The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  “Show you where these girls live.”

  I’m eyeing the bag again and whisper with stiff lips, “Do you have it with you?”

  She shrugs and I know that she does.

  “What do you need it for?” I ask.

  “C’mon,” she says. I follow her, feeling numb. We head downhill on the dirt road. At the bottom there’s this lonesome shop that looks like a knock-kneed old man with walls caving in and a roof like a squashed hat, spotted brown bananas hanging off like skin tags. One good cough and the thing will collapse. Old posters are curling. buy strepsils. use omo detergent. Get whiter than white. Then comes the first row of houses—grey concrete boxes the same and the same and the same like they were stamped by a factory machine. People are sitting on plastic chairs and watching us pass. There’s music, shouting. A ditch piled high full of rubbish gives off a fruity stink—municipal rubbish trucks are targets in the war and don’t come around. We wade through boys kicking a pup soccer ball, another boy too big for his bicycle rides up and circles, his thin knees pumping to his chin. He seems to know Annie, they exchange some words in African before he drifts off.

  We reach this bend where on one side there’s a field and on the other a crowd, women behind steam-billowing cast-iron pots of mielie pap and wire grills of pink meat and yellow chicken feet, charcoal whiff of burning fat. A barbershop flashes cracked mirrors, a shebeen blasts music with red-eyed drunks lolling in the dust outside. Some goats are grazing on garbage. Annie turns onto the field. Across is the shantytown—that skin disease on the land, the slum of the slum, where people have built their huts out of trash. Annie’s heading straight for it. You go if you want but I’m effing not. But when I turn away there’s a group of young guys standing there, guys with those flat golf caps and those pants with pleats or else tracksuits. Looking right at me. A hurricane of fear starts up in my guts and I walk out onto the field without looking back. When I catch up to Annie I say, “Where in bladdy hell are you going? Annie Annie Annie. Wait. Annie.”

  “The school is needs-based.”

  “What? Stop. We can’t go in there.”

  “It’s where our girls live,” she says.

  Behind us the young guys are on the field also, following, spreading out. A headline flashes in my head, tomorrow’s Star: two white idiots necklaced in jules. But her confidence sucks me along with her into the shantytown, taking a rough alleyway between the dinky huts. A naked little girl is standing in a ditch with fingers in her mouth and staring at me as she piddles down her chubby leg while a ribby, mangy dog laps the wet from her thigh. Looking away, I only just miss stepping on a mooshed rat with the worms of its guts all spread out. I try to keep my eyes on Annie’s back. There’s a flap of plastic hanging over a cutout in a hut and it flies up and a woman with wild hair sticks her head out. I say hello and she starts talking fast in what I think is Xhosa, her words all snapping and poppy in her mouth and she’s not sounding happy to see me. I try to smile as I squeeze past. All the time I can hear Annie’s bright American voice up ahead going hi, how are ya, how ya doing, hello, and mispronouncing dumela, sawubona, howzit, sharp-sharp. It’s kind of annoying to be led by an American cos this is my country, except it’s not really, I don’t know this part at all. And on another level I’m super glad she’s American—they’ll think I am too.

  Annie makes a right, steps over a smashed-up old tin bath, some chicken wire, and then ducks through hanging sheets. We come into this small courtyard, with the hanging sheets on the laundry lines all around us. I can hear a humming. “I want to show you this,” Annie says. “Before we go on. I need you to see it.” She points to a kind of marsh to one side behind this droopy little fence. “Go on up,” she says. I take a step and get clobbered in my nose by the motherlode of all bad smells. Annie’s saying, “You understand?” And I just shrug and say it’s gross. “No,” she says. “That’s not what I mean.” Her voice has changed so much I give her a worried look. She puts her hand on my neck and steers me forward and we reach the sagging fence and on the other side is a pit and it’s covered in about a billion shimmering flies. I have to put my hand over my mouth and nose. Some of the flies lift in a humming silver cloud but then drop right back down to their feast. The pit is piled full of mostly human shit but other things are rotting away. There’s rice except it’s not rice cos it’s moving and I think so this is what maggots are. Annie’s still got her hand on the back of my neck and it’s nice to be touched but she’s pushing a bit too hard. She points with her other hand. “You see the cans?” I just nod cos my mouth and nose are still covered. “Pick up that one,” she tells me. She means that rusted lid sticking up, covered in fat blue flies and slimy ropes. This is where it all ends up. We’re talking maximal shit. The smell is so thick it’s like wet paint. I shake my head and Annie is saying, “Go ahead, what are you, scaredy? Pick it up.” She pushes harder on my neck so I lean over the fence and like I’m dreaming I watch my hand go gliding down like it’s not part of me and get hold of the tin lid between thumb and fingertip. When I pull, it makes a sucking noise before it pops loose. I turn my face to one side. “I’m ganna coch,” I say. But Annie probably doesn’t understand our word for vomit. “Just read it,” she says. I don’t have to. I already know it’s Pamper cat food, the blue tin, hearty beef and gravy flavour. I recognise it from the Spar, in the end aisle where Arlene and I used to buy Sandy’s meals. I’m telling Annie this as I drop the can, automatically wiping my hand on my jeans before I can stop myself.

  Annie says, “You think these people have cats? You think these kids here keep cats as pets?” She’s right in my face, her eyes huge and shiny. “It’s for them,” she says. “It’s all they can afford. I mean families here live on it. They have to eat cat food. You understand now?” I still have my other hand over my mouth and nose and maybe this bugs her cos she yanks my wrist. “Cats here live on the rats. With all the garbage and sewage they get giant rats breeding everywhere. These things eat the feet off children who have to sleep on the floor. I’ve seen it. And meanwhile you guys are piling up mountains of bloody steaks and sausages on the barbecue every Sunday.” Annie is a vegetarian and she’s making a horrible face which I think is because meat’s disgusting to her but it’s not that, the face, cos now she starts mimicking. It’s me she’s mimicking with a whiny voice, some of the things I’ve said to her. “Awww it’s so hard at my fancy private school—nobody wants to be friends with me—ooh—I have to wear a stupid uniform—and the tests are so hard—and my principal is such a dick and wa wa waaa . . .” Almost as if she has one of those olden-day air raid sirens inside of her where you turn a handle and it goes faster and faster, like there is nothing I can do to stop it, and even worse I reckon there is nothing she can do to stop it either. “Oooh, we don’t keep a maid,” she’s saying, all nasty. “Oh wow you deserve a medal!” I try to move around her but she stays in my face, so I put my hands on her shoulders but she goes all stiff and I can’t move her. “All you care about is this,” she says all hot in my ear and she takes my left hand and pulls it onto her tit, I swear. Just squashes it in. Her big soft tit. It’s like an electric shock, I can’t believe it, the feeling in my hand, the feeling of her, it goes all through me. It’s not something I can hide from her cos she can feel it too, down there, what it does to me. Next thing she’s pushing me with her hips and I’m falling backward. The wires are behind my knees. I grab the fencepost but it’s doesn’t hold, it starts sagging. I twist half around and have to put out my hand and it goes straight onto the pit, nothing I can do. There’s a horrible feeling of popping through and then it’s warm slime and squelching and my hand going down, down, and all the ricey maggots swirl in around my arm. Getting gobbled alive. But when the slime touches my biceps my hand hits something a little bit solid underneath, I don’t want to think what it can be, something soggy, but it pauses my sinking. Maybe Annie is trying to help me up then, I don’t know, but I feel her weight coming down and I sort of panic, I’m thinking This
woman’s gone nuts and at the same time I’m like whatchacallit—flaying around—with my other arm and my bony elbow goes wham into her tummy. She makes a heavy oof! sound and backs off me and I can haul myself up, pulling my sucking arm out of the filth. I hold the stinking arm away from me and run to the nearest sheet hanging up. When I rip the sheet off and wind it round and round my arm it makes the laundry lines bounce and I see someone standing behind, close, and others behind him. He has a flat cap, black leather, and thin eyes watching me while he’s chewing on a match. He’s one of those who followed across the field. Annie’s turtled up on the ground with her head down like a praying Muslim. I’m saying sorry but I don’t think she hears me, I go to help her up, pulling on the bag which opens. The videotape’s inside. Without really thinking about it, I take it out and stuff it quickly down the top of my pants under my shirt. Then I zip the bag and move off and start scrubbing like crazymad with the sheet around my arm. More young guys come out from behind the laundry and just stand there, staring at me, at us both. “Comrade,” says the first one. “Are you all right, Comrade?”

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  But he’s not talking to me.

  13

  The shantytown runs along the bank of a muddy little stream and the people use that stream for everything. Annie and the guys wait for me while I find a spot that’s not too bad—there’s even a slither of laundry soap that I manage to pick out of the rubbish and clean my arm with till it hurts. On the other side of the stream there’s more shantytown but not as much and past that it’s just open veld, where the guys lead us.

  It’s hilly and hot in the open, all rocks and yellow grass and red anthills. I’m not looking at Annie as we walk, I keep playing over in my mind how bladdy nasty she got by that shit pit. Especially the mimicking. When someone mimics you like that it’s like a burn inside, it doesn’t just stop hurting the second it’s over. All-a-sudden I hear a big engine revving and look up and the guys tell us to run and we all run hard up the closest koppie and drop down in the high grass on top. Looking down, I see a yellow Casspir come around. Bladdy spaz-looking things they are, on their giant moonwalker tires. One of the guys says Mello Yello and I get that’s what they call them, after the col’drink which is also that bright yellow colour. Behind the Casspir comes a police truck. They both park and policemen get out of both and they open the back of the truck and bang on the sides. People climb down and stand there with their hands up, mostly school-age kids, some little ones, and older men and women too. The cops have shotguns or assault rifles out and are wearing khaki leopard patterns or blue peaked caps, some carry sjamboks. What surprises me is how most of these cops are black men. But the white ones look in charge, shouting orders. One of the whites has a German shepherd on a leash. A butterfly hovers in front of me and I watch it for a while. The guy next to me slowly breaks a twig into twenty pieces. No one speaks. Annie is chewing on her lip. Down there, the cops are playing a game. Laughing. They pick someone and that person has to run and get back in the truck. But there’s a catch, the dog cop lets the big German shepherd go and I can hear him giving the order in Afrikaans every time to vat hom nou—take him now—so the chosen one has to try and make it while the unleashed dog hits them from behind and tries to drag them back, shaking and growling like mad. The males are mostly quiet but the screams of the females float all the way up to us so clearly. Then this one girl breaks from the group and starts running hard, all long legs, her skirt flying. A policeman moves fast across and hits her with his shotgun held sideways and she goes over and he gets her by the collar and drags her back to the truck. She’s kicking and flopping. He pulls her up and swings her hard into the truck and when she bounces off he lets her fall on her back and the dog is on her. Her skirt goes over her head and a whip comes down on her dark thighs.

  I look away and when I look back they’re throwing her in the truck and looking for someone new when all-a-sudden one of the cops goes down on one knee, lifting the shotgun. I notice smoke on the Casspir. Then things bouncing in the air around it, dancing bits of bricks and rocks. The shotgun goes crack! Other cops are down low too, firing. Now there are flames also on the Casspir, licking there under the smoke, and its engine roars. As it moves I see men and boys popping up in the tall grass on the far side, up and chucking stuff, their arms bowling super fast, and I can hear the noise of things hitting the Casspir bonk bonk against the steel and also the crish! of breaking glass. There’re more flames. I see a burning bottle spinning in the air. Now the men and boys are running hard the other way, back toward the shanties, whistling and spreading out, and the burning Casspir goes after them but all cautious on the slope, like it’s an elephant walking on thorns.

  Meantime the people by the truck are running in our direction. A cop spins round and shoots at their backs—towards us! One guy goes all stiff and then falls. A woman hugs a little kid to her chest. Annie dragged me into all this—she did it. I could die. All my fear gets turned into this big rush of pure rage against her, as the guys with us start moving and we all run downhill full stick. I have to press the video against my stomach to keep it from falling. There’s a dirt road at the bottom and a BMW comes fast around on it, boiling dust and spraying stones as it sweeps to a stop. Annie’s running to the window on the passenger side. She’s talking there, touching her bag. I run around to the driver’s side. Up close, the BMW’s side window is missing, broken pieces of glass on the dash and wires dangling under the steering wheel. The driver is this kid, a boy. Two others in the back. But the man in the passenger seat is no kid and by the way Annie is talking to him, the way she’s showing the bag, I just know this is him, this is the man, the connection for the tape. I stick my head in and speak to him across the kid driver. He turns away from Annie. Good. I’m so acid against her it’s unbelievable. I mean who the hell does she think she is to schlep me into all this? Literally shoving me into the shit. And then mimicking me, which I truly hate the most. This American. I’m so cross I want to hurt her. Just having the tape with me is not enough. So I shout to this main man in the passenger seat, “Hey. Hey. She doesn’t have it! I do!” He is probably thirty or so, wearing a black turtleneck, his face cannonball round and shiny-dark with a shaved head. “Who is this?” He’s asking Annie but looking at me. I say, “I have it, hey.” Annie’s mouth is open but she can’t speak, it’s like she’s been slapped. “She doesn’t have it,” I say. “I do.” And I tap the tape under my shirt so he can hear. There’s a hell of a bang from over the hill, then two more on top of each other. The passenger puts out his hand to me. “Okay, pass it, let’s go.”

  Annie says, “Martin. Give it back and move away from the car. You don’t know what you’re doing. Martin.” But I’m not interested in listening to Annie Goldberg. I want to do whatever will rock her the most, make her feel bad for what she did to me and I’m opening the back door of the BMW and getting in before I even realise what I’m doing. Annie runs around the car to get to me. “Bye American!” I shout and the bald man in front laughs and points and the BMW shoots away, shaking its arse on the dust road, giving Annie a blast of red dirt.

  14

  The road climbs up and we pass groups of mature men walking down. They’re all carrying sticks and spears with them, and some have animal skins on their shoulders or tied around their heads and I notice pieces of red cloth tied on everywhere and they’re singing in their deep voices that way that makes your skin goosepimply. The driver kid gives them the old eff-you sign with the thumb sticking out of the fist. They shake their sticks, whistle and shout back. He swerves the car at them. Some have to jump to get out the way. As we drive away I look back and see a stick turning over in the air then it whacks the back window and bounces off leaving cracks in the glass. “Those dogs,” says the bald man. “The time is coming. Chuh! Chuh! Chuh! Is coming.” Every chuh sound he karate chops his other hand. “You know Buthelezi?” he says. “That dog. These men are his. They licking in the usshole of Botha. They lick B
otha uss! The time is coming!” Buthelezi, Gatsha Buthelezi—he’s the Zulus’ man, I know that, with a beard and glasses. But I have a hard time picturing him kissing the arse of our white President Botha. Those older guys on the road must have been Zulus and when we drive up higher I see they’ve come down from this big red-brick building with a razor fence around and I click that this must be what a migrant hostel is, that I’ve heard of in the news. The Zulus with the red and the spears are from the hostel and they are older men and these in the car are township youth who live below and there’s hectic aggro between the two, obviously, but I don’t know why. The boy on the far side pulls out a handgun and points it out the window—the one in the middle sticks his fingers in his ears, I’m too shocked to do the same—and fires three times, all casual, pointing at the hostel as we zoom along its razor fence. The bangs hurt my eardrums and I smell something burnt that must be gunpowder. This kid did it so relaxed he might have been having a sip of col’drink instead. Nobody else in the car seems to even have noticed apart from fingers-in-ears. “. . . your name? Heh?” I realise the bald one up front is talking to me, his eyes in the rearview. Like a total dunce I give him my full, correct name. And he says, “Me, I am Comrade Shaolin. This one is Comrade Electrocute. Comrade Jaws. Comrade Guillotine.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” is what I hear myself say.

  The road goes around the back of the hill. It gets all overgrown and we stop and everyone piles out and walks. It’s hot and the grass goes bizzzzz so loud from those insects with a name I can’t think of since my brain has stopped working. Nobody says anything and I start to shit myself to the max. Telling myself do not panic but I cannot believe what I’ve gone and done. Marcus used to say there’s no point in panicking, it just makes things worse. But it’d be pretty damn hard to get worse than this. Up here there’s nobody else, nothing but sky and grass and in front an old rusted water tank lying on its side next to a concrete slab all cracked and black-and-white splotchy from bird crap. This’s where we stop. There’s a view down onto the concrete wall around the township, far underneath, and looking out I can see the long shimmery strip of the highway and then after that are the ivory-white roofs of the mansions in Sandton which is a suburb that makes me feel poor every day at school cos of how many Solomon students come from there—land of private tennis courts and perfect rose gardens and butlers serving sundowners. It’s funny that they would build Sandton right next to Jules township. Funny, ja—like that Depeche Mode song goes, someone must have had a very sick sense of humour.