Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  'Dog Poep heard them and came running into the room.

  'What happened? What's the matter?' He stared at them both. Johnny Tambourine and Flyspeck Mendoza were pointing at the huge buckled shape of Mr Nguni and pis sing themselves with laughter.

  Johnny Tambourine, Dog Poep Ismali, Too Many Fingers Bembi and Flyspeck Mendoza, with the help of Gideon's people, crossed the border into Mozambique to join a terrorist training squad. Or that's what Tandia thought, but halfway across the Komati River Flyspeck Mendoza lost the grip of the guide who was holding him and panicked. He couldn't swim and, being the smallest, the water came up to his neck. He disappeared under the swift-flowing current, came up thrashing and disappeared again as the river current carried him off. Several minutes later and several hundred yards downstream he was washed up unconscious on a part of the bank covered with reed. The villagers guiding the boys across called him with the soft hoot of a river owl, which was the signal to keep them together in the dark. Two of them came back and searched the riverbank to no avail, and they assumed he was drowned.

  Flyspeck Mendoza regained consciousness just before dawn and climbed up the riverbank, not knowing which side he was on. He started to walk and skirted the lights of a town, which unbeknown to him was Komatipoort. When the sun came up he slept, and travelled all of the next night.

  At dawn, hungry and footsore, he came to a farm where he waited until sun-up and then asked the farmer for work. The farmer asked him for his work papers and when Flyspeck said he'd lost them the farmer grinned and said he could work for his food, but no pay. And so he became a slave.

  Flyspeck was a city boy, a bad guy who stayed up late and rose around noon, a hired gun. He had a bad leg from a knife fight and he'd never worked a day in his life. The farmer took the gold Rolex he was wearing and then beat the living shit out of him. He continued to do so daily with a sjambok until Flyspeck was working quite well for a city boy with a bad limp.

  But at night in the dark cell, no different to a prison, where the farmer kept all the vagrants - who turned out to be just about everyone who worked on the farm - he sharpened the end of a bicycle spoke he'd stolen, using a small slab of slate-stone. Though he was exhausted from the dawn-to-dusk work and the others around him fell asleep within minutes of eating their evening meal of mealie pap and watery gravy, Flyspeck forced himself to stay awake long enough each night to do a little honing.

  For almost two months, night after night, he worked in the pitch blackness until the point of the bicycle was smooth and narrow and sharp as a needle and the sides felt like satin to his touch. The time had come for Flyspeck Mendoza to depart.

  Two days later the tractor broke down in a field where they were sowing potatoes and the Boer climbed down and buried his head in the engine. Then he sent his boss boy back to the shed for something. The boss boy laid his sjambok over the back of the tractor and walked quickly away. Suddenly the Boer was alone in the field with only his slave workers, his head in the tractor engine and the top three vertebrae deliciously exposed on the base of his red, sunburned neck.

  The spoke went in so cleanly that the Boer let out a soft 'pffft!' like a long sigh. To anyone watching, he would have appeared just like before, on his knees with his head in the tractor engine. Only this time he was dead and the beautiful spoke was already back down the seam of Flyspeck's ragged trousers. Flyspeck reached down and unclipped the Rolex from his wrist and put it in his pocket. Then he picked up his bag of seed potatoes and walked to the end of the field and he just kept walking. Two days later the police caught him on the outskirts of Barberton where he was arrested and thrown into gaol to await trial.

  Flyspeck Mendoza confessed readily to the murder of the Boer, but he'd not used his proper name when he'd asked the Boer for employment. His fingerprints were sent to Pretoria to the Department of Native Affairs which keeps the fingerprints of every African over the age of sixteen. A month later he was indicted for murder a second time, this time under his correct name which, because it showed up on a computer check of wanted persons, was also sent to the Special Branch. Finally it arrived on the desk of the youngest colonel in the history of the South African police force.

  Colonel Jannie Geldenhuis didn't take long to make the connection between Flyspeck Mendoza, the death of Mr Nguni, and the disappearance of the four boys. The Rolex watch found on Flyspeck was instantly identified as having belonged to Mr Nguni. The Boer who'd been murdered on a farm about twenty miles outside Komatipoort had died in exactly the same way as Nguni had done. He was also sure that Tandia was behind the murder somewhere - otherwise why would all four boys, Johnny Tambourine in particular, have found him when a national manhunt had failed? Johnny Tambourine was her chauffeur and minder; she had to be involved somewhere. Even if Tandia was only aware of the murder and hadn't reported it to the police she could be indicted.

  The more Geldenhuis looked at the file on Johnny Tambourine, the more excited he became. Flyspeck Mendoza was a lifelong friend, they did everything together. The four boys, he discovered, all worked for Tandia. He had to find out if Nguni had said anything before he'd died. Geldenhuis grew suddenly cold. He had to find out whether she had anything and if she did he had to compromise her so that it couldn't be used.

  How Geldenhuis handled the kaffir on the murder charge at present in Barberton gaol was critical if he was to compromise Tandia. He picked up the phone and a voice answered, 'Constable Vermaas.'

  'Vermaas, look up your prison directory and tell me the name of the Kommandant at Barberton prison.'

  'Yes, colonel,' Stoffel Vermaas answered. A couple of minutes later he called back. 'Colonel Smit, sir. Do you want me to calI him for you?'

  'Asseblief, ja.' Geldenhuis thanked the operator and waited for the calI to come through from Barberton.

  There was a click in Geldenhuis's ear. 'Smit hier,' a voice said on the other end of the phone.

  Geldenhuis identified himself to the prison officer. 'Not the Jannie Geldenhuis, the boxer?' Smit asked.

  'Ja, I boxed a little.' Geldenhuis laughed, 'a long time ago.'

  'We take our boxing pretty seriously down here, colonel. What can I do for you?'

  Jannie Geldenhuis explained to Smit what he wanted. 'Ja, of course, colonel, we will make everything available and ready for your arrival. But, just one thing; prison regulations state that a prison officer must be present if an interrogation takes place within the prison. I cannot allow you to interrogate with only your own people in the room.' Geldenhuis cursed under his breath; he was dealing with a small-town yokel who played by the book. 'This is a Special Branch case, Kommandant, we do not require supervision with the work we do,' he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  'Nevertheless, colonel, I must insist.'

  Geldenhuis was too good an operator to push it any further. He sighed heavily so that Smit would hear him on the other end. 'As you wish, Smit.'

  'Colonel Smit, Colonel!' Smit corrected, his voice suddenly hard.

  Geldenhuis realized at last that he wasn't dealing with a fool and softened his voice immediately. 'I'm sorry, Colonel, here in Special Branch we do a lot of undercover work, we get a bit careless with titles. If you will make a man available we'd like one who has been involved in getting information out of a prisoner himself, if you understand what I mean?'

  Geldenhuis wasn't too worried. He'd have preferred to have Flyspeck Mendoza on his own with a couple of his own men, but Barberton prison was a place with a notoriously tough reputation and, anyway, in his experience, warders in country prisons didn't exactly play by the rules. He'd sweet-talk the prickly kommandant when they got there.

  Smit called Gert immediately after the phone call. 'We've got Jannie Geldenhuis, the boxer and Special Branch Colonel coming down from Johannesburg tomorrow early to interrogate the kaffir who murdered the Boer from Komatipoort. I've told him you will attend.'

  'Yes, Colonel,' G
ert replied, 'Do we want the interview on tape?' Though he and Smit had been friends for twenty years they generally kept things formal during working hours.

  Colonel Smit looked up at Gert. 'You know who called yesterday?'

  'No, sir?'

  'Peekay. He's going to defend the kaffir murderer. He phoned to say he's coming down the day after tomorrow to see this Flyspeck kaffir.'

  'Here, man, why?' Gert asked, amazed. 'It's open and shut, the man has confessed.'

  That's just what I said. He wants to expose the conditions on the farms. Blacks without papers used as slaves. This guy who got murdered, he says he's been doing it a long time.'

  'Jesus! So what's new? It's been going on three hundred years!'

  Smit looked up again. 'You know, Gert, I love Peekay like my own son, but I don't think he's going to make old bones, he doesn't know where to draw the line.'

  That's what made him champion of the whole world, he never knew when he was beaten,' Gert said, though it was plain he was as concerned for Peekay as Smit was.

  Smit cleared his throat. The subject of Peekay was too painful to discuss even with Gert. Peekay was the only truly innocent man he'd ever known and he found it a distressing experience coming to terms with this kind of truth. He admitted to himself that if he hadn't known him as well as he did he would despise him for it. Smit knew about fanatics; his own people, the volk, were often as fanatical and totally unreasonable and unreasoning. But you couldn't put Peekay in the same category. Peekay didn't hate the Afrikaner people or the kaffirs or anyone for that matter, he hated injustice. He couldn't see the grey shades, the reasons, the necessities for things to be as they were and this made him dangerous to a system which Smit himself supported. But it made him doubly dangerous to people like Jannie Geldenhuis, and Colonel Smit knew how people like Geldenhuis were and how they reacted when they were threatened.

  'Ja, on second thoughts, we'll let Colonel Geldenhuis and his people in alone with the kaffir. If he's going to have to smack him round a bit to get whatever he wants from the bastard we don't want to be the people to stand in the way of justice. But tape the interview, Gert. Put a two-hour tape on and let it run; if he does something stupid and the coon dies, we want to be covered. But also, man, if they ask if we taping, just look stupid, let him think the japies from the platteland don't go in for that sort of thing.'

  FORTY-ONE

  Tandia was arrested in the early hours of the morning and given five minutes to dress. It was the second time in her life she'd been roughly pushed into the back of a kwela-kwela, a police van, and taken into custody. In the ensuing years the frightened teenager had become a great beauty and a famous barrister, yet nothing, she told herself, had changed. She was still a kaffir and Geldenhuis, her original tormentor, still had his boot on her neck.

  The back of the police van had the sharp pungency of African sweat and the sour smell of beer mash as though earlier in the night a drunk had vomited. In fact, Tandia concluded, this was precisely what had happened, for the floor and the wooden seat on which she sat were wet, suggesting that the back of the van had recently been hosed out. The wetness now added to the cold, though she was not sure whether she shivered from the damp, dark cold interior of the van or from her own sense of misery.

  For some reason the siren on the van would wail intermittently, for fifteen seconds or so every few minutes. She wondered if it was intended to intimidate her; there couldn't be much traffic at this time of the morning nor, she imagined, was her arrival urgent.

  After a while they slowed down and stopped. She heard the police driver talking to someone. They must have arrived at the gate into the huge, grey granite structure of the John Vorster Square police headquarters. The van moved off slowly again and proceeded for what seemed like only a few yards before it stopped. Moments later Tandia heard the passenger door slam and then the sudden rattle of the lock on the rear door of the van. The door opened and the detective sergeant who'd arrested her stood waiting.

  'Get out now, please, miss,' he instructed. Tandia half stooped and climbed out, the air outside cold and fresh on her face after the smell of the van. He held a pair of handcuffs. 'I've got to do this, it's procedure, I should really have done it when we arrested you.'

  Tandia nodded, holding up her wrists. It was dark but if the policeman had looked carefully he might just have made out the slight discolouring around her wrists which were the scars from the last time she'd worn handcuffs.

  She expected to be finger-printed and formally charged but instead she was led down a long corridor into a brightly lit room which, under normal circumstances, would have seemed like a joke. It contained a powerful light with a larger than usual frosted bulb in the centre of the ceiling. A single wooden upright chair stood directly under it. A polished honey-coloured cork linoleum covered the floor and muffled her footsteps as she entered. The walls of the fairly large room were painted a light apple green. It was so obviously an interrogation room that it seemed to belong in the pages of a Dick Tracy comic book. The door was painted a glossy brown and on it was lettered in white:

  Interview Rm.1. Europeans only.

  Onderhoud Km.1. Slegs Blankes.

  Tandia pointed to the door. 'You've brought me to the wrong place. I do not suffer from the affliction of being white, constable.' She was using the last of her courage, for she could feel her bowels beginning- to constrict; the well-known barrister was quickly dissolving into the small frightened teenager sitting in the play chair at Cato Manor police station.

  The white female constable who'd taken over from the detective sergeant when they'd arrived at John Vorster didn't bother to reply. 'You can sit if you like,' she said, standing at the door and pointing to the lone chair. She was so nondescript in appearance that she almost defied description; she was twenty pounds overweight and the hem of her light-blue drill skirt was a good four inches higher on one side than the other.

  'I'd like to use the toilet, please,' Tandia asked.

  The female constable looked confused, then annoyed.

  'The non-European toilets are on the other side of "C" block.

  There's no time, man.'

  Tandia pointed to the chair. 'If I can sit on that white person's chair, why not on a toilet seat?'

  The woman seemed to hesitate again; then she jerked her head. 'Kom, maak gou, jong, she said, telling Tandia to hurry. Tandia followed her down a corridor to a women's toilet. 'Leave open the door,' the female constable instructed. She stood directly in front of the open door looking into the toilet, her heavy brown stockinged legs slightly apart and her hands clasped behind her back.

  They returned to the room and Tandia seated herself on the chair. The constable closed the door and left her, having first made her remove her shoes and confiscated her handbag and wristwatch. Placing the watch into the bag and taking both shoes and bag with her she placed them in the corridor directly outside the door. Then, using both hands, she pulled at the door which closed slowly. Tandia realized it was nearly six inches thick and must be sound-proofed. As the door clicked to a close a small red light went on above the lintel and she noted a telephone receiver fixed to the wall where it had been hidden by the open door.

  Tandia longed suddenly for the calming effect of a cigarette. 'Hold yourself together, nothing's happened yet,' she said to herself, though she could feel the constriction in her chest and the leaden feeling in her stomach as her terror began to mount. It was oppressively hot in the room and she rose from the chair and removed the cardigan and then the sweater she wore under it. She was wearing a fashionably short green woollen shift which, she now realized, showed her figure. Soon this, too, became too warm and she was conscious of her clammy overheated body. Her scalp itched as the perspiration gathered on her brow.

  She wiped herself down with a discarded sweater but the perspiration soon returned as she paced the room, fanning herself with both hands.
She was becoming increasingly distressed. Finally after what seemed like an hour or more, with a rattle and a soft 'phffft', the door opened and Geldenhuis stood framed in the doorway.

  'Here, but it's hot in here,' he said, blowing through his teeth and fanning his face with his right hand. He turned and spoke to someone in the corridor, 'Tell them to take down the heat, you hear?' Then turning to her he smiled, 'Good morning, Tandy. I'm sorry about the heating, I told them they mustn't let you get cold.' He grinned, 'You know cops, they always over-react!'

  Tandia sniffed, 'That was considerate of you, Colonel Geldenhuis.' She was surprised at the hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  Geldenhuis took a step into the room, 'Now don't be like that, Tandy!' There was a grin on his face but his pale blue eyes were cold and seemed not to move, as though they were permanently locked into place. He turned. 'Bring a table and another chair!' he called at the open door.

  Almost immediately two black constables appeared, one carrying a table and another carrying a chair. It was obvious to Tandia that they'd been waiting outside for permission to enter. The single chair placed directly under the light had been a ploy to unsettle her. Jannie Geldenhuis was dressed in full uniform, though he wore no cap and he carried a flat plastic zip-up folder under his left arm. He put the folder on the table which had been placed away from the light with the original chair moved to one side of it and the second chair placed on the other side.

  Tandia was surprised. She hadn't seen Geldenhuis in uniform for several years and in it he took on a different dimension. If the uniform was meant to intimidate her it had slightly the opposite effect. As a uniformed policeman he tended to be the Geldenhuis who had terrorized the child. As long as she could hold on to her adult status, her lawyer's mind, Tandia told herself she could overcome these old fears. The uniform he wore would help her to keep this in mind. What she needed to fear far more was the plainclothes Geldenhuis where the evil and the private madness lay.