The October Killings

by Wessel Ebersohn

  “I’ve just come from there. They’ve been interrogating him since midnight, more than twelve hours now.”

  “Freek should thrash him.” Rosa’s eyes flashed in indignation. “Freek should thrash him and thrash him and thrash him until he tells them where that man is.”

  “Yudel told you about it?”

  “Not everything. He never tells me everything. But he told me enough to know that Freek should thrash him.”

  Abigail found herself nodding. If only it had been that simple. “Yudel hasn’t been there all morning.”

  “He’s in his study again, staring into space. He does that when he is faced with an insoluble problem. Sometimes he gets inspiration. Not always though. He told me he has a feeling about that place you took him to. I told him that this is not a time for feelings. This is a time for action. He said he doesn’t know what action to take.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Go in, go in.” It was said with a brief, impatient shake of the head. “But afterward, you go back to the police station and tell Freek to thrash that monster.”

  Abigail nodded again. Rosa was not in the mood for a rational discussion.

  * * *

  In the study, Yudel was sitting behind his desk, but side-on, leaning forward, his head in his hands. He was clearly deep in thought, so deep that he did not hear her enter. Yes, she thought. My friend, you are not a man of physical action.

  She was almost upon him before he became aware of her. He rose suddenly to face her. If Freek looked tired, she thought, Yudel looked close to collapse. There was an agony in his eyes that went beyond physical weakness. “Yudel…” she said, but never got beyond his name. Looking at him, standing in the chaos of his study, without the jacket and tie he had worn to the Samson performance, he seemed to have more gray hair than the day before. She knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

  There was something in his look that drove away the possibility of any secrets between them. He spent a long time, framing the sentence. “You came here to tell me about Ficksburg.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you care to sit down?”

  To Abigail, the circumstances made Yudel’s politeness seem absurd. She almost responded that she would not mind if she did, thanks awfully. But she said, “I’ve left it too late.”

  “Neither of us knows that. Tell me now.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything there that will be helpful, but I’ll tell you.”

  “Everything?”

  “Absolutely everything.” She sat down on the same chair she had occupied two days before. For a long moment she seemed to be struggling to find a place to start, then she began, not smoothly or effortlessly, but in uneven snatches of memory.

  “Only six of us survived the Maseru raid. They took us across the border through a place where they had already cut the fence.

  “Leon got into the armored vehicle I was put into and sat down next to me. I hardly remember anything of the drive to Ficksburg, but I do remember van Jaarsveld shouting at Leon in Afrikaans, Ja, go with your black whore.

  “At the time I never even thought about what a serious thing it was for Leon to stand up to an officer the way he had, even pointing his gun at him. I had just seen my father killed and I knew what Leon had done and all I wanted was for Leon to hold me, but there were other soldiers in the vehicle. I don’t know whether he would have held me if they had not been there, but I thought that he would have. I know how strange it sounds, but that is the way I felt.

  “What do you want to know, Yudel? Tell me what you want to know.”

  Only Abigail knew what she had to tell him, but he had to let her get there in her own way. “Where did they take you?”

  “Ficksburg. The police station in Ficksburg.”

  “And what did they do with you there?”

  “They took us straight to the police cells. I never saw Leon, or van Jaarsveld either, after that. They didn’t put us in cells with criminals. I suppose they thought we might influence them for the worse, and turn them into revolutionaries.

  “The four women went into one cell and the two men who were still alive in another. The woman, Julia, the one I had been playing ball with earlier in the evening, had also survived.

  “People have asked me if that was the longest night of my life, expecting me to say yes. But I don’t think it was. I only remember bits of it. For me, the night may only have lasted an hour or it may have lasted a week. I have no clear memory of the passing of time or how I spent most of it.”

  “They put you in the cells for the night?”

  “Yes. At one point all four of us were clustered together with our arms around one another. I also remember being alone at times. The cell was big, designed for many prisoners, twenty or thirty perhaps, and there were times when we were scattered around it.

  “There was a lavatory in the corner with a screen around it made from board. It was high enough to give some sort of privacy, but you could see the feet of the person using the lavatory. I know it’s bizarre, but I still remember the feet.”

  Abigail seemed to be struggling with the memory. Perhaps there was too much, or perhaps it had been suppressed for too long. “Was anything done to you there?” Yudel asked.

  “Not by the police. The ordinary policemen in Ficksburg did not seem to be bad men. There was a white officer and two black constables. The white officer only glanced at us, then went back into the police station. The cells were in outbuildings in the police station yard, maybe twenty meters away from the main building. I suppose they didn’t often have important prisoners in Ficksburg.

  “I don’t know if they thought of us as important. They had gone to enough trouble to attack our house, kill most of us and abduct the few survivors. Do you think they thought of us as important, Yudel?”

  “I believe they did.”

  “It seems so strange. I never thought of us as important.”

  “But they kept you there that night?”

  “Yes, and the next day. One of the two black policemen led us into the cells, then he unshackled us and locked us in without saying anything.

  “It was the other one who made an impression on me though. I needed so for someone to be kind to me. Like Leon had been. And this man was. He was about fifty and his hair was gray in patches, rather like my father’s. The night was hot and I remember him coming in a number of times with a jug of water. And every time the water had ice cubes floating in it. There must have been a refrigerator in the police station. But I’m sure ice was not usually offered to prisoners. It was a kind thing for him to do when you think how people like him were indoctrinated. We were communists and terrorists, as far as they were concerned. On one of his visits, he squeezed my shoulder and told me not to worry, that I was underage and they would have to try me as a juvenile. He was a good man and I remember the name he used was Jan. No doubt he had an African name, but during working hours he was Jan to both his colleagues and to the prisoners.”

  Abigail again lapsed into a silence that seemed to have more to do with the jumble of recollections she was struggling with than her emotional state. “It happened long ago,” she said eventually. “I don’t remember all of this part very well.”

  “You were there the next day too?”

  “It must have been the next day, because there was daylight from the windows and it was unbearably hot. The cells did not have ceilings and with the sun beating down, the corrugated iron roof must have been too hot to touch. The only air came in through the window, where I had seen the stars, and a small inspection hole set in the solid steel cell door at about my head height. But the inspection hole only gave you a view into a narrow passage that had gray, unpainted walls.

  “They brought us food. There was meat, but it was gray and did not taste good, but there was enough for all of us and we ate it.

  “Most of my memories of that day, the night before, and the one that followed, are vague. The way we were rescued is the o
nly part of it that remains clear in my mind.”

  She grabbed hold of Yudel’s arm closest to her with both of her hands. “Michael Bishop was there. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” Yudel said. “Help me understand. I need to understand.”

  When she started again, her voice was more even and the picture she was describing more composed. “I think it must have been close to midnight or even past midnight. I had not slept at all. The image of my father dying was all I could think about. From what I had seen it was not impossible that we would never get out of Ficksburg alive. I also thought about Leon. I thought about the way he had stood there pointing his gun at that ghastly man. It seemed to me that, although they were wearing the uniform of the oppressor, both Leon and Jan were on my side.

  “I remember a drunkard singing. His sang terribly, stumbling from one key to another, singing the same line over and over. I even remember the line. It went, ‘Down to the bar room he staggered and fell down by the door.’

  “At first it seemed to be coming from somewhere at the back of the cells and I thought that he must be another prisoner, but the sound moved past the cells toward the police station itself. He must have run into one of the policemen, because I heard one of them shout at him, saying that if he didn’t shut up he would spend the night in the cells.

  “He argued with the policeman, then I couldn’t hear them anymore. I thought he must have been bundled into a cell, because everything went quiet. Later I heard him farther away, for a short time, then it was quiet again. I’ve often wondered who that man was and what he would think if he knew what was about to happen.

  “I remember clearly how complete the silence was. There was nothing at all, not even the sound of a car, and no sound from the other cells. In our cell only Julia and myself were awake. The other two were both lying on their backs, breathing through their mouths.

  “And, Yudel, then the strangest thing happened. I was sitting with my back against the wall when I saw the cell door open. It swung slowly inward without a sound. But no one came in. There was a long moment, more than a moment, perhaps a minute or more, that I looked at it as if it were an hallucination. Then I got up and started toward it. I remember Julia catching me before I reached the door. Have you ever been in the cells, Yudel? I mean, I know you’ve been inside many, many times, but have you ever been inside as a prisoner.”

  “No, never.”

  “Not once?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the door opening and no guard there … this is the strangest thing of all. You don’t expect it to happen that way.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know how long I looked at that open door, with Julia holding me. Eventually, I asked her to let me go, but she wouldn’t. She was telling me not to go there, that it was a trap, that they were going to kill us as escaping prisoners if we went outside. That door was standing there, wide open, and I had to go. It took a struggle to free myself. She gave up eventually. I heard her starting to cry as I got to the door.

  “The passage was empty and I followed it until it ended at a door into the yard, which was also open. If they had set a trap, they were well hidden in the open piece of ground between the cells and the police station. I walked across that open patch of dirt as if I were in a trance. If there were sounds, I don’t remember them. As far as I remember, everything happened in complete silence.

  “There was a flight of four or five stairs leading up to the back door of the police station. Why I went up the back stairs into the open door I will never know, but that’s what I did. I did not even pause at the door. Like the cell door, it was half open.

  “The light in the room was coming from the front of the building somewhere. By that dim light I could see the body of one of the policemen. He was on his back, as if asleep, but I knew immediately that there was no life in his body.”

  She stopped again, struggling with some, private part of the memory. Yudel tried to get her going again. “He was the enemy. You must have been glad to see him dead.”

  “You would think so. But to me it was a continuation of the night before. I did not see the Ficksburg policemen as my enemies. They seemed like ordinary men. And Jan had been a friend.

  “I think that finding Jan was somehow the worst moment of both nights, even worse than my father’s death. Perhaps the death of my father had driven me to saturation point. My threshold for brutality had been reached. I had no longer the capacity to deal with more of it.

  “What looked at first like a pile of washing against one of the passage walls turned out to be Jan’s body. I remember kneeling next to him and touching the graying hair that reminded me of my father’s. I don’t know how long I stayed in that position, but later I found myself in the charge office at the front of the police station. And there I found the body of the white sergeant. He was lying on his side behind the counter. The light was better there, and I could see a very thin cut across his throat. I thought at the time that it had been made by a very sharp knife. I have since learned that it was made by piano wire.

  “The front door was wide open and I stopped there. I remember a hedge and a wooden fence made of round poles. By the light of a street lamp, perhaps half a block away, I could see a young white man. He was sitting on one of the horizontal poles of the fence. He seemed to be waiting for someone and he seemed completely unconcerned about the bodies inside the police station. I knew at once that he had killed them.

  “He noticed me the moment I appeared in the doorway, and I believe he knew who I was. He never looked directly at me, but I believe he saw me in every detail. I was still standing there when he slid to the ground and started coming toward me.”

  Abigail was lost in her story now. Yudel knew that this was Michael Bishop and that it was this part of her story she had come to tell him.

  “His grip on my arm felt strange. He did not seem to be holding me tightly, yet I was helpless. I thought someone that strong did not need to use his strength. When he led me back into the police station I cannot say that I fought him. There was a room with a couch. It had a hard coir mattress on wooden slats. Scratchy bits of the coir stuck out of the mattress and rubbed against me.

  “I can’t say that he used any force. That would suggest that I resisted. He also did not undress me and there was no foreplay. He only unzipped my jeans and pulled them down to my knees. He did even less undressing himself. I think he only unzipped his fly.

  “I closed my eyes so that I would not see him and turned my head away, but he turned my head back and kissed me. I remember how hard his lips felt. They did not seem to be made of flesh at all. And I remember his voice. There was no expression in it. You are lucky, he said. You are blessed. Do you know that?

  “I never answered and he never looked for an answer. That was all he said. I thought at the time that I was immune and that he was not touching me, but I have never been able to think about that time that started when I first saw Jan’s body, and ended when Michael Bishop got off me and went away. Tonight is the first time since then that I have ever tried to remember it. If Leon was not in such trouble, I would still have closed my mind to it.

  “To understand just how bad it was, you have to understand what the killing of my father meant to me, then the killing of all our other people—then, when it seemed to be over, the killing of Jan … and you also have to understand what Bishop was like. There was no fury in him, not even any lust, just a strange, cold desire. I can’t describe it.”

  Abigail stopped speaking as suddenly as she had started. She slid off the chair until she was kneeling next to the desk. “I’m sorry, Yudel.” To her own ears she sounded feeble, undone by the images that had been buried for so long. “I always hid it from myself. Forgive my weakness.” She bent over her hands in a position of prayer.

  Yudel knelt next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. Slowly she lifted her head and he helped her back to the chair she had been sitting in. Then she was speaking again: �
�Bishop didn’t use a condom, and I leaked blood and his semen all the next day. For years afterward I thanked God from the depth of my soul every night that it had not resulted in a pregnancy. It was my first experience of sex, and my last until I met Robert nearly ten years later.

  “Julia found me zipping up my jeans and helped me. I remember her saying that they were bastards and they didn’t need to do this. She took me to a minibus taxi that had come to take us away. By morning we were in a house in Johannesburg, having traveled on back roads all the way. Bishop sat in front with the driver, but to my knowledge he never even looked at me once during the drive. Within a week I was in Botswana and a month later I was at ANC headquarters in Lusaka.

  “You see, Yudel. On one night in Maseru I was saved by a good man, defending an evil cause, and on the next I was saved by an evil man, fighting for a good cause.”

  “Nothing in life is ever without complications.”

  “I know that. And I also know that one of the complications is the way many people in the movement see Michael Bishop. To them, he is a genuine African hero.”

  “He’s no hero,” Yudel said. “He doesn’t have the motives of a hero.”

  “Many believe that he is one.”

  “He’s not a genuine African hero. You are.”

  “Why don’t I feel heroic then?”

  “I don’t think heroes usually do.”

  “I think that Bishop felt heroic after every successful mission. He seemed to be using me to celebrate what he did to those policemen. I don’t care whose side they were on, Yudel. They were human beings and he was exulting in the death of all three.”

  “You didn’t see him again until this week?” Yudel asked.

  “I did not even hear anything about him till last Thursday, when our department decided to honor him. I did not see him again until I saw him unconscious on the pavement last night. The first time I ever spoke to him or he to me—except for those few words—was early this morning in that interrogation room.”