Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  Mama Tequila was wearing a red sequined gown and a huge red Laughing-Cavalier picture hat festooned with two magnificent white ostrich feathers. Her chubby fingers were a vulgar splash of diamonds as she fanned herself with a delicate little Japanese paper fan. Where she sat among the roses, with the swing chair moving back and forth, she glimmered, glittered, sparkled and shimmered in thousands of tiny bomb-bursts of light. The swing chair was situated close to a long and beautiful rose arbour festooned with climbing pink roses to make a natural tunnel of blossoms through which the train travelled. Children would see her as the train emerged from the arbour and squeal with delight. It was as though she was an unexpected sideshow placed in amongst a bed of roses to surprise them. Halfway through the morning a rumour started that Mama Tequila was Mother Christmas, after which the children waved and smiled and cheered and blew kisses at her. The presents had yet to be given out and they reasoned that if Mother Christmas was anything like their own ma, it was just as well to be nice as pie and show no disrespect.

  Mama Tequila was beginning to feel decidedly peckish. She was happy when noon came, the funfair stopped abruptly and the train was halted for Solomon Levy to make his welcoming speech. She knew Flo would soon be chirping at her side with the first of several plates piled high with her favourite food.

  She listened as the public address system whistled and then crackled. A voice said, 'Testing, testing, one…two…three …' and then with a final tear of static grew silent. The next voice she heard was that of Mr Nguni who spoke in Zulu to the crowd, though only for a moment. She couldn't understand him but she guessed he was simply calling the crowd to attention for Solomon's welcome. Trust him to get in there somewhere. She didn't like the big black man, nor did she trust him. More than once she'd chastised Tandia for going out with him; he was creepy, a black man you couldn't read, who laughed too much and showed too many white teeth. That would be a one-eyed snake that would be very cruel and careless with a girl, you could tell just by looking at the bastard. Tandia had told her that nothing had ever happened between them, that he was like her father. 'A father you don't need, a Big Daddy, yes, that more like it, but only if he likes to give diamonds, you hear? Does he give you diamonds?'

  'He takes me places, I meet people I couldn't normally meet, people who are important to me,' Tandia protested.

  'Meeting kaffirs is never important to anyone, skatterbol,' Madam Tequila had said, ending the discussion.

  Now she heard Solomon Levy clear his throat briefly and she imagined him standing at the microphone in his blue blazer with the bright brass buttons and beret. Flo had left ten minutes earlier to get a good place in the lunch queue. 'My friends, happy Christmas!! Solomon Levy's voice suddenly boomed out over the loudspeaker. 'Thank you for comink to my house. Thank you, also, for helping me to make the business. This year you are gettink a bonus, one month's pay!' Mama Tequila could hear the loud cheer from the crowd and Solomon Levy waited for it to die down. 'My pleasure,' he said quietly, 'you are all makink me very proud.' His voice brightened suddenly, changing tack. 'Also, children, I got here a letter Father Christmas, comink direct the north pole!' Mama Tequila heard the scrunch of paper over the microphone and Solomon. began to read. 'Dear children at Solomon Levy Carpet Emporium, Thank you all za nice letters you are writing. Don't vorry, I got for sure everything. I hope you are being also good boys and girls because two o'clock sharp I'm coming wit' my train by Mr Solomon Levy's house! Maybe you can be zere?'

  Mama Tequila could hear the squeals of delight from the children and she imagined how they'd be hugging each other. Their parents too, with the knowledge of a double pay packet coming in at Christmas time, would be feeling very good. Solomon Levy now ended the letter, 'Yours Sincerely, Father Christmas. North Pole, za world, za universe!' There was a great deal of clapping and laughter and he concluded simply by saying, 'Okay, my friends! Now we eat. Enjoy please a little lunch.'

  Simon Fitzharding's film crew had hardly been noticed during all the morning's excitement and the cameramen had used the time for pick-up shots, filming the oxen roasting on the spits, the chefs preparing the tables groaning with good food and generally keeping an eye out for a 'cute' shot.

  Now the cameramen, grips and sound men stood by for a final briefing from the BBC director who, in a manner of speaking, had caused the entire security kerfuffle. The plan was simple and had been rehearsed a hundred times. The unit stood by, bored; they'd long since stopped listening to the Englishman with the hot potato in his mouth. There was very little that could, go wrong. Both cameras would be mounted on platforms; there was a small one that allowed the cameraman to operate six feet above the heads of the crowd and looked directly into the train station. It was fitted with a four-to-one zoom lens so it could pan as Father Christmas Solomon Levy made his triumphant arrival from the direction of the rose garden. This same camera would also be used for the medium and close-up shots of the choir. The second unit, placed on the black side, was mounted on a much higher camera platform with the latest twelve-to-one zoom lens to pull focus and follow the entire progress of the little engine around the estate.

  The platform on the taller tower had been built fairly high so that Hymie's security men could man it as well, with radio contact to their plainclothes people in the crowd. Solomon Levy's train ride was the next obviously critical moment in the entire security operation. For six minutes he would be alone and totally exposed with a crowd of three thousand or so people lining the tracks.

  Peekay had permission to share the platform as he wanted to take pictures to send to Doris and Togger and Harriet in England. Later he'd also get the snaps for Mr Rubens, the schmaltzy shots the old man adored, showing wide-eyed kids hugging their Rubens-Kellerman dolls.

  Peekay was as anxious as everyone else involved in the security operation, but he played no active role in it and the team had been so thorough that, as the day wore on, they'd all begun to relax a little. Hymie had given him a Nikon with the very latest telephoto lens for his birthday a year previously and he found he enjoyed messing about with it. He'd spent a lot of time taking pictures with Doc's old Hasselblad as a child and privately he fancied himself as a bit of a photographer. How the old man would have loved this Nikon, Peekay thought as he set the camera on its tripod and squinted through the powerful lens, deciding on the mandatory shots he would take when the little train finally got under way.

  Now, with a few minutes to go, he watched the crowd through the camera's telephoto lens. The little green train would start in the dahlia garden on the black side where it was concealed from the crowd. Below him he could see Solomon Levy in his Father Christmas outfit flapping his hands about and, Peekay imagined, being a general nuisance to the security men who were loading the train with the pretend Christmas packages. This year Solomon needed no padding for his Father Christmas outfit and Peekay thought to himself that the old bugger really ought to go on a diet. The carriages were almost loaded with the beribboned boxes and assortment of bicycles, scooters, tricycles and dolls sticking out among them.

  Peekay turned the lens towards the station. The platform was crowded with the children's choir which spilled over onto two stands, one on either side of the strange-looking little building. Next he turned the tripod and camera to face the distant rose garden. This was a shot he didn't want to miss; the little engine at this point was a hundred yards from the end of its journey when it entered a long arbour of brilliant pink climbing roses. He began to focus when he realized that Mama Tequila was in the background slightly to the side of the rose arbour. He adjusted the lens to bring her into sharp focus. The huge woman appeared to be asleep. Peekay grinned to himself, he'd seen Mama Tequila tuck in before and he had no illusions about the size of the lunch she would have consumed. Even at the distance of some two hundred and fifty yards he imagined he could see her huge bosoms heaving under her shimmering red dress. He fired off a shot of the dozing Mama Tequila and flipped the camer
a ratchet to the next frame.

  There was a sudden excited roar from the crowd as the little engine gave two shrill whistles and emerged from the dahlia garden. Peekay pulled his camera tripod around and checked his pad, quickly adjusting the lens of the camera by hand without bringing his eye to the lens. When he looked into the camera. to his satisfaction he saw his focus was bang-on as he fired off the shot. He removed the camera from the tripod and followed the little engine around, pulling focus and taking random shots. Then he suddenly realized that he'd been so intrigued by Mama Tequila that he hadn't completed focussing on his third set-up, the little train emerging from the rose arbour.

  There was still a couple of minutes to go and he positioned the camera tripod and fixed the Nikon to it. He brought his eye to the camera and worked the powerful telephoto lens. The lens sharpened into focus and to his enormous surprise he saw Mr Nguni on his haunches beside the track halfway down the rose arbour. Peekay sharpened focus on his crouching figure; the big man was fairly deep into the arbour and it would have been almost impossible to see him by eye at the distance Peekay was standing. Peekay fired off a shot. The shutter blinked and in the fraction of a second it went from light to dark and back again he knew with a blinding realization what Mr Nguni was doing.

  Peekay turned from the camera tripod and reached the top of the ladder leading up to the platform in three steps. He half climbed and half skidded down the ladder, jumping the last ten rungs to hit the ground running.

  'What is it?' he heard one of the security men call from the top of the platform.

  'A detonator on the track!' Peekay yelled, but already he was yards away, running hard. He had to run around a small copse of trees and down a sideshow alley. Two teenage girls, walking between tents, didn't see him coming and his shoulder collected one of them and knocked her spinning. He reached the open lawns and made for the rose arbour. People seeing him coming jumped out of his way, though some he dodged and others he pushed aside as he ran. His head was pounding and he could taste blood in his mouth where he must-have bitten his tongue. The sound of the children singing in Zulu came to him clearly, like a car passing suddenly with its radio on too loudly; then he lost it, his own furious panting drowning out all sound. By the time he'd reached the centre fence the little train was behind the big house and heading for the rose garden. He reached the front of the arbour just as the engine entered the other side. Seconds later he heard two shots go off, one a split second after the other. A moment later a dense white smoke came from the front wheel of the engine, which seemed to be flaring with an intensely bright blue flame. 'Jump!' he screamed at Solomon Levy. 'Jump!!' The old man was too shocked to respond and he flapped his hands wildly, beating at the magnesium smoke billowing into his face. Peekay ran towards him and, turning so that he was running with the train, he tried to pull Solomon Levy from the carriage. But Solomon wearing a bullet-proof vest was a snug fit, and in his panic he held onto the sides of the cabin. 'Stand up! Try to stand up!' Peekay screamed. The old man was gulping for air, his eyes popping out of his head; he was totally panic stricken and beyond response. Peekay beat down at his fists which were white-knuckling the sides of the engine, but still Solomon clung on. Peekay brought his hands around Solomon's thick throat and started to strangle him. With a cry Solomon brought his hands up and Peekay released his grip, slipping his arms under the old man's armpits and jerking with all his strength against the movement of the train. With Solomon's foot now off the throttle, the train started to slow down. For a few desperate moments nothing happened and then Solomon Levy was dragged clear of the cabin. They hit the ground hard at the same moment that the engine emerged from the arbour; then Peekay lost his hold on the old man. Both of them seemed to bounce and then roll wildly, the momentum of the fall hurling them over a small embankment and clear of the engine. With a deafening roar the bomb exploded, sending the little engine high into the air. It landed on its snout and somersaulted three times to land on its back in a rose bed fifty feet away.

  Peekay was already on his feet by the time the first of the security men reached the scene. He was bleeding slightly from the mouth but seemed to be all right, though his head spun furiously and the sound of the explosion at such close range had momentarily deafened him. Had they not been below the sound when the explosion went off it might well have burst their eardrums. He was also finding it difficult to focus, catching only glimpses of a man moving towards him. He felt the man grab his shoulder; the man's mouth opened like a fish under water but he made no sound. Peekay nodded, unable to speak and the man turned and ran towards Solomon Levy who lay motionless against a small tree. The top of his Father Christmas outfit had been tom away by the explosion, showing the bullet-proof vest, half on and half off his hairy stomach. Peekay's eyes were beginning to focus a little better, though they still seemed to snap-shoot the scene around him, like a cinema projector with its speed out of synchronization. People seemed to be running from everywhere.

  His vision cleared, but now it was as though he could see everything with the clarity of slow motion. Hymie moved up to him, touched his face with the flat of his hand, sobbing; he said something which Peekay couldn't hear then moved towards his father. Tandia rushed up and grabbed him; she seemed to be sobbing in little gasps, grabbing him about the waist and burying her head in his chest. He tried to bring his arms up to embrace her but they wouldn't work. There was no pain, but they simply wouldn't respond to the message his brain was sending to them. Solomon Levy's legs seemed to be at strange angles and Peekay wondered vaguely whether they were broken. Nothing made a lot of sense. Hymie returned and hugged them both, tears streaming down his cheeks, his lips moving soundlessly. Someone threw a blanket over his shoulder and he tried to hold it but his arms still refused to move. Then, as though someone had thrown a switch in his head, the sound came back on and he could hear. It was the most fortuitous piece of timing in his life, for Tandia was looking up at him, her green eyes bright with tears, 'Peekay, I love you,' she said and started to sob quietly, her head against his chest. Then he was looking into the pale face of a blond woman in a white coat with an untidy wisp-of hair across her forehead who had the same pale blue eyes as Jannie Geldenhuis.

  'Let me take a look at you?' the woman said in Afrikaans.

  Then she let out a short expletive, 'Here, jou been!' She pointed to his left leg.

  Peekay's head was almost clear and he realized he hadn't imagined Tandia's words. He glanced almost casually at his leg, looking down over Tandia's shoulder. He felt no pain whatsoever so he was surprised to observe that the bottom half of his khaki trousers had been torn and below it the knee was totally soaked in blood.

  The woman doctor was on her haunches, ripping the material away. A deep gash ran from just under his knee to his ankle and looked as though it had been sliced open with a boning knife, the top layer of skin folded back to expose the tendons of his ankles and his calf muscle. With a sudden rush, the pain appeared in his shoulders as though his arms had been jerked out of their sockets, though there was still no pain from his leg. 'I can't stitch it here, you'll have to go in the ambulance,' the doctor said rising. 'I'll give you a tetanus injection, also one to kill the pain.'

  'Dankie, doktor. Hoe gaan dit met die ou kerel?' Peekay asked. He had a violent headache but his mind was now lucid and his concern was for Solomon Levy.

  'Both his legs appear to be broken and his collarbone. We'll have to watch his heart, that's all,' the doctor replied. She looked directly at him and sniffed; with an almost imperceptible nod of her head, she indicated Tandia. 'It's none of my business, you hear, but people are looking,' she said, loud enough for Tandia to hear.

  Shocked,' Tandia pulled away from Peekay. 'Don't! Please don't go!' Peekay cried. He tried to stretch his arm towards Tandia but the pain was too great. Tandia stood three feet from him, her hands covering her face in shame.

  The woman doctor stepped between Peekay and the distrau
ght Tandia, blocking her from his view. 'Come now,' she said, 'You can't stay any longer on that bad leg.' She called over a couple of medics carrying a stretcher. 'Kom hier, maak gou, jong!'

  Whatever the doctor had given Peekay to kill the pain was making him feel very' woozy. Johnny Tambourine had appeared just as they were putting him into the ambulance. 'Look after Tandia, Johnny!' he shouted up at him.

  'She's a mess, man! Mama Tequila is dead,' Johnny said, making no attempt to soften the news.

  'Stay with her, Johnny, take my car, take them home to Madam Flame Flo's house in Vereeniging. Stay there, I'll call tonight or get over.' He had to fight to keep his concentration and his eyelids were becoming impossibly heavy. The ambulance attendants were trying to close the door. The news of Mama Tequila's death was suddenly too much and his mind shut it out. He suddenly remembered the camera on the tower, his lawyer's mind asserting itself. 'Johnny, my camera! It's on the tower, get it!' he shouted; he was too woozy to realize how callous and unfeeling he must have sounded to Johnny Tambourine.

  'Shit, why is it always us who die,' he heard Johnny Tambourine say as the ambulance doors closed him from view.

  Peekay awoke just after dawn and lay listening to the sparrows chirping outside. The nylon curtains were drawn but the window showed as a contrasting square of pale light in the dark hospital room. The bird noises told him he was probably on the ground floor. 'Good, I can walk out,' he thought, 'walk out and find a phone box and call Hymie.' This thought was, of course, a nonsense but his mind was still blurry from the sedation he'd received and it had taken up more or less where it had left off with Johnny Tambourine in the ambulance. A thought formed in his head. 'Tandia? She said she loved me?' Then he wondered if it was something he'd dreamed. His mind began to clear, the outline of his thoughts sharpening. He could vaguely remember arriving at the hospital, the strips of pale purple neon light passing above him as he was wheeled down a long corridor, then nothing more. Now it was all coming back to him, like animated bits of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place by themselves. He felt the shock of Mama Tequila's death for the first time and sudden tears blinded him and ran down his cheeks. He tried to move his hand up to wipe at them and realized both his arms lay across his chest cradled in a sling which was tied around his neck. He was feeling lousy; he tried to sniff away the tears and his head still ached, but the pain was familiar. His body had been badly battered before and he knew he'd be okay in a week or so when the bruising and stiffness worked out of his muscles. His left leg was stiff and sore but it wasn't throbbing.