by Caryl Ferey
“You just have to keep them closed, darling.”
“You’re funny in the morning, you know.”
“I’m feeling a bit groggy,” he said. “I keep thinking it’s still evening.”
She murdered the frying pan with her fork. “Oh, yes? You were already half asleep when I got in.”
“Sorry, darling.”
Tracy had come over after her shift, but Brian had collapsed after the third joint of Durban Poison. It was the first time they had seen each other since that crazy Saturday night and the abortive Sunday at Jim’s. Tracy was thirty-five. She knew that, working behind a bar, she could have as many men as she wanted, the problem was always the second time. Other drinks led them on to other girls, and the funny redhead behind the bar was part of the past. “You just have to find a proper job, girl,” she would say to herself on the evenings when she felt depressed, “not one where everyone’s eyeing your ass.” But Tracy didn’t believe much in other jobs—or men in general.
She stirred the mixture in the frying pan. “I hope I’m better in bed,” she said.
“Like eggplant caviar.”
“Is that good?”
“If you like garlic.”
Tracy pushed what was left of the eggs onto the plates and threw the frying pan into the sink with a deafening clatter.
Brian grimaced—this girl certainly didn’t smell of lavender.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” she said, sitting down opposite him.
“My shoe size is forty-three, if you must know.”
“I’m serious.”
“Go on, darling.”
Tracy lowered her eyes. A lock had escaped from her pencil, and fell in red curls down her neck.
“You must tell me if I get on your nerves. I’m so unused to this, I keep thinking I’m overdoing it. I’m talking crap, aren’t I?”
“A little, darling.”
In spite of his show of stoicism, the magic trick kept going flat. You could see it escaping through the garden, conjured away. Brian looked at his watch. It wasn’t that he was late, it was just that the world was running away from him.
*
When the ANC had refused to give their support to the system of Bantustans, the apartheid government had imprisoned Mandela and his associates on Robben Island, a small, verdant island off Cape Town that had the advantage of leaving the political opposition in total isolation—Mandela had had to wait twenty-one years before he even so much as touched his wife’s hand again.
Sonny Ramphele did not have to suffer that cruel double sentence. Stanley’s brother was serving two years in Pollsmoor prison, an insalubrious, overcrowded concrete building, where even the flies were in hell.
“Find what you’re looking for?” the head guard said.
Dan Fletcher was peering down at the register, trying to get an idea of the visits and their frequency. Kriek, the redneck everyone called Chief, was playing with his bunches of keys and waiting. Dan did not reply. Brian Epkeen was smoking, looking threateningly at Kriek. He didn’t like prison—mankind should have come up with something better in eight thousand years—and he certainly didn’t like a petty dictator like this one, a beneficiary of the sunset clause,17 who had reenlisted because the prison population, when you came down to it, hadn’t changed—you still had plenty of kaffirs and coloreds.
Sonny Ramphele had been on a suspended sentence when he was arrested at the wheel of a stolen car with a hundred ounces of marijuana crammed under the seat. He hadn’t fingered anyone else, and had been given two years without remission. Sonny’s story was a classic one. Parents—tenant farmers—who had died when he was young, the exodus with his brother to the city, overcrowding, unemployment, poverty, crime, prison. Sonny had just turned twenty-six, and if he didn’t do anything stupid, he’d be out in a few months.
Forensics had searched the mobile home, but if the younger brother had taken over his business and had a stash of drugs hidden away somewhere, it seemed to have disappeared with him. They had found only a few prints, all of them Stanley’s, and inquiries with the locals hadn’t gotten them anywhere. The nearest shack was uninhabited, and the dropouts who lived on the coast didn’t stick their noses in other people’s affairs—as witness the fact that Stanley’s body had been rotting for four days. Some had known Sonny—“Big guy, pleasant enough, looked after his little brother”—and Stan, who was really into fashion and motorbikes. No one had ever seen him with Nicole Wiese—a young blonde like that, they’d have remembered. The one clue that had confirmed the lead they were following was that there were several prints of Nicole’s in the pickup, which had been used on the day of the murder.
Dan looked up from the register. “Stanley Ramphele has been visiting his brother regularly since he was incarcerated,” he said. “But not for the past month.”
Kriek was cleaning his nails with his teeth. “I didn’t even know he had a brother,” he said.
One of the guards chuckled behind him. For a moment, Brian forgot about the head guard’s piggishness and that rancid odor of men in confined spaces that pervaded the air. “Can we have a quiet room to question Sonny?”
“Why? Planning to look up his ass?”
“You’re a funny guy, Chief, you know that?”
“Ramphele’s ass isn’t up for grabs,” Kriek insisted. “It’s not me who says that, it’s the other prisoners.”
There was agreement from the other guards.
“What does that mean?” Dan said irritably. “That Ramphele’s protected?”
“Apparently.”
“There’s no mention of it in his file.”
“The animals eat each other, make no mistake.”
“What do the informers say?”
“That his ass is out of bounds.”
“You seem to be fascinated by his ass.”
“Not me, them!”
Kriek laughed first, soon imitated by his cronies. Brian signaled to Dan that they needed a change of scenery. Kriek was exactly the kind of guy who used to beat him up and leave him for dead in the ditches.
Two hundred percent overcrowded, a ninety percent reoffending rate, TB, AIDS, lack of medical care, blocked pipes, people sleeping on the floor, rapes, assaults, humiliations—Pollsmoor epitomized the state of South Africa’s prisons. As the prison population kept growing, the private sector had been given the task of building new detention centers, most of which dated from the apartheid period. There were few social workers, rehabilitation was a utopian dream, and corruption was endemic. The number of escapes had reached a record high, with the complicity of a poorly trained, underpaid, even criminal staff. Some prisoners had to pay a fee to attend classes or participate in activities, while others, even with life sentences, spent the weekend outside. New prisoners were occasionally sold by the guards to those who asked for them, the guards’ first reflex being to put themselves under the protection of one of the bosses, who monopolized the wifyes, and distributed favors.
Prostitutes, drugs, alcohol—eight crime syndicates divided the prison system between them. In this jungle, Sonny Ramphele had coped pretty well. He had struck a deal, like everyone. He had caught scabies, and there were swellings between his fingers that made it look like his hands were turning into flippers—Sonny had never taken very good care of himself, not like his cute brother—but he had managed to preserve his integrity. He was waiting for the end of his sentence, listening to his fellow prisoners quarrelling about who would be next in the latrines, when a guard came and stirred him from his long apathy.
Sonny grumbled—why the fuck did he need to see a doctor?—but obeyed, assailed by sarcastic remarks from the others.
The prison corridors stank of cabbage and bodily fluids. Dragging an invisible ball and chain, Ramphele passed through two magnetic gates before being led into an isolated, windowless room. This wasn’t the infirmary. There was a table, two plastic chairs, a short brown guy with piercing eyes sitting with a bunch of photographs in front of him, a
nd a taller guy with his back against the wall, who looked as if he might once have been in good shape.
“Sit down,” Dan Fletcher said, indicating the empty chair opposite him.
Like his brother, Sonny was a solid Xhosa, about six feet tall, with eyes that kept wandering to the sides. He walked forward sluggishly and sat down as if there were nails on the chair.
“Do you know why we’re here?”
Sonny shook his head very slightly. He had the heavy-lidded look of a tough guy who had become a heavy smoker.
“You haven’t seen your brother in a while,” Dan went on. “A month, according to the register. Any news of him?”
He made a contemptuous gesture. This was all water off a duck’s back. Hundreds of police officers had been indicted for assault, murder, rape. Sonny didn’t want to talk to them, especially not about Stan.
“He’s been running your business for you, hasn’t he?” Dan said. “Too busy, I guess, to visit his big brother.”
Sonny was keeping an eye on the other cop, who was prowling behind him.
“What was Stan dealing? Dagga? Or something else?”
Sonny made no reaction.
Brian leaned over his shoulder. “You were wrong to give your brother the keys to the truck, Sonny. Didn’t you tell him he was going nowhere?”
Sonny did not react immediately. Fletcher turned over the photographs scattered on the table.
“Stan was found dead in your mobile home,” he said, indicating the photographs. “Yesterday, in Noordhoek. He’d been dead for several days.”
His bored gangster pose changed as he looked at the photographs: a livid Stan on the window seat in the mobile home, his face in close-up, eyes open, staring at a forever indeterminate object.
“Your brother died of an overdose,” Fletcher went on. “A tik-based mixture. Did you know your brother was a user?”
Sonny was shrinking on his chair, his head bent over his unlaced sneakers. Stan as a boy, laughing, the slaps on the head he’d given him, their fights in the dust—their life flashed before him, fading to black.
“Stan didn’t have any needle marks on his arms,” Dan said. “What do you think of that?”
“Nothing.”
It was the most he’d spoken so far.
“Your brother was involved in something big. We think he was dealing a new drug to young whites in the city. Did you know?”
Still in shock, Sonny shook his head.
“Your brother was going out with a girl named Nicole Wiese, the one who’s been in all the papers. Did Stan ever mention her to you?”
“That’s none of my business.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the photographs.
“Nicole was murdered, and everything points to Stan. We found drugs and the girl’s purse in your mobile home, and we have proof they were together at the time of the murder. What is this drug?”
“Don’t know.” Sonny was nervously twisting his fingers.
“I don’t believe you, Sonny. Try harder.”
“Stan didn’t say anything to me.”
“Apart from the Chief, no one knows about our visit,” Dan assured him. “No one will know you talked to us, your name won’t appear anywhere. The appeals judge is lenient to people who turn State’s evidence. Help us and we’ll see what we can do.”
Ramphele sat on his chair, brooding. Things were looking bad.
Brian tried again. “Stan took over your patch on the beaches. We’re looking for his supplier. You must know him.”
“I don’t know anyone who deals tik. Neither did Stan.”
“Your supplier may have changed direction.”
“No. Too dangerous.”
Brian sat down on the edge of the table. “Why do you think your brother stopped coming to see you? Why had he been playing dead for a month? He started selling the hard stuff, to earn money and live it up with little white girls by the sea. He even bought himself some nice clothes and a flashy motorbike. Stan stopped coming to see you because he knew you wouldn’t appreciate the way he’d taken over your territory. Except that he hit a snag. They used your brother, Sonny. Don’t expect to get any respect from these people. They treat you like beasts for the slaughter.”
Ramphele shrugged. It was the same in here.
“We’re offering you a way out,” Dan said, more gently. “Tell us who was supplying your brother, and your sentence will be reviewed.”
Sonny had stopped moving. His chin had fallen on his shabby T-shirt, as if his brother’s death had broken his neck. There was only him left now—best to say nothing.
“Dagga, man,” he said at last. “Only dagga.”
A heavy silence fell over the interrogation room. Dan made a sign to Brian, who put out his cigarette. Either the brother knew nothing, or he had a good reason to lie. He was about to send Sonny back to his cell when Brian asked him point blank, “Stan was scared of spiders, wasn’t he?”
Sonny’s gloomy expression changed completely. He looked up questioningly at the cop in the black fatigues.
They’d found the flaw, a gaping one.
“Really scared,” Brian insisted. “Like a phobia.”
Sonny was disconcerted. Stan had fallen into a well when he was little, a dried-up well that hadn’t been used for ages. They had searched for him for hours before they found him, trembling with fear, at the bottom of the well. There was no water there, but there were spiders, hundreds of them. Fifteen years later, Stan could barely stand to see those fucking spiders, let alone go anywhere near them.
“They used your brother to sell their dope for them,” Brian went on, “and when Stan knew too much, they shot him up to make it look like an overdose. Or rather, they gave him the choice of shooting himself up or spending some time with one of those nice little animals. A trap-door spider was found in the toilet in your mobile home. A big one.”
Sonny rubbed his face with his hands. The photographs on the table made sinister kaleidoscopes in his mind. The last pieces of his world were drifting away, and he had nothing to hang on to, only the moist eyes of the cop opposite him.
“Muizenberg,” he said at last. “We were dealing on the beach at Muizenberg.”
*
Used for five thousand years by the Pygmies for their medicinal qualities, the roots of the iboga contained a dozen alkaloids, including ibogaine, a substance similar to that present in various species of hallucinogenic mushrooms. By acting on the serotonin, ibogaine increased self-confidence and a sense of general well-being. While the plant and several of its derivatives had mind-stimulating properties, they could, in larger doses, also be responsible for auditory and visual hallucinations, sometimes very anxiety-provoking, which could even lead to suicide. Etymologically derived from a word meaning “to heal,” iboga was an initiatory plant whose therapeutic properties and hallucinatory power made it possible for its user to connect with the sacred. Iboga was used during inner-directed ceremonies called bwiti, conducted under the aegis of a spiritual guide, a shaman known as an inyanga, who was thought of as a herbalist. Apart from these secret rituals, iboga root was used as an aphrodisiac or love potion.
True believers claimed that ibogaine provoked erections that could last six hours, in which the pleasure was indescribable. In Western medicine, ibogaine had been used in psychotherapy and the treatment of heroin addiction, but knowledge about its aphrodisiac qualities remained sketchy, due to the lack of scientific tests.
An African love potion.
Neuman was brooding like an old lion looking at its own reflection. Nicole Wiese had taken iboga a few days before the murder, a strong dose according to the medical examiner’s analysis, probably in the form of an essential oil. What about the flasks found in Nicole’s purse? Was her friend Stan also dealing iboga?
Neuman set off to see the medical examiner.
Tembo was the first black to run the Durham Road morgue. His short gray beard was reminiscent of that of a former secretary-general of the United Nations, and his glasses b
etrayed the fact that he was as short-sighted as a mole. A confirmed bachelor, Tembo loved anything old—baroque music, old-fashioned hats—and had a particular passion for Egyptian hieroglyphics. Dead bodies were for him parchments to be deciphered, puppets to which he was the expert ventriloquist. He only left them alone once he had exhausted their meaning. A man fiercely dedicated to his job—he and Neuman got on well.
The two men sat down in Tembo’s laboratory.
Stan Ramphele’s postmortem showed that he had died of an overdose following a methamphetamine-based injection. The exact hour of death was unclear, but it had happened four days earlier, in other words, not long after Nicole’s murder. The sand on the flooring of the pickup matched the grains in Nicole’s hair. Traces of salt had been found on Stan’s skin, as well as pollen from the Dietes grandiflora, a flower better known under the name of Groot Wilde iris, confirming what they already knew—that Stan and Nicole had been together in the botanical gardens.
“But the most interesting findings were in the toxicological analysis,” Tembo said. “First, the iboga. Ramphele also took some, but more recently, just a few hours before he died. In other words, around the same time as Nicole Wiese was murdered. We found the same essence in the flasks in her purse. A very concentrated formula, one I’ve never seen before.”
“Homemade?”
“Yes. I wondered at first if this essence could change the behavior of its users, but the guinea pigs we tested the product on just fell asleep.” Tembo fingered his beard. “So then I looked at the powder that caused Ramphele’s overdose and noted that the same molecule was in the cocktail taken by Nicole. Thanks to the sample from the mobile home, I was able to dig a little deeper. Like all synthetic drugs, methamphetamine has intermediary components that are toxic to the brain, but however hard we looked among the usual substitutes, we just couldn’t find it. We still don’t know the name of the molecule.”
“How do you explain that?” Neuman asked.
Tembo shrugged. “The Mafias are often ahead of State-funded research. They certainly have more resources than we do.”