The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  I cruise on through the days and weeks with my new mates, a part of all the shenanigans. The starting of the fires in the rubbish dump. The baffing contest where we bend over and fart into the mike of Spazmaz Cohen’s new tape recorder to make the volume meter twitch up the highest (till Katzelbaum strains too hard and kuks his pants). The punitive raids on the Standard Six lighties. The passing round of wrinkled pages from a smuggled-in-from-the-overseas Penthouse, porno being big-time illegal (even a nipple will bring the police). The war cries on Fridays, building school spirit.

  Ugguh bugguh ugguh bugguh!

  Ee uh! Uggubugguh!

  Ugguh bugguh ugguh bugguh!

  Ee uh! Uggubugguh!

  Up with Wisdom!

  Bugger the rest!

  Now we get the word there’s ganna be a major rawl. Big Beefus Blitzer is challenging for Strongest Lad. There’s tons of betting leading up to it and when the bell goes we vikkel up to the rugby fields to secure a good position overlooking the tuck-shop square. Everything important at Solomon seems to happen around that tuck shop. In front, the square is paved with slasto and the prefects are all shoving the crowd out to make space. Here comes Lionel “Beefus” Blitzer (Blitzer Petrochemical), wheeling his short, thick arms. Beefus has the kind of wide, dark face that you can see already needs to be shaved more than once a day. And here comes Crackcrack. We the okes of 8E are standing behind the rugby fence above the square, looking down. I watch how the two of them do their warm-ups, both fighting the air and showing what they’re about to do to the other. Stocky Beefus is hooking lefts and rights from way out, lanky Crackcrack keeps sucking his big lips away from his teeth which makes him look, to be honest, sort of mentally ill, as he knees the air like a hundred times and I hope old Beefus remembers to protect his goolies. Not that he seems worried. Beefus is strong as an ox, he’s a definite for prop on the First Team this year. The general feeling in the crowd is Beefus all the way. The general feeling is Crackcrack deserves a fucking-up, solid. Crackcrack’s got a reputation for being cruel (no surprise to me), especially among the lighties in the lowest Standards. Then the prefects are stepping back and saying go! Beefus runs across and takes a mighty swing and when he misses he’s off balance and Crackcrack jumps on him. There’s a wild milling of arms and legs and they go down together. Crackcrack gets ahold of Beefus’s tie. I can tell he’s thought this out in advance, confirmed by how he took off his own tie beforehand. He drags the knot of Beefus’s tie around and starts twisting it like mad as he wraps his legs around Beefus judo-style to keep him from getting away. Choking Beefus with his own tie—I hear a buzzing in the crowd and then some okes start booing. The prefects look unsure whether to stop it or not. Others are arguing with the booers. There’re ones who think this new trick is cheating and others who reckon it’s pure genius. Meantime Beefus’s face has puffed up all bad, his lips purple and the rest dark red. His arms go all floppy and his eyes close. Shoving matches start busting out as the chinas of Beefus try to help their man and Crackcrack’s chinas are getting in their way. It takes a long while before they get Crackcrack off and they have to peel him, one hand at a time like he’s a bladdy crab with its pincers locked into that tie.

  Then his mates lift Crackcrack up, cheering. I see Sardines Polovitz there, he was at the Emmarentia Dam that day. The other one, Russ Herman, he emigrated with his family to Texas, America. They’re carrying Crackcrack around on shoulders like he is getting married. Meantime old Beefus is limping away, leaning on someone. What bugs me is how people are. I mean already they are all with Crackcrack, the winner. If it had been the other way round they would have been with Beefus. People have no bladdy loyalty, they’re all sheep who run after winners. It really gets to me. I’m shaking my head and I can feel my face all sour and all-a-sudden—bing!—I am looking right down into the eyes of Crackcrack himself. I know I should look away. We’ve got that contract of shame that goes all the way back to the Dam—I pretend you don’t exist and you pretend I don’t—but instead I make a spaz face and give it to him full stick. For a second I see the surprise hit him, the shock of it, then his eyebrows come together. He’s breathing hard and he is sweating and he’s just almost murdered another kid and it’s probably the greatest moment of his sad life and there’s me, Helger, to remind him of what happened that day at the Dam. To mock him, noch. Next thing his fist is waving at me and I hear him shouting, screaming, in a hoarse voice, “I’ll sort you too, Helger! Your time is coming.” Then they turn and carry him down the other side.

  Spunny nudges me. “Looks like you made a new friend there, hey, Charity. Wow-wee. You should be a diplomat when you grow up. You got a real talent.”

  “What Charity’s got,” says Turdster, “is what we call a death wish.”

  “Charity, Charity,” says Schnitz, shaking his narrow head. “When you ganna learn to behave yourself, hey man? When in heaven’s name?” Schnitz has his cigarette style and his way of coming up sideways and talking in quick spurts. He likes to show he knows everything from the inside. He’s got a wink that goes off so often it’s like a medical twitch. He’s the one I need to ask. I’ve been carrying it around for a long time, trying to find the right time, to get my nerve up. I decide, screw it, I’ll do it now.

  We start walking back to class. I keep rapping to Schnitz to keep him with me, dawdling a bit so we’re at the back. Meantime I carefully fit it into the palm of my hand—it feels naked to have it out here in the open, away from the Sandy Hole. I take a breath and tap Schnitz to break his monologue about the various categories of vaginas and when he looks at me I turn over my hand and show him the card without letting him touch it. One of his eyebrows shoots up almost straight and starts bobbing like the hand of a keener kid with a question in class. “Not my scene,” he says. “I’m a Thunderdome man.”

  So it’s a club. I try not let any surprise show in my face. But inside I’m flashing like a pinball machine through everything I know about the clubs, everything I’ve ever heard. Cos Thunderdome is a club and a club is a nightclub, a kind of disco in town. The cool Solomon crowd go to clubs, they get in even if they’re under eighteen. Clubs are dangerous, glamorous. I know the names and the legends but of course I’ve never been. I’ve heard of Q’s on Market Street and of Idols with its balcony on End Street. The Junction nearby and the crazy 4th World. The Doors near the Carlton Centre and Bella Napoli and the Chelsea Hotel where the frissest band in South Africa, éVoid, played some infamous concerts for their weirdly dressed-up fans called fadgets. But I’ve never heard of a club called Xanadu. “What’s wrong with Xanadu?” I ask Schnitz. It’s the one word on the card. He’s trying to get hold of it but I’ve already pocketed it back.

  Schnitz stops and sends me a lank shrewd look. “You’re a Xanadu man, hey, yourself?”

  “Ja, man,” I say. “That spot is lank tit.”

  Schnitz smiles. “You scheme so, hey?” He starts talking about all the heavy jolling he has done at the clubs. The rounds of flaming sambucas. The man-crazed shiksa sluts jumping up and down under the strobe lights. The dirty action in the toilets and the Miami Vice suits and the time Myron Shekelovitz drove his Suzuki through the plate-glass window at the front of Jackal’s. He talks about how much it costs to bribe the bouncers to let you in. “But you,” he says, suddenly all sly, “you have probably got fully fake ID, am I right? Like gold-plated. A big-time clubber like you. Am I correcto, bru?”

  “Hundred per cent,” I say. I’m on automatic, the bullshit flowing on tap from my mouth.

  Schnitz snorts. “Charity. Level with the gravel, my mate. Have you ever even been to a club? Any club. Ever in your life.”

  I pretend to be confused, my eyelids flapping like moth wings. “What are you asking me?”

  He grins. “Charity, didn’t your mommy ever teach you to tell the truth?” As he walks off what I most want to do is grab him by the shirt and shake him and say, Take me with you next time you go! But I’m too cool for that. My hands go in my pockets
and I start whistling. Too cool for school.

  29

  I have my school name—Charity—but I don’t have a Name yet, have to work for that still, find my angle. But the more time passes the more I think of the girls in Jules township, of the Struggle, and all-a-sudden I find myself swelling up with pure gratitude for the schooling that’s right in front of me on a silver platter, the quality of the textbooks and the teachers, and never mind the ugly stuff. Maybe coming up on turning seventeen also has something to do with it, but for the first time in my life I start to avail myself of what’s there, actively concentrating in classes and doing my homework first thing instead of wasting my afternoons in useless Playing. And every morning now I’m doing push-ups and making my bed, and at home I hang up my uniform neatly and sit down to eat a proper lunch “like a gentlyman,” as Zaydi puts it. I even do shadow boxing with my shirt off in the sun, trying to remember the little bit that Marcus did teach me. Like defence first. Elbows up, fists over eyebrows. Angle off to your man. Left, right. He can’t hurt you. Nelson Mandela was a boxer. He does push-ups in his cell.

  This afternoon I decide to go into the Yard, I can do my homework after supper. I want to help the business, to be useful. I catch the municipal bus on Barry Hertzog Avenue and get off in Vrededorp. At the Yard, Isaac is working alone at the Old Cars just like the last time when I was here with that freak Captain Oberholzer in tow. I pass my old man his tools for a while before I notice Silas’s stuff isn’t there and ask about it. Isaac lifts his head with one eye shut in the sun, looking at me like he can’t believe I don’t know this. But no one tells me anything. He says ten days ago Silas went missing. It was a week before they found out what happened. He was driving his Peugeot 404 station wagon and he ploughed into the back of a truck on the highway off-ramp. They took him to Baragwanath Hospital in the giant township of Soweto, and there he got left on the floor, neglected in some mix-up. Eventually his family tracked him down, and it turned out he had a broken neck and had developed bad infections on the lungs and cardiac problems. When Isaac found out where he was, he arranged to have him transferred to a private clinic in Illovo, their first nonwhite patient ever. “They only took him cos I’m paying extra,” Isaac says. “Plus the physician manager there is a nephew of Errol Kramer. You know Errol.” I nod. Errol’s bought exhaust systems from us for donkey’s years. One time he shot three robbers dead in his shop and was in the papers. Isaac looks sad to me and I’m not surprised, him and Silas have been glued together at the Yard since forever.

  “How is he doing now?” I ask.

  “You want to go see?”

  So we drive to Illovo and I lose a breath when I see Marcus’s car in the parking lot. It takes a second to remember it’s not his anymore, belongs to Victor Mabuza now, Silas’s son, given to him by my father after Marcus did the unthinkable—maybe the unforgivable—and joined the army. We go inside and Silas is lying there asleep, tubes all over the show. Isaac’s already told me this is basically hospice care, Silas is no spring chicken and we have to face it, he’s not going to recover. Victor is sitting by the bed and I can see Isaac wants to say something to him. I say I’m going to the toilet but I listen outside at the door. I can only just hear what Isaac is saying, his voice all squeezed. “I’m . . . very, very sorry.” And Victor says, “It was an accident.” And Isaac says, “Ja, I know. But I should have looked into it better, rightaway. He should never have lain there like a dog on the floor. I should have looked into it when he didn’t come to work. Your father . . . I could have gotten him in here rightaway . . . Maybe it . . . I’m sorry, I am sorry.” Driving home, my father’s eyes are still red. “It’s terrible what happens to them,” he says like he’s half talking to himself. “It is terrible. A man should have proper doctors. Terrible. When I was a kid, I’ll never forget . . .” But he doesn’t go on, and I don’t push it.

  In the morning I realise it’s Wednesday again. I’m not nervous about that anymore, it’s funny to think how I was the first time. Going down to Viljoen’s has become a routine, there’s never any message from Annie in the books. Now I think how I can go on waiting or I can make things happen myself. You can’t build a Name by doing nothing. At first break I go up to the media annex where we have our Commodore 64 computers in neat rows, our library, our film hall. I’ve been thinking about this all night, it seemed a lot easier lying in bed—I’m shaking but I take out the steel ruler in my pocket and use the corner to unscrew the plate of an electric outlet, pulling it out and leaving it dangling, and then I go up to the top floor. Mr. Gordon is a bit of a dick and he basically lives there in the media annex, his little kingdom. I ask him about joining the video club and he looks up and talks slowly to me like I’m a moron, saying I should know it’s only for matrics and only for the very few that shall manage to qualify. I give him a nice smile and tell him someone vandalised one of the plugs downstairs and that gets him agitated even more than I’d hoped. When he runs down to have a look, I vikkel behind his desk and through the accordion doors to the video lab. There’s a video editing suite, a camera on a tripod pointed at a green screen. A steel door in the corner is slightly open. Inside is a walk-in storeroom full of supplies. There’re cameras, lights, microphones—and on the far side a tall block of stacked VCRs, floor to ceiling. Hallelujah. I pump my fist. Mr. Gordon’s footsteps are on the staircase so I use the outside fire escape. When I get home I hurry inside and write out the Hebrew grid Annie showed me, encoding a message: HAVE FOUND VID PRODCTN EQUIP STANDBY. It goes between page 100 and 101 of Sense and Sensibility which I take down straightaway to Viljoen’s and do the book swap with Dolf like always. How’s that for initiative, American?

  30

  Sunday is braai day, obviously. In the morning I go with Isaac to pick up the meat from the kosher section at the back of the Checkers on Barry Hertzog Avenue. T-bones and lamb sosaties and a jar of monkey gland sauce (Annie nearly vomited when she first heard the name, she only calmed down when I explained it’s not made of monkeys, just spices and tomato and worcester sauce and such). When we get back there’s a red Jaguar XJ6 parked outside. Means only one thing. Sure enough in the garden Hugo Bleznik is nicely settled in, a very large Scotch in hand and a much younger woman at his side that I’ve never seen before, which doesn’t surprise me. Hugo with a belly like a beer barrel and about twenty-five puddly chins under his real one. He’s wearing a white suit today with a carnation in his hatband. He’s been Isaac’s partner since the beginning but I can’t think of two men more opposite. Isaac’s place is the Yard—king of the rust and the wrecks—while Hugo works in nice restaurants and pretty hotels and fancy bars. He’s got that warm handshake, that unbreakable ceramic smile. He knows everyone in Joburg that matters to the business and probably most of them that don’t. He’s never been married and he owns seven racehorses he keeps at the track out in Turffontein and a huge house in Hyde Park and another holiday house with a boat on the Vaal River. He must be getting near eighty but still has amazing energy, prefers being on the road to his office at the Yard. He not only drives all over the country, fishing for new wholesale clients and visiting dealers, he also flies to Los Angeles and Tokyo to make deals for shipments of used engines and new parts.

  I help Arlene lay the table under the plum trees and after we eat and the fat black flies are parked on the gnawed bones, Hugo turns to me. Isaac has gone inside, where Arlene disappeared a while ago, to fetch another bottle. Hugo’s new lady friend is in deep study of her long nails, and Zaydi’s eyes are closed. Hugo says to me, “I wanna talk serious to you, boyki.” His pinkie finger pointing from his glass. “You know it’s ganna be you now. You the one, hey.”