Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  Peekay still wore his business suit, though he'd removed the jacket. It was almost a full moon and the subtropical evening was warm, but he knew that towards dawn it would get very cold and he'd added his jacket to the stuff they'd piled onto the hood of the car to take with them.

  'You were right, Peekay, there's a road block about three miles in along the Barberton road. They're Nelspruit guys, but none of the police we know, probably Special Branch.' Gert said in an undertone. 'We stopped and talked a bit; they're stopping all incoming traffic.' He glanced over at Tandia. 'They know who they looking for and showed us a magazine picture.'

  'Okay, let's get going, man. You never know what eyes are around, even in the dark. Where are we taking you?' Smit asked.

  'Gert knows, Colonel. To the farm, Eendrag, you know Magistrate Coetzee's old farm.'

  Gert opened the back of the large van, shining his torch into the interior where half-a-dozen black warders dressed in prison uniform sat. They immediately stood up as the doors opened, grinning into the torchlight.

  Gert explained to them that if the van was stopped by the police and opened they were to stand up and conceal the presence of Tandia. To Peekay's enormous surprise, he used the name Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. There was a murmur of amazement from the men at the mention of the mystical Peekay, who was the special legacy of Barberton prison.

  No more than about twenty minutes after they'd left, driving down the escarpment into the valley which Doe had named 'God's toe print,' the van slowed and drew to a halt. The men in the back of the van stood up immediately, pushing Tandia and Peekay to the back of the cabin end where they crouched. They heard a voice say in Afrikaans, 'Police!'

  Then Gert saying, 'Ja, we saw you before coming out.'

  Then the second voice again, 'No, man, we the new shift.

  You from Barberton prison?'

  'Ja, ten prisoners from the lock-up in Nelspruit. A fight in the location over a shebeen woman. Kaffirs are crazy, man!'

  'We'll have to look,' the policeman said. Peekay held Tandia's hand, squeezing it in the dark. The sound of his heart seemed to fill the whole van. He pulled Tandia close to him so that her body touched his and he felt her trembling.

  'What for! Don't be blerrie ridiculous, the kaffirs in there are some of them still drunk!' Smit said.

  'This is Colonel Smit, our kommandant,' Gert said, then added, 'We don't want a shooting, man! Kaffirs like this are dangerous.' He paused 'Here, you open it!' Gert must have offered the keys to the back of the van to the police officer.

  There was a pause; then a second voice, one they hadn't heard before said, 'What's going on here?'

  'I've got ten kaffirs in the back, they been arrested after a fight in the Crocodile River valley native location and they mostly still drunk. If you want to open the back, sergeant, you better take your gun, you know what kaffirs are like when they been drinking skokiaan!'

  There was a sudden banging on the side of the van and Tandia nearly fainted, but it came from the inside. 'Haja! Policeman! Buya lapa! Come here!' one of the black men in the van shouted and the others all laughed and began to bang on the side, shouting obscenities. Moments later the van pulled away and after a short while the men all sat down again convulsed with laughter and congratulating Peekay on his magic as they all chatted on happily. A few miles further on they heard a hand banging against the back of the driver's cabin; it was Colonel Smit telling Peekay they were approaching the turn-off to Eendrag.

  'We must go soon, my brothers,' Peekay said to the men in the van. 'I thank you for what you have done and my ancestors thank you also.' They all responded, 'Haya, Onoshobishobi Ingelosi, it is a great honour.' Then one of them, starting slowly, began the first high single note that begins the chant to the Tadpole Angel, when the boss boy in a gang calls them to the song. He held the note which deepened down and down as it neared its end until it vibrated in the back of the prison van. Then the voices of the others came in to pick up the first words of the chant. Soon the van was filled with the haunting melody of the great fighter who came for the people.

  The van stopped and Peekay and Tandia got out while the men still sang. Then their leader called them to a final chorus and their voices ended with a sudden thud, an expulsion of air from deep within their chests as though a hundred picks had hit the ground at the same time.

  They stood in the moonlight, the two Afrikaners, the coloured, the rooinek and the black men, all the colours of Africa for one moment in perfect harmony. Colonel Smit shook Peekay's hand, then suddenly the huge man embraced him, pulling the little welterweight into his chest. 'My God, little boetie, be careful!' As quickly as he'd held him he let him go, his voice tight with emotion.

  Gert took Peekay's hand. 'Go quickly into the mountains, Peekay. I'll only feel safe when I know you're up past the foothills.' He squeezed Peekay's shoulder, 'You the best, you hear?' Peekay was too overwhelmed to speak, but it wasn't necessary for him to say anything; they both knew how he felt.

  The two men both shook Tandia's hand, wishing her luck. She wondered what was really going on in their heads. They so obviously loved Peekay that the fact that she was placing him in danger must have made them feel enormous animosity towards her. But they showed none of this to her. Both men climbed quickly into the van and with a scrunch of tyres they pulled off the shoulder of the road and went on their way. The back of the van was now open and the men called, 'Hamba kahle, Inkosi, Inkosazana. Go well, my Lord and Princess.' Peekay and Tandia watched until they could no longer see the tiny wink of the red tail-lights and then turned down the dirt road leading to Eendrag half a mile away.

  The bushveld lay silver in the bright moonlight and they could hear the sound of the river in the distance, where it took a bend and the water flowed over rock to make the rapids. Tandia had only been here once, she'd not even come down when the old man had left the property to Peekay in trust for her. But now as they walked up the rutted road, each on a tyre path with the grass on the centre island grown high and almost to their waists, she felt as though she was coming home.

  They passed the burned-down cottage where the walls stood naked and sheets of twisted corrugated iron collapsed inwards, like a toy box filled with untidy bits and pieces. They continued over the small rise and there stood Tandia's ghosted house of Africa against the ridge, its white gables and the sweep of the steps leading up to it clear in the moonlight. As they approached she smelt the moonflower blossoms and the frangipani which hung in the still air as if to perfume her arrival home. They climbed the steps and stood on the stoep looking out at the silver ribbon of river where, in the moonlight, the water turned white as it took the wide bend and turned into the rapids. Tandia, who was running for her life, had suddenly never felt safer. Peekay stood at her side and Africa was all around her, clean and perfect. Calm flooded her and seemed to invade the very bones in her body. Though the African night was filled with sounds, it was also perfectly still. Peekay, as though instinctively understanding, turned and took her in his arms. His mouth closed over hers. After what seemed like her whole life he lifted his head. 'Tandia, I love you,' he said.

  Tandia suddenly wanted this man with a fierceness that physically hurt. It was a feeling she'd never experienced and it rushed into her hands. The calmness of the moments before Peekay had taken her into his arms was gone; now an urgency grew in her as she tore at her blouse and then her jeans. Tandia made no attempt to calm the feeling within her, or to delay in getting her clothes off and then helping Peekay to remove his own. She pulled at his shirt, breaking a button as the others came loose. Around his neck he wore a leather thong with a small bag attached to it that she'd never seen before. Getting his shirt off, even though he was attempting to help her, almost brought her to panic, as though the moment would pass and she'd be left with nothing. Peekay spread the blankets they'd brought and suddenly he lay with her and was loving her, his lips moving over her, his hand
s urgent and caring, trying to gather up all of her at once. Then he was inside her and she rose up and was carried away, floating on the perfumed air over the distant rapids which roared white water over rock. Then they were quiet again; she lay perfectly still, perfectly silent, bathed in the perfume of frangipani and moonflowers in the shining African night. Tandia cried softly and Peekay kissed her tears and held her and sssh'd her, kissing the lids of her eyes until he'd magicked her into a deep exhausted sleep.

  FORTY-FOUR

  At about the same time as Gert and Colonel Smit were turning the prison van into the short road leading to Schagen station Jannie Geldenhuis left John Vorster Square and went home. The police colonel was dog-tired; he'd been interrogating the four black men they'd brought in that afternoon. He badly needed sleep and when a report came through at half past nine that the lights were still burning in the Red boardroom he was confident he'd won the first round and forced Tandia and Peekay to appear before Justice Swart in the morning.

  At a quarter past four in the morning Geldenhuis was awakened by Koekemoer, the duty sergeant on the phone.

  'Sir, we have a report in from the Nelspruit police.' Geldenhuis was instantly awake. 'Ja, quick, what?'

  'They've found a brown sixty-five Chrysler with "TJ" plates parked at a place called Schagen, which is a small railway station about eight or ten miles before you get to Nelspruit.'

  'Have they forced it, looked inside, checked the registration ?'

  'We've done that, sir. It's registered to the Solomon Levy Carpet Emporium.'

  'Shit!' Geldenhuis cried.

  'They've forced the boot and discovered a woman's skirt and jacket and high-heeled shoes. It seems pretty certain. The suit fits the description of the stuff Tandia Patel was wearing in court today, I mean, yesterday.'

  'They may have transferred to another vehicle. Have you checked the road block on the Barberton road?'

  'Yes, sir, every vehicle coming in since six o'clock last night has been stopped and searched.'

  'I'm coming in. What's the time? Okay, it will be light by six o'clock, call Police Air Command. I want a Piper Cherokee with pilot on standby and cleared for take-off to Barberton by seven o'clock. Call the Barberton police. No, don't! That whole fucking town thinks Peekay is Jesus Christ! Call Nelspruit, it's only thirty miles away, they can make it in plenty of time.' Geldenhuis had made his first big mistake. He was a city boy and he'd assumed that two towns so close and both in the lowveld would share the same sort of environment. But Barberton is a mountain town, its topography quite different from the savannah grasslands and undulating hills of the Nelspruit area. He was recruiting a bunch of plainsmen for territory that even mountain men respect. 'Tell the senior officer I want ten men, if they've got them, and a sergeant, all white and fit and fully armed; also a good kaffir tracker, explain they're going to be climbing, to wear fatigues. If they've got dogs, bring them also, we can let them get a scent off the clothes the terrorist left in the car.' Geldenhuis no longer referred to Tandia by her name but by the words the terrorist, in the same way as a hunter might refer to 'the lion': she was something he was hunting to kill. Her personality dimensions no longer existed for him; his task was to destroy her. In his mind she was already dead meat. 'What time did they find the car?' he asked.

  The sergeant was reluctant to tell Geldenhuis the truth, but his superior always found out. 'Just after midnight, Colonel.'

  'What? And you called me now! Four hours later?' Geldenhuis was suddenly furious, 'Jesus fucking Christ, Koekemoer! We could have been in Barberton by now!'

  'Colonel! The call came through the main switch and wasn't transferred to the operations room. I didn't know about it! They filed it for your morning report.'

  'They? Who? Find out who took the message!'

  'I've done that already, Colonel. Officer Stoffel Vermaak. He came onto the switchboard on the eleven o'clock shift and didn't read his standing instructions until just before I called you.'

  'Put him on report, he's a boxer isn't he? Yes, that's right, a middle. Still, put him on report! Bladdy idiots like that don't belong in the police force! I'll be in in forty minutes. Call off the other road blocks. Jesus no! Don't do that! The car near Nelspruit could be a decoy. Call Nelspruit again, tell them to put a road block on the Havelock road, halfway up between Barberton and the Swaziland border. If they say it's not their district, tell them we've cleared it in Pretoria.' Geldenhuis changed the subject. 'Has Hymie Levy left Red?'

  'Yes, Colonel. We followed his Mercedes home about midnight. We have people in the front and back of his place and the car is still parked underneath the building.'

  'Jesus, how much does that mean? You had people front and back of Red and Peekay and the terrorist managed to walk out under your bladdy noses! What about the driver, what's his name, Hercules?'

  'We haven't seen him since he dropped the two of them off at Red at fourteen hundred hours yesterday.'

  'Check his home, I don't remember his surname. If he isn't home, bring him in when he gets in.'

  Sergeant Koekemoer was surprised, it wasn't like Jannie Geldenhuis to forget the surname of the Red chauffeur, Hercules. The polite colonel was so well versed in the three Red partners and every circumstance of their daily lives; forgetting the surname of the black man who drove them regularly was definitely not a good sign.

  Koekemoer worshipped Jannie Geldenhuis and was, perhaps, the only person in the police force who did. He was worried about him. Lately, Geldenhuis had complained occasionally of a headache and hadn't seemed quite as sharp. He hadn't been near the boxing ring, or even into the police gym since his acquittal. It was as though the anger in him, which these days always seemed at the point of boiling over, was clouding his judgement. Increasingly he'd lash out violently and several black prisoners had died at his hands before they'd confessed. Which wasn't like him at all. Geldenhuis came back on the line. 'One last thing. Make a note to call a guy named Cogsweel in Pretoria at eight o'clock. I want authority to talk to the army base commander at Komaatipoort. His number is in the code book in central security, I'll phone through now and give them my clearance number.' Geldenhuis slammed the receiver down.

  Peekay woke Tandia at half past three in the morning. She tried to sit up but discovered she'd been wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. The moon was still bright in the sky and there was as yet no sense of the coming morning. Peekay unwrapped her blankets. 'It's very cold, Tandy, put on your sweater when you dress.' Tandia realized with surprise that she was naked and clung to a blanket, pulling it up over her breasts as she sat up. Peekay laughed. 'Too late for that, darling. You are quite the most beautiful woman in the world anyway, you shouldn't be allowed to wear clothes!'

  'You're supposed to love me for my brains, Counsellor!' Peekay knelt down beside her and kissed her gently. 'But I do! Good morning, beloved Tandia. Your brains, body and spirit, all of you, I love with a deep passion.'

  Tandia couldn't quite believe she'd made love! Physically loving Peekay had played no part in her romancescape. Physical love wasn't an aspect of her life she cared to remember. With the exception of Gideon, her body had only ever been violated by a man. Now, inexplicably, all that had changed.

  'Peekay, last night was? We did…? I'm not still asleep?' Peekay kissed her again. 'No, but you've got to get up, we have to be gone in half an hour.' He rose, turned and walked over to the end of the stoep where Tandia was surprised to see the embers of a small fire. He returned moments later with a small billycan which smelled of onions. Tandia was ravenous, she hadn't eaten since the luncheon adjournment the previous day. 'No plates! Hercules remembered a spoon and a fork, two tin mugs, but no plates.'

  Tandia ate from the can, a mixture of bully beef, tomato and onions. She hated bully beef, but the concoction Peekay had prepared for her was delicious. Perhaps being in love makes you like bully beef, she thought. She ate half the contents of the can an
d handed it to Peekay.

  'No, please, finish it! I ate during the night, cold chicken. There's still some left, would you prefer it?' Tandia shook her head, getting stuck into the remaining bully beef with gusto. 'There's a small running stream behind the house, get dressed, you can wash and I'll put on water for coffee.' By the time Tandia returned from the stream the sky in the east was beginning to show the faintest indication of light, a narrow strip against the horizon, as though the night had developed a silver rind. Peekay handed her a mug of coffee, white and sweetened with condensed milk.

  Putting his arm around Tandia, he pointed to a star just above the horizon. 'See the big star on the horizon, that's the morning star. As a kid I would sometimes wake up just before dawn and frantically climb the path up the hill behind our house and sit on a big rock at the top and wait to see if I could see the exact moment when the morning star went out. But I never could. I'd watch and watch until my eyes started to water. Then always, when I couldn't stand it any more and blinked, when I looked again it was gone!' Peekay laughed softly, 'But it was back again the next day, squatting there just above the horizon and due east, always in the same spot waiting to disappear on me again. I used to think it knew all about me and was playing a game it was very good at and which it was determined I would never win.'

  'Peekay, do you think one day we can rebuild this house and you and I could live here in a South Africa where it isn't a crime for a black woman to be terribly in love with a white guy?'

  Peekay turned Tandia towards him and pulled her into his chest, almost spilling her coffee. 'If I didn't think that, Tandy, I don't think I'd want to live. I don't want to make our life in England. We are African, this is where the sweetness and the bitterness lies for us. This land has been sick for so long I sometimes think it will never recover, that the sickness is terminal. But I know it will. My nanny, Gideon's mother, used to say, "There is a season for sorrow and then it will pass." When it passes we'll come back and restore this house; like the beloved country it has solid foundations. It will be our house, the house for all Africa.' He kissed her again.