Mr Nguni didn't remain behind for the feast, he was fiercely disappointed at the outcome. 'The fly-blown old fart in his tattered leopardskin cloak has ruined everything!' he thought bitterly. His immediate plans were in disarray; had Gideon been given 'the power' then he, Nguni, the one who controlled him, would have seen his own power and prestige spread throughout the land.
But Mr Nguni knew better than to try to change things or, from this point on, ever to openly oppose Peekay. By morning the whole country would know of the decision to retain the white Onoshobishobi Ingelosi and there would be no way he could confound it. His mouth was dry with the coppery taste of defeat on his tongue. Somojo the great witch doctor, the old Swazi pimp, had openly rebuked him and made him eat the meal of humiliation in front of all the tribes.
But Mr Nguni was also an African. In his head he might well reject the old man's silly warnings, but he felt the expensive brandy in his stomach turn sour and in his heart he trembled mightily. He would have to step on the surface of this problem with great care, or he would sink into oblivion.
THIRTY-TWO
Red, despite its quickly earned reputation, remained small and for the first two years comprised Hymie and Peekay and two other people: first, a law clerk named Mr Bottomley-Tuck who was in his fifties and was an alcoholic who would sip quietly from a small silver hip flask of brandy (constantly refilled) all day so that by five in the evening when he went home to a bleak flat and an ageing mother in Rosebank he was generally half snickered. But he knew his torts and his way around the Johannesburg courts better than anyone in South Africa and was indispensable to both young men. The second was the general dogsbody, Chronic Martha who later, when they'd grown big enough to need one, ran the switchboard. Martha too was a good worker, though she suffered from chronic hayfever and seemed always to be on the verge of catching a cold which never quite arrived. She was rather fat and wore glasses and thought Mr Bottomley-Tuck was a disgusting old man because he suffered from mouth ulcers and would sometimes take his false teeth out and stand them in a glass on his desk. He'd sometimes forget them when he went home and Chronic Martha, whose final job each night was to tidy the offices, would come across them, 'All pink and white and yukky, like they alive in the glass and if a person put their finger in they'd bite you!'
After two years, when both Hymie and Peekay were snowed down with work, they advertised for a junior partner and a law clerk, the clerk to be trained in law. To both Peekay and Hymie's surprise Gideon begged for the clerk's job. It seemed insane; he had already defended his world title some four times and was, by African standards anyway, extremely well off. The job of law clerk under Bottomley-Tuck promised to begin by being a glorified messenger boy. But he proved to them that he wanted the job and they gave it to him, though not expecting it to last. Because Red was increasingly known as a law firm that represented the non-European element in criminal juris. prudence they expected very little response for the junior partnership. It wasn't a fashionable position and in career terms promised to be a disaster. They were amazed at the response from young barristers and lawyers from all over the country. Peekay and Hymie spent almost three weeks processing the candidates, reducing the one hundred and fifty replies to twenty which they gave to Bottomley-Tuck to interview. He narrowed these down to the finalists. He'd selected only four. Tandia, who hadn't come through the back door but had applied in the normal way, was one of them. As Bottomley-Tuck had no idea who she was and was a confirmed bachelor Hymie and Peekay were forced to take her application seriously, though they both felt inclined to treat her candidature warily. Peekay left the final interview to Hymie, aware that from the first day he'd met her he was stricken.
This fact alone made Hymie reluctant to take the initial interview any further. However, he couldn't ignore' her results with Bottomley-Tuck and the fact that she'd won the university medal as the top law graduate with the third highest marks ever obtained for jurisprudence.
Tandia had been driven up from Durban by Juicey Fruit Mambo for the interview and had stayed with Madam Flame Flo who had recently moved from Meadowlands to the town of Vereeniging.
Tandia badly wanted to work with Red. When Gideon had been employed as a law clerk she'd been shattered, realizing that it was unlikely they'd employ her as well.
When called up for an initial interview she'd been ecstatic, but soon came down when confronted only by a somewhat inebriated Mr Bottomley-Tuck. On the trip home she'd cried several times, convinced that Peekay and Hymie weren't interested and had fobbed her off with the funny little man who was half cut, but who nevertheless had given her a torrid interview after she'd completed the written paper.
Nothing Juicey Fruit Mambo could say cheered her up and she'd immediately applied for a position with the Durban Urban Planning Authority.
When a month later a letter had arrived from Hymie saying that of the one hundred and fifty people who'd originally applied she was one of four to be selected for a final interview, she could hardly believe her luck. Immediately she began to see the problems, however. She was a woman. A coloured. Gideon's friend. She had to move. She wouldn't be in a position to buy into the practice. She was too inexperienced. All of these things she discussed endlessly with Juicey Fruit Mambo on the trip up to Johannesburg.
Juicey Fruit would listen as though considering every point carefully and then he'd declare his verdict. 'You are number one, Missy Tandy, they no say no to you.' He said this with such conviction that he 'gave Tandia enough courage for at least thirty miles until the next doubt grew from a clear blue sky like cumulus cloud and Juicey Fruit Mambo was thrown into another bout of deep and meaningful listening.
But what Hymie saw was a young and beautiful woman immaculately - if somewhat cheaply - dressed, who appeared confident and assured.
'Tandia, I want you to understand that our previous knowledge of you in any capacity doesn't count for you,' Hymie grinned. 'It may even count against you, though I hope not. Let me ask you the first obvious question. Why do you want this position?'
'Because I need a job,' Tandia answered simply. The reply bowled Hymie over. Each of the other three candidates had gone into a long explanation involving politics, the law and their need to do something to expunge their guilt. Hymie had mentally sat back waiting for the well-turned phrases and the conscience-stricken reasons to pour out. Now he laughed. 'That is perhaps the best answer I've had to that question. Do you mind if I probe a bit?'
Tandia smiled, her brilliant green eyes coming alive. She really was a devastatingly beautiful woman and Hymie saw how, if her brains matched her looks, she could be a terrible thorn in the side of the racist law profession. He grinned to himself; in haute couture clothes, hair properly styled, speech pattern modified somewhat to a more cultured accent, Tandia Patel would be dynamite, something to throw at the smug and pompous white legal profession. 'Why did you become a lawyer, Tandia?' Hymie now asked. Tandia looked at Hymie directly. 'Because I was clever and because I know how to hate.'
In two replies Hymie had been totally surprised. The woman in front of him wasn't that much younger than him and Peekay and she was playing for real. She was either totally ingenuous or very clever, and Hymie was quite sure it was the latter. 'The law is not about sides, Tandia. It is above your personal politics. You will need to see it that way.'
Though the interview lasted an hour Tandia's reply to this was what got her the job: 'When it is in South Africa, then I will,' she said simply.
Tandia Patel was hired as the new junior partner in Levy, Peekay & Partners. As Hymie put it to Peekay, 'I had no choice, it was no contest. She sees with a perfectly clear pair of eyes. We simply have to have her, she's tougher than both of us put together.'
On 7 March 1960, almost exactly three years after Magistrate Coetzee had concluded that Peekay had a prima-facie case against Colonel Klaasens and Lieutenant Geldenhuis for the abduction and murder of Tom Majombi, the last of t
hree verdicts was handed down by Mr Justice Petzer of the Court of Criminal Appeal.
In an editorial the day following the court decision, the Cape Argus summed up the general feeling amongst the black people and also the fair-minded element of the white South African public by writing:
Over a period of three 'Years we have witnessed two police officers, Lieutenant Geldenhuis and Colonel Klaasens, receive a trial by jury which resulted in a murder conviction. Since this original sentence we have seen two further trials, in which no jury sat, where murder has been reversed to manslaughter and finally manslaughter to a misdemeanour which has been further trivialized by a fine of ten pounds. Justice is not only blind in South Africa, it has also become totally deaf; finally, it is senile.
Two days after Judge Petzer's decision Geldenhuis was returned to duty, and just twenty-four hours after returning to his post at Special Branch in Pretoria he was transferred to the police district of Vereeniging, some thirty-five miles from Johannesburg.
The period over which the Majombi trial was conducted had not proved a happy one for Geldenhuis. He'd been placed on clerical duties away from the real action of the Special Branch and his promising career had suffered accordingly. His only consolation had been that he had access to the Red File which concerned itself with the movement of the principals of Levy & Peekay. His transfer to Vereeniging was, in effect, a censure for the young policeman who, despite his acquittal, had become too hot to handle and needed a period in the comparative wilderness to cool down.
Though nothing was ever said, his defeat by Mandoma had also affected the way his senior officers regarded him. From a potential world champion he'd become just another boxer, and one who'd made a series of unfortunate headlines over a protracted murder trial. In addition he'd suffered a second defeat, this time at the hands of Togger Brown, when he again boxed as the undercard to the world title fight between Peekay and Mandoma. In all, he'd caused too much embarrassment even for a police force which is not easily embarrassed.
The posting to Vereeniging was ideally suited for a career censure when you don't want it to look that way. To a prying media, the move could be explained as an important posting for a promising young police officer while, in truth, it amounted to several steps down the road to oblivion.
Vereeniging is an industrial satellite town on the Rand where the giant Sasol state-owned petrochemical works involved in the task of converting coal to petroleum, a technology the South African government was perfecting in the event of a future Middle East oil embargo against South Africa, is located. The government regarded the giant works as a potential terrorist target and designated the Vereeniging district as a small, though separate, Special Branch responsibility.
Despite its potential sensitivity the district had enjoyed almost total freedom from the sort of unrest which was becoming commonplace in African townships. The job prospects for Africans in the area were good, not only at the refinery, but also in the light industry which had developed in the district. The large model township which housed the black workers was noted for its law-abiding black people. In fact, it was this very reputation for quietness which caused Madam Flame Flo to move to the township. After the mass government eviction from Sophiatown she'd moved to Meadowlands, but when her daughter's white husband got a job at the Sa sol refinery in Vereeniging, she saw the move as an opportunity to be closer to her at last. She and Mama Tequila still planned to set up business in Swaziland, so Vereeniging was a temporary move for Madam Flame Flo. Nevertheless she built a nice house in the African township with two spare bedrooms, one for Mama Tequila which contained a king-size Ebenezer Snoozer inner-spring mattress spread over two divan bases. The bedroom also sported its own bathroom with a shower, an essential requirement, as Mama Tequila was too large to get in and out of a bathtub on her own.
From this neat cottage, with its eight-foot corrugated-iron fence surrounding the back yard, Madam Flame Flo ran a quiet little shebeen which opened only during the day for the more serious drinkers. This dalliance with her old lifestyle was more to stay out of mischief. and as an opportunity to fraternize with the locals than to make any serious money. It proved to be the perfect set-up; the shebeen provided good liquor but no gramophone music or dancing so the good-time girls, who usually slept during the daylight hours, stayed away. Madam Flame Flo had given up brewing the dreaded 'Flame' which attracted far too much trouble. With smuggled bottle-store liquor the shebeen practically ran itself and allowed her plenty of time to visit her daughter and her two grandchildren, which she did twice each week by posing as the coloured lady who came in to do the sewing and the heavy cleaning.
At the time of the Geldenhuis transfer Mama Tequila was up from Durban visiting her sister. She was unaware of the proximity of the police lieutenant or she would almost certainly have mentioned his presence to her sister, warning her to stay away from him. Madam Flame Flo was already, of course, aware of Geldenhuis from the murder trial which she herself had set in train more than three years previously. Geldenhuis was no fool and saw the move to Vereeniging for what it was. Outwardly he'd recovered from his extreme angst and inwardly from the almost suicidal frustration which had culminated in his vomiting fit and collapse in the toilet.' But his bitterness against Peekay consumed him. He was famous for being able to keep his feelings under control but now his rage was always near the surface and he would lash out at the slightest provocation, In his tunic pocket Geldenhuis kept a single gold-plated pistol bullet with the nose suitably filed into a dum-dum configuration and when his inner anxiety grew too unbearable he would finger the bullet, reminding himself that it was reserved for his mortal enemy, that sooner or later the time must come when he held Peekay squarely in the sights of his police revolver. In his imagination they would be alone and he would make Peekay go down on his knees and beg for his life. They would make a deal and he would insist that Peekay fight him, properly in a ring, and he would fight Peekay until he'd knocked him unconscious. Then Peekay would recover and the place would be in darkness and he'd stand up in the boxing ring as the lights went on. Standing in the ring would be a huge, ugly, syphilitic black whore in the nude. He would force Peekay to undress and then he would hold the gun to the back of his head and make him go down on the mountain of black kaffir flesh. When he was down there with his head in the hair and the stink of her thighs he would pull the trigger, blowing away the back of his enemy's head with the gold dum-dum bullet.
The spectre of the grotesquely naked black whore was buried deep in his subconscious. It was a major part of his hate for the blacks and his fanatical response to the traditional Afrikaner call of bloed gevaar, blood danger. It would surface when he fantasized about the gold bullet and the demise of Peekay. He was careful not to dwell on the manner of Peekay's death, allowing himself the fantasy only in extreme frustration, for the memory which seemed to live in tandem with the fantasy, so that the one always conjured up the other, was too painful for him to bear.
He was six years old, in the back of his father's butcher shop in Doornfontein. He'd sneaked into the cold-storage room where the hindquarters and dressed sides of beef were hung from great hooks attached to wheels on three separate rails which ran along the ceiling. It was forbidden territory but he found the temptation irresistible. He'd walk out of the blazing sun and suddenly find himself in a cool, dark world. On Tuesdays in particular, when the beef and the dressed mutton and the creamy pink porkers arrived from the abattoir, the cool room would be full to bursting with the smaller carcasses of lamb and pig and calf. The huge sides of beef would be stacked, one on top of the other, on the floor against the wall on the furthermost side from the door, where they would remain until there was sufficient room to hoist them onto hooks. Jannie used to love to climb to the top of these stacked sides of beef and lie across the top, his cheek placed against the cool, soft flesh.
The insulated door was too heavy for him to open on his own and he'd wait for one of the butche
r's lads to open it and, when they were busy hoisting or slicing from a carcass, he'd slip in and hide, waiting for the moment when they'd depart, switching off the light as they left and leaving him in the cool, dark, secret place. Later, when someone returned, he'd quietly slip out again. Occasionally he'd be caught and receive a severe thrashing from his angry father.
Jannie's father was a large, irascible and impatient man who was disappointed at his small-boned eldest son, blaming his tiny, long-suffering, slightly dark-skinned wife for his undersized offspring. When he'd had a few drinks, which was often enough, he'd refer to her in the family as 'the bush man'. Indeed, to race-obsessed eves in constant search for tainted blood, she appeared to have a touch of the tar brush which had become more pronounced as she bore him four children, each of them sapping her vitality and leaving the prettiness of youth behind her while etching the distinctive features of her ancestors more sharply on her careworn face. Jannie's blond hair and pale blue eyes, inherited from his father, was all that saved him from his father's ultimate wrath. 'At least the dwarf looks like a proper Boer,' his father would say when he was drunk.
One hot Monday afternoon when he'd slipped unnoticed into the cold room and was lying on the long, cool slabs of beef the door slid open and the light went on. He only just had sufficient time to scramble down from the stack of beef and hide elsewhere when he heard his father's gruff voice and the higher-pitched giggle of a woman. From where he hid Jannie could just see what was going on. To his surprise the woman with his father was black, a young black woman with large buttocks which wobbled as she walked. Without undue ceremony the woman walked over to the stack of beef and straddled the carcasses, her huge bottom facing towards his father. Jannie watched as his father removed his butcher's belt and apron 'and then unbuckled his real belt and let his trousers fall to his ankles. He was amazed at the enormity of his father's engine as it stiffened. He'd had his own tiny version do the same thing often enough, but he'd never imagined it could possibly grow so huge or look so dangerous and ugly. His father pulled the skirt of the woman's dress up over her back and unceremoniously mounted her, pushing and grunting. The black woman made no noise of her own, her huge bottom moving only to accommodate the thrusts of the white man who grunted and farted once, calling her filthy names, his thick fingers kneading into the flesh of her huge black bottom. Finally, urgently, with a loud groan he became suddenly possessed and then as quickly came down to panting silence as though he was suddenly exhausted; his hands were still, no longer kneading the woman's purple flesh.
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