Zulu

by Caryl Ferey

  Neuman looked at the decapitated head on the desk and its sliced eyelids. “In that case, let’s go have a word with the leader of the pack.”

  *

  Mzala was playing darts in the private room of the Marabi. The shebeen was already full of the kind of people who had suffered everything life could throw at them and so were ignoring the insults that Dina was flinging at them like bones at birds of prey.

  “Buy drinks, you heap of vermin! This isn’t a steam room!”

  That was when she saw the big black cop in the entrance, with a whole bunch of Sanogo’s cops following him, and released her pressure on the drinkers. Neuman walked though the alcohol-dazed crowd, with Brian covering his back.

  “You—”

  “I told you once before, shut up.”

  With a look, Neuman boxed her in behind the counter. He walked past the pillar and pulled open the metal partition that led to the Americans’ private room. A noisy fan was stirring the smoke-laden air. Three guys were slumped on straw mattresses, waiting their turn to play. Mzala had his eyes fixed on the target, apparently contemplating his next throw.

  “Did you like my gift?” he asked, and simultaneously launched the dart.

  It landed a long way off target.

  Two red-eyed tsotsis came from the corridor and took up position on either side of Mzala. Brian had them in his sights—they both had guns under their shirts. The other three seemed to be snoozing behind their eyelids. Sanogo was standing against the metal partition, next to Dina, who had come to the rescue.

  “Where does the head come from?”

  “Not far from here. Near Crossroads, on the edge of the township, where he was trying to sell his dope.” Mzala gave an impassive smile. “Not a good idea.”

  He was about to throw another dart, but Neuman went and stood in front of the board. “So you cut his head off.”

  Mzala assumed a contrite air, which suited him about as well as a clown’s nose. “I have nothing against cops,” he said, “but I don’t much like finding out from them what’s happening on my own pitch. The story you told me almost kept me awake. It made me think the Americans’ territory isn’t watertight.” He clicked his tongue. “You’re an educated man, you know what private property means. We had to send a strong signal to those fucking foreigners.”

  “The Nigerian Mafia?”

  “Apparently.” He smiled enigmatically. “Dogs like that, you chase away ten, a hundred come back.”

  “How do you know they’re Nigerians?”

  “They talked Dashiki among themselves, and those gangs of theirs grow like weeds.” He pointed his nose in Sanogo’s direction. “Just ask the captain there.”

  Sanogo didn’t bat an eyelid. There were two constables at the entrance of the shebeen, the others were keeping an eye on the drinkers in the main room.

  “Who’s their leader?” Neuman asked.

  “One of those fucking niggers, I suppose.”

  “You cut his eyelids with a razor. That wasn’t just for fun, was it?”

  Mzala wiped the palm of his hand on his faded T-shirt. “I didn’t ask their names, brother. They were just Nigerian dogs. A territory can’t be shared. Especially not the Americans’.”

  For the moment, no one was making a hostile move. Brian glanced through the barred window looking out on the street corner. Outside, boys in shorts were watching from a distance, held back by their elders.

  “Where’s the rest of the body?” Neuman asked.

  “We sent the son of a bitch back where he came from!” Mzala said, swaggering in front of his court. “To the other side of the tracks.”

  The line separating Khayelitsha from the squatter camp.

  “So the gang comes from the buffer zone?”

  “Seems so, brother.”

  “What are they doing on your territory?”

  “I told you—trying to sell their dope.”

  “What dope?”

  “Tik. Anyway, that’s what the guy told us. He didn’t have any reason to lie,” he added with a sly smile. “These hyenas were prospecting around here, for a while apparently. It’s just not done, you agree. We’re the Americans, we don’t like sharing.”

  “You’re a funny guy, you know that?” Neuman held out the photograph of Gulethu. “Know him?”

  “Er . . .”

  “Gulethu, a Zulu tsotsi. He was skimming off the gangs, then he disappeared. He’s killed several people, two white girls in particular.”

  “Is he the Zulu the papers are talking about?”

  “Don’t tell me you can read.”

  “I have girls who’ve learned to read for me,” he said, turning to a colored girl sprawled on the couch. “Isn’t that right, girl, you know heaps about reading?”

  “Yeah,” the girl replied, her breasts bursting out of her red leotard. “I even have the Bible written on my ass!”

  They all laughed coarsely. The girl’s breasts shook rhythmically.

  “Well?” Neuman said impatiently.

  “No,” Mzala replied. “Never seen the guy.”

  “What about the rest of the gang? Where’s it hiding?”

  “In Cape Flats. An old spaza shop according to the guy, down near the tracks. I didn’t go see. It stinks over there.”

  Mzala was smiling with his yellow teeth when suddenly the windows exploded. Before the two cops at the entrance were able to raise their guns, they were riddled with bullets, and the sign and the door were both shot to pieces. A pickup truck with the tarp removed screeched to a halt outside the shebeen, and from the back of it three men sprayed bullets. Inside the shebeen the customers retreated from the entrance. A man fell to the floor face down, another collapsed in front of the bar counter, his neck broken. The strongest of them surged back, knocking over the stunned drunks, forcing their way through with their fists. A burst of fire took off the jaw of one of the constables who had been caught in the crush, and he let out a piercing scream. Neuman had thrown himself to the ground. Bodies were falling around him. People were taking refuge in the games room. The firing came from AK-47s. In a panic, some customers tried to escape through the windows, but the killers outside picked them off, and they dropped back inside, covered in blood. Neuman looked for Brian, saw him on the floor, his .38 in his hand. Crouching against the wall, Mzala was yelling orders into his cell phone. People were falling onto the metal partition, machine-gunned at close range. The bullets were still raining down in an explosion of plaster, glasses, bottles, billboards. Mzala and his men posted themselves at the window of the private room and opened fire in their turn.

  Sanogo and his men had fallen back in confusion—seven uniformed officers, including the one who’d had his chin torn off and was being supported by a terrified young recruit. The bullets were coming thick and fast over the counter, behind which Dina was hiding, her hands over her head. There were more shots out on the streets, like an echo to the groans of the wounded.

  Fully alert now, the Americans had launched a lightning counterattack, bombarding the pickup outside their HQ, until the rain of fire stopped.

  Brian and Neuman ran out into the yard of the shebeen, a dead end heaped with crates and bowls of crushed corn. They looked up at the corrugated iron roofs, and climbed onto the gutter. The passersby had run away in panic. Cries could be heard from the neighboring alleys. The three blacks in the back of the Toyota had turned and were now responding to the Americans’ fire. After a brief exchange, one of the blacks collapsed against the tarp, and the pickup set off at high speed. A fourth shooter covered their escape from the door of the truck. Brian and Neuman fired from the roofs, emptying their barrels at the tsotsis in the back.

  They jumped off the roof in a cloud of dust.

  The machine-gunned Toyota zigzagged on the street before crashing into a small brick house with a dull thud. The passenger who had been shooting from the door jumped out and ran off, screaming. Brian and Neuman ran to the truck, reloading their guns as they did so. The men in the b
ack of the pick-up had stopped moving, their bodies riddled with holes. Neuman covered Brian, who aimed his revolver at the smoking engine. The driver’s face was resting on the wheel, his eyes open—the bullet had come out through his mouth. Brian looked up and saw people running in all directions. Neuman was already a hundred yards away, at the end of the alley.

  The fugitive was holding an AK-47. He fired a burst blindly before turning the corner. He reappeared immediately, retreating, firing all over the place. The Americans had cut off the area, blocking off his retreat. A bullet-riddled car came charging at him in a cloud of dust, and stopped dead.

  Cornered, the killer turned toward Neuman and, with his eyes bulging, aimed the AK-47. A black with a hideous face, who seemed to be defying him in his madness. Gulethu.

  As he pressed the trigger, Neuman fired.

  Mzala’s men sprang out of the car, guns at the ready. Gulethu was lying on the beaten earth, a bullet in his hip. He blinked in the sun, saw the Americans at the end of the street, and tried to pick up the AK-47, but it was out of his reach. He smiled dementedly, squeezing the amulet around his neck. The tsotsis finished him off with a burst of fire at close range.

  Neuman wanted to cry out, but he felt a sharp pain. Instinctively, he lifted his hand to his stomach. Removing it, he saw it was red. Hot blood was running down his shirt.

  PART THREE

  LET THE EARTH TREMBLE

  1.

  Zina had been born without brothers. As the eldest child, she had learned the Zulu martial art of izinduku, usually reserved for boys, and had shown a skill and a determination uncommon in such a pretty girl. Her father had gone to the forest to cut her a stick that was the right size for her. She had fought with the boys, blow for blow, ignoring the sniggers.

  Her father had been stripped of his position for refusing to kowtow to the Bantu authorities who had granted the tribal chiefs a relative autonomy in return for obeying the apartheid laws. He didn’t want to be one of those little despots who’d sold out to the whites and would soon be imposing their power by force inside the homelands with the help of the militias. Their house had been bulldozed, their animals killed, and the clan driven out, its members scattered through the neighboring slums.

  Zina had decided to fight back. The ANC was banned, and its leaders had been in prison for twenty years, so she had joined Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement.

  There were few women fighters in Inkatha. From time to time, using a knitting club as a cover, they would help to organize political meetings or hide white sympathizers who were in danger of being arrested by the army or lynched by the comrades. Zina had demonstrated with the Zulu fighting sticks they were allowed to carry, she had challenged white power by parading with imaginary weapons, she had printed leaflets, and attacked and fled the militants of the ANC-UDF, which up until then had represented the opposition. Because she performed all these masculine activities and kept her femininity to herself, when her hidden side did eventually emerge it had been like an eruption: futile outbursts, cataclysmic love affairs and disappointments. It was as if Zina had thrown her heart off of a bridge a long time ago and was waiting for a little girl—herself—to appear and pick it up.

  The years of apartheid had passed, her adult years, and the political struggle had made her as hard as the wood of the sticks her father had carved for her. By embracing his political enemies, President Mandela had put an end to the slaughter but the world, when you came down to it, had merely shifted. These days, apartheid wasn’t political but social—and she was still up there on that bridge, looking down at her fallen heart.

  But Zina didn’t despair—not completely. She was an intelligent woman. She decided to work on her body.

  Ali Neuman lay in his hospital bed, and smiled weakly in welcome.

  She raised an ironic eyebrow. “I thought a Zulu king was indestructible.”

  “I’m not dead,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Gulethu’s bullet had entered his left side and passed along a rib, narrowly missing his heart. The cracked bone made him sigh from time to time. The hospital doctor had recommended complete rest—one or two weeks, until the cartilage had reset.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I read about your exploits in the newspaper,” she said, mockingly. “Congratulations.”

  “Twelve people dead, I don’t call that an exploit.”

  Birds were singing beyond the window. Zina wore a midnight-blue dress and a cobalt-blue stone hanging from a braid around her neck. She looked at the bouquet of irises standing imposingly on the night table.

  “From an admirer?”

  “Worse—my mother.”

  She picked up the book lying next to the flowers. “And this?”

  “A present from Brian.”

  “A friend?”

  “The only one I have left.”

  Zina read the title out loud. “John Paul II: Essential Writings.”

  She gave him a questioning—and quite charming—look.

  “I’m a bit of an insomniac,” he said, euphemistically. “Brian hoped it would help me sleep.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I usually drop right off as soon as I’ve read the cover.”

  Zina smiled, and a bead of sweat ran down into the hollow between her breasts. As if in a dream, the dew of her skin had disappeared beneath her dress.

  “When are you getting out?” she asked.

  “Right now. I have to attend a press conference.”

  “The doctor will be happy.”

  “I can walk.”

  “How far? The door?”

  The tone was playful, but Neuman did not notice her smile. He was aware only of her bare feet on the plastic-coated floor, her legs shimmering in the daylight, and the desire that had grabbed him by the throat.

  “I’m performing at Rhodes House on Saturday,” she said. “It’s the last date on the tour.”

  “Is that so?”

  Neuman was playing his role badly, even though it was one he had at his fingertips. They hadn’t said anything else the other night in the dressing room. He had escaped her lips to answer Janet Helms’s call and then had left without a word. Zina did not know what he was thinking, if he still suspected her of killing people like in the old Inkatha days, or if she was still up there on the bridge, waiting for a day that would never come.

  She leaned over the river flowing down there, a movement she couldn’t resist. Part of her soul drowned when she placed her mouth on his lips. Too bad for the little girl hanging in the rain. Neuman was raising a hand toward her—even before she did—when there was a knock at the door.

  The weight of the world immediately pushed them apart.

  A big black woman entered the room, laden with food, groping at the air with her stick. Josephina sensed a female presence beside her son, and laughed. “Oh! I’m disturbing you! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

  “I was just leaving,” Zina lied.

  “Ah-ha!”

  Josephina put down her energy-giving food at the foot of the bed and shifted her attention to Zina. Neuman introduced her but she was already exploring her with her fingertips.

  “Ah-ha!”

  “Yes, all right, that’s enough.”

  But Josephina was in seventh heaven. The woman had a noble face, generous curves—a poplar tree gently leaning over her son’s bed. “You’re a Zulu, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes. A bit too much for your son’s taste, apparently.”

  Zina winked at Neuman, and hurried out.

  Neuman turned a little paler.

  Leaning on her cane, his mother was looking at him as if he was chasing clouds on Venus. “You seem on good form, son!”

  He had the taste of her lips on his mouth and a black hole in his heart.

  Brian had bought a yellow and red lion from a street vendor, and a zebra for Eve, wire figurines made in the townships. He rang the entry phone, his throat a little dry.

  “Yes?” a
woman’s voice said.

  “Claire? It’s Brian.”

  “Who?”

  Everything calm and white in the crushing sun.

  The sidewalk felt like quicksand.

  They’d spent enough alcohol-fueled evenings together to become firm friends. Dan wouldn’t have liked his wife to be abandoned just because he wasn’t around anymore.

  “Let me in, Claire,” he insisted. “Just for a few minutes.”

  First there was a heavy silence, then a barely audible sigh through the entry phone, and finally an electronic click that opened the gate.

  The little garden was flooded with sunlight. Eve and Tom were splashing each other in a plastic swimming pool, watched over by their aunt Margo, who greeted him with a preoccupied smile.

  “Uncle Brian! Uncle Brian!”

  The kids threw their arms around him as if he was a pony, and enthused over his gifts.

  “Where’s Ali?” Tom asked.

  “Polishing his nails. He’ll come and see you when they’re dry.”

  “Really?” Eve asked in surprise.

  Claire was on the terrace, smoothing out the modeling dough the kids had been playing with. Margo suggested a new game to draw the children back to the pool. Brian went up to the table where Claire was silently applying herself.

  “I told you I’d rather be alone,” she said, without looking up.

  He put his hands in his pockets, to stop himself smoking. “I just wanted to see how you were.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How are the kids?”

  “Have you ever seen orphans on top of the world?”

  “You’re alive, Claire,” he said, in a friendly tone.

  “I’m not dead. There’s a difference.”

  She looked up at him. It was as if grief had eaten her up from inside. Even the blue of her eyes had faded.

  “The situation is already difficult enough, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, sure, it could be worse,” she retorted, with a harsh smile. “I could also lose my breast to cancer. But I’m lucky, my hair’s growing back! Great, isn’t it?” Her hands shook as they kneaded the dough.