The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  Wednesday arrives and all day at school I’m thinking about if there’s a message from Annie waiting for me at Viljoen’s. At second break the bell wakes me from my beanbag nap in the library. We get two bells at Solomon. First one tells you to get moving, second one comes like three minutes later. If you’re not in your class or where you’re supposed to be by second bell you’ll get sent to Volper’s office for jacks. I get off the beanbag, stretching and yawning, and head back. I’m going along the bottom corridor with my hands in my pockets when out of nowhere I’m slammed hard from the side and jammed into the brick wall on my right. Some bastard’s got hold of my neck and is pinching the pressure points behind my ears like crazy, his other hand gripping the back of my arm. He starts banging my head into the wall. “Think you big stuff, hey,” he says. It’s Crackcrack. “Where’s big brother now? You little tattletale. Run and talk shit to the Gooch on me. This’s what you get.” And he hammers me with a beaut of a dead leg. There’s an art to giving dead legs and I have to admit he scores an A plus with this one—kneeing me exactly on the nerve spot on my thigh so the pain rockets up my spine as the leg goes lame. I yank my head loose and use my free hand to shove against the wall and throw my head back and manage to catch him with a little head butt as we go staggering. “You boys! You there!” Crackcrack lets me go and hoofs it out of there. There’s a teacher in the corridor way down the other end. I limp-run to the stairs and keep climbing till I get away. By the end of school I can walk normally again but it still hurts like a bastard and there’ll be a lekker bruise. The worry about Crackcrack stays with me—all the way until I get back from Viljoen’s with a book, cos that’s when I find a message. From Annie. And not just any message but one that says exactly what I’ve been wishing for, and then nothing else matters, nothing even comes close.

  36

  I’m up before the alarm, eyes open and body buzzing. I almost go around and fetch the bike before I remember and stop myself. In the Sandy Hole I collect my satchel with all my pipe togs, spending extra time checking everything. I take out the key and look at it, telling myself so long as I have control of this the school will always be mine. I shouldn’t forget that. Then I climb over the garden wall. I’m expecting to have to wait but Annie’s Volksie is parked there already, the engine and the lights switch on before I can turn around. “You’re late,” she says when I get in. I check my watch. “Four minutes?” She doesn’t smile. “That’s four fucking minutes too long.” Her hair is tied back to show the fine bones of her face and her smooth neck, the olive skin made yellowish by the streetlight glow, her lips plump and shiny and her smell as it was at the pomegranate bench, lemony and musky-warm all mixed together. My mouth is dry, I can’t think of what to say. She pushes a tape into the stereo as she drives off. It’s the old Juluka hit “Scatterlings,” the Zulu voice deep and driving—yim-boh! yim-yim-yim-boh!—and the Jewish one going high and sweet—oh-la-la! oh-la-la!—singing about all of us being exiles from Mother Africa. I direct with my hand and sneak looks at her. I could bite her neck, I swear. Could scratch the clothes off her right now. I look out the window instead at the dead suburb outside, the walls.

  In Regent Heights she parks at the end of the dirt parking lot above the soccer pitch and we get out and I check over what she’s brought, the pads and overalls. She’s forgotten goggles, I wear goggles now cos I got sick of being gunked in the eyes. I try to give her mine but she pushes them away. She’s brought a duffel bag stuffed with about fifty blank videotapes, four times as many as we’ll be able to do. So we’re schlepping a lot of unnecessary weight but I decide not to say anything, knowing how touchy she can be. We hike through eucalyptus trees and then the break in the fence and down the trodden path into Brandwag Park and I lead us straight to the pipe with no problems. Annie looks at it and doesn’t say anything. A dented, thin-walled metal pipe as round as an oil barrel. Her face is grim. I don’t like this tense mood, I’m going to need to find a way to relax things between us or nothing sexy’s going to happen tonight. We whisper-discuss the best way to schlep the duffel bag, and in the end I decide to stick my satchel inside it also and to rope it to my waist. I adjust my goggles, switch on my helmet light and then turn back. “It’s going to feel claustrophobic as hell in there, hey, your first time. Like you start thinking you are trapped. Don’t let yourself. Just think of something else, pretend you’re having fun. There’s plenty air coming in. We’ll be fine. Whatever you do, don’t panic. Stay calm.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Dad,” she says.

  I blush and crawl in, feeling the rope bite into my waist as the bag slithers and drags along behind me. Then I hear her climbing in and the rope goes soft as she pushes on the bag from behind. I keep crawling and we find a rhythm between us, pull and push, with our pads scraping and knocking on the tinny steel. Getting close to the end, I twist my head to shout back and let her know, to ask how she’s doing, but then my voice dies in my throat. The bag slides into me and she says, “Martin, what?”

  “Quiet. Quiet.”

  Felt something. I’m frozen, not breathing. Felt something. Please God let it not be. Let it not be. But it comes again and this time I shoot forward, clawing with both hands, pulling hard at the rope like some sled dog with rabies. I told her don’t panic but man, I never knew what panic is till now. Annie starts shouting at me, what am I doing. Another faraway boom comes through the earth and into the walls of the pipe where it shivers into my hands. It can only be thunder. Big African thunder. I think I shout this aloud but it doesn’t matter cos I’m already feeling wet on my fingers, seeing it ooze down out of the black ahead. Flash floods. There’s a reason they call them flash—in no time the booming is coming through so fast it feels like we’re being shaken by giant hands and then the wet on my hands turns into fat snakes of water, slithering cold over my arms and soaking my thighs. Branches and twigs and plastic bags and tin cans come riding down at me, and the water climbs and then living things start coming out of the dark also. A whole clump of chittery rodents all knotted together and splashing like mad and streams of shungalulus and then the huge Parktown prawns and lizards and whippy snakes go floating by and I swear I don’t even glance at any of them. All I care about is go go go. The bladdy rope is cutting my waist and slowing me and I try to untie it but I can’t without stopping, the knots are too tight. I’d do anything for a knife in my hand but it’s in my satchel which is in the bag. I think I’m going to die I mean for real die and I’m saying Ma Ma oh mommy Ma, I don’t know why. The water now rises over my shoulders and I have to keep my chin up high to breathe. It rises some more and I pull off my hard hat to give my head some room, turning my chin to the side. The light in my hand shows the pipe slanting up ahead and I realise we’ve almost reached the final climb. The water smashes and tumbles here in the bend. I suck in a last big breath through my nostrils and then the cold rises up to the top and I’m under—trying to go forward but stopped in the pocket where all the weight of the water keeps churning. The bag rams into me, Annie shoving wildly from behind and there’s nowhere to go. All-a-sudden I remember the part of the pipe that moves. It’s on the right, at the bottom. I’m starting to really need air as I grope down there and straightaway there’s a strong sucking current. My hard hat is still shining, the light strange underwater, and through my goggles I make out the flap—wide open like a mouth now, the storm water rushing through. The light is flickering out. Dropping the hard hat, I stick my foot into the opening and then the other, and sit and grab the top edge and pull and wriggle till my waist pops through. Metal scrapes my back as I drop into nothing. The rope jerks me short and I slam against a wall. But there’s air here and I guzzle a breath, dangling in space. Twisting around, I plant my feet and wrench the bag through and Annie follows next and we both fall hard onto a shallow pool over a concrete floor. I slump against the wall behind us, panting. It’s very dark but there’s some light and I can see in front of us how the spout of water from above is hitting the shallow p
ool we’re in. Annie is slumped back against the wall like me and I can hear even over the churning water the sobs of her breathing. It takes a while but the spout thins to a trickle down the wall while the pool drains away to show bare concrete. My eyes get more used to the dark—this is the back wall of a concrete tunnel with square sides and a high flat roof. Looking up to the flap we came through I see it’s almost completely shut, there’re thick springs on this side of it. In the new quiet I ask Annie if she’s okay and she sort of grunts at me. I drag the wet bag across my legs and unzip it, get my satchel out and find the little torch I have in there. I don’t expect it to work but it switches on first shot. I hunt out the Swiss army knife and use it to pick open the knot around my waist. The videotapes look okay, they’re brand-new and all shrink-wrapped in plastic, only a few of them bashed up. I dig around till I find the stuff I packed for my night of passion with Annie. A bottle of champagne swiped from the liquor cabinet and a one-litre tetrapack of Liqui-Fruit orange. Amazing that the bottle isn’t smashed. I rip open the corner of the orange juice. Annie moans when she sees it. I take a long sweet drink and pass it to her. We polish it off in two-twos and I start to feel new energy coming through but also a lot more pain as the cold numbness starts to fade. I’ve hurt my back and I’m scratched and bumped all over the show. Not to mention my thigh throbbing again where that arsehole Crackcrack kneed me.

  I stand up and shine the torch around. There is some dim natural light seeping through from somewhere, obviously, but no visible opening except the flap above and that’s fully shut now. The tunnel is wide, made of grey concrete with mould on it, with vertical beams on both sides against the walls every twenty metres or so. It stretches on straight ahead of us too far for the light to reach. Annie asks if I know where it goes. I tell her I don’t even have a clue what this is, but thank God it’s here or we’d be dead. I’m trying to remember the blueprints at the Malcolm Steinway exhibition. Annie stoops to pick up the bag. I take a handle and we carry it between us and without speaking start walking down the slightly sloped tunnel. I spot my waterlogged hard hat and fish it up and tap the headlamp but it’s dodo dead. The air doesn’t taste stale, fresh is getting in from somewhere as well as the dim light, but I can’t feel a breeze. I know we’re moving east, maybe under the Pimple, and I’m trying to picture a drain in that area on the surface but it’s not something I’ve paid attention for. After we’ve been walking a while, Annie nudges me. The torch beam shows rusted ledges on the wall, two in a parallel line, the bottom one jutting out further than the top and the top one with half-moon grooves in it. Annie asks me what they are but I have no idea. We go on and then I stop and turn back. I’m remembering something, a flash from the aquarium, from inside John Vorster Square. “They’re for guns,” I say. “You put them like this.” I show with my arm and Annie says, “Oh yeah. It’s a rifle rack.” She huffs through her nose, says, “You never heard of an armoury under your school?”

  “Never,” I say, but there was something else I’m almost remembering as we go on. We reach the end of the tunnel, a blank wall and the water here’s still ankle-high, gurgling away into a large floor drain. We turn around and start splashing back the way we came. I happen to shine the light to my left and catch a thick dark line there. Closer, I find it’s a narrow opening. Shining up this black slit the light shows brick walls on both sides and tons of cobwebs for like fifteen metres and then a dull green wall facing us, not brick. “Another dead end,” I say.

  She’s shivering, hugging herself. “Hang on,” I say. It’s the niggling idea that I half remembered before. I shine the light back on those rusted rifle racks. “I scheme I know what this all might be. Was written on a blueprint I saw. Said, original fortifications.”

  “Fortifications?”

  “Ja. Said they were from the sixties.”

  “Like before there was a school here?”

  “No. Solomon goes back to the turn of the century.”

  She shakes her head. “Guns under a high school.”

  “Ja, it’s a whatchamacallit—not a bunker, a bomb shelter. Didn’t you in America build some nuclear bomb shelters also? In case of the Russians and that. I know that they have em in Israel. Every school has to.”

  “I don’t know,” says Annie. “This’s more like a tunnel that’s going somewhere than a bunker to hide out.”

  “That’s cos I don’t think they ever finished it. What I read, it said, original fortifications unfinished. Wasn’t part of the new security system they put in after ’eighty-two—the wall.” I shine the light down to the gurgling drain at the end. “It’s got drainage, this thing. So they just joined it to the pipe for overflow, with that flap. It’s a storm valve.”

  “And this?” She means the slit in the wall.

  “Don’t know. But I’d sort of like to find out.” I hesitate and she tries to take the torch from me so I blow out a breath and turn sideways and squeeze into the slit and start shuffling down through the cobwebs. The rough mortaring between the bricks scrapes my front and back. I have to not think about rats at my ankles, or snakes. They could chew the hell out of me and I wouldn’t be able to reach down. I get to the end, the green wall. It’s metal, but thin, it pops in and out. “What’s going on down there?” Annie calls. I rap on it with the torch—a hollow bang. “Martin!” she shouts. I think I know what this is. I push it hard, straightening my arm, and it rocks away and comes back. I shove it again and it falls over with a crash and dust comes boiling up. I’m glad I still have my goggles on but some grit tickles my throat even though I cover my mouth and nose, making me cough hard. Annie’s still shouting what’s going on as I step through.

  37

  The torch beam passes over boxes, plastic chairs stacked up, wooden desks likewise, racks of clothes. I’ve walked over a fallen filing cabinet. The beam shows other upright ones and sweeps over Hebrew on book spines and yellowed tallaysim, stacks of old papers and photos and yearbooks. The walls around all this junk are solid concrete like the ceiling. There’s a light but when I find the switch on the wall and flick it nothing happens. Annie, back there in the dark, is shouting at me that I’m being an arsehole only she says it asshole. (Why is it everyone except Americans knows an arse is a bum while an ass is a donkey?) Anyway I’m a dick, etcetera, for leaving her back there in complete darkness. I yell at her to hang on while I look in the steel cabinets and find a box of yortzeit candles and some Lion matches. I plant lit candles around and then shine the torch down the narrow slit for Annie while she makes her way along, swearing a lot. She looks big-eyed at the candlelit jumble of stuff. “Creepy shit,” is her verdict. Then she puts one finger under her nostrils, her eyelids fluttering. I say bless you a second before she sneezes like a cannon. “Place’ll give you asthma,” she says. Under a layer of dust there are framed photos, men in skinny suits and horn-rimmed glasses and women with hats and gloves. On a pile of papers, Drum magazine has a cover with John F. Kennedy on it. There is a radio made of bakelite, trophies for academic achievement. Some ancient curling yearbooks. I push a pile over with my foot, trying not to send up more dust. A newspaper says barnard heart transplant succeeds, 3 December 1967. I have a closer look at the Hebrew on the books, they’re siddurim for prayers, mostly. I spot the word Yesod on a spine—foundation is what it means. Must be a Hebrew grammar text or else a work of Kabbalah. Dust nearly hides the first Hebrew letter of the title, almost shifting the meaning to secret. I look at Annie. “I think I know where we are.”

  “Where? Is there a way out?”

  I nod, pointing up. “What dwells in heaven on high.”

  It’s supposed to make her laugh but she gives me her bitter face. “I’m friggen tired, dude. Just speak English, okay?”

  I start inspecting the ceiling more carefully. On the far side there’s a metal panel with a handle. Annie helps me move a desk across. Then she climbs up first, so I hold the light, watching her twisting the handle, trying to pull. Just when I’m about to give her advice
she shoves instead and it pops up. Behind is a wide rectangular chimney, with walls of wooden planks and a wooden top. It’s only about four feet high. Annie asks me for a chair and I put it on the desk and she steps up. She can reach the wooden top easily now and she starts thumping on it. “Check the edges,” I say. She feels all around and finds something, a catch, and works it and the top swings open and she stands up completely on the chair as moonlight rushes in with cool fresh air. “Oh my God,” she says. “Would you take a look at this.” I climb out after she does, stepping down onto the bimah, the centre stage of our school synagogue. I suspected we were under the synagogue but hadn’t imagined for a second that the base of the bimah could be a hollow concrete bunker going down underground. We both stand there like we’re ready to conduct a service, only the pews are empty and the windows are full of the moon and a woman would never be allowed onto the bimah—which all makes it feel even more like I’m caught in some mad dream. It gets stranger still when I look at what we’ve climbed out of. It’s the bench—the bimah has this bench at the side against the low wall of glass, the top of it is padded leather and that’s what we’ve opened from underneath. It’s where Volper sits when he’s on the bimah, where the Honoured Guest of the Week will sit on a Friday morning, waiting to address the school.