The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  Eventually I make out a shifting blob of daylight ahead and sniff the coolness of fresh air. A wave of gratitude lifts in me, new energy with it. As I get closer to the light I find it slants down from above, hitting the pipe floor. This last section of the pipe rises up at a steep angle and there’s a grate at the top. I’ve never been happier to see anything. My foot goes to the side to press off and something shifts. There’s a long horizontal flap in the pipe wall down there, but I have to use my foot and all my weight to make it move just a few centimetres. I kick at it for a little bit, puzzled, and then I climb on up to the top. At the grate it’s a battle to open the satchel and get the key out, dirty sweat running into my eyes. This key—253—is the one that I took from the Gooch’s office and keep stored in the Sandy Hole. Next week I’m ganna make copies before I replace it. Right now I’m working my hand through the grate but I drop the key and almost lose it and have to get reset all over again. It takes lank tries to get it slotted into the plastic box that sits like a mezuzah on the side of the grate outside, but then it turns smoothly and it’s tit-easy to open the latch. Next thing I’m crawling out into the open air under blue sky, panting like a half-drowned swimmer hitting a beach. I’m covered in filth. I stand up on shaky legs and see the veld and the tennis courts and the distant buildings and I’m completely alone. I start walking. It’s like being inside a zombie movie, the end of the world. I’m the last person alive. No bells, no voices, no one at all except me and the wind. Unless old Volper is waiting with his cane in his hand, ready to rush out, lashing and screaming for me to bend over.

  I go all the way up to the pool. In the changeroom where JT Mendelovitz likes to grab a beam naked, swing up his legs, and fart aggressively at the nearest faces, where Linky Shapiro is the undisputed towel-snap king, I use the showers, the water running black over my feet, and go out with a fresh towel around my waist. I’m starting to feel more relaxed in all this open space that belongs to no one but me. I wash my clothes and put them out to dry on the stands beside the pool, then walk down to the tuck shop. The door is unlocked so I enter and help myself to a nice selection—Aero bars and Lunch bars and Bar Ones and Chomps and Damascus nougats, a couple of cans of cream soda, a brace of Simba chips. Just like the kid in the Willy Wonka story, I swear. I go back to the pool and swim for a bit, tanning and sugar gorging till my clothes are dry. With my satchel, I head down to the media annex. At the video lab the storeroom is unlocked. There are twelve video machines but I bring out five to start, it takes me a while to work out how to connect them to the editing suite at the same time. Luckily there are tons of cables, enough to connect up every machine, but the problem is that I don’t want to take too many blank tapes from the storeroom or it might get noticed. In the end I decide on only eight tapes so I only need to hook up seven machines to the suite. I get the Annie master tapes from the satchel and begin. While the forty-five minute segments are copying, I catch a nice schlof, using my Casio alarm to beep me awake whenever it’s time to change a tape.

  Before leaving I swipe an old tracksuit from lost-and-found and put it on over my washed clothes. After I crawl out of the filthy tunnel I ditch the messed-up tracksuit and go collect my bike. Monday I finish cleaning the mural and that afternoon I get keys copied (the Gooch’s office and 253) and buy myself a miner’s helmet with a light, get some overalls from the Yard, and also buy some knee and elbow pads from a BMX shop, plus a whole box of blank videotapes from the electronics shop opposite. Everything gets stored in the Sandy Hole. My alarm wakes me at two in the morning to lower my bike over the wall and ride through Greenside and up into Regent Heights. I’ve never ridden after dark like this. It’s dead still, just the yellow streetlights and the long walls. Sometimes a television flickers like a ghost at a window or a dog howls like a wolf. There’s a good chance someone is getting murdered or raped right this second. Security lights shine on razor wire. A black man lying asleep or maybe dead with his hat on his face in the weeds by a green municipal electricity substation with a sign that says danger! gevaar! ingozi! In Brandwag Park I climb down into the trench, put on my overalls and pads, and then climb up into the pipe and switch on my miner’s helmet. It would be so easy not to do this. One deep breath and then I start. This time I’ve kept the satchel under my belly, it makes it easier to get up a little bit higher so that I can crawl. My bones are protected by the pads and I know what to expect. The trip up takes exactly thirteen minutes. I come back out the same way before five and ride home on a bike seat wet with dew as the sky is turning light and the birds are starting to sing. I’m woken up it seems like a minute after falling asleep though the alarm says seven-thirty which is nearly two hours. On Wednesday arvy I collect a new message from Viljoen’s and that night I’m back at the school. Thursday night I’m there again. And Sunday and Monday. Wednesday I pack all the tapes I’ve done—forty-eight of them—in a big apple box and cover the top with books and I carry it all the way down to Viljoen’s where Dolf takes it off my hands. I fall into a routine after this, the days sliding by into weeks. Monday to Thursday it’s early to bed, my alarm set for one. When it jabs me awake, I sneak out of the house and collect my bike and head to the Sandy Hole where I get my satchel with my pipe togs. Lower down the bike and ride to the pipe. Do it over and over. Instead of the four master tapes I use a single 180-minute copy, this lets me sleep for three hours straight. I’m out by five-thirty with twelve fresh new copies. And every Wednesday another boxful dropped at Viljoen’s.

  All this extracurricular action makes me cut back on visits to the Yard. Isaac doesn’t say anything but I think he’s hurt, sometimes he talks about visits to Silas at the clinic, wants me to come with. Silas keeps hanging on somehow. But I’m too tired to feel guilty, or to brood on what happened when Victor came to the Yard. At school I’m failing tests cos I’m not doing homework and falling asleep in class. “Charity’s lost his zest,” says big Spunny. “Charity needs drugs or time off.” The okes are warning me that I’m sailing for a nailing. They say Volper has his eye on me. They also say Crackcrack Lohrmann is soeking for me big time. I do my best to avoid him by staying in the library at breaks. I need the kip anyway and there’s a beanbag at the end of the mysteries stack. When the call comes over the intercom for me to go to the office I can’t say I’m surprised, I only wish I had on a pair of stainless steel undies. Volper sits behind his huge desk and tells me he wants to remind me how important the Standard Eight year is, that either “the sluggards will pull up socks” and improve toward a decent matric finals or else they will “sink to the intolerable.” He does not want any “rotten apples” pulling down “his” matric average. He is very proud of “his” matric average which has been maintained for decades. He points at my nose. “A horse can be brought to water but we cannot make it drink. I know you Helgers are a . . . special category, with your different circumstances. But don’t let your background be a detriment, let it be a spur. If not, there is another spur that can be applied before we give up on you. Rest assured it will be. Unless we see a change in you, and soon. Are we clear, Martin Helger?” I nod, I’m starting to believe I’ve gotten away with just a lecture, but Volper makes me bend over and gives me two jacks, just to wake me up, he says. Looking at the blood on my arse in the downstairs bog I tell myself I’ve had enough of this. I’m not going to let myself be whipped anymore. But it’s just talk, there’s no way to stop it. Legally the police give canes that are like a thousand times more vicious than any school headmaster. If you were to threaten a headmaster that’s where you’d end up. And the army is waiting. There are so many worse things than Volper all around me.

  When I get back to the classroom on the Pimple there’s no teacher there yet and the okes are up to their usual mayhem outside. Dice Lewinsky is at the edge of the drop, doing trash fishing, a new sport invented by Spazmaz that uses string tied to hooks made from old col’drink cans to snag items out the rubbish dump. Froggy Greenburg is causing major grief again with Baffboy by singing the
milk advert to him. Grow tall, little man. Baffboy is short and has a complex about it. I find Schnitz and them round the corner, lighting up their shmerfs with a flick of the Bic. I tell Schnitz his lungs will turn black inside. “I wish,” he says. “Like getting your black belt in karate. You got to put in like sixty a day for twenty years. Dedication.” He offers me a Benson and Hedges. “Take one, Charity. Some toxin will see you right.”

  “Charity doesn’t shmerf,” says Bogroll Chernikov (C&S Minerals). “He’s saving his lungs up for the right one.”

  “Charity’s not looking so hot,” says Schnitz. “What’s a matter Charity?”

  I tell them about the jacks I just got and that Volper is gunning for me big time. Schnitz puts his arm around my shoulders and leads me away like we’re in a conspiracy. In a whisper he says, “Listen, bru, I feel bad for you. You still wanna hit the clubs hey?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “We going next weekend. I’m ganna stick you in the loop. You’ll get a call. Don’t embarrass me, hey.”

  “Shot, bru,” I say. “I absolutely won’t.” And my heart jumps and there’s only one word beating in my head: Xanadu.

  35

  Annie wants more tapes, faster. I write back, explaining I’m almost at my max capacity but if she’ll come and help me we can probably work out a way to jack up production. For example, with two of us and a car we might be able to schlep in our own video machines, and then she could also take the tapes away the same night. I include details of the togs she’d need. I get a message back that they’re trying to find someone. I write back and say no, it has to be her cos I don’t trust anyone else. That’s mostly bull—the truth is I want to see her badly. Need to.

  We’re in April now and the news is full of our army pulling out of South West Africa. It could mean the end of the war with the Cubans on the Border. Isaac kicks the hell out of the ottoman and shouts, “Bladdy bullshit!” He says there’re too many diamonds in South West for chutis to ever give it up. Not to mention it’s packed full of their fellow Afrikaners. “If South West turns into Namibia,” he says, rolling out the African sound of it, “then believe you me it’s just a matter of time before we turn into bladdy Azania. That is why I’m telling you it will never happen in a million years.”

  “But Da, they are saying that it is happening.” The news even showed a UN force moving in to watch over our pullout.

  “Don’t be bladdy ridiculous!” Isaac says. “It’s all for the cameras, Martin. Trust me, chutis has the whip hand behind the scenes. He still runs the show. Chutis will never let go.” I think he’s forgotten that old Botha has had a stroke and his face has turned all droopy on one side. Botha said on TV he isn’t going anywhere, he’s still the state president, and people believe him, I mean they don’t call him Groot Krokodil—Big Crocodile—for nothing. But I’m not so sure. I heard from Stroppy Davidson at school that strokes can change a person majorly, it happened to his nice aunt who turned nasty overnight. If that’s so then I think the opposite’s possible too.

  Next day after school I make an effort and go into the Yard. Passing Isaac tools through the hot afternoon, my eyelids start to dip and I need to stretch my legs. The sun is bright on the smashed, glittering mirrors, the twisted metal. All these broken machines are like dead bodies, with fuel pumps for hearts. Wandering through them, my head down, I almost bump right into Phala, and say sawubona—Zulu for hello but it means I see you. It’s like they’re not interested in what’s inside, how you are, they just want to say the fact of the moment, simple and true. I see you. Phala nods. I ask him about Victor again. He makes a show of frowning. “Victor who?”

  “You know Victor,” I say. “Silas’s son. He was here the other day. Drives the Barracuda.”

  Phala shakes his head. I keep asking the question but he just shakes and shrugs, saying nothing. While I’m talking, though, I spot Winston Mathenjwa behind. He’s one of the oldest guys on the staff. Winston gives me a definite look as he goes past. I leave Phala and circle through the wrecks. When I catch Winston by himself I call him softly and ask about what happened the other day at the gate. He checks around to make sure we’re alone. “You mussen say for your father.” I promise him I will not. Winston says, “I think Victor, he came here, he wanted to confront.”

  “Confront?”

  “You know is good that you came out.”

  “Why?”

  “They wanted to . . .” Winston waves his fingers across his wrinkled throat.

  “What’s that?”

  He does it again. “They would have finish him off,” he says. “Believe me.” He really means what he’s saying. It’s hard for me to accept but he’s so certain and I remember Victor’s face, his shaking and sweating. How he left right away.

  I ask, “But why would they?”

  Winston says, “He thinks it is them who did it. He says his father would never have brakes like that. He want to see for his self, the Peugeot wreck, maybe is here. He wanted to look.”

  “He thinks they did it?”

  “Yuh, yuh. But you must not say your father!”

  “But Winston—”

  “No, this is a danger for him also. We say, even if the river looks flat it doesn’t mean there is no crocodiles there. You see? These guys—the young ones here . . .” He swings his arm, taking in the Yard around us, and whistles softly over his bottom lip. “They are wanting to put this new union for us. They say is time. The olden ones like me and Silas and Oscar and those, we don’t want, we are for your father, he is good, yuh. But the new ones don’t respect anything. Silas he was a problem for them. Because the most follows him, even the young, and he is telling us stay away from the union, so . . .”

  “So you think they messed up his brakes for him to have the accident?”

  “Eeh-yuh,” he says, nodding deeply “This is what is happen.”

  There are voices and footsteps coming closer. Winston’s cheek twitches. I nod at him like thank you and he turns and heads away. All the rest of the day I keep thinking about that throat-cutting sign. I wish I didn’t believe him but I do. The problem is I don’t know what to do about this new info. I catch a lift home with Arlene instead of Isaac cos I’m afraid I’ll say something to him, and also he might take me to visit Silas and Victor might be there—I just can’t deal with this right now.

  My ma looks tired behind the wheel of her Mazda. She asks me what’s going on with me these days, says she’s noticed a change. She calls me Toppers like she did when I was little, I can see she’s in one of her dreamy moods. When we stop at a red robot she pretends to be playing the piano on the dashboard, humming away till I laugh. I think I inherited my Playing gene from Arlene. When she grew up in Cape Town she was going to be a great ballerina on the London stage. Her parents, the Cossingtons, had come over from England and she still always talks about going back one day. To all that style and culture that they have over there. Isaac and her met at the snake pit at Muizenberg Beach where everyone Jewish used to socialise in the December holidays. Just for fun I ask her about that now. “Wasn’t Isaac a lot older than you?” I tease. She says what I know she will, what I’ve heard a million times before. That he looked grob, so rough and wild, he was wearing a “gruesome” peacoat. “He was like a bloomin caveman. He bopped me on the head and dragged me off by the hair up to Joburg. Ooch. Joburg.” And she pretends to shudder and laughs again, cos everyone knows nobody hates Johannesburg like a Cape Tonian. My grandparents from Arlene’s side died before I was born. I know they were very poor, though back in England they were rich before the family went bust. They used to sell crystal to the Queen. (On the other hand, Isaac says they were kidding themselves cos there’s no bigger anti-Semite than an Englishman and Ma’s family were trying to be more English than the English, forgetting they were Jews till they got put in their place.) I think Arlene’s parents wanted her to have a lot of class. They spent everything they could afford on her, for her lessons and dresses and that. Isaac never liked
them cos they always looked down on him even though he was doing so well in business. He’s still sort of bitter toward them. I think Arlene would love it if I went to live in London, and I think she wanted me and Marcus to go to Solomon so we’d have some class and be able to go back one day. All-a-sudden I want to ask her why did she marry Isaac, if he was so grob? But I don’t cos I think I know the answer. She told me that once when she was little her family had to sleep in the Jewish aid shelter in Sea Point. We always battled, is how she puts it.