Witness does not respond.
Commissioner Ksole: After what, Mister Straker? Was it the massacre?
Witness: Yes.
Commissioner Ksole: Please speak up.
Witness: Yes. The massacre.
Commissioner Lacy: Surely you were aware that this kind of thing was going on, Mister Straker?
Witness: I’d heard the rumours. We all had. But I thought they were crap; communist disinformation. That’s what our officers told us.
Commissioner Ksole: You grew up in a privileged part of Johannesburg, did you not? Your family was well off. You had black servants.
Witness: Yes, sir.
Commissioner Ksole: And you never considered the situation of these people?
Witness: No. Not until later. I was just a kid. That was just how it was.
Commissioner Ksole: So you tell us.
Commissioner Barbour: So why are you here, son?
Witness does not answer.
Commissioner Barbour: Son?
Witness: Sir. For the dead, sir. They need the truth to be told.
Commissioner Barbour: And for the living?
Witness: Time, sir. They need time.
8
So Much He Could Not See
It was only once they were on the helicopter that Zulaika finally spoke.
‘Thank you both for what you did…’ she said, her voice coming thin and pulsed over the helicopter’s intercom. She hung her head. ‘…Before.’ She looked different now. Without the bruises and the swelling, her face was leaner, the cheekbones more pronounced, the nose smaller. Her eyes looked bigger, darker.
Clay adjusted his headphones, swivelled the microphone pickup closer to his mouth and hit the transmit button. ‘Where are we going?’
‘There is something you must see.’
The scattered orange pinpoints of village cooking fires flashed beneath them. Clay imagined the people clustered around, sharing the evening meal, telling stories, distracted for a moment as the helicopter sped over close and fast, some glancing up into the night sky before turning back to gaze into the flames, the sound of the rotors fading into the night. Soon the fires were gone and there was nothing beneath them but the star and quarter-moon silvered bushland.
‘We’re in Angola,’ said Eben.
Brigade nodded, his face lit by the red-green glow of the cockpit instrument panel.
Clay still couldn’t believe that Wade had signed the order; that they’d just walked out of the front gates of the base like that, fully kitted out, and jumped into a waiting helicopter. And now they were back in Angola.
Brigade reached into a pack and pulled out what looked to be a collection of rags. He handed Clay a stained grey sweatshirt and a red-and-white Palestinian-style bandana.
‘Put these on,’ said Brigade. ‘No uniform markings.’
Clay pulled off his Fireforce vest and unbuttoned his uniform tunic. He pulled on the sweatshirt, tied the scarf around his neck and pulled his vest back on.
‘Welcome to long-range recon,’ said Brigade over the intercom.
They sped through the night, the cool air whipping their faces through the open doors, all of Africa below them dark and, for the moment, without war.
Soon the helicopter’s engine changed tone as the pilot cycled down and started to descend. Clay’s heartrate jumped as it always did when they were about to go in. He fought to control it, to breathe, to focus.
And then he was out, the hard, dry ground beneath his boots and the sound of the rotors retreating into the night. He followed Brigade and Zulaika through the short grass, Eben beside him, the stars shot like miracles in the limitless darkness above him. A thorn caught his trouser leg, ripped the brown canvas open; a dulled pain signal blooming momentarily and vanishing in a torrent of adrenaline.
They walked for an hour, maybe more, under the wide, turning night sky, Brigade and Zulaika in the lead. A couple of times Zulaika held them up and they went down on one knee and gazed out into the night, then continued on. After a time, they came to a small clearing. Brigade signalled halt. They stood in the shadows thrown by the moon and the stars, and waited. Clouds the size of cathedrals drifted in low-blown ranks above them and the shadows they made passed over the land so that it was like standing on an ocean.
Zulaika’s hand touched Clay’s elbow. He looked out across the clearing to where she was pointing. The figure of a man appeared just inside the tree line, silvered in light. Clay raised his rifle.
‘No,’ she whispered, putting her hand on his weapon. She stepped out of the trees into the clearing. Fully illuminated, she stood there a moment, and then raised her hand.
The man did the same then started towards them.
‘Well, will you look at that,’ said Eben.
The man was very small and wiry, with a long beard, naked except for a flap of hide covering his genitals. The spear he carried was short handled with a hammered metal point. He was barefoot.
Zulaika and Brigade greeted him in !Kung, the click language of the bushmen. They spoke for a long time, the plosive ejective and nasal-aspirated clicks and consonants of the Ju’hoan dialect hard and distinct against the background of a million sawing insect legs and vibrating wings. And then, above all of it, coming on the night breeze that pushed the clouds over the land, the deep-chested moan of a lion.
Clay glanced over at Eben.
Eben shrugged. ‘Wake me when I stop dreaming,’ he whispered in English.
Later, it would be as real as a dream, and the memory of it the thing imagined. But right now he could feel the place the thorn had cut into his leg, touch the blood, viscous like rapeseed oil between his fingers, the sweat channelling down his spine, pooling cold between his legs and in the backs of his knees, the R4 familiar in his hands almost as if it were part of him, a fused prosthetic.
And then they were up and moving again, single-file through the wide, dry savannah country, the diminutive bushman leading, his feet sure and quick, soft on the land. They skirted a copse of mopane, spread like oversized parasols on a Durban beach, then sprinted silent across a narrow clearing. They came to a place where the bush became suddenly dense with thickets of scrub acacia and leadwood, umbrella thorn and close-sprung mopane and wool bush – country favoured by dik-dik and giraffe.
Zulaika stopped, waiting for them, put her finger to her lips then pointed into the dense bush. ‘One kilometre through here,’ she said. ‘Be as quiet as you can.’
‘When we get there, we will set up an OP,’ said Brigade.
‘What are we observing?’ said Clay.
‘You will see,’ said Zulaika.
‘Why do you ask such questions, Straker?’ Eben said in English, so the others couldn’t understand. As he said it one of the big cloud shadows slid away and Clay could see Eben grinning so that his teeth and his eyes shone in the moonlight. ‘You don’t need to know. Always works the same, no matter whose army you’re in.’
‘And whose army are we in now?’ said Clay.
Eben adjusted the sling of his R4 so that the magazine and pistol grip rested on the front pouches of his Fireforce vest. ‘You tell me, broer.’
They followed the bushman into the trees.
It took them the better part of two hours to thread their way through the close-spaced trees and the dark, spreading undergrowth. Clay was much bigger than the others, weighed down with over a hundred pounds of ammunition and water, ten M27 grenades, and two eponymous command-detonated M18 anti-personnel mines that Brigade had given him in the helicopter. While the bushman, Brigade, and the delicately boned Zulaika slid along the barely perceptible trail with stealth, Clay crashed through the underbrush like a buffalo. Eben, sweating behind him, wasn’t much better. Though they were upwind, he couldn’t imagine how whatever lay at the far edge of this forest wasn’t already alerted to their presence.
They came to the edge of a long, broad chana. The bushman signalled down. Clay, Eben and Brigade dropped their packs. Prone, they sna
ked forwards until they could see clearly across the short, open grass. The clearing must have been more than a kilometre long, about as wide as a rugby pitch. They were close to one end, tucked into a thick patch of silver brush, wedged between two big old ironwoods. From where they lay they could see along the whole reach. The flat, dead grass was bright against the dark of the surrounding trees, and the scuttling clouds made dark patches that drifted over the illuminated ground.
The bushman pointed to the closer end of the chana. About a hundred and fifty metres away, some sort of wire enclosure glinted in the dull liquid-mercury light. A cattle pen of some sort. Nearby, a makeshift shelter – log uprights, palm-frond roof. Beneath it, a few upended wooden packing crates and a couple of stools.
‘Now we wait,’ said Brigade in Afrikaans. ‘Four-hour shifts. The rest of us move back into the forest, set up there. I will cover our rear with the Claymores.’
Clay retrieved the M18s from his pack and passed them to Brigade. ‘Are we expecting company?’
Brigade shrugged. ‘We could be here for some time.’
‘What, exactly, are we expecting?’ said Eben, violating his own rule.
‘With luck, we will see,’ said Zulaika.
‘Luck?’ said Clay.
Zulaika looked at him square. ‘I am sure they will come.’
‘Who, Zulaika?’ said Clay. ‘Tell us. We’re here. Trust us now.’
She looked out across the chana a moment, seeming to consider this as one might consider a proposition of marriage, or of doing violence.
‘It is not trust,’ she said. ‘You are here exactly because of trust. It is not that.’ The words caught in her throat, the Portuguese strong in the Afrikaans. She closed her eyes and Clay could see tears clinging to the tips of her dark lashes like dew on sweetgrass, each a blown-out star field.
Clay waited.
She blinked away the tears, the drops running silver across the dark skin of her cheek and guttering in the linear beauty scar that ran from the highest point of her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth. She captured the moisture on the glistening underside of her tongue.
‘It is because of what it is that I cannot say. I cannot explain because I am not sure what it is. I can only say that it is of the greatest evil.’ She turned away, hid her face in her hands.
Clay decided not to push her. He nodded. ‘I’ll take first watch.’
Brigade handed Clay a pair of binoculars and a starlight night-vision scope. ‘If you see anything, wake me.’
Clay looked a moment at Brigade. A fever had ignited inside him somewhere, suddenly and without warning, and he could feel it running hot through his chest and come burning to his face. It felt a lot like shame. He took the gear. And then he realised: he was taking orders from a black man. ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he said.
The others moved back into the thickness of the understorey. Clay settled into a position where he was well hidden but could see out along the entire clearing. He arranged his pack as a back rest, checked his R4 and set it on the ground beside him with the binoculars and the night scope.
An hour gone and the Southern Cross had risen over the far tree line, the ranks of cloud more widely spaced now, the breeze lighter. The chana was still empty and quiet. Clay drank from his water bottle and was replacing the cap when a rustle in the undergrowth stopped him dead.
Zulaika emerged from the shadows. ‘I cannot sleep,’ she whispered.
Clay offered her the water bottle. She shook her head.
‘All quiet out there,’ said Clay.
She settled in beside him and scanned the chana.
‘Why are we here, Zulaika?’
‘I told you. To observe.’
‘No. I mean, me. Why am I here? Me and Eben.’
‘You have orders.’
‘I’ve seen them.’
She looked out across the clearing. ‘You are a soldier. You follow orders.’
Yes, even from a black man; and when I did, I felt shame, even though I know him and know he is a good, experienced fighter and outranks me. ‘So do you.’
She nodded. ‘This is my country.’
‘You lied to me. You are MPLA.’
She said nothing, just sat there for a long time on the ground, obscured in the darkness.
Clay let the silence of the African night reign.
Finally, she said: ‘Please, you must trust me.’
‘Not for a second.’
She shook her head, picked up the binoculars, scanned the close end of the clearing where the shelter and the wire pen were. ‘Yes, I am MPLA.’
Clay eased his sidearm from its holster, pointed it at the woman. ‘I should kill you now.’
She moved the binoculars from her face and glanced at the handgun. ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘I welcome death.’
Clay said nothing.
‘This war has taken everything from me.’
Clay lowered the handgun but kept it in his hand.
Zulaika placed the binoculars on the ground next to the night scope. ‘Until a year ago, we had only heard of the war. It was in Namibia. It was nothing to us. At night, sometimes, we could hear the bombs, but only if the wind was right – they were very far away.’
She lived with her husband and his family and her four children – two boys and two girls. Her village was small and even during the war of independence from Portugal they were so far away from Luanda and the big towns that they saw nothing of the government or the other factions. And then, after 1975, everything went quiet and for a long time they thought peace had come. And indeed, for them, it had. Her husband tended their cattle and goats, and she worked in the fields and in her family home. The rains were good and her children grew and were happy and no one in the village was hungry.
And then one day armed men came into the village. They said they were fighting for the freedom of the people. She thought they were already free, but she was a woman and was not part of the discussions. At first all they did was take the men into the forests to cut wood and carry the tusks from the elephants they had killed. After a while the men returned to the village, and the soldiers disappeared. They all thought that the soldiers were gone for good. But after a time they returned, wanting men for soldiers. Her husband and her eldest son refused, but they took them anyway.
Not long after, a different group of soldiers came. Foreigners were with them. They said they were from a place called Cuba. They told the villagers that they were communist – that it meant that everyone should share everything, which is what they already did in her village. The new soldiers stayed for a while and gave out food and medicine and then left. Her husband and son had still not returned. She cried for them every night. The pain and worry inside her was too big.
And then, one night, the other soldiers came again – the ‘freedom’ soldiers – and this time they took some of the older boys, thirteen and fourteen years old. This time she decided she would do something. She followed them into the forest and watched them use the boys and men to cut and carry wood and hack the tusks from dead elephants. They called themselves UNITA. She watched them give the men and boys pills instead of food. She followed them for days, hiding, eating from the land, her feet raw. They went north to the diamond fields, where she watched the men and boys work in the muddy gravel rivers until they fell exhausted, hoping always for a glimpse of her husband and son. But hope was not enough. She walked back to her village, her worst fears growing. And the next time the other soldiers came to her village, the MPLA communists, she told them what she had seen and pointed to the places she had been on their maps. The foreign soldiers spoke in Spanish, which sounded like Portuguese, but was impossible for her to understand. The Angolan MPLA commander was her age, and very kind. He gave her food for her family – small delicacies, like chocolate and Cuban cigars for her father-in-law. He was kind and cultured and did not treat her with disrespect, as the UNITA soldiers had.
‘We will find your husband and son,’ the MPLA commander told her. �
�Help us. Be our eyes and ears.’
Of course, she agreed. What else could she do? They gave her a radio and an identity card, which she hid in a hole that she dug inside her hut and covered with a piece of planking and woven mats. The next time the UNITA men came she followed them with her radio and told the MPLA commander where the enemy soldiers were and how many they numbered and what they were doing, for by now they truly were the enemy in her mind. As the UNITA forays into her country became more frequent, finding the missing village men and boys became her reason for living. Each time UNITA returned to her village she scanned the faces of the men but could see none of her village kin. She came to recognise some of the UNITA soldiers, though. The commander who called himself Colonel and would take young village girls to use, returning them swollen, bruised and afraid. O Coletor, they called him. Then some of the other soldiers started taking the girls and even some of the married women, too. They were mean and drugged-looking and treated the girls and women very badly. Some of the girls became pregnant. Once, one of the young men of the village tried to resist. He stabbed a UNITA soldier in the kidneys. The soldier died eventually, and when he did the young village man was shot in the head with a pistol by the UNITA Colonel. The whole village was forced to watch.
Zulaika said: ‘Now I have only my hate.’
She begged the MPLA commander to protect their village. He told her he would do what he could, and for a while the UNITA men did not come back. The MPLA commander told her that there were rumours about the missing men, although no one could confirm them. But he was sure the same fate was befalling those of his own soldiers who had been captured by UNITA during the increasingly bitter fighting.
Zulaika looked at Clay. Her face was set hard in the patchwork of slanting moonlight. ‘I was following them, the night you rescued me. I was careless. They caught me. I managed to call my commander just before they took me.’
A long time later, when all of this had become clear, and Clay was able to use the perspective of time and distance to make sense of some of it at least, he would come to see this woman as one of the bravest he had ever known, and, equally, would see the essential evil so readily unearthed in men. But now, here under the setting moon somewhere in the southern Angolan bush with only the compressed and limited experience of a boy of twenty years, there was so much he could not see.
Reconciliation for the Dead Page 9