The Quarry

by Damon Galgut

  His hands were cuffed behind him. He walked back slowly with the policeman holding his arms. His cassock ballooned around him. It had holes burned in it from when he had jumped through the fire. When they got back Captain Mong was standing there, waiting. He looked bored. He glanced at Valentine and turned away, sucking on his moustache.

  The other policemen came back. They were panting. Small wasn’t with them.

  ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘Ek weet nie, Kaptein. He got away.’

  ‘Where’s he?’ the Captain said to Valentine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Valentine said.

  ‘We’ll get him later. Let’s take this one down to the station.’

  The plaza wasn’t far. They made him walk. Two of them stayed behind to go through the house and Captain Mong came walking behind him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

  ‘Valentine.’

  ‘Valentine who?’

  ‘Valentine April.’

  ‘Valentine April,’ Captain Mong said.

  ‘What do you want with me, Captain?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Captain Mong said. ‘Maybe you stole some things out of a car.’

  ‘I don’t steal,’ said Valentine.

  ‘Nice dress,’ Captain Mong said.

  They came to the police-station. Inside there was a cell made out of steel with a concrete floor. They locked Valentine in it. There was a bed against one wall and a high barred window and a toilet in the corner with no seat. The cell was painted green and over the years people had scratched their names into it and the dates when they had been there.

  Then Valentine was alone.

  Then Captain Mong came back. He was carrying the clothes that the minister had been wearing, with the bloodstains on them.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘What’s this?’

  Valentine looked at the blood. ‘I don’t know, Captain,’ he said.

  Then Valentine was alone again for the rest of the night. He slept for a few hours on the bed, then got up and walked around. There was a light on in the corridor that shone into the cell. He shat and stood leaning against the door for a while and went back to bed and slept again. When he woke up it was day already and a shaft of sunlight was coming in through the window. The shaft moved slowly along as time went by and he could hear the sounds of voices coming in from the plaza outside. He could hear feet walking past.

  16

  Captain Mong outside the door in the sunlight. Smoking a cigarette with his eyes slitted, one hand hooked into his belt. When the minister came to the door he tossed a black bundle to him and said from the corner of his mouth:

  ‘That it?’

  The minister unfolded the cassock. He held it up, looking at it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  He folded the cassock over his arm and followed the policeman across the plaza. They went in past the sandbags and the red motorbike and down a passage round a corner to a door. The door had bars in it that cut the world into vertical strips and in the square room on the far side was a man, lying on the bed.

  Captain Mong kicked the door with his boot. ‘Kom hier, doos,’ he said.

  Valentine came to the door.

  ‘That him?’ Captain Mong said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ag, give me a cigarette, Captain.’

  The Captain gave him a cigarette. He lit it for him through the bars.

  ‘Remember this man?’ he said.

  ‘What man?’ Valentine said.

  ‘This one.’

  The two men looked at each other through the intervening iron. The face of one was scarified with scars and the face of the other was smooth.

  ‘I did nothing,’ Valentine said.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘A few clothes. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Come,’ Captain Mong said.

  The minister turned and walked after the policeman. Valentine called down the passage.

  ‘I saw the flower,’ he said.

  In Captain Mong’s office the goldfish was swimming in its bowl. There was a newspaper open on the desk with a crossword half finished in it. There was a large pile of clothes on the floor.

  ‘Those them?’ Captain Mong said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can have them back. Just sign this form for me.’

  ‘How did you find him?’

  The policeman pulled his ear. ‘I hear things,’ he said. ‘I know things.’

  The minister signed the form. He knelt down by the clothes and started arranging them neatly. There was a silence for a while, then he said:

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘To him.’

  The policeman shrugged. ‘He stays here. There’s a circuit court that comes every few months. He can wait till the next one.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  There were too many clothes to be carried across in one trip. The policeman made no offer to help him. The man took an armload of clothes and went out and across the plaza to the house. When he came back the Captain was sitting behind the desk, staring at the crossword. He glanced up idly.

  ‘Those yours?’ he said.

  He was pointing to the blood-stained clothes that the minister had been wearing.

  The man looked at them. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ the Captain said. ‘They weren’t with your things. I just thought.’

  He went on with his crossword.

  The man made another trip. Out of the station, across the plaza to the house. When he came back the Captain had filled in two words in the puzzle. He said, ‘Do I know you?’

  He stopped. ‘What do you mean?’

  The Captain looked up. ‘Do I know you? From before you came here.’

  ‘No,’ the man said.

  ‘Oh.’ The Captain looked down. ‘It feels like I saw you before.’

  He took another armload of clothes. He went and came back again. He gathered up the last load and was about to go out. The Captain tapped his teeth with a pencil.

  ‘“The evil leader is after flesh,”’ he said, ‘“and there’s no escape.”’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Fate,’ said the man.

  He went out.

  17

  Captain Mong finished the crossword. He folded up the paper and threw it into the bin behind him. Then he sat for a time at his desk staring ahead at nothing, sucking on his moustache.

  It was a hot, clear day. Sunlight slanted into the office in long transverse beams and motes of dust were visible going past. He got up. He went to the cupboard that stood against one wall and opened it. He took out a box and took from it a pinch of colourless flakes which he sprinkled on the water in the bowl. The goldfish rose hungrily to eat.

  He put away the fish-food and from the same cupboard he removed a black plastic bag with something wadded inside it. He held it for a moment meditatively. Then he closed the cupboard and went out of the office, closing that door behind him. He was a meticulous man.

  On the way he leaned into a room and gave a peremptory grunt. Two black policemen came out and followed him. Their uniforms and expressions were identical. All three of them went down the passage to the cell. Captain Mong unlocked it and they went inside and closed that door behind them too.

  Valentine stood up when he saw them. He had been lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, looking up at the roof. His shoes were on the floor. He moved away to a corner, his eyes fixed on the three men and an expression on his face of increasing unease, as if a thought was troubling his mind.

  ‘I think…’ he said. ‘I think…’

  But he didn’t finish.

  ‘Valentine April,’ said the Captain. His tone was amused and remote.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. The two black policemen stayed standing, formal and correct, on either side of the door. The light that came in throu
gh the window was diffused by the grid of metal and fell in daubs and slivers on the floor, the walls.

  ‘It’s funny in here,’ said the Captain. ‘It’s funny to be in this room.’

  Valentine said nothing.

  ‘The world doesn’t look normal from in here. When you try to look out, the bars, they make things look funny.’

  Valentine was in the corner now, his back pressed to the wall.

  ‘You don’t want to be in here.’

  ‘No,’ Valentine said.

  ‘Me also, I don’t want you in here. I have to watch you, give you food. You give me trouble.’

  Valentine didn’t move. Only his eyes were blinking.

  ‘Also you tell me lies. You tell me you’re not a thief. You say you don’t know where the blood on your clothes came from. You say you don’t know where your brother is hiding.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Valentine said, his voice rising shrilly now. ‘But I don’t know.’

  ‘Valentine April,’ said the Captain musingly. ‘Valentine, Valentine April.’

  He was shaking his head. Smiling tenderly as an uncle, he opened the black plastic bag that he had taken from his cupboard. He took out a handful of leaves and ran his fingers gently through them. They released a scent that was vivid and distinct in the room. He looked into Valentine’s eyes.

  ‘And this, Valentine. And this.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Valentine said.

  ‘Maybe you like this room. Maybe you want to stay in this room.’

  ‘No,’ Valentine said.

  ‘Where do you grow this?’

  ‘I don’t grow it.’

  ‘It was picked two, three days ago.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Where does it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Captain Mong turned to the policemen. He made a gesture. One of the men went out. The other one waited at the door, rolling up his sleeves.

  Captain Mong glanced around idly. He had that amused, disdainful look again. ‘Have you written your name on the wall yet?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you must. It’s a tradition.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘He’ll come back.’

  The policeman came in. He had an assortment of things that he threw down on the floor. It was hard to make them out but there was what appeared to be a tube and a sack of some rubbery material. There was something made out of metal.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Captain Mong turned at the door. ‘If you remember where your garden is, maybe I’ll come back.’

  ‘But I –’ Valentine said.

  Captain Mong went out and back to his office. He got a rag and a tin of polish and went out again and into the plaza. The sentry greeted him and he called back cheerily. The red motorbike stood beyond the wall of sandbags. It was large and fat and dramatic. He took off his shirt and set to work with the rag, rubbing the polish into the planes of steel until his face was uncovered in them. His back, his shoulders hurt.

  Later his sister came to visit. She drove up in her yellow Triumph and parked. They sat in the sun on the rampart of sandbags and drank beer which she had brought with her. Her name was Miems. She was married to the minister of the white church in the town and she was fond of her brother.

  She looked across the plaza to the church. ‘They’ve got a new minister,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He stopped to ask me the way.’

  ‘Oh, ja,’ he said. ‘This beer is warm.’

  She kissed him goodbye. ‘Come and visit,’ she said.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Liefie,’ she called. ‘Kom, liefie.’

  She went nowhere without her white dog.

  He stood at the edge of the plaza and waved as her car disappeared. Then there was only dust and the plaza was empty and immense. His motorbike stood tilted to one side, giving off light like a sun. Behind his eyes he felt the shimmer of a headache. He started to put on his shirt.

  ‘Captain!’

  He turned. It was one of the policemen he had left in the cell, his broad face shiny with sweat. He was smiling. As he looked at him Captain Mong tasted something in his mouth that had a faintly sourish flavour to it.

  ‘He remembered.’

  18

  Small spent the night lying face-down in a ditch. He emerged when it was light again, his arms wrapped around himself, trembling. He wandered through the streets in which other people were also afoot, looking for something that might console him. He went near to the house once but there was a policeman sittng on the back step smoking and he walked hastily away.

  Later he ran into Harry. Harry worked with them sometimes. He was a large man with a black eye-patch and fingers that were thickened with rings. He had heard the news, he told Small. ‘Everybody heard.’

  ‘Where’s Valentine?’ Small said.

  ‘They got him.’

  ‘The boere?’

  ‘Ja. They took him down to the station.’

  Small sat down on the kerb to consider this news. He held his head in his hands.

  They were at the side of a road. The road was at the edge of the township. Behind them there were houses in geometrical rows and before them the veld stretched away. The sun came vertically down.

  ‘Wat moet ons nou maak?’

  Harry smirked. ‘Ek weet nie wat jy moet maak nie. Me, I’m not doing anything.’

  Small started to cry. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  ‘Jy’s vol blare.’

  He picked at the leaves on his shirt. He stopped crying and Harry sat down next to him. They stared out over the grass.

  ‘Is it because of the car?’

  ‘I think it is.’

  They sat in the sun. Time passed.

  ‘What about the boom?’ said Harry.

  ‘In the house?’

  ‘No, man. The other place.’

  Small thought.

  ‘Do you think he will tell them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why will he tell them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  A wagon came past in the road. A horse was in the traces, its head down. An old man sat on the wagon with a frayed whip in his hand. He looked at them as he went past. There was dust.

  ‘It’s hot,’ Small said.

  ‘Kom ons gaan kry ’n drankie.’

  They went to a room nearby. It was cool inside and there were wooden tables and faded prints on the wall. They drank beer. Harry paid.

  ‘Do you think he will say about the dagga?’

  ‘Ek weet nie. What do you think?’

  ‘Why will he say?’

  Harry lifted one fist significantly and brought it down on the table. Both of them looked at the fist.

  ‘No,’ Small said.

  They drank more.

  ‘Maybe we must go there.’

  Harry smirked again. ‘And do what?’

  ‘Pull it up. Throw it away.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ Harry said.

  Small set out for the quarry in the mid-afternoon. His shadow stretched out in front of him. He had never gone there in daylight before and he kept looking furtively behind him. But nobody else was around and the landscape lay passive in the sun. Even the road was untravelled.

  At this hour there was still light in the quarry. One side of it was in shadow but across the rock face on the other side the sun burned yellow and steady and the ground was hot to the touch. He went down by the usual path and at first he walked in the light but by the time he had descended halfway he was overtaken by shadow and it was blue and cool at the bottom. The gnarled trees crouched in their attitudes of stasis and the rocks lay inert and watchful.

  Small spoke to himself and answered.

  ‘What smells like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Can’t you smell something?’

  ‘No, man. Let’s hurry.’

  H
e went through the defile to the bank of weeds. The plants were green and prolific. He knelt down and started uprooting them in handfuls, undoing the work that they’d done. He threw them down in a pile on the ground that gradually mounted and swelled.

  ‘Will Valentine mind?’ he said to himself.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He’ll be proud.’

  Then the bank was clear. The plants lay in a matted mass, wilting slowly in the air. He stood there a moment looking down at the bare soil, panting and sweating from his labour. His hands were dirty with earth.

  ‘What are we going to put them in?’

  ‘We can’t leave them here.’

  ‘Isn’t there a bag or a packet or something?’

  ‘Look around. Maybe there’s something lying around.’

  Small went back through the defile into the garden on the other side. The vine grew up along the cliff-face with its burden of intermittent flowers. They gave off a scent. But there was another smell on the air that mingled with the scent of the flowers and it was redolent of decay and putrefaction and it was sourceless, this smell. He walked around a little. Then he came to the hole.

  He stood at the edge, looking down. There was a pyramid of rocks. Nothing else could be seen but there was a stench on the air and flies were thickly clustered like grapes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  He stood there. The shadow had reached the top of the quarry and the sky was cooling now.

  Small climbed down into the hole. He stood there, helpless and looking. Then he reached out and took a stone from the pile and dropped it down heavily behind him.

  ‘What is it?’ Small said.

  ‘I don’t know what it is.’

  Flies rose droning around him and the miasma of corruption was sweet. Small stood rigid, his body poised to run while he worked. He lifted the stones and dropped them. In time the truth was uncovered.

  ‘Jissus. No. No. Jissus.’

  He got out of the hole. He was sweating and his hands were shaking. He stood there, staring down. Then he got back into the hole and continued with what he was doing. He picked up the rocks and he dropped them.