‘You want to die, eh?’ I said to the boy, trying to sound like Lucky did that day, but my voice was not as confident. ‘Do you want to die?’ I shouted at him.
It looked as if he considered attacking me. If he did, I’d have to shoot him. Our eyes met. The knife clattered on the stones. The boy’s lips moved, but no words came. He backed away and stumbled over the rubbish in the street. His friend abandoned him, racing down the alley without looking back. The tall boy could not regain his balance. He could not take his eyes from the gun in my hand. I stepped forward to close the space between us, still pointing the gun. This was what it felt like, not to be afraid. The boy slipped on the paving, wet with water that had run down from the top of the alley. He covered his face with his arms.
‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.’
He was on his knees now, crawling away, and then, after one more glance at me, he scrambled to his feet and ran, ducking and swerving, his arms swinging wildly. Already he was halfway down the alley. I aimed at his back, still mad, wanting to shoot him. My hand was shaking. I couldn’t pull the trigger. I raised the gun into the air and fired.
Nothing happened. Just click, click, click. There were no bullets in the gun.
The boy had made it to the bottom of the alley and disappeared round the corner. I still gripped the gun, feeling cold. Perhaps I had gone deaf – everything was silent around me. It didn’t feel as if this could be real. It took a long time before I heard the city again and when I looked back to the top end of the alley there were people standing there, watching me. I shoved the pistol back into my trousers. I should have known that first day when I walked into Lucky’s shack that no good could come from a friendship started over the barrel of a gun. I walked towards the top end of the alley. The people made off quickly. My legs felt shaky. Somewhere over the city I heard the sound of thunder and then, while I stood there, the storm broke above me.
I had been walking for hours, while the rain drenched me and the lightning flashed over the city. I passed people without seeing them until I came to a part of Newtown that had not been renovated. No parks and squares with cafes and sculptures and wall paintings. Here, the city was falling apart. Shacks were built in between abandoned buildings. An open plot of land between two tower blocks was used as a rubbish heap and two tramps were picking through it. Down the street a burnt-out car stood on bricks, no wheels, no windows.
A woman sat on an upturned paint drum with her back against the faded blue wall of a shop with boarded windows. She sat with her hands folded on her lap and her ankles crossed, staring ahead of her. I didn’t notice her clothes or her shoes. I noticed her eyes and in them I saw a lifetime of worries and pain and fleeting pleasures. There were good times and bad times in every person’s life. To most people more of the bad times were just around the corner. It was hard to make a living in this city. On the ground, by the woman’s feet, were a bundle of clothes and a bag of potatoes. There were many people like her, people with big problems and no place to go. I went home. Grace was waiting for me.
‘Your garden looks well,’ she said. ‘You have done a good job. This year we shall have plenty of pumpkins. I see you have planted gem squash too.’
They were Grace’s favourite. She cooked them until they were soft, when she would cut them in half and scoop out the seeds and add butter, sugar and cinnamon. That was the best way to eat gem squash. Grace talked about the garden and about the richness of the soil in this country. I sat down at the table listening to her voice. She had brewed some of her good coffee and filled my mug. Her eyes were like black pools of water, deep and soft and alive. Not like the Nigerian’s stony eyes, or Hope’s filled with grief. How did she know I would come home hurting?
I stayed up talking to Grace for some time. We talked about family. Grace had received a letter from her old school friend, the matron at the hospital in Ladysmith. Her friend had asked around and had found someone who knew my uncle. He lived in Phuthaditjhaba, in Quaqua.
‘That is good news,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow I shall write a letter to your uncle,’ she said. ‘You must write as well. We shall send the letters in the same envelope.’
I nodded, and my thoughts went back to Lucky, to his schemes.
‘What would you do with a million rand, Grace?’
‘A million rand?’ she asked. ‘I would buy new school clothes for the children.’
I laughed. ‘And what else?’
‘A minibus, to take the children on trips. To the zoo, to the science museum.’
‘If you park a minibus anywhere in the city it will be stolen within five minutes.’
‘That is true,’ she said. ‘So I would rent a minibus for the day and take the children to the zoo.’ She smiled. ‘If I had a million rand, Siphiwe, I’d use some of the money to send you to technikon to learn about gardening. There are excellent courses. I would use the money to pay for Mantu’s computer course. They are expensive, those courses. Msizi and Elizabeth must go to university. A million rand should be enough.’
And there was a safe in a house in Jeppe with a million rand in. Drug money.
‘Msizi does not want to go to university,’ I said. ‘He wants to become a soccer player.’
‘Ha,’ Grace said. ‘Silly boy.’
We said goodnight and went to bed.
Grace had managed to find my uncle’s address. It was good to know that I had family. I would write a letter to my uncle tomorrow saying that I am Siphiwe Modise, the son of his sister Maria, brother of Sibusiso. I was alive and living in Johannesburg.
I lay down on my bed. How easy to say, tomorrow. Tomorrow we shall meet, talk, love. I didn’t know how the Nigerian had found Lucky’s hiding place. Perhaps one of Lucky’s girlfriends had thought she could use two hundred rand. It didn’t matter now. Lucky was dead. We would not meet to discuss his plans to get rich quick and I would not get the chance to dissuade him. It was 12 October. A date I would remember. It was the day I found Lucky’s body and the day I pointed a gun at a boy, wanting to shoot him.
That night I lay awake wondering about many things. About the day I’d sat outside with Msizi eating our sandwiches. He had asked me if we were good people. I didn’t give him an answer then, because I wasn’t sure. Who were the good people? Grace was one. Dr van der Sandt too. Moruti and the bishop at the Methodist church who helped people from all over – the one who hid the Zimbabweans, because sometimes people wanted to kill them. I felt sorry for these Zimbabweans. I knew what it was like to be targeted by a crowd of angry people. I knew what it felt like to run for your life.
It was all too easy to kill someone. All you needed was a gun, then you pulled the trigger. Without bullets nothing would happen, but the person on the other end of the gun wouldn’t know that. That person would assume that the gun was loaded, because what kind of a man would carry a gun without any bullets in? A man like Lucky Mosweu. What was the use of a gun without bullets? What was the use of new clothes when you were dead? Why, Lucky Mosweu, did you not run away when I told you to?
I pulled the pillow in under my head. I could make out Mantu’s shape on his bed, his head covered with the blanket, and his feet out of the sheets, the way he always slept.
At that moment, I felt so much older than him. I felt as if I had lived a long time and seen many things. What was the difference between a bad man and a good one? One person was a murderer, the other not, just because there were no bullets in the gun. Perhaps it was not that simple, but I knew, when I stood there in the alley, I had wanted to kill that boy. I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. It wasn’t because I was a good person. It was because I was a coward.
I recalled how I felt when I had pointed the gun at that boy. There were many people who felt that way, who, one day, looked around them and decided: I’ve had enough.
The thunderstorm had moved west, in the direction of Soweto. From my bed I could see through the gap between the curtains that the clouds had cleared completely. I
couldn’t see the stars because of the city’s lights. I knew that the cycle of the moon had a powerful effect on the earth and the sea. I had learned that in school. But when you looked at the moon, you did not see its power. It was like that with many things in life – things you couldn’t see. It reminded me of my brother and the day he died, about the people in the crowd, going mad because two boys were caught stealing corn.
It was like a fire, someone being careless with a candle. At first the flames would lick at the bed, the curtains, then they would devour the house and the wind would carry the sparks to the next house and the next, until the whole township was burning. Once you’d set that fire among the shacks, there was no stopping it, and when it had burned itself out, it left behind only smoke and ash. That was how it was with this anger that was running over our land, eating up its people without mercy. But when I looked at Msizi, I saw no sign of the flames in his eyes. Grace was right: there was hope.
The next morning I was up early, while it was still dark. I went to the kitchen to make coffee, the cheap coffee from the cupboard, not Grace’s coffee from the fridge. I put two spoons of sugar in – I liked sweet coffee – and sat at the table waiting for the sun to show itself over the roofs of the houses and the flats and the skyscrapers.
Every day started exactly like the one before. Some mornings would be cold and frosty, some warm, but that was just the way the seasons changed. As for the day itself, it was just another day. There was no way to tell, when you started a day, whether it would be your last. You didn’t know what would cross your path when you stepped out of your shack. Neither would a rich man know when he pulled out of his garage in his new car. It was the same for everyone and death, it seemed, was good at taking people by surprise. I believed that was how it had been with Lucky. The Nigerian must have sneaked up on him. When my brother died he had known only minutes before what was about to happen. He had known when he’d seen the railway line. I recalled what Adrian had said about my brother, that he was a hero, that it was an extraordinary thing, saving a man’s life. That was true. My brother had given me this extraordinary gift. This life. I’d be a fool to throw it away.
After I finished my coffee, I took Lucky’s gun, wrapped it in newspaper and put it inside an empty coffee can I got from the kitchen. I buried the can in the corner where I’d planted the beans. I would not be a fool, but neither would I forget what had happened to Lucky. Today, I’d phone Letswe and tell him where the Nigerian’s safe house was. I’d give him the map, let him deal with them. I’d like to see Obembe waving his knife about when Letswe stood before him with his RPG-7.
I looked up and was alarmed to see Msizi standing at the corner of the house, wearing only his pyjama bottoms. I worried he might have seen me bury the gun.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked me.
‘Working in the garden,’ I said. ‘Why are you up so early?’
‘I can’t sleep any more,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘You are always hungry, Msizi. You are like a caterpillar.’
He grinned and rubbed his belly. After I washed my hands, I took him to the kitchen and gave him a slice of bread with strawberry jam and a glass of milk. I got myself a slice too. Grace wouldn’t mind. We went to sit outside, our backs against the wall, eating in silence while the rays of the sun crept over the wall and touched the corner of the garden where the pumpkins grew.
30
LUCILLE HAD BEEN very quiet, brooding over something, but when Letswe asked her what she shook her head and looked sad. He put the paper aside – still had the sports page to read, but that could wait.
‘What’s the matter, baby?’ he asked, reaching for her, pulling her onto his lap.
‘It is the dream,’ she said, resting her head against his shoulder. ‘That goat. It still worries me.’
‘You need not worry,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her. ‘Let me tell you why. The Nigerian I am after, Sylvester Abaju, he is the goat. He is the man your dream refers to. He wears a white suit every day, white as the goat of your dream. He’s as good as dead. I know where to find him. I am getting men together. We will take him out this week.’
‘What about the bank?’
‘Soon.’
‘What bank will you hit?’ she asked.
‘I’ve not made up my mind yet. Stop worrying.’
Monday morning, before sunrise, Lucille stirred next to him. He was barely awake, but he knew she was watching him. She would be lying there staring at him, she always did that. Now he felt her move closer, he felt her breath against his skin. He pretended to be asleep but did not fool her.
‘You talked in your sleep, my lover,’ Lucille whispered in his ear. He rolled over on his side and pushed himself up on his elbow.
‘What did I say?’
‘You said you will buy your woman some lovely perfume and a gold necklace.’
‘I said that?’
She winked at him.
‘Well, a promise is a promise. I shall go to the bank today and withdraw some money to buy you a present.’
‘Be careful,’ she said.
He reached for her and kissed her on the mouth. ‘Baby, I’m always careful.’ He threw the sheets to the floor and got up, stretched his arms above his head and searched for his underpants.
‘But I worry about you,’ Lucille said. ‘Why don’t you leave the bank? You have enough money.’
‘No, that money is not enough. I want to buy shebeens. I want to start a chain. Lucille’s Beauty Parlours. McCarthy’s Shebeens. I need a lot of money for I will have to deal with the competition. I want none of these drug people around my businesses.’
‘Shebeens?’ She was sitting up now, looking at him with shocked eyes.
‘Yebo.’
She frowned at him. ‘I do not want drunken men anywhere near my house, McCarthy. I had enough of drunks with my daddy’s drinking.’
‘You worry too much, woman. Let me run my business and you run yours.’ He blew her a kiss. ‘Where are my pants?’
‘In the laundry basket. There are clean ones in the drawer.’ She lay down again, pulled the pillow in under her head and closed her eyes.
Progress arrived at Letswe’s house at nine. He hoped to see Lucille, but noticed at once that her car was not in the garage. He went to the front door and rang the bell. Thabo opened the door.
‘You are late,’ Thabo said.
‘Traffic.’
Thabo motioned with his head. ‘He’s in there, waiting.’
The curtains were drawn. Dark green, heavy curtains printed with a gold-leaf pattern that reminded Progress of the day he went to Oriental Plaza with Lucille. Curtain shopping. He had to swallow hard, had to force his mind away from that day, from Lucille’s body pressing against his. Letswe was on the phone. He waved Progress in. Progress sat down on a straight-backed chair. Letswe ended the call.
‘Any news?’ Letswe asked.
‘I couldn’t find the Nigerian’s house. I did not want to ask too openly, but none of my contacts know anything about it. That Modise boy may be wrong.’
‘He’s not wrong,’ Letswe said. ‘He’s smart, that boy. He phoned me this morning, gave me the address. And he’s got a map of the house, inside and out, security cameras, dog, lookouts on the corner. All sorted.’ He turned his head. ‘Is that Lucille’s car?’
Progress went over to the window, his heart beating faster. Lucille’s RAV4 pulled up in front of the house.
‘Yes.’
‘Go open the gate for her,’ Letswe said. His phone rang again.
Progress crossed the little patch of lawn and stepped over the flower bed where Lucille had planted daisies. Siphiwe Modise was trying to get in with Letswe, trying to make him, Progress, look bad. He lifted the latch of the gate and pulled it open. Lucille drove into the garage. Progress closed the gate again and secured the latch. He scanned both sides of the street. All clear. They had lookouts at both ends of the street anyway.
‘Jackson,
come and help me with the bags,’ Lucille called from the garage.
Hearing her say his new name, just the sound of her voice, made him feel better, made him forget all about Modise and what he’d like to do to him. He’d not take his place with Letswe. He was weak. Just an informant.
Lucille had been out buying groceries. She’d bought three big pumpkins, carrots and a bag of potatoes which he lifted onto his shoulder.
‘Where is McCarthy?’ she asked.
‘On the phone.’
‘Progress,’ she whispered next to him. ‘You must do something for me.’ She looked over her shoulder to the door. ‘You must let me know what bank McCarthy is going to rob.’
‘OK.’
‘And when,’ she said. ‘I need to know when. And you must be careful.’
‘Why? What are you going to do?’
‘It’s best you don’t know.’ She flashed her beautiful smile over his shoulder. ‘My lover,’ she said. ‘I shall go bankrupt. That William will eat us out of house and home.’
Letswe laughed. ‘Baby, you can forget about going bankrupt. Soon I shall have more money than you can count. We shall roll in the money.’
Progress put the potatoes in the kitchen and went back for the pumpkins. Not once did he look at Lucille. It didn’t take much for Letswe to become suspicious. He wished he knew what Lucille was planning. He had to find out about the bank.
Later, when he was alone with David, he spoke to him, warning him to keep his eyes open. ‘Something’s going down and we must be ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘Ready, David, just ready. You and I, we are a team.’
‘You are full of shit, Progress Zebele. Yesterday you said you are Letswe’s man. You’re in his team. Now what’s this talk? You must stay away from his woman, she’s trouble.’
‘Just keep your eyes open.’
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