The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

When he comes out dressed he says, “You just mellow here, bru. I’ll organise you that flight, I promise.”

  “Right,” I say. He must not like the way I say it cos he gives me a hairy-eyed skeef. “Martin,” he says. “What’re you plotting there, man? Tell me.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hey. Just tell me.”

  “Ach,” I say. “I don’t want to involve you. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know. Go out there. To Marshall Street, that Dynamite Gym.”

  He shakes his head like mad. “Just what I thought. Being a flippen idiot. Check here, china. That gym is bad news, oright. I nearly got my own self in heavy trouble there last time when I started asking questions about Marcus. And they know me there. I’m tuning you straight, Martin, whatever you do, do not go poking your nose into Dynamite.”

  “It’s my brother, Pats. My parents. I wanna try. I need to understand what happened here or I’ll be thinking about it the rest of my life.”

  “You go down there, you won’t have a life, bru. Think about that.”

  All I can do is shrug and look away. Pats is fiddling with his scooter helmet now, standing by the sliding door. “Promise me, Martin,” he says.

  “I can’t promise,” I say. “I’ll be leaving forever, you know. I won’t be able to come back.”

  “Ukay, listen. I’ll tell you what. I will slide by there, and I will see again if I can find out anything for you. I’ll ask about this cop, Oberholzer.”

  “No. I’ll go.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Martin, you don’t. Remember Xanadu.”

  I don’t say anything but being dragged down that alleyway’s not something I could ever forget.

  “Listen,” Pats says. “I’ll be in and out, too cool for school. And then you’ll know. If there is anything to know.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be dof,” he says. “Let me handle.”

  I look at him and nod, finally, and say okay.

  “So I got your word, you’ll park here, wait for me?”

  “Yes.” And then he’s gone, swallowed by the afternoon sun. I realise I never even thanked him.

  67

  The poolhouse phone is ringing in the middle of The Untouchables, which I’m watching in the front room, getting depressed by this latest De Niro flick which is all about crooked cops in America. I don’t want to believe it’ll be the same wherever I go, want to believe what Hugo told me, that America is a clean future. America the golden. I hunt the dusty phone down behind the bar. It’s past four in the morning and Pats says he’s sorry if he woke me. I tell him I wasn’t sleeping and he says I should be. He won’t be coming home, he’s too far out, he’ll crash where he is. He just wanted to check in. I tell him everything’s sweet and try to go back to the movie but my heart’s not in it so I switch off and sit there staring at nothing for hours as the sun comes up. I make tea and listen to the morning news. There was an election last month (whites only, of course), I was so out of it then I had no idea, my house crowded with strangers. It doesn’t matter, the Nats won big again. The new leader of our country is De Klerk. A new boss just like the old boss, as the song says. I get my satchel and take out the bomb tapes and play them. Kefiya and Ski Mask remind me of Annie. I don’t have a photo of her, only memories. I feel very sad and start sobbing. Wish I had photo albums of my folks, and of my brother, but all that’s inside my house, the one I’m never going back to. Maybe I’ll be able to have the contents sent to America once I’m there. Have Joski do it. But that’s not going to happen. Oberholzer has control of that stuff and anyway I’d be scared to let him know where I am, they can reach overseas too—Annie told me anti-apartheid people have been assassinated in Europe before. The spring sun rolls up, burning away the morning chill as it always does in Joburg. I have a cold swim to shake my numb state, and then get dressed and walk to the shopping mall. I have to remind myself it’s not like the cops will be searching for me on wanted posters, like in a movie. Only that I’m probably on a list at the airport, at border crossings. In the mall I buy a rucksack and fill it up with new clothes and a vanity bag full of toiletries. When I get back I find Pats is in, eating a hot pressed sandwich from the snackwich machine. He tells me he spoke with the oke who has the private plane. “He tuned me it’s no hassles,” he says. “He can fly you out on Friday.”

  “This Friday?”

  “No, the one after. It’s the . . .” He checks the calendar on the fridge. “The twenty-ninth. Freddy’s a lank good oke, he told me once you in Gabs he will organise you an international flight to America, no probs. Long as you’ve got the dosh, hey.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  He grins. “Should bladdy hope so.” Then he yawns and scrubs his hair. “I’m sut,” he says. “I’mna crash big time.” He gives me an envelope with numbers written on it. One is for the gate in the fence at Lanseria airport, underneath is the code for the gate and then the airplane number, to look for on the side of the plane. Pilot’s name is Fred and he leaves at four on the dot. I nod, making myself smile to show gratitude, but I’m thinking about the Dynamite Gym—it doesn’t seem like he’s made any enquiries. He reads my mind cos he tells me then that he wasn’t able to get over to the gym, but he will, and soon, I mustn’t hassle, there’s time.

  After Pats staggers off to the bedroom, I drift back to the front room, my satchel is there with the Sandy Hole stuff. On the couch I pull out an old notebook, my eyes gliding over my poems and my sketches, scribbled little notes made years apart. What kind of a person am I? I think about Zaydi in his old-aged home, probably telling stories to no one about Dusat. Maybe I’ll be like that one day, sitting there in America and muttering about Greenside, Greenside. But Jewish Dusat doesn’t exist, it was wiped out by Jew haters. Like Oberholzer’s father, and now his son. And they’ll be in America too, don’t kid yourself. And one day America could be like this place and I’ll have to leave again. Or if I have a son, a daughter . . . Things don’t go away, do they. Maybe Auntie Rively had a point about the Land of Israel, but there’s no shortage of Jew haters there either, no shortage of war. I page through the letters from Mr. Volper’s male lovers, the photographs he took with them. It makes me feel kind of sorry for him, sadistic bastard or not. I watch the tapes some more, Kefiya and Ski Mask. I cry for Annie. I doze off and when I wake up it’s dark and Pats has left. There’s a note on the table saying he’ll be gone for a couple of days and reminding me there’re frozen steaks and a braai outside. The braai’s by the pool, a fancy brick one with wood and charcoal neatly stacked. I start up a fire as the last of the sun disappears. The coals glow orange and their warmth feels good. From inside I fetch the Volper letters, the photos. That sorry feeling I have for him—I dunno, I’m getting all mushy, feel like there’s enough shit in the world already, maybe I don’t need to add to it. So one by one I feed the pages and photos to the coals and watch them curl up and disappear. I go back in and get the Fireseed tapes. I sit there for a long time, watching the coals.

  Sunday morning the ringing phone wakes me but I’m too zonked with heavy sleep and the pills to move. I remember the ringing when I wake again in the hot dark room and go out into the eye-burning sun. The pills are still spread over the top of the bar. I found them in a Jiffy bag in Pats’s things, they’re Mandrax—what he calls buttons (same as Stein called his)—the kind that gets crushed up and sprinkled to make white pipes. I’ve been taking them with orange juice now and then. I know I shouldn’t but they’ve helped me to sleep and numb out the hours. At least they don’t make me go on shotgun patrol and hear operas in my ears—not yet anyway. I poke the flashing answering machine. There’s traffic noise, blurry voices, and then Pats’s voice, all hoarse and loose and loud—he’s drunk or at least a bit merry. “Bru, my china. I’ve been in and rapped with the boys, the you-know-whos. Very bladdy interesting. Woo. These okes . . .”—laughing for maybe ten seconds, then snorting and coughing and some mixed-up words
—“. . . ganna head back in and talk to”—some name I can’t hear—“and get it sorted, aw man, lekker soos a cracker ek se”—tasty like a cracker, I say, which rhymes in Afrikaans and it’s a slang joke. He’s given it a heavy accent too. He’s telling me, I think, that he’s been hanging out with Afrikaners, people that are so stereotypically Afrikaner-like that it’s too funny. But I can’t be sure. I play it over a few more times. I notice I’m gnawing on my nails, my heart starting to go fast again. I decide I’ll take a couple of buttons with breakfast. Okay, one, just one.

  68

  In my dream I say to Patrick, “Patrick, do you ever dream about the Dam? About what happened, about Crackcrack?”

  “Why would you ask me that, stupid?”

  “I think a wrong turn was made. We need to go back.”

  “You know you can’t. What’s lost is lost. Now let go of me. I have to go.”

  “But there’s nowhere to cross.” The lanes of traffic are full, there’re highways on every side of us.

  “Let go of me,” says Patrick. “Your Zaydi did it, he made it through, I saw. Let go of me!” He breaks loose and runs. A red Jaguar runs him down and keeps going.

  69

  These last couple of days I’ve phoned the pager number again and again but there’s never a response. I’m getting a bad feeling. Now it’s Tuesday morning and I’m listening to Radio 5—there’s that ad for Jungle Oats that reminds me of Jet Jungle, the superhero radio plays I always listened to when I was little—and then the news comes on. They start talking about a murder and I feel cold hoops round my chest. I get dressed and run to the mall and buy the morning papers. I read them carefully but there’s nothing about the murder. Enough to tell myself to stop panicking, but there are still no call-backs to my pages. In the arvy I head back out and buy the National, the evening tabloid, pro-government, big on crime. And there it is, just like I knew in my gut it’d be. Page 3, with huge headline. It’s the kind of story they like, full of gore, showing the blacks as savages.

  MUTI SLAYING TIED TO DRUGS

  By Tina Rourke, Staff Reporter

  The white teenage victim of a horrific muti-style slaying was also a suspected drug dealer, police say.

  Patrick Toviah Cohen, 18, of no fixed address, identified today as the victim of yesterday’s brutal attack, was a well-known drug dealer in the area, according to police sources.

  “I can confirm the individual has been investigated for multiple drugs offences prior to this,” said Warrant Officer Kobus le Roux. “He had no convictions but we do believe Mr. Cohen was involved in trafficking of ecstasy, cannabis, cocaine, and other dangerous substances.”

  However it was unclear if the murder was related to the drug trade or not. “We have no evidence of that,” said Officer le Roux. “This kind of mutilation of a body is not something common to the drug trade. It’s possible he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Cohen’s body was discovered yesterday in the park at the corner of End Street, Hillbrow, and Beit Street, Doornfontein, not far from several well-known nightclubs. According to the coroner’s initial findings, his vital organs, eyes, and genitals had been removed as well as both hands.

  Police said the killing was likely the work of a group under the leadership of an experienced practitioner. They said body parts could fetch a high price on the black market. “With muti, they believe for example if you own the hand of a white man you’ll never have to work for one,” said Officer le Roux. “Other body parts are used to make charms what they believe can make a person immune to bullets or getting sick or arrested and that.”

  Investigators believe the perpetrators may have already left the Johannesburg area. “We believe they will try to go back to their homelands or possibly into Lesotho or Swaziland. We are on the alert for a party of four or five that would be possibly travelling together.”

  The page is all crushed up in my hand but I can’t remember doing it. I flatten it out and I’m looking at Patrick’s grinning face. They’ve got two photos, an old one, probably from his school yearbook, with a caption that says, Bright Future in Better Days. Cohen was a top-marks pupil at Emmarentia High School before dropping out to pursue life in the fast lane of nightclubs and drug dealing, police say. The other photo is a shot of a sheet with pale body parts spread out on it, most of them obscured with squares of black ink and the word censored. Underneath it says, FOUND: Cohen’s sickening fate at the hands of muti killers.

  Again, I think. Again.

  I’m on the ground. I can’t breathe. It’s got to stop.

  And then I think: Oberholzer.

  Who by Fire

  70

  I’m big-time glad I kept my keys as I unlock the grate and crawl out, sweating in my new-bought overalls and pads, dragging a rucksack on a rope behind. I stand up on Solomon ground. I haven’t been here in three months, since the end of June, when I still had parents. The tennis-court lights look like giraffe necks in the silver moonlight. I hump the rucksack through the veld to a mound of stones I remember well, and roll over a big one and dig a hole with my commando knife and put the rucksack in. I unzip it and get the smaller bag out and then head up to the Gooch’s office. My torch beam roams over the storage area at the back—garden shears, rakes, mowers—and stops on the sacks of Wonderwerk fertiliser in the corner. With three of them loaded onto a wheelbarrow I head down the main road to the synagogue. Then I go back to the bus depot and fetch a big steel drum marked diesel and roll it down to the sacks. I return for a bus battery, a dozen cans of paint, and three bags of nails. In the science lab on the bottom corridor I dig out my sweaty notebook, read over what I’ve put down. These are notes I took from Ski Mask and Kefiya, stopping and rewinding again and again, before I burnt the tapes. I fetch certain compounds like magnesium from the supply room behind the blackboard. Outside the shul I empty half the diesel into a drain, then I slit open the fertiliser bags and pour them into the barrel. I use a rod to stir the mixture, adding the compounds, keeping it moving like cake batter. When I’m finished, I empty the paint cans. In my bag are five hollow steel pipes wrapped with black insulation tape. Wires stick out their ends. I fill the cans with the mixture from the barrel. Then I close them and make holes in the tops and push the pipes in. I take time to clean up the work site and then carry the loaded cans into the synagogue.

  Inside, the bimah is hit by white moonbeams like spotlights, holding the centre of the huge space. I climb up and find the hidden catch on the bench and lift the top and look down at the metal plate of the shut trapdoor. Onto this I pile up the loaded cans, filling the hollow bench. I pad the cans with bags of nails and set the battery next to them. Now begins the job of wiring it all together. Twist caps join the ends of exposed copper, and then I bring out the circuit board. I made this at the poolhouse, using a soldering iron, an alarm clock, and a remote-control toy car—all bought at the mall. Watching the Fireseed video, I saw how to solder the remote-control unit onto the alarm board. Now I leave the board unconnected to the cans but switch on the radio unit.

  I shut the lid and head down into the pews, taking a seat in the back row of the Standard Eight block, the radio transmitter in my pocket. Amazing how small it is once you remove it from the joystick box. A little screwdriver operates it. I turn it on and listen—I can hear the faint chirping of the alarm clock inside the bench. I switch it off, move around to other seats and try it again—there’re no hassles with activating the unit from anywhere inside the shul. But when I step out into the marble hallway, the signal cannot get through the teak doors. So it’s as I thought, I’m going to have to be inside to do it. That’s actually perfect. It means I’ll get to see it with my own eyes, like I should.

  Back to the bimah, to open the bench lid. Now my heart is kicking in me like a bucking zebra as I fit the positive wire from the cans to the circuit board. I take out the little screwdriver and turn the screw till it pinches the wire solidly. Then I take a deep breath and do the same to the negative
. I sit there for a minute. Close my eyes and say the Shema, the first prayer you learn, the most important one. I open them and turn the radio control unit on. Nothing happens. I breathe out. Kefiya and Ski Mask knew what they were doing. I squat back on my heels and take the time to look at a fully activated bomb. This thing, just waiting for my signal to go boom. I keep looking, thinking about the amount in the cans—did I calculate it right? Did I put enough or too little or too much? I think about the blast radius and the bags of nails. The way I’ve worked it out the walls around the bimah of solid glass brick will confine the blast to the bimah alone. Nobody else in the school will be touched by it, not even in the very front rows. They might get some eardrum damage, but that’s all, unless someone freks of a heart attack. I look at my watch. In a few hours, at about eight-thirty this morning—the twenty-ninth day of September 1989, when sundown starts the Days of Awe at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when HaShem Almighty judges all men and women and decrees their fate, who shall live and who shall perish, who by drowning and who by strangling, who by sword and who by fire—the only person that will be standing on this bimah will be the Honoured Guest of the Week, one Major Wilhelm “Bokkie” Oberholzer of the Special Branch of the South African Police. Giving his address to the schoolboys because Bokkie Oberholzer believes in growth as a human being, in setting goals and facing challenges.

  Me too, Bokkie. Me too.

  I look across to the aron kodesh, the holy ark where the Ten Commandments are etched on copper tablets. It doesn’t say Thou Shalt Not Kill. It says Thou Shalt Not Murder. That’s a legal difference that matters. Sometimes killings are allowed. Sometimes required. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. Justice justice justice shalt thou pursue.