The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  About the other. Do not believe police, etc. What they say happened did not + if I had not LeFT in a quicky hurry probably it would be me also like that. Definitely I do not want to give that scum Captain You know who any bloody chance to get me alone in a cell and neither must you!!!

  I know you understand because you are reading this which means you are alreayd thinking and moving. Good! KEEP IT UP.

  Go see Webber + get out pronto. There is now nothing for you in this broken country. Remember the birds! Make arragngements for your grandfather, bless him, you have these cabbage leafs to pay off with. From the overseas you can send more. New York will fix you up with plenty. Don’t forget I been buying dollars with Rands for years whent the Rand was stronger than a dollar by a mile. Your are well taken care of but you have to go + get it!

  Do not waste any time on stupid anger against me if you have it. I am looking out for you like your father wanted even if he did not understand how. You can see now today that yours truly was right + unfrtunetly yr fathe was wrong. I have seen this day coming especially since that horrible meeting with you know who + his rifle, my G-D a madman plain and simple. I have been arranging it so that what me + yr father built up has been put away in a safe places away from the bad people who run our country. Dont cry for them yr father was right they are all scum but in the meantime we have payed plenty taxes believe me but nobody should have the rigth to tell a man where he can send his own money + that is all that I did yr father would not understand but I have provisined for you.

  Boyki I myself will be in Gabs, Botswasna in few hours. My plan is now drive + I will do the border run ASAP. It is getting late with me writing this + the news is terible I knoew + I you don’t know how bad I feel in my heart I loved yr father + mother we were family I never had family of my own you are now my only family with Marcus gone down that bad road + that is why I am providing. From Gabs I fly to a country where I will live out my days.I leave my name behind. A good peaceful place with no more violence + mad police + all the bloody rest. REst is all I want now. I want to live out what I have left in peace. You are just starting my advice forget us all, ulter kukkers like me, forget me, you need to go forward in America. Maybe one day I will see you again before it is my turn to go but if not I love you, boyki.

  To life! To life!!!

  Hugo

  PS—You must burnt all thse pages now. Trust me. Leave absolutely no trace.

  PPS—I left your brother’s “GREEN” card with you also. There always is hope!! You never know!!

  Another page has handwritten notes—account numbers in America, a paper-clipped card for the attorney in New York City. A small envelope has the two laminated cards. Resident Aliens. One for Martin and one for Marcus. I reread everything and then I fold up the sheets and put them in my pocket, the green cards in my wallet. My vision is blurry so I wipe my eyes. I stuff the wads of cash in my pockets and then take one out again and count off some notes for my wallet and push the wad back in the pocket. I relock the plank and walk back to the house where I call all the maids and the gardeners to the kitchen. I tell them that Hugo has gone and is not coming back, that there is no one left to pay their salaries. The police will probably be coming here at some point. At the end of the month this house and the vehicles will probably be repossessed by the bank. Trucks will come and take away all the furniture and everything else of value. When I finish they are smiling at me like I’m a loony case, talking to each other in their languages. I tell them who I am and give them two hundred rand cash each—that seems to help change their minds. I tell them I am leaving now and recommend they also leave. I tell them if I were them, I would take Hugo’s stuff in lieu of pay. Take the rugs, take the clocks, take any watches, jewellery, furniture, any gold fixings, whatever. “Take it now,” I say, “cos if you don’t other people will. Hugo’s gone for real. He’s not coming back.” When I leave, they’re arguing among themselves, waving their arms. I don’t look back.

  60

  At home I crawl straightaway into the papyrus stand, to the Sandy Hole, to deposit my newest secrets. The photo of young Nelson Mandela stares up at me and I think of Annie and wonder if I could try to reach her somehow. I’d have to go into Jules, to the school, see if she’s still teaching there—but I’m not going to do that, it exhausts me just to think about. And I have so many other problems. Inside, Auntie Rively is in a fuss, wanting to know where I’ve been. I don’t say anything and she asks me to sit down, starts talking about Zaydi, saying things I already know. That he is happy in the old-aged home, that there is money in his own account which was managed by Isaac, his savings invested. Just when I’m starting to wonder where she’s going with this, she giggles nervously and tells me the “good news” that I’m going “home” with her. To Eretz Yisroel, the Land of Israel, where all Jews belong. She’s talked it over with Uncle Yankel and her sons and there’s a room and a school waiting for me. We can leave as soon as she’s sold off the house here, she tells me. I get up without saying a word. She follows me to the gate, talking about no more running wild, it has to stop. I need a home and a structure. HaShem has a plan for me.

  This time I take the bus to town, to Harry Steed’s office on Twist Street. I have to wait a long while before the secretary lets me in. Steed stays on his feet, not looking at me. I keep asking him about the house and he keeps saying I need to go talk to my auntie. “She’s the one,” he says. He touches my back, moving me to the door. I find myself standing outside on the street before I even know what’s happened. I have the feeling he’s already on the phone to Auntie Rively—Steed’s not ganna be any help to me. I feel like crying, but then I think of my parents and look up and there’s a post office opposite. In a phone book chained to the wall in there I turn to A for attorneys. The name Joski snags my eye for no reason other than the look of it. I dial straightaway. Back at home I fetch a wad of cash from the Sandy Hole and keep it with me in my room. Auntie Rively knocks on the door and I tell her to go away. The morning comes and I head back to town. Joski’s office is nice and new-looking, full of sunlight. The secretary even uses a PC computer, you can hear the printer buzzing through the door. He’s a young oke, Joski, and he laughs when I show him the cash, saying I’m not a drug dealer now am I? But he’s only kidding, he takes some money and gives me an agreement to sign and says, “I’ll help you. It’s up to us to clean up their mess.” I shake my head cos I don’t understand. He says we’re the younger generation, the future, it’s up to us to make things right. He shows me a picture of his father who was a famous Queen’s Counsel, a political guy, he says, and he also likes to take on political cases when he can as well, to do his part to “clean the mess.” At home I keep to myself and by the end of the week I get a call from Joski, explaining that he received the documents he requested from Steed and has filed a motion with the court on my behalf. Another few days and a courier brings me a copy of the motion granted, with a note from Joski. Nothing can be done with the house until my eighteenth birthday. Through Joski, I am in control of the property until then, when the deed will pass into my name. If there’s any trouble about this, I must call Joski at once. Best regards.

  I keep this good news to myself until the day the estate agent comes back. Standing at the front door, I tell him to leave. He smiles at me and asks me where my auntie is. I take out the copy of the court document and show it to him and repeat that I want him to leave. Auntie Rively comes to the door, looks at the document, and gets all hysterical. “No, no, Martin,” she says. “This is unbelievable. Where did you get this? Who gave this to you? No no no.” She phones Steed and he phones back and breaks the facts of life to her. She can’t sell the house—nobody can. It’s my residence now. I repeat myself again to the estate man and this time he leaves, but Auntie Rively still hasn’t got the picture. She starts yakking to me about Israel and studying and her husband and my cousins. How I will fit in the family and start a new life, a Jewish life, where I am meant to be. I’m her responsibility. She
says this was a vow to my father, but I doubt that cos they were never that close. Then she starts almost begging me, talking about my late Bohbi and how she tried right before the war to get her sisters out of Dusat. She sounds like Hugo. “But I don’t want to try,” she says. “I want to get you out.” She rubs her face and cries into her fingers and says, “Come on, Martin. You’re all on your own. You have no family left. Come with me. What else are you going to do? HaShem wants you to come with me.”

  She won’t leave without me. She just stays and stays, forcing me to call Joski. In the end Steed has to come to escort her to the taxi with her baggage, and she’s crying again, her wig sitting skew. “You’re making a horrible mistake,” is what she tells me as Steed shuts the taxi’s door. I’m standing behind the gate. My gate. I lock it.

  61

  I let the maid go and I’m alone in my house for the first time. I open up the liquor cabinet and fetch out Da’s Scotch, pour a glassful, and sit in his chair to watch the news. His smell oozes from the leather. My feet are on his ottoman. “Good evening,” says Michael de Morgan. “Good evening,” I say. The Chinese government continues to crack down following its brutal assault on the protesters in Tiananmen Square last month. The Polish workers are demonstrating. This Gorbachev with his plum-marked head is promising reforms. State President Botha has had a face-to-face meeting with Nelson Mandela, and then Mandela went back to his cell. I look at my heels on the ottoman, they haven’t so much as twitched. I drink my father’s whisky and fall asleep and wake up with the test pattern. I sleep a lot and when I wake I try to search in my mother and father’s old cupboards. I want to sort through their things, but it’s too hard, I never get anywhere. In the end the only thing I retrieve is my own passport, which was in Da’s drawer along with both of theirs, from that time we all travelled together to Israel to visit Auntie Riv. I take it out to the Sandy Hole and put it in the envelope with the green cards.

  Time is passing. I eat canned beans on toast. The phone is ringing—it’s Detective Sergeant van Rensburg. He wants to update me on the case. I tell him to come over. He arrives with another detective and we sit in the lounge and he tells me they believe it was some of Isaac’s own staff and do I have any knowledge of any of them who might have had a particular animosity towards my father? I tell them about Sammy Nongalo and the others being fired. At first I leave out the part about Isaac hitting, I don’t want them to think Isaac was the kind of man who beat his staff—because he wasn’t, it wasn’t like that. Right? But then I tell them everything. They don’t seem surprised. They say, ja, they knew about this Sammy, they are looking for him. His details are out and he’ll be arrested soon, they’re sure.

  After they leave I lie on the couch and sleep and when I wake up I don’t know what day it is. The electricity must have been out because all the digital clocks are blinking. It’s dark as a bruise outside and rain is storming at the windows. I have some whisky and go back to sleep. I wake up and toast some stale bread and eat it with sardines. I have whisky. I sleep. The phone starts ringing. It’s Harry Steed, he wants to tell me about what’s happening with the Yard since it’s almost the end of the month. I think, Is it? How can that be? Steed says something about the lease having some kind of clause, and there are creditors. He says the property will be taken over “unless you have some other brilliant legal tricks hiding up your sleeve.” And I’m sort of surprised to realise he’s still pissed off at me over Joski and the house. But then I get double-surprised as his voice changes and he says, “Martin, what are your plans? For your own self.”

  “It sounds like you actually care.”

  “Martin.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you must start going back to school.”

  I don’t answer. “You can do what you like,” Steed says, “but that’s what I think.”

  I say, “The staff. What’s ganna happen to them?”

  “Who?”

  “The guys at the Yard, the workers.”

  “Oh. They’ve found their own way by now,” says Steed. “For them, for everyone, the era of Lion Metals is long over with.” That pompous way he puts things, like he’s giving a speech—but if he wanted to touch me I have to admit he got me there. Then I think, screw them, screw them all. The staff. It’s them who bladdy did it. Who gassed my parents to death. And into my head flashes the waxy bodies and the black dots and the mashed fingertips. I never even want to see that fucking building again in my whole life. But something about that morning at the Yard, the vault, some little detail—it keeps scratching at me. And what was it Hugo’s letter said? Do not believe police, etc. What they say happened did not. I should think about it more but I’m too tired. I’m lying down again. The way a car works is that the battery starts the engine and then the engine tops up the battery. But if the engine stops running the battery drains. You have to move in order to top up your human battery. The more you lie there, the more that’s all you can do. While I’m lying the house starts sinking. Water pours in through the windows. Blue like the water at the aquarium in John Vorster Square. I go drifting off the couch and float down the passage. Warm as blood so you can’t feel your skin. Where one things ends and another starts. A pomegranate goes floating by. It breaks open and it’s full of tiny eyes, watching me. I pull out the phone cord. The gates are locked, the wall is high. I know things are rotting in the fridge but I’m not hungry. My upper lip is prickly. A moustache wants to live and I don’t have the kaych to kill it. I’m shaggy, I know. During shiva they covered the mirrors. I think it’s a good idea so I bring it back. Now I’m sleeping, I think, and dreaming of a clanging, a heavy bell. Some lunatic swinging a bell like Frere-oh Jacques-oh. I’m not dreaming. I go out and find it’s early morning. At the back fence, the splintery planks, I say, “Take it easy, Mr. Stein.”

  “They coming,” he says. “They coming.” I put my eye to a gap showing part of his jowly chin and one eyebrow, fat and grey as an old silkworm. Suddenly that one eye flicks onto mine. “You think I’m mad. They all reckon I’m mad.”

  “No,” I say, yawning. “I don’t, really. Not anymore.”

  “What’s going on over there? I don’t see any cars coming.”

  “They got my parents,” I say.

  A long pause. “I heard,” he says.

  I think about this for like probably half a minute. “You couldn’t bother to walk a few feet, Mr. Stein? You couldn’t come to their shiva out of respect? Sis, man. Shame on you.”

  “Shiva,” he says.

  “Respect!” I’m surprised by how vicious my shout sounds, it wakes me up to how angry I must be. “You schtick drek,” I call him. You piece of crap.

  “I’m sorry,” says Stein. “I don’t go out. I got my system.” I turn to leave. “Wait,” he says. “No, wait, Martin. Wait here, please. I’ll go and get you something. Let me fetch it for you. Please wait.”

  Now I’m standing in the passageway, in front of my brother’s door. I remember the day Marcus first put the lock in, drilling into the doorframe. Isaac should have lost his temper but he seemed more amused, Arlene just shook her head and said I give up. The combination lock dangles like a steel scrotum. I take the box of shells out of my pocket, bright apple red with a waxy feel to them and copper bottoms. My other hand lifts up the thing that Mr. Stein gave me—it’s heavy, ja, but not as heavy as I would have thought before, and then I push a shell carefully into the slot and work the pump. I click off the safety with my thumb, and aim. A voice in my head says stop, just stop. My finger starts pinching the trigger very slo—

  Boof!

  The explosion kicks the air and light right out of me in a storm of wood chips. My ears feel busted, ringing. I drop the long shotgun and go staggering into the bathroom. Shirt’s torn. Blood, splinters. In the mirror I tell myself I’m lucky my eyes are still there. Red shoulder will bruise. I wash myself with shaky hands and go back into the passage and pick up the shotgun. There’s a smell of burnt gunpowder and singed c
arpet. Something is smoking, I stamp it out. The door is ajar, all shredded and blown out around the smashed lock. I push it in with my foot and step inside, I can’t remember the last time I was in Marcus’s room. There’s a wall closet on the left, a steel desk the other side. The bed with stripped mattress along the wall and the window above it. Bare floor but for the piles of boxing magazines in one corner, with cracked leather twelve-ounce gloves on top. Fight posters on the wall. Dust of years. What was the big secret? Why did he have to lock his door off? I look in the cupboard—just some neatly folded clothes. I don’t know what else I expected. A diary? Like in some Victorian novel by one of the Brontë sisters, Marcus confessing his dark secrets in pretty prose. But life isn’t pretty prose or even pretty and there’s no confessions, no understanding, it just happens. I sit on the mattress with the shotgun across my legs. I’m thinking the police will be coming soon. Reports of a shotgun blast echoing around the neighbourhood. But people keep to themselves in Whiteland. Slowly I slide over onto my side on the cool mattress and curl up around the shotgun. When I open my eyes the moon is shining through the window. I have a look into the shotgun and there’s a shell in there, it’s loaded and the safety is off. Wow. I’m not thinking well. I have something else that Mr. Stein gave me along with the shotgun and the box of shells—nine cards full of pink pills. “You better take these,” he said. “Amphetamine. We used to call em battle buttons in the war. Don’t get caught schloffing when they come.” I pop two on my palm and look at them.

  Now I’m out on patrol, checking my perimeter with the loaded shotgun in my hands. I discover the mailbox is overstuffed. I empty it and start up a bonfire in the metal braaivleis. The Greenside Shopper is advertising a special, 99 cents on mozzarella cheese at the Spar. The United Building Society has a one-time friendly rate offer for Mr. I. Helger, Esquire. This month’s Vogue has Arlene Helger typed on the label stuck to its cover. I feed these and all the rest in batches into the licking flames, like tossing chunks of meat to a demon. I watch their names turn black and blistery. I poke with a stick to get the fire’s teeth into the last of it but then I see a postcard with the word Pats written in ink. I use the stick to flick it off but by the time I stamp the flames out it’s mostly gone. I lean down and read, All the best mate. Above this I can just make out the last part . . . your folks and I am very sorry and wish you long life. If I can help with anything you can bell my pager 784-112 . . . I pick up the charred scrap and wipe it off carefully on my leg and put it in my pocket. Then I dump sand on the flames and go back inside.