Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  Jannie Geldenhuis found some consolation in the fact that in Vereeniging he'd run his own show and be away from the day-to-day contact he'd endured for almost three years with Klaasens. But he'd make sure he kept in touch with and on the right side of the big bastard. The police colonel remained his only direct access to the Red File. Geldenhuis gained a great deal of comfort from the fact that Klaasens hated Peekay almost as much as he did himself; he would happily help to put Mandoma away as well, so he'd take a special interest in the surveillance of the people involved in Red. Tandia he could handle himself. And as for the Jew?

  Well, he had a special surprise for him. Furthermore, Klaasens could be relied upon to respond to 'suggestions' by the more imaginative Geldenhuis when it came to tactics against their common enemy. In the end Vereeniging might not be such a backwater after all.

  THIRTY -THREE

  In late March, Mama Tequila had come up to the Rand to see a specialist about her gall stones and was staying with Madam Flame Flo in Vereeniging. Her stay coincided with the national campaign by the PAC for the abolition of the hated pass laws which, more than any other, made Africans prisoners on constant probation in their own country.

  The campaign announced by Robert Sobukwe, the charismatic Pan African Congress leader on Friday, 18 March, was to be a strictly non-violent affair and, as he explained it, was the first step to achieving 'freedom and independence' for the black people by 1963. It involved leaving passes at home as a legitimate protest.

  Tandia secretly liked the aggressive Sobukwe, despite Gideon's disapproval of the PAC. The Congress was growing rapidly as a pro-Africanist organization made up mostly of young black radicals a lot more militant than the ANC old guard of Chief Luthuli and Professor Matthews. The PAC's 'Africa for the Africans' policy was gaining a lot of popularity among urban blacks, particularly in the Western Cape, the Eastern Province and parts of the Southern Transvaal.

  As the white government came to show less and less concern for its African people so many Africans came to believe that a South Africa ruled by a black majority should have no place in it for the white man. Robert Sobukwe promised freedom and independence by 1963 and his antipass laws campaign was to be his first major show of strength and defiance.

  Late that Friday Tandia and Peekay had returned from court and were sitting with Gideon in what passed for the boardroom at Red, a waist-high, partitioned-off area where everyone tried to get together at morning and afternoon tea.

  Hymie was out and the firm's messenger, Tom 'Ace' Temba, always left early on a Friday for soccer practice with his team the Moroka Swallows. Chronic Martha, now the switchboard operator, had gone home sick with laryngitis. Tandia and Peekay had arrived to find Gideon making an awful hash of working the tiny antiquated switchboard. It was five minutes to five and Tandia decided they'd all had enough for the day so she switched the board to night switch before joining the others in the boardroom, where they now sat, sipping the strong black percolated coffee Peekay usually made and served out of large tin mugs. It was the first opportunity they'd had to discuss Sobukwe's announcement. The PAC leader had announced that the protest would begin within seventy-two hours which probably meant on Monday morning.

  Tandia was excited about the event. 'It's good! I'm telling you, something's being done, at last. I only wish the initiative had come from the ANC, that's all.'

  'Tandy, Robert Sobukwe's call for a non-violent campaign over passes is too early,' Peekay replied. 'The ANC is right, nobody's ready. There has yet to be a Treason Trial decision; the infrastructure isn't in place. The PAC will be lucky to get fifty thousand demonstrators out on the streets. They are going to be made to look ridiculous.'

  Tandia tossed back her head, showing her impatience, her green eyes sharp. 'A revolution can afford to look ridiculous, Peekay. There are no rules, this isn't the Gentlemen-versus-Players cricket match. In the ANC book, it's always too early, too late or too something! That's the trouble with them, they're so careful they've practically disappeared from the political scene. At least Sobukwe wants action!'

  Peekay blushed. Tandia was having a shot at him, the white man from Oxford trying to teach the black people how to conduct a revolution by the rules. It was true, he seemed to be always pulling her back a notch. Tandia was proving to be a very bright lawyer but not always a mature one. There was so much hate in her and so much injustice going on around her that she'd often rush into things without fully thinking of the consequences. If the firm had agreed to work on every case she wanted to take to court Red would have been totally snowed under with petty session work. As it was, Peekay was allowing her to do much too much, and Hymie complained frequently that she left no time in her court diary for the profitable corporate work they all needed to do in order to pay the bills.

  Peekay was reminded that Magistrate Coetzee had called him several days earlier, ostensibly to discuss an altered date for a murder hearing coming up. After they'd settled on a new date Peekay could sense that the man on the other end of the telephone wasn't finished.

  'Is there anything else, Magistrate Coetzee?' He'd developed a great deal of respect for the gruff Afrikaner with the brandy balloon nose.

  'Ja, maybe, I don't know.' The magistrate sounded uncertain.

  'Something I can do to help, magistrate?'

  'About your junior, I see her a lot around the court of petty sessions.'

  'Ja, that's true, she's trying to win everything at once for every one with a beef against society,' Peekay grinned.

  'She's very talented, it's a waste! She's a lot more clever than you think, man!' The magistrate rang off with only a cursory 'Totsiens'.

  Peekay had been puzzled. Coetzee was the chief magistrate of Johannesburg; how could he possibly know of, or even care about the progress of a young female coloured lawyer doing work in the court of petty sessions?

  When he'd asked Tandia she'd shrugged. 'He knows Mama Tequila. He used to be a magistrate in Durban.' Her reply had been too studied, her beautiful green eyes looked up at him justa little too ingenuously. Peekay had made a note to look into it.

  He'd met Mama Tequila and Madam Flame Flo, of course, on several occasions since the night of the world championship fight. Peekay wasn't stupid and when Mama Tequila explained that she ran a nursing home and that Madam Flame Flo was a retired businesswoman in the liquid refreshment business, he was aware both were not exactly walking the tightrope of an honest living. But he knew better than to probe any further. He had also discovered the attachment Madam Flame Flo had for Geel Piet, and so had solved the riddle of the black granite tombstone raised so proudly among The Stones. He admired her enormously for that, and had come to see both sisters as Tandia's family. But he sensed there were parts of Tandia even her surrogate family couldn't reach.

  There were a great many things about Tandia he simply didn't know, things which seemed to drive her remorselessly, for she worked impossibly long hours and apart from attending fights and meetings of the ANC with Gideon, seemed to have no personal life whatsoever. Occasionally she'd admit to having spent part of a Sunday with Madam Flame Flo, but that was about all. For Tandia, life was her legal work and she'd often work all Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday on the briefs piled up on her desk, far too many for her own good.

  Peekay was too honest with himself to deny that his interest in the beautiful young lawyer was somewhat tempered by his personal feelings. He kept reminding himself that Tandia, except for that first night in Solomon Levy's rose garden, hadn't given him the slightest encouragement and obviously regarded him as a friend and professional colleague, but no more than this. Even becoming her friend hadn't been easy. Tandia knew little of the mechanics of friendship; she was tentative and suspicious, both characteristics concealed by the clever guise of seeming to be shy. It was Peekay'-s friendship with Juicey Fruit Mambo which had finally won her over. Juicey Fruit Mambo and 'Peekay would chat together in Zulu fo
r hours like two old women washing clothes on the rocks down by the river. Juicey Fruit Mambo's hate for all whites was such, that if he decided he liked Peekay, then it was perfectly safe for her to do so as well. But respecting and even liking a white man like Peekay came pretty low on Tandia's list of priorities, even though it was a friendship that could be useful to her. Tandia had plans and the law was the vehicle which would take her where she was going. Gideon was exactly the right person on whose arm she wanted to be seen for all sorts of reasons, with love only a small part of them. When she'd first heard Gideon speak and had seen him fight against the Irishman in Sophiatown she'd believed herself to be in love. Now she realized it had been a young girl's infatuation for a larger-than-life hero. She'd fallen for his quiet assurance, his power in the ring and his way with words. She didn't doubt his intelligence and sometimes his amazing perception, but his wasn't a mind like Peekay's that cut like a knife and saw the concepts in your head almost before you'd started to shape them properly - or even a Hymie who always seemed to have thought everything out in advance.

  Gideon's mind didn't have the discipline of an education and it was still locked into the old tribal ways. Tandia was an urban creature, her African heritage essentially an intellectual acquisition. Secretly Tandia knew Gideon for what he was, a tribal Zulu who would always regard her as a woman and therefore inferior, in the African manner. Peekay, on the other hand, was trouble of the sort no coloured person needed, let alone one with an ambition and mission as deadly serious as her own. She could use both men but she could sleep with only one; and him only when she could find no way to avoid it.

  Tandia sensed Peekay's attraction to her. Mama Tequila had taught her too well; she knew how a hungry, one-eyed snake could ride rampant over even the most acute intelligence. Thus she reasoned that Peekay must not be given the slightest encouragement.

  Mama Tequila had seen them together at Solomon Levy's party after the world championship fight and had kept a close eye on them since then. One time, at Madam Flo's home in Vereeniging, she'd taken Tandia aside. 'Lissen, Tandy, the white boy, he is eating you with his eyes. That's a very clever person, also some man, I'm telling you! But still a man you understand? Right now his one-eyed snake is still under control, but I don't know for how long, jong!'

  'Ag, Mama Tequila, don't worry, he's not my. type,' Tandia had replied, trying to dismiss the old woman's remarks. She was aware that Mama Tequila missed nothing and would pin her down if she wasn't very careful. Anyhow, you know I'm with Gideon.'

  Mama Tequila sighed. She looked up at Tandia, her small, almost black eyes bright pinpricks in the great pink and blue bulge of her made-up eyelids. 'The kaffir is okay, a world champion, and now also he has some money. But he's in politics, kaffir politics, next week the boere will catch him and lock him away for ten years! What will you do then?'

  'Mama, Gideon is Welterweight Champion of the World.

  They wouldn't dare! We'd…Peekay, I mean the firm, we'd have them in court and make a fool of them in front of the world!'

  Madam Flame Flo entered the room and sat down quietly. It was as though she sensed Tandia's discomfort and wanted to lend her support just by being in the same room. But Mama Tequila didn't seem to notice her sister's presence.

  'Ja, for sure, next week comes along some Joe Palooka from Chatanooga and knocks him down and then he's not welterweight champion no more, he's just another kaffir who's in a lot of trouble with the police. Believe me, for black boxing heros the memory is short but the forgettery is long! Lissen, Tandy, I told you before, it's no use thinking you some lah-di-dah snot-nosed lawyer, you a coloured person the same as Flo here and me! You also beautiful and you a slimmetjie, clever as anything, man, but in the end that make no difference, you still walking pussy. You still bait for the one-eyed snake!'

  'Mama, I don't have to be like everyone else! Not every coloured girl is like that! Mama, you know what happened! You know how I feel!' A tear ran from Tandia's eye and she brushed it away with the back of her hand.

  Mama Tequila appeared not to notice Tandia's distress.

  Her voice grew impatient. 'Tandy, you stupid or something, hey? That the precise point I'm making! You finish and klaar in the love department, twice you got hurt, no man's going to get through to you now! I'm not talking about love, I'm not talking even about being a whore who works for money, I'm talking about exchanging! Pussy can be a cash register and it can be a weapon but it can also be something else. For God's sake, Tandy, you a lawyer, man! You should understand. Pussy, it also a means of negotiation, the only way a woman has of exchanging goods for services rendered! Every woman who ever lived, one way or another, been forced to do that. What God put there is not to enjoy, it's your collateral! Magtig! He put it there neat and nice between your legs for your own survival!'

  'A woman doesn't have to take everything in life lying down.' Tandia knew it was useless arguing, but she felt suddenly dirty and inferior and she'd worked very hard not to feel either of these things ever again. Mama Tequila was taking her back to where she never wanted to be again. Tandia turned suddenly on Mama Tequila; her eyes flashed.

  It was the first time she'd ever seriously answered her back. 'Mama, I've got brains and I've got hate and that's got to be enough! For three hundred years the white man has been throwing black women on their backs and plundering them, taking what he wants. It's time women fought back. When the revolution comes and the underpeople win, the blacks and the coloureds and the Indians, then their women, you and I and Aunty Flo and Sonny Vindoo's wife and all the black women, we'll still be inferior! We'll trade one master for another, we'll still have to take everything a man wants on our backs!' Tandia paused, close to tears. "Mama, I hate sex! I sleep with Gideon, but I don't like it! I sleep with him because I love him and the man you love expects you to lie on your back for him. But I'm not going to sleep with Peekay! If I do that, then I lose everything! I'm just another kaffir woman to be plundered by the white man!'

  Madam Flame Flo clasped her hands together and drew them into her chest. 'Here, Tandy! That's the best speech I ever heard!' She turned to Mama Tequila. 'Ousis, did you hear that? Did you hear what Tandy jus' said, hey? She's right, one hundred per cent! We women must fight now or those black bastards going to do exactly the same to us as the white bastards already done!' She turned to Tandia, an indulgent smile on her face. 'Magtig, what a clever lawyer you going to be Tandy, we very proud of you, you know.' Mama Tequila snorted suddenly. 'All I got to say further on this matter is there is not going to be a revolution and what you saying, Tandy, that lawyer's bullshit, man!'

  Now as Tandia sat with Peekay and Gideon sipping coffee, she wondered if Mama Tequila wasn't right. The ANC under Chief Luthuli and Professor Matthews was in good, God-fearing Christian hands, old tired hands and old tired legs that limped from one crisis to another. What was it Luthuli said the other day? I have knocked on the white man's door and I have 'waited, patiently, but no one has answered.

  Something like that. It was nice Zulu rhetoric, but the Boers in Pretoria would still be chortling over the old man's naivety. Gideon called him, 'The great Induna, the Father of the Nation'. The black people didn't need a father, they needed a lean and hungry fighter with sharp teeth, someone who wouldn't knock at the door but kick it down instead. In the absence of anyone else, Sobukwe would have to do. Even if the campaign for the abolition of the pass laws failed, it was another blow struck, another kick at the still firmly closed door of apartheid. If the black people kicked long and hard enough the door jamb would finally give.

  Peekay took a deliberate swig of coffee from his mug. 'What do you reckon. Gideon, do you think Sobukwe can pull this pass thing off?'

  Gideon seemed to consider for a time. It was a characteristic Tandia used to love about him, it made everything he said seem wise, but now she wasn't so sure it wasn't simply a mannerism and a fairly calculated one at that. 'That Sobukwe, he talks and
he promises, but he 'doesn't organize. His people think things just happen. You blow a whistle and the people rise up and bum their passes and go to the police and put out their hands like so…' Gideon proffered his hands to Tandia, '…and say, "Arrest me, please, baas,

  I have burned my pass." It doesn't happen like this. That I can tell you every time…for sure!'

  Tandia's eyes flashed. 'We know what's going to happen, the government is going to ban the ANC and the PAC and then it will be too late!'

  Gideon laughed, shaking his head. This time there was no hesitation in his answer. 'I do not think they can do this thing. The ANC is very very old, since 1912, you cannot ban such a organization.'

  His manner was pedantic and condescending and Tandia felt a tiny knot of anger in her stomach. But she didn't respond, she was getting much too excited. Magistrate Coetzee had suggested the notion to her outside a cafe near the courts where they regularly met for a chat and a cup of coffee. As Tandia was not allowed to sit in a Whites-Only cafe, he'd buy coffee in two paper cups together with two huge doughnuts and they'd stand on the pavement and chat while they drank the coffee and finally licked the sticky sugar off their fingers.

  Old Coetzee was a constant source of valuable information and his suggestion that the ANC might be banned by the government had to be taken seriously. Nevertheless Tandia wasn't sure how to use it. It would be impossible to reveal her source and she was fairly certain she wouldn't be taken seriously if she proposed it simply as something she felt.