only one. She dialed the number. A woman answered and told her that Yudel was at the prison.

  “The regular prison or C-Max?” Abigail wanted to know.

  “C-Max, I think,” the woman said.

  * * *

  Abigail Bukula sat in her car in the parking lot outside C-Max. Half an hour earlier she had used her Department of Justice ID and her status in the department to bluff her way past the gate in the outer perimeter, but had got no farther. She had been refused entrance by a pair of stony-faced guards who would not listen to any arguments that were not backed up by permission from their own department.

  As she watched warders came in and out through the narrow door set into the vehicle gate to fetch individual visitors to prisoners. Each visitor went through a name check, then entered the prison accompanied only by a warder. Most of the visitors were working-class people, both black and white. Many were wearing clothes that had not been bought in the last twelve or even twenty-four months, but that seemed to have been washed and ironed specially for the occasion.

  One woman of perhaps fifty looked like a caricature of a white, working-class grandmother. She was a little overweight and walked slowly, as if her feet hurt. On her left ankle there was a bright pink scar or birthmark. Maybe it’s a scar and whatever caused it is why her feet hurt, Abigail thought. The woman’s gray hair was pulled back into a bun. She was carrying a basket over one arm that was searched at the gate before she was allowed inside.

  Abigail had no way of knowing that this woman was Annette van Jaarsveld, Marinus van Jaarsveld’s altogether loyal and devoted wife. What is such a woman doing here? she asked herself. A mother visiting her son in this place? Or her grandson?

  And what about me, why am I sitting here? she wondered. Van Jaarsveld was deep inside this seemingly impregnable fortress, and she was outside. It was clear that they were not going to let her in unless she could get some real influence on her side. And sitting here in the parking lot was not going to do it. But still she waited.

  There are better things I could be doing, she thought.

  All her life, unplanned and seemingly inexplicable incidents had come to Abigail’s aid. Sometimes, as on this occasion, she had found herself waiting for something that she had no reason to expect. In fact, she had no idea what it was that she was waiting for.

  She was still asking herself why she was waiting when the reason became apparent. The narrow door into the prison opened and a white man, Jewish in appearance, slight in every dimension and wearing a rumpled gray suit, stepped through it. His unruly bush of graying hair did not seem to have been combed recently, certainly not today.

  He looked exactly as Fransina had described him. While Abigail watched, he stopped and looked around. He had obviously forgotten where his car was parked. He was still scanning the parking lot when a warder who had taken up a position outside the gate pointed him in the right direction. He nodded to the warder, seemed to say something and set off in that direction.

  Abigail was already standing next to her car. The small white man was following a path that would bring him close to her, but looking down at the ground in front of him as he walked. His lips were moving slightly, as if he were talking to himself. She took a step forward as if to intercept him. He glanced up and their eyes met for a moment. Abigail smiled, but he looked down immediately and hurried past. She watched him get into a new sedan. She did not know it, but it was the car he had bought with his retrenchment package from the Department of Correctional Services. Abigail watched him drive away.

  By the
time she turned back to the gate, the warder had opened the narrow door and was about to go back inside. Abigail called and waved to him to stop. He looked curiously at her, but he stopped. From close by she recognized him as having been present when she had been refused entry earlier that afternoon.

  “Hello, sister,” he said. There was something exasperated in the tone of his voice. “What can I do for you now?”

  “That man who just left, who is he?”

  He looked quizzically at her, as if wondering whether he should be giving her this information. He was just an ordinary warder, but she was someone who had been refused permission to see a prisoner. To him, this meant that she was not a very important person. In the civil service, as he understood it, important people were not refused much. “Why you want to know?”

  “Oh for God’s sake. I just want to know his name.”

  He was not well educated but, from her way of speaking, he knew that she was. She therefore had money, but he was in charge here. “Why?” he demanded.

  Abigail, who had never in her life paid a bribe for anything, found herself scratching in her bag for money. She found a fifty-rand note and handed it to the warder. Robert would kill me if he could see this, she thought. She had often heard him intone, “If we give in to bribes we will end up like the worst African countries.”

  The warder had no such reservations. He took the money. “That’s Mr. Gordon,” he said. “Mr. Yudel Gordon. He used to work here.”

  Damn, Abigail thought. He was right here. I had the chance to speak to him. Why didn’t I speak to him?

  * * *

  Back in her office, it proved to be only a little easier to get information about Yudel than it was to see Marinus van Jaarsveld. She called Robert, but he had never heard of Yudel. He had his librarian look for references to Yudel in past editions of the newspaper though, and had found only one obscure report relating to disciplinary action being taken against Yudel by the department in the old days. The reporter had not been too clear on the matter, but it seemingly had to do with a complaint laid by the security police. Apparently they felt Yudel had interfered in one of their investigations.