The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  I manage a nod, forcing myself to concentrate against the stony heaviness (so this is why they call it being stoned) and start telling him about Marcus and the tuxedo. The card and the piece of a human ear, the sink under the early morning sky. How my brother musta been working as a bouncer, maybe there at Xanadu.

  “Before my time,” Pats says.

  “Since the army,” I say, “we hear like zilch from him. He’s so gone, I swear.”

  “Except when he comes here on leave,” Pats says.

  “Ach, he never gets leave.”

  “But I’ve seen him,” Pats says.

  I shake my weighty head. “No. No, you haven’t.”

  “Yes I have,” Pats says. “It was near the Small Street Mall there, in town, wasn’t long ago.”

  “It wasn’t Marcus. Marcus hasn’t been back on leave.”

  “Bru,” says Patrick Cohen, “I know Marcus. Don’t tell me who I saw. I saw him.”

  40

  All Sunday morning I have a headache and worry that smoking drugs has destroyed major brain cells. Then I see Hugo Bleznik—he’s back from his road trip, and my guts start flopping like wet sheets in a washing machine on high. At the braai under the plum trees he keeps wiggling his eyes at me and I keep pretending not to notice. The last thing I feel like doing is going with him to “fix up” that policeman problem like he told me I had to, keeping it a secret between us. Now he manages to whisper to me that he’ll be waiting round the corner. I nod, but I tell myself he can wait till hell freezes.

  Then after he leaves I keep thinking about how it’s my mess—that is true. It makes my chest throb with a sick feeling of guilt. So I get changed and tell the folks I’m going to my new friend’s house to swot for a physics test and I’ll go wait outside for his ma to pick me up. Around the corner sure enough there’s the red Jag. I get in and shut the door. Hugo asks if I’ve made a good excuse and I nod. He pats my leg and tells me not to worry, to “shine up” cos the problem will all soon be sorted. He reaches in the back, wheezing like an old accordion, struggling to stretch cos his belly is so damn big, I mean I’d be amazed if the seat belt fitted—not that he even tries to put it on. He brings the shoebox to his lap. “I know you’ve seen me collecting these from your da sometimes. You’ve got those noticing eyes, don’t pretend you don’t.” I nod, not saying anything. “Your da ever tell you what’s in them?” I say no. Hugo lifts the top—Adidas rugby boots, size 12. The box is stuffed with banknotes, pinkies and browns, fifty and one hundred rand notes. I couldn’t guess how much total. Thousands. Hugo tells me I need to understand that a lot of business gets done with cash. “What people show in their books is one thing,” he says, “but cash is the real truth. You want to get summin done in this world, stick an envelope in a man’s hand. That is my first lesson to you. Exactly what we ganna do tonight.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “To see your policeman pal. And give him this.”

  “What, him, himself?”

  “Ja. Who else?”

  “I dunno, when you said fix the problem I didn’t think—”

  “We’re going to see Oberholzer,” Hugo says. “Right now.”

  “Jesus, Hugo, I can’t. Da’d murder me. He says I’m not even supposed to say the guy’s name.”

  Hugo tells me Isaac will never know and reminds me that I’m the one who brought Oberholzer to the Yard that day. Things have happened since then that are damaging the business. “My police contacts are telling me Oberholzer is on the way up. He’s pushing to get us inspected and investigated. He’s got some big-shot friends and can make our life an absolute misery. Already he’s had some of our staff picked up. Things keep going this way, he can end up putting us right out of business.”

  “No ways,” I say, frowning with the craziness of that idea.

  “Boyki, I am dead serious. You have to understand how things work in this city. Oberholzer’s got contacts and he’s not shy. They stick us under a microscope, you never know what’ll turn up. They play dirty, these boys. Behind the scenes. Someone like Oberholzer has no bottom. Believe me.”

  “What do you mean, never know what’ll turn up?”

  “Boyki, we do what we have to, like everyone in business.” He pokes the shoebox. “You need it to schmear the works so they run proper. For the insurance fellows so we get the contracts for the wrecks, for the inspectors and the licences, for the councillors so we keep our zoning. Follow me?”

  I nod.

  “Oberholzer’s no joke. He’s serious about hurting us.”

  “But why? I asked Da about him but he wouldn’t say. I think he knows him.”

  Hugo takes out a hanky and mops his face, his big head shaking. “There is a whole long megillah,” he says. “There was an Oberholzer that crossed ways with your father back before the war. Let me just say when your father sorts out someone they stay sorted. Let me just put it that there was bad blood with that old Oberholzer that went off all charts. That bugger was an outright Nazi and had the hell in for your old man. Now it’s been passed down to this one, who happens to be—his son. Understand? Now he’s on some kind of a revenge thing, I don’t know what. I don’t think a full deck of cards is being played with there, if you take my meaning. But he is a sly devil. Much worse than his father. He has brains. He’s a plotter.”

  “What happened between his father and Da?”

  “Ach, it’s ancient history to anyone normal. But not to the son. What is his name again?”

  “Bokkie,” I say.

  “Ja, that’s right. Bokkie they call him. Dangerous man. A real bad bugger. It’s rough luck he arrested you that day and put two and two together. You reminded him Isaac is still around and doing well. You caused him to visit the Yard and from what I hear it did not go well. So now we are on the top of the tall man’s shit list and it’s a big problem and it needs to be fixed. Luckily Dr. Bleznik has the cure.” He picks up the shoebox and shakes it so the money rustles like an instrument. “This is why you and me are ganna go over there now and put this in the man’s hands and that will be the end of it.”

  “Will it?”

  “Boyki, I never met a man who couldn’t be persuaded by a shoebox full of solid cash. Specially a chutis on a police salary.”

  As we drive off I ask Hugo where we’re going and he tells me it’s somewhere private and out of the way, Oberholzer wants to meet far from any watching eyes. We get on the highway, the N14 west, and drive for over two hours through the afternoon before we stop at a petrol station. Then we switch highways to bypass Lichtenburg. There are signs for the Botswana border. We get off and take farm roads south. There are concrete grain siloes, brown grasses, and then the land turns really dry in the orange light of the setting sun, it’s full of rocks with ugly twisting little valleys and hills of gravel. Hugo tells me this area is what Afrikaners call klipveld—stone bush—and that seventy-odd years ago there’d been a huge diamond rush here. “Diamonds as big as a lion’s balls were lying around everywhere for the taking. Bladdy fortunes got made. There were Yiddluch who came off the boat on the bones of their arses and ended up men of property. S’matter of fact, your father had a—” I look at him but he’s stopped. Not easy for talk-machine Hugo. “A what?” I say. Hugo just shrugs and tells me to ask Da. I try for like five minutes to get him to go on but he won’t budge. I say, “Has this got anything to do with that old Cadillac there in the shop?”

  “Jesus!” says Hugo. “You got an eye for the raw nerve, hey, son. Listen, that Cadillac is a whole ’nother ball of wax. Like I say, you’ll have to ask your da. But I wouldn’t. I don’t look in the rearview. Only losers in reverse do that.” He asks me to get his flask from the cubbyhole. I unscrew the cap and the smell of good Scotch spills out as I hand it over. Hugo takes a large nip and offers it to me. I say no thanks. “Good man,” Hugo says. “Keep a clear head on the shoulders. You here to learn.”

  “If we ever get there,” I say, looking out the window.

  “Just be
patient,” says Hugo, “or you end up being one.”

  41

  Somewhere along the way Hugo uses the word farmhouse. This gives me a picture in my head like the Cadbury’s ad (the one that goes Come to our dairy and taste the cream that the okes of 8E love to sing while making certain dirty gestures) showing an old stone house in a green meadow. But the real “farmhouse” turns out to be a box of concrete with a rusted metal roof standing there on the dry, flat land full of stones. There’s a yellow bakkie with a rollbar parked to one side and a tin windmill is somehow turning even though I don’t feel any breeze, going squeak-squeak-squeak. A man comes out and stands on the porch, his top half in shadow and his long legs wearing jeans tucked into boots. As we get closer the shadow moves up and there’s his face. He says, “How goes it with you, boy?”

  “Ja, good thanks, Captain,” I say. “And yourself?”

  “You see any uniform? Call me Bokkie out here.” He goes inside and we follow and there’s a sweet smell foreign to me. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust—some old furniture, a table with bottles and rags, metal pieces, a rifle. A steel thing with a knobbed handle is clamped at one end of the table. Oberholzer catches me staring. “A reloader,” he says. “To make your own ammo.” He smiles at Hugo. “Saves you a few shekels, hey.” Hugo laughs but it doesn’t sound real, more like he’s pressing on that wheezy accordion I imagine living inside his chest. Oberholzer picks up the rifle, plucks a rag from the barrel and the sweet smell gets stronger. “I was jiz oiling up Claudine here. Come outside, mense”—folks—“while we still got some good light.”

  On the back stoep—the covered porch—all you can see ahead is open land and sky. There’s a sleeping bag laid out and Oberholzer sets up the rifle there with a bipod under the barrel, lying flat on his belly in a shooting position, his eye to the scope. He hands me a pair of binoculars. Hugo rolls his eyes and taps his temple and sits down on a chair behind, mopping his face with his silk hanky, his fat knees spread and the Adidas shoebox parked awkwardly on his left thigh.

  “What am I looking for?” I ask Oberholzer.

  “Targets,” he says. “Our little friends.”

  I peer through the binocs and at first it’s just a moosh of colours with a spiky monster snake till I wipe the hair from the lens and fiddle with the focus ring and then a clear picture jumps at me. The hook of a thorn. Hard grains of red and yellow sand. I start tracking around and something pops up. Some furry animal, up on two hind legs like a tiny man, its smooth long neck stretched and black rings in the fur around the twitchy eyes in the neat, tiny head, claws on the ends of teeny hands. Now I know what Bokkie wants from me but I don’t say anything. It doesn’t help, though, cos I sense him glancing at me and he says, “Ah, you looking to the left there, hey?” Next second the rifle cracks and I see the furry little guy jump up in a twitch of blood and flop down on his back. Bokkie says, “Ja, keep looking, now is when it gets fun. His pals will come to investigate. Nou sal die poppe dans.” And he chuckles. The Afrikaans saying means now the puppets are going to dance, like now there’ll be hell to pay, but it has that sly double meaning cos the little creatures are just like dancing puppets as Bokkie starts to shoot. He is very quick and he never misses. We hike out there after, leaving Hugo on the porch, fanning himself with his hat. Dead meerkats are spread on the dirt in the evening light. That’s what these little animals are called, Oberholzer telling me how they live underground and pop up to hunt insects while some of them stand watch, making perfect targets for his Claudine. He flicks the little bodies with the barrel. “My Claudine’s a custom Anschütz,” he says. “I replaced her bolt action for speed. Lightweight .22 Long ammo is all she uses. You don’t need much power, you need precision. She’s perfect for riot work, you can pick off a leader and not touch anyone behind. Or if you don’t wanna kill, you can drill a kneecap or an elbow, drop them surgical on the spot. I got bad eyes and I wasn’t born much of a blerry shot. Hard work made me one. I’m helluva good now. I was urban sharpshooter instructor on police course even. If you graft hard enough a weakness turns into your biggest strength. These meerkats let me work at range with random pop-up. Windage and bullet drop. Your stability. Your sight picture adjustment. Breathing. Not like in close like this. That’s too easy-peasy for me and Claudine. Look.” The rifle has a deep bend in the stock so he can use it with one hand and he points it like a long wand. A rusted can jumps off the ground maybe sixty metres away. He swings and points one-handed and makes an old paper bag flap into the wind. Then he stretches out his arm and hits whatever he names: that shiny stone, an old nail, a green chunk of bottle glass. He changes the magazine in one move and keeps going, crack crack ping crack. Whatever he points at gets smashed.

  Hugo is on his feet when we get back to the stoep. His smile doesn’t let up. “Well, Bokkie, I hope you had some very good shooting.”

  “With his help,” Oberholzer says. “You liked that hey, didn’t you, Martin?”

  I just say, Ja, meneer—yes, sir—while Hugo’s eyes are going like Ping-Pong balls between me and Oberholzer. Oberholzer puts his hand on my shoulder. “You remember and tell his father, Isaac, what a good learner his boy is. Tell how Captain Oberholzer is teaching him proper what to do. You make sure and tell him that.”

  “Um, ja,” Hugo says. “Well. Actually his father. This is what I’d like to, uh, discuss.”

  Oberholzer reaches out with the rifle and pokes the barrel against the shoebox on the chair. “I wonder if the discussing has to do with zis thing over here, hey?”

  “I wonder also, ha ha ha,” Hugo says, wheezing that accordion. Then he frowns. “You see, Captain, I’ve come out here in behalf of myself and my partner Mr. Helger, whom you well know to represent the Lion Metals company. I come here on full respect, to clean up any miscomprehending that has gone between yourself and the company whichever of it may be. Captain, we want to have goodwill with any member of South African Police and—”

  “And this is ganna clear things up, hey? This box here. Let me ask you something. Where is Isaac Helger right now, is he at home, enjoying his nice weekend?”

  “Captain—”

  “He’ll retire soon, hey? And then he’ll have every day off, every day will be a nice Sunday for him.”

  Hugo tries to laugh again, says, “Well he works hard some Sundays, so not quite.”

  “Does he?”

  “Oh ja, he’s in there at the Yard one Sunday a month, doing stocktaking himself.”

  “Is that a fact?” says Oberholzer.

  “Yes, it is,” says Hugo, “but as I was saying before, Captain. We here to bring goodwill between our firm and—”

  “Shhh,” says Oberholzer and he lifts up the rifle and touches the end of the barrel to Hugo’s lips. Just like that. Hugo flinches back, blinking. A spear of shock goes right through my chest. Did he really just do that? “Be quiet,” Oberholzer is saying. “I know why you here. I know what this is.” He swings the barrel back to the shoebox and knocks it off the chair, cash sprawling out. “Let me fill you in, Mr. Goodwill who comes out here with a box of money.”

  “Wait a sec,” says Hugo. “You invited us.”

  “I said quiet,” says Oberholzer and pokes into the cash, stirring it, spreading it over the floor. “My father, Magnus. He died right over here, behind you, Mr. Goodwill. In this shack. Drinking himself. Full of the bitter truth of what goes on in this country. I know who killed him. I know the ones who is behind it all. Who is always behind everything. He taught me that well, and he was right. He prophesised would come the day and here we are. So I will make him proud now. Here in the flesh when you come with your pound of it, hey. Come with cash, just like he foretold me you people—”

  “Ukay,” Hugo says, putting his hat on. “That’s enough. We hear you.” He looks at me, his face red. “Boyki, let’s go.”

  “Every scrap of your dirty paper gets off my property,” Oberholzer says.

  “Captain—”

  “Do some re
al work, Mr. Goodwill. Pick it up.” He has swung the barrel back onto Hugo, this time against his chest. I take a step but Oberholzer looks at me and I freeze. “Cool your jets, junior,” he says. “You just watch and learn.” It takes a while for Hugo, groaning, to gather the money, with his bad knees and his belly. Plus it’s getting dark and the notes are hard for him to see with his weak eyes. He’s panting by the time he stands up with the box. “Now go,” Oberholzer says, “and never come back.”

  “We going, believe me,” says Hugo. “But I want to ask you one thing. What is it that you want with us? You said you wanted to meet. Here I am. And I brought Martin with me, just like you asked.” This is news to me. What else don’t I know?

  “And that is what I wanted,” Oberholzer is saying. “For him. To see this.”

  “What’s he got to do with it, Captain? I mean whatever happened years ago—”

  “Shut up, Jew. Go off my father’s land.” He turns to me. “And you go back to your daddy and send my regards. Make sure you tell him Oberholzer is the one who showed you how a man behaves—Oberholzer. You tell it to him. Tell him Oberholzer has got his eye on the Helger boys. From now on he is ganna help bring them up right.”

  42

  In the dark in front Hugo drops the car keys. He’s so anxious to get out of here he gives up the search and goes for the spare key he keeps in a little box welded under the driver’s-side wheel well, but meantime I’ve found the dropped keys. He drives very fast—so fast we get pulled over by a traffic cop near Ventersdorp and I’m scared we’ll be arrested. Just the word Ventersdorp is bad enough to me cos it’s where the AWB, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, is based. These guys have swastikas and brown safari suits. Their leader’s called Terre’Blanche—White Earth—and he’s a wannabe Adolf Hitler. They hold rallies where they shout angry speeches against the government for being too liberal and beat people up. But Hugo gives the cop a wad of cash from the Adidas box and the cop grins and lets us pass on. “You see,” says Hugo, “that was a reasonable human being. A sane person you can do business with. This other one, Oberholzer . . .” He shudders. I’m thinking how he told me before that Oberholzer’s father was a Nazi before the war and I can picture that now cos I can picture the AWB troopers, beefy bearded Afrikaans men marching with their red-and-black swastikas flying in the wind and bright as blood on their armbands, like the ones in the Nightmare. I turn to Hugo and ask him what happened there at the farmhouse. He asks me to pass him the flask and has a few long slugs from it, wiping his lips. “He was talking about his father,” I say. “Who died there or something.”