by Caryl Ferey
They left the wooden jetty that ran over the first dunes and started walking on the soft sand. On the weekends, people flocked here from the city, but now Muizenberg beach was almost empty. The few bathers were concentrated on the promenade, near the lifeguards’ hut, where two blond guys with African necklaces were keeping a close watch on their muscles. Neuman had shown them the photo of Ramphele, but they saw dozens of young blacks wearing Gap and plastic Ray-Bans every day. Same with the young blonde who was supposed to have been with him.
The waves were breaking loudly, swallowing up a few surfers as they came in. The long-haired guys who got out alive, when questioned, gave them nothing but dirty looks. They walked. And walked. There were fewer and fewer houses. Soon there was only one windsurfer in the distance, and big waves crashing on the shore. Brian was sweating under his cotton blouson, he was starting to get sick of this walk, they had been plowing on for twenty minutes now. Beside him, Dan was saying nothing, an indolent figure in the sun and the wind lashing their faces. Neuman was walking upright, oblivious of the elements. Half a mile, a mile. Then they saw a group of men in the shelter of a dune. Blacks, half a dozen of them, drinking tshwala18 beneath a tattered straw canopy. A girl was dancing in the shadows. It was only after a moment that the wind let them hear the music—a kind of reggae, being spat out by a ghetto blaster.
Neuman signaled to Brian to go take a look. They would carry on to the dunes—a little farther on, a thin gray wisp of smoke rose, borne on the wind. Brian walked straight toward the improvised bar, drawn by the girl’s golden thighs.
The gusts of wind were raising clouds of sand. Dan kept grimly on behind Neuman and followed him to the white dunes.
A smell of grilled chicken floated in the air, and something else that was hard to define. They saw a worm-eaten beach hut, a braai19 sheltered from the wind, and two men in canvas caps busy grilling meat. Neuman assessed the terrain, saw only the ridge of the dunes, and the two guys turning toward them. Snatches of reggae from the straw canopy reached them, carried on the wind. Neuman approached. The half-open door of the hut was barely upright, holding on only by a whim. The two blacks, on the other hand, were stiff as ramrods.
“We’re looking for this man,” Neuman said. “Stan Ramphele.”
The two men, both red-eyed, attempted smiles. One of them was a nervy-looking black of about thirty, teeth partly rotted by malnutrition and dope. The other one was younger, knocking back a beer and looking at the bottle as if the taste had changed with each swig.
“We don’t know the guy,” he said. His breath smelled.
“You look like one of his customers,” Neuman replied. “Stan,” he insisted. “He used to deal dagga, then he graduated to harder stuff.”
“I don’t know, man. We’re just enjoying the beach, that’s all!”
The ashes on the barbecue flew up in the wind. The two men had scars on their arms and necks.
“Where are you from?” Neuman asked.
“The township. Why, man?”
Dan was standing a few feet back, his hand on the grip of his gun.
“We found Stan in his mobile home with enough powder in him to burst his veins,” Neuman said. “A tik-based mixture. What do you think of that, fellows?”
“We don’t think anything,” the nervy guy replied.
Neuman pushed open the door of the hut, saw a pair of binoculars on the dirty floor. A top-of-the-range model, which didn’t seem like the kind of thing these losers would have. They had seen them coming. They had been waiting.
The nervy guy’s smile froze, as if he had guessed what Neuman was thinking. His partner took a step toward the other side of the barbecue.
“Don’t move,” Dan said, taking his gun from his holster.
At the same moment, he felt a presence behind him. “No, don’t you move!”
A revolver was jammed into his spinal cord. A third man had just emerged from behind the hut. Neuman had taken out his gun, but did not fire. The Beretta was trained on Dan’s neck and the guy holding it had empty, lackluster eyes. A tsotsi, barely twenty years old—he’d seen him before, the other day, on the waste ground, the young guys who were kicking Simon. Dan scanned the surroundings out of the corner of his eye, but it was too late. The others had pulled revolvers from the sack of charcoal under the barbecue.
“Get your hands up, pig!” the nervy guy hissed, the barrel of his revolver pointed at Neuman. “Gatsha, take his gun—slowly!”
“One move, and your friend gets a bullet in the head!” the youngest of the three yelled.
Gatsha advanced toward Neuman as if he might bite, and tore the Colt out of his hands.
“Take it easy.”
“Shut up, nigger!”
The nervy guy, holding his gun to the back of Dan’s neck, had forced him to kneel with his hands on his head. The others, grinning triumphantly, hissed insults in Dashiki. Neuman did not move. Dan was sweating profusely beside the barbecue. He was white-faced, and his legs were shaking. Neuman swore through his teeth. Dan was losing his nerve. You could feel it by the way his pores were dilating, the aura of fear gripping him, his hands placed uselessly on his head.
“Over there, you!” the nervy guy shouted at Neuman. “Keep your hands still! You hear, asshole?”
Neuman moved back until his back and hands were against the cracked wood of the hut. Gatsha had followed him. He held his breath when the tsotsi pressed his revolver into his testicles.
“You move an inch, and I’ll blow off your balls and all the shit that comes with them.”
Joey, the young black he had seen on the construction site, took a knife from his belt, and waved it in front of his eyes. “We’ve met before, haven’t we, cop?”
He laughed, and with one blow planted the knife in the worm-eaten wood. Neuman started—the tsotsi had just nailed his ear to the door.
“I said, don’t move!” the boy cried, the veins in his eyes bursting.
The barrel of the gun was still tight against his testicles. His ear was burning, warm blood was running down his neck, his lobe and cartilage had been pierced by the blade that kept him fixed to the door. A few feet away, on his knees, the gun pressed to the back of his neck, Dan was shivering in the gusts of wind.
“So, cop, scared now?” The nervy guy pushed Dan down on the ground. “You know something? You look like a little fag. Has anyone ever told you that? A dirty little police fag.”
The youngest of the three laughed. Gatsha was looking at his finger on the trigger.
“What would you say to a little grilled cop, boys?” their leader said. “This one looks good enough to eat!”
“Hey, man! Grilled cop! Better than grilled chicken! Yeah!”
“We could give him a try, couldn’t we?”
“Yeah!”
“No!”
The two tsotsis were arguing for the fun of it, but Gatsha did not release the pressure on Neuman’s testicles. There was a knot in his throat.
“Come on, Joey! Bring something to cut up the cop!”
Dan, now lying on the sand, could not stop shaking. Joey handed the older guy a panga.20
“Leave him alone,” Neuman said.
“Go fuck yourself, nigger.”
Neuman threw a furtive glance at the straw hut—as if Brian could see him from there.
“No point counting on your little white friend. We’re taking care of him.”
He thought he could make out the figure of Brian through the heat haze, bouncing up and down on the improvised dance floor beneath the straw canopy. What the fuck was he up to?
The nervy guy bent over the young cop on the ground and passed the machete over his back as if cleaning the blade.
“Now you’re going to be a chicken. Do you hear?” He was whispering in his ear. “You’re going to be a chicken or I’ll kill you, you little fag. Do you hear? BE A CHICKEN!”
Fletcher looked at Neuman in panic.
“Leave him alone.”
The gun barrel b
ored into his groin. Time stood still. There was only the wind scalping the dunes and the cruel eyes of the tsotsi oozing contempt all over Dan. He couldn’t even hear the music anymore. The man was going to strike. Dan could feel it in his bones, it was only a matter of seconds. He looked around for Neuman, couldn’t see him.
He let out a feeble splutter that did not cover the sound of his sobs.
“The slightest move and you’re dead,” Gatsha whispered in Neuman’s bloody ear.
“You can do better than that!” the nervous guy bellowed, still holding the panga. “Come on!”
Dan emitted a feeble cluck-cluck, which was drowned by the noise of the rollers.
The man laughed, madness in his eyes. “Ha, ha! Look at this chicken! Oh, the pretty little chicken!”
Dan was trembling, his face buried in the sand next to the barbecue.
The tsotsi rose to his full height. “Look what I do to fags like you!”
With one stroke of the machete, he cut off Dan’s right hand.
*
Brian looked at the small crowd gathered near the icebox. There were half a dozen people dancing under the straw canopy, including a colored girl in an impressively low-cut dress. She was strutting as she drank her beer, looking at him with an insistent air, lips playing with the neck of the bottle. The ghetto blaster was spluttering out reggae, Bob Marley and the Wailers. The girl wiggled her hips, the guys swarmed around her like bees—young guys, only the big black serving the tshwala was more than twenty. Tattoos on his arms, poor quality ones—probably done in prison.
“Hi!” the girl said, approaching Brian.
“Hi.”
“Want to dance?”
Without waiting for a reply, she took his hand, wrapped her arms around him, and drew him onto the improvised dance floor. She smelled of licorice, with the unfortunate addition of hops. In spite of a missing tooth, she had a nice mouth.
“My name’s Pamela!” she cried above the music. “But you can call me Pam!”
He bent over her cleavage and said in her ear, “Not so much a pompom girl, more a pampam girl!”
She smiled greedily. The others, bobbing up and down to the music of the Wailers, waved to them in a friendly manner. Caught up in the girl’s movements, Brian wiggled around a little. Pamela snuggled up against him, playfully, provocatively.
He took out the picture of Ramphele. “Know this man?”
She twisted around to look at the photograph, shook her head, and pressed herself against his back with a prolonged quiver—her peppery skin was on fire.
“Buy me a beer?”
She was looking at him with an expression of childlike supplication, as if the world was waiting for his answer. The others were watching them. Brian signaled to the tattooed man in charge of the beer. They grabbed their drinks with an acrobatic sensuousness and, still dancing, raised their bottles in the air in a toast. As the music was too loud to let them have a conversation, he pulled her toward the grass on the edge of the dunes.
Pam was smiling at him as if she found him very handsome.
“Stan Ramphele,” he insisted, again shoving the photograph in front of her face. “A young guy who spent his days on the beach. A good-looking guy. You must have seen him around.”
“You think?”
“Stan was dealing dagga, and more recently a kind of tik. Here, on the beach.”
The girl was still wiggling her hips. “Are you a cop?” she said.
“Stan’s dead. I’m trying to find out what happened to him. I’m not here to arrest you or your friends.”
The wind made the charms in her hair jingle. She shrugged. “You know, I’m just a beach girl.”
Her gap-toothed smile faded. The rest of her continued to sway. She drank her beer in one go, caught hold of him again, and started laughing.
“Don’t tell me you brought me out here just to talk about this guy!”
“You looked like an honest girl,” he lied.
“And now?” she said, putting her hand on his buttocks. “Am I honest or dishonest?”
The grass was bending in the wind, the sound of the waves mingled with the reggae, and Pam was feeling the merchandise, like a connoisseur. She rubbed her groin against his, lingered over his cock, kneeled and rubbed her breasts against it. Brian felt the girl’s hand moving over his back. Within a second, Pam had pulled the gun from his holster.
She stood up again, amazingly quickly given her position, lifted the safety, and aimed the .38 at Brian, who had hardly moved.
“Don’t move,” she said, cocking the hammer. “Hands on head. Come on!”
Brian didn’t bat an eyelid. A man appeared from behind the dune, where he had been crouching. The tattooed man who’d been serving beer.
“It’s all right,” she said to him, her gun still on Brian. “But this idiot’s refusing to put his hands up.”
“Is that so?” the tattooed man said, coming closer. He had a gun under his Rasta shirt.
“Get down on the ground!” Pam hissed.
Instead of obeying, Brian took a curious object from his linen jacket. His forefathers’ knout, with its copper loop.
“Too bad!” Pam cried, aiming at his head. “You had a nice face!”
She pressed the trigger, twice, while Brian rushed at the man. Pam continued to fire, until she realized that the . 38 was not loaded. The tattooed man took out his gun, but the leather thong struck his cheek and tore off a piece as large as a steak. The man let out a muffled cry and staggered. His eyes filling with tears, he did not see the second blow coming. The .32 leapt from his hand.
Pam had emptied the barrel between Brian’s shoulder blades. Now he turned to her. The knout broke her wrist, and she dropped the .38 with a squeal. Behind her, the tattooed man tried to pick up his gun. The knout stripped his fingers to the bone. Brian’s heart was pounding. They weren’t dealing with small-time beach dealers, but with tsotsis who killed cops. A sudden gust of wind made him screw up his eyes. Abandoning his gun, the tattooed man set off at a run toward the straw hut, holding his cheek. The girl had still made no move to run away. She was looking at her broken wrist as if it was about to fall off. Brian punched her on the chin, knocking her out. He looked up, saw the tattooed man running up the side of the dune.
That was when he heard a scream in the distance, above the rollers. A man’s scream, coming from the other side of the dunes.
Dan.
*
“Go on,” Gatsha breathed in Neuman’s broken ear. “Give me the pleasure of cutting open your dirty nigger face. Go on, let me blow away your balls.”
He was pressing so hard that Neuman wanted to vomit. One move and he was dead. That was what the guy was waiting for. Dan was weeping as he looked at his severed hand, wild-eyed, as if he didn’t want to believe what was happening to him. The blood was spreading around the legs of the barbecue, the wind was swirling, and he was sobbing like a terrified child nobody would come and save. He was alone with his stump and his hand that lay there on the sand, detached from his body. He was living a nightmare.
Neuman closed his eyes when the tsotsi cut off his other hand.
Fletcher let out a terrible scream and passed out.
“Roast chicken! Roast cop!” the nervy guy bellowed, brandishing his machete.
Joey was smiling ecstatically. He picked up the severed hands and threw them on the barbecue. Neuman opened his eyes again, but things hadn’t gotten any better—the blood spurting from the stumps, his friend lying unconscious on the ground, the wind stoking the charcoal, the smell of meat, the crackling of the hands on the burning griddle, the knife blade pinning him to the hut like an owl, the revolver in his guts, and Gatsha’s bulging eyes and insane laugh.
“Ha ha! Roast cop!”
Sparks from the charcoal flew in the wind. The nervy guy planted his knee in Dan’s back, but Dan had stopped reacting. He grabbed him by the roots of his hair and with a stroke of the machete cut his throat.
Neuman’s he
art was pounding as if it was going to burst. His brother’s ghost passed behind his sweat-soaked back. They were going to cut Dan into pieces, they were going to grill him right here on the beach, and then it would be his turn. He clenched his teeth to chase away the fear that was making his legs turn to jelly. A warm liquid continued to run down his shirt, and Dan was dying before his horrified eyes.
The tsotsi with the machete turned to the younger man. “Joey! Go see what the others are up to while we deal with the nigger.”
The nervy guy was dreaming of spectacular deaths when Gatsha’s head exploded. Thrown by the impact, the boy didn’t even have time to press the trigger. The others immediately turned toward the straw hut, where the shot had come from. A slender figure was running down the dune, a white with a revolver in his hand. They raised their guns and aimed at him.
In spite of the pieces of flesh and bone that had spattered his face, Neuman reacted in a flash. He pulled out the blade that was pinning him to the hut and rushed at them. Sensing danger, the nervy guy turned to him, but too late. Two hundred and twenty pounds of hate planted themselves in his abdomen. The tsotsi staggered back a few feet, and fell to his knees.
The first shot hit the sand at Brian’s feet, the second went completely wide. When he got to the foot of the dune, he stopped and aimed his gun. With the sun in his eyes, the guy did not have a chance. Brian brought him down with a bullet to his gut.
The leader of the gang stood by the barbecue, looking down incredulously at his stomach, where the knife was plunged in up to the hilt. Neuman did not bother to pull it out. Instead, he grabbed the hands crackling on the griddle and threw them on the sand.
Brian was looking around, searching for another target, as if the whole world was his enemy. That was when he saw Dan’s mutilated body lying at the foot of the dune. Neuman had rushed to his side. He took off his jacket, felt his pulse. Dan was still breathing.
At last, Brian ran up, pale as a sheet.
“Quick!” Neuman cried, pressing Dan’s jugular. “Call an ambulance!”