“Ah, there they are,” said Boubacar. “Behind us.”
I dragged myself back to look through the small window but saw only traffic weaving across the road.
“Two cars back. That yellow Bolt Safeguard security van.”
“I see them, Boubacar, but how can they help us?”
“It’s our last chance, Patson, and we’re taking it.”
9.45 AM
Sergeant Brandt turned off the main road and pulled over just before the palm-lined drive into the Blue Flamingo Hotel. I saw the yellow security van pass us by and turn into the hotel grounds. Another car, a small red hatchback taxi, followed close behind it.
“Brandt and Mashau are discussing how to hand us over,” whispered Boubacar. “If the wrong people see them, they will be in big trouble.”
We moved close to the hatch to listen.
“Let’s just leave them here,” Mashau said. “The cripple kid can’t go far.”
“And how do you suggest we get our money?” asked Brandt.
“He can leave an envelope at reception. I’ll pick it up, and you turn them over to him here on the street.”
“It’s too open,” said Sergeant Brandt. “We should have taken them to the military base.”
“Too late now. Phone him.”
“No, you stay here,” decided Brandt. “Let me go to the hotel, find him, get the money, and arrange for a better place to hand them over. Then he can follow us, and once we’ve dropped them off, we leave and our hands are clean.”
The van bounced as Brandt got out, slammed the door, and walked through the shade of a palm tree toward the hotel while making the call. Meanwhile, Mashau came around to the back, lit a cigarette, and checked up and down the road.
Boubacar was texting furiously. “Talk to him,” he whispered.
I hiked myself up to the rear window and knocked on it. “Can you give me some water, Mr. Mashau? It’s very hot in here,” I said, smiling.
Mashau glanced up at me.
“It’s true what I told you. My sister’s name is Grace. A man took her from our home in Marange and now he’s taking her to Cape Town. I have to go to a hospital, my leg is very sore. Please help me.”
Corporal Mashau took another drag on his cigarette and threw the butt to the ground.
“I’m sorry for your trouble, boy, but there’s nothing I can do,” he said, turning at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Corporal Mashau?” said a man in army fatigues coming around the side of the van.
“Yes,” answered Mashau, taken by surprise at this stranger addressing him so familiarly.
“Sergeant Brandt sent me for them. You have to wait five minutes and then pick him up outside the lobby. The commander will pay him and your business will be done.”
Mashau glanced inside at us, looked more closely at this man, and then up the winding road of the hotel grounds.
“Please, sir, do not give us to this man,” yelled Boubacar suddenly, beating on the van door. “He is CIO. He will torture and then kill us! Please, sir, I beg you. Don’t listen to him.”
“Shut up,” yelled Mashau as he quickly put the key into the padlock and opened the door. “Get out and shut up!”
Cool air swept inside the back of the van as Boubacar jumped out and turned back to help me out. “Act frightened,” he whispered.
I didn’t need to act; I was terrified. I shuffled through the door and climbed onto Boubacar’s back. I clung awkwardly to his neck, clutching my crutches and kitbag.
“Five minutes,” said the CIO officer. “Then you go to the hotel and pick up your sergeant. Understood?”
“I heard you the first time,” said Mashau, glancing anxiously up and down the road as the CIO man gripped Boubacar’s arm, dragging him forward.
“Get a move on, you two,” he ordered. “The commander has waited long enough.”
I gripped tightly to Boubacar’s neck as he walked around the bend in the hotel road to where the Bolt van was parked out of Mashau’s sight. Its driver was waiting for us and shouted, “I’ve got them now. Yes, sir. At once, sir.” He made even more noise slamming the empty van shut.
“Très bien, Regis,” Boubacar whispered, slapping the CIO man on his back as they ran toward the red hatchback parked behind a tall hedge. Regis tore off his fatigue jacket, threw it on the floor of the car, and jumped into the driver’s seat as Boubacar heaved me onto the backseat.
“Stay down,” he ordered, and wedged my crutches and his big body onto the floor before pulling the door shut. “What’s happening? What do you see, Regis?”
“Nothing yet,” came the answer from the front seat. “Here comes the sergeant. He’s almost back to Mashau. Stay down. He looks pleased with himself. And there goes Patrice in our van. So we only have to wait to see if they take the bait.”
I heard Brandt cursing Mashau, then the screech of their siren and the squeal of tires. Regis started the taxi and drove slowly back out onto the main road. The wailing of the police siren faded away in the opposite direction.
“It worked,” said Boubacar, looking out the back window. “They are following him. Bravo, Regis!”
Regis only chuckled. “It was a good plan, Boubacar. When they do catch up and stop Patrice they’ll find only an empty van, driven by a guard for Bolt Safeguard.”
I struggled to sit up. It was hard to believe that moments ago I had given up and now we were free. “And we’ll get out of Musina?” I asked, surprised at how quickly everything had changed.
“Yes, leaving Commander Jesus waiting for nothing at the Blue Flamingo,” Boubacar added.
“You are a lucky boy to be traveling with this man,” said Regis, grinning at me in his rearview mirror. “He is a hero among we Congolese—”
Boubacar cut him off. “We have wasted enough time already. We have to be at the Johannesburg train station no later than two thirty, Regis.”
“Ah, Boubacar, you know that is impossible. It will take us at least—”
“You will drive like the wind, Regis. We will be there before three o’clock.”
And I felt the engine surge.
12.02 PM
The landscape of South Africa flashed past my window: One-Stop petrol stations with jungle gyms and swings for children; gleaming fast-food shops alongside wide, double-lane pothole-free highways; cultivated fields dotted with tractors and crop sprayers with the wingspans of airplanes; luxury vehicles cruising past with white children staring out of closed-up windows; battered minibuses packed with people, pulling trailers piled high with furniture and luggage. Then came the walled suburbs with tall trees and fancy houses that offered only glimpses of their sapphire-blue swimming pools through iron gates. And on the faraway hills, smoke rose from shantytowns, their tin roofs glinting in the sun.
As fascinated as I was by this new country, I kept checking the time, willing the clock on my phone to go slower. In three hours the train would be pulling out of the station and heading for Cape Town. I sent Grace message after message about our progress along the N1 highway, through the towns of Mahoda, Louis Trichardt, and Polokwane, but she never responded. A sign flashed by—JOHANNESBURG 360 KM—and I leaned forward to check the speedometer. The needle hovered around the 130 mark.
“We’ll never make it, Boubacar. At this speed it will take us more than three hours,” I protested.
“Can’t you go any faster, Regis?” asked Boubacar.
But Regis only smiled and swore back at him in French. “As long as you have enough money for the speeding fines.”
Time collapsed into a feverish haze, punctuated by stabs from Stumpy. I checked my phone but the numbers on the screen no longer made any sense.
2.22 PM
I jerked awake. We had stopped. Traffic was rushing past. The front seats were empty. Disorientated, I opened the door.
“Don’t get out,” cursed Regis.
“What’s going on?”
“Flat tire,” said Boubacar. “Stay in the car. It’s
almost finished.”
Boubacar rattled a string of French words to Regis, who responded angrily.
“I can only go as fast as I can go,” he said, tightening the lug nuts, one after the other.
“Forget the hubcap,” said Boubacar, tossing it through my open window.
My phone buzzed with a message from Grace:
Thurs 4/17/08 2.15pm
@ JHB Park Station. Platform 17. Where r u?? What must I do? xxx
“Tell her we are almost there—”
“No, we are not,” snapped Regis. “We have at least another thirty minutes—”
“And that she must not get on that train,” Boubacar added, moving quickly to the driving seat. “I’m driving, Regis. Get in!”
Boubacar pulled out onto the busy highway and swung across the fast lane to a chorus of hooting from angry drivers. I sat rigid, focused only on the screen of my phone and how rapidly the digits progressed.
2.52 PM
Boubacar pulled up to the front entrance of the train station, jumped out, and ran down the escalators two steps at a time.
“I’ll park the car,” shouted Regis as I stumbled out and hooked my crutches into my arms, looking around for an elevator. As I descended I gasped at the scale of the station: The Johannesburg Park train station was the size of two football fields, with huge metal rafters stretching out above forty-five platforms. The elevator doors opened on hundreds of people moving in every direction. I tried to decipher the signs that directed travelers to the different platforms but it was confusing and I had no idea where to go.
“Please, I have to go to Platform Seventeen. Which way?” I asked a woman passing by.
“You don’t look very well, boy—” she said, pointing off to the left.
I threaded my way through the crowds as quickly as I could, using my crutch to clear my passage. I was covered in sweat, and when I looked up I was only at Platform 9.
2.58 PM
I crutched past Platform 15, when I heard the announcement. “The three o’clock train for Cape Town. Departing on Platform Seventeen. Departing now for Cape Town. Platform Seventeen. All aboard.” There was still time. I swung the crutches forward, taking bigger and bigger strides, but the next platform had no train beside it. Platform 16. One more to go, and then there was the train, its engines already humming. Boubacar must have made it before me. He must be on board, I thought, as the train slid away from the platform, on its way out of the terminal.
3.01 PM
“No, no,” I yelled.
Then I saw Boubacar farther down the platform, running alongside the train as it picked up speed.
“Get on board,” I shouted, knowing deep down that he couldn’t hear me.
Boubacar glanced back toward me and stopped running. The three o’clock train had left on time and was moving farther and farther away from both of us.
3.03 PM
I fumbled for the phone buzzing in my pocket:
Thurs 4/17/08 3.02pm
I’m on train. I saw Boubacar!!!
My father once told me, when the world was still a safe place of bedtime stories, soft baby sisters, and gentle mothers, that before people arose from the Pool of Life, the Great Spirit created the first goddess in human form. This goddess, the Great Mother Mai, was created so that she could make the stars, the sun, and the earth, he had explained as I sat at his feet, a small boy, eager for his stories.
“When she finished her task, the Great Mother Mai was lonely,” my father said in his deep, serious voice. “And she wept so many tears that the stars trembled and fell from the sky.”
“But how can stars fall from the sky, Baba?” I asked, imagining a black void in the heavens.
“Oh, but they can, Patson, and when they do they can cause great damage,” my father replied. “So the Great Spirit commanded the goddess to stop her tears of loneliness, but she replied that she could not stop crying until she had a companion to comfort her. ‘Who can I talk to in my lonely hours?’ she asked the Great Spirit. ‘I have only the barren plains, the silent mountains, and the stupid stars that twinkle foolishly at me,’ she wailed. The Great Spirit took pity on Mai and agreed to grant her wish for a companion. ‘But what manner of companion will you send me?’ she asked. The Great Spirit replied that as she was a female her companion shall be her opposite, and thus be a male. Well, Mai was so happy with this news she grew four immense breasts, each with a sharp pointed nipple of emerald green—”
“Joseph, stop embroidering!” My mother laughed, holding Grace asleep in her arms. “Patson, don’t listen to your father. Mai did not grow four breasts, as much as your father might like that to be true.”
Like all good storytellers, my father paused to pour his tea, and debate the issue at length with my mother, while I waited at his feet ever so still. When he continued, it wasn’t about breasts or nipples but rather about how curious Mai was about the companion promised to her by the Great Spirit.
“Well, being the only woman on earth, the Great Mother Mai was vain and wanted to know if her mysterious companion would be as beautiful as she was. The Great Spirit thought for a while and then said, ‘In the boundless reaches of infinity nothing is ugly—nothing is beautiful.’”
I threw myself backward on the floor, and my father laughed at my puzzled expression. “That doesn’t make sense, Baba.”
“Of course it does, Patson. Remember, all that is created is equal in the eyes of the Great Spirit,” he explained. “There is nothing ugly or beautiful. All that the Great Spirit created is good. Do you understand?”
I nodded, in part just to keep the story going, and sat up again.
“Well, the Great Spirit told her that the male would bring her contentment and that together they would bring forth life upon earth,” he continued. “‘But what will he look like?’ Mai asked a second time. ‘Will he be as lovely as I?’ But the Great Spirit only insisted that she had to be patient.
“Oh, how the Great Mother Mai burned with curiosity, wondering what kind of contentment her companion would bring, and wishing, above all else, that he be as beautiful as she. And so she waited impatiently for the first rays of light,” my father said, smiling over at my mother gently shaking her head at him. “As you know, Patson, women can be very impatient with men—”
“Only because men can be so difficult,” retorted my mother.
“When Mai thought she could wait no longer, she heard an awful voice call out hoarsely to her. ‘Come, oh, my mate, I await thee here,’” my father said in a low, gravelly voice, which made me shiver.
Fever chills dragged me back into the never-ending humming of the taxi’s tires on tar, and the bright lights, rattle, and rush of a passing truck. Then foreign words from splintered conversations broke into the story and I heard my name over and over again.
“Patson? Patson, are you all right?”
“Let him sleep, Regis.”
“The kid looks bad.”
“But he is strong. Two more hours to Bloemfontein. There we fill up, have something to eat, and your shift begins.”
“Relax, Boubacar, there is still time. We will be in Cape Town well before the train.”
Their words melted into the droning of the engine and I willed my father’s voice to return.
“She was so excited, Patson, that with a cry of joy she stretched out her arms to welcome her companion. Then, in a thundering cloud of dust, boulders began to move from beneath the mountainside, and hungry limbs reached out of the ground for her lithe, beautiful form. At first she called to him, ‘My mate! My mate, I am here,’ but then she grew silent seeing that the limbs that reached for her were not arms anything like her own.”
“What was it, Baba? What came out of the mountain?”
“Must you excite the boy so just before he goes to bed, Joseph?” chided my mother, but I knew she listened as eagerly as I did.
“Well now, what do you think it might be, Patson?”
“I don’t know, Baba, tell me.”
>
“They were the arms of a creeping vine, whose bark was studded with jagged pieces of granite and diamonds. Those branches had sprung from the top of the biggest baobab tree that had ever grown on earth. And from the middle of the monstrous trunk emerged dozens of bulging, bloodshot eyes, burning with hunger for Mai—”
“Easy, Joseph,” warned my mother.
“Beneath the eyes a wicked mouth grinned, and a long green tongue, like the hide of a crocodile, licked its granite lips. ‘Come, my beloved, come to me!’” said my father in that same low voice. “Then the tree roared, and its vines drew Mai close. Its diamond-studded mouth bruised her silvery lips with a savage kiss. ‘I am the Tree of Life, thy mate, and I desire thee!’”
I screamed in disgust, but my mother laughed. “Joseph, stop it. He’ll wake up Grace.”
But my father’s story was in full flight, and his voice took on the panicked, breathy tones of the goddess. “‘No,’ cried Mai, ‘you are not my mate. You are an ugly, monstrous thing, release me!’ But the tree laughed and drew her ever closer. ‘You are my heart’s desire. I did not catch you only to release you,’ he said as more branches held her even tighter to him, until the baobab towered over her and—”
“Okay, Joseph, that’s enough,” interrupted my mother. “I think Patson knows what happened next.”
I looked from my father’s twinkling eyes to the blush on my mother’s cheeks. “I know, I know! They made jiggy-jiggy,” I said proudly, and much to the delight of my parents.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, Patson, they did.” He laughed. “But when the tree finally released Mai, she fled across the plains and complained bitterly to the Great Spirit about the horrible mate he had given her. ‘You have had your wish—now what more do you want?’ was his reply.”
My mother shook her head, settled Grace on a blanket, and picked up the story, this time cradling me in her arms. She told me how the terrified goddess fled into a valley to get away from the hideous tree, but no matter how far or how fast she fled, the Tree of Life pursued her.
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