by Malla Nunn
Emmanuel kicked the crate hard twice and the railway man toppled to the ground. The orange rolled free, collecting dirt. He stepped around the broken crate and pushed the door open. A quick squeeze on the hand and Davida followed, leaving the leering doorman chewing gravel.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered.
“Didn’t like his attitude,” he said. Like most English South Africans, Davida spoke very little Afrikaans. She had no idea the doorman had called her a whore.
They walked a long corridor bordered by small cubicles, mostly empty. From behind a closed door came the sound of chatter and music. The interior door was locked. He knocked twice and waited.
“Yes?” a female asked in a gravelly voice.
“Fatty? Open up. It’s the police.”
A metal bolt slid back and Fatty Mapela appeared in a silver cocktail dress specially modified to fit her extra-wide hips. The tight cap of her hair was dyed platinum blonde, the ends of her false eyelashes sharp enough to pierce leather. She cupped Emmanuel’s face between her palms and planted him an open-mouthed kiss. Davida’s hand tugged free.
“How long, how long?” Fatty massaged his shoulders, digging stout fingers into the flesh.
“Too long,” Emmanuel gave the expected answer and reached for Davida before she sprinted for the exit. “Fix told you I was coming?”
“Of course, yes.” Fatty backed into a wide room with hurricane lamps set onto individual tables draped in white cloth. A chrome jukebox flashed yellow and blue light onto a small dance floor on which three couples swayed to a crooning love song. Half a dozen European men shared tables with women ranging in colour from ebony to very nearly white. In a far corner, set hard against the rear wall, a collection of girls with glossy mouths and powdered cheeks waited for customers. Fatty had thoughtfully provided a selection of black, mixed-race and Indian girls.
“My brother said you were coming. He did not say you were bringing a friend, Emmanuel.” Fatty turned to Davida with a tight pink smile. “And such a young one, too, just out of the nest.”
“This is Davida.” He kept hold of her arm, felt the tension in her muscles at entering an unfamiliar world. “Meet Fatty Mapela, an old friend from Sophiatown.”
“No, no.” Fatty wagged a diamante-ringed finger. “More than a friend. I was your first girlfriend.”
“True,” Emmanuel said. “But I was not your first boyfriend.”
“What can I say? The men, they have always loved a piece of Fatty.” She ushered them over to a small table on the edge of the dance floor. “Whisky and water for you and, I think, a cola with a straw for the little girl.”
She ambled over to a long wood trestle table holding a variety of drink bottles and deliberately bent over from the waist to give the room a panoramic view of her silk-encased behind.
“Don’t mind her,” Emmanuel said to Davida as they sat down on folding chairs. “She likes to poke fun. It’s mostly harmless.”
Until it wasn’t, and the pokes and jabs became physical.
“Was she really your girlfriend?” The idea that a white boy—any boy at all—would pair up with this enormous black female with a throaty, almost male voice, disturbed Davida. Men, she thought, gravitated to soft, feminine beauty. Fatty was a wrecking ball in high heels.
“Yes, she was my first but it didn’t last long. She was uh …” He tried to find the most polite description of the relationship. “She was much more advanced than I was. The things she wanted us to do scared the hell out of me. We broke up after one day, which was a record even for Fatty.”
“You were lucky to escape,” Davida said. “She would have crushed you if she’d decided to get on top.”
Emmanuel laughed and circled Davida’s wrist with his fingers, enjoying the feeling of being out in the world with her. She wore a simple green dress with a scooped neck and a hem that fell well below the knee. Chosen by her mother to cool lustful thoughts, he assumed. The plainness of the dress combined with the dark fall of her hair hanging loose around her shoulders had the opposite effect to that intended by Mrs Ellis. The sight of Davida’s body moving under that layer of thin cotton was tantalising.
“Come and dance,” he said.
“Not yet.” She eyed the couples on the dance floor, their hips gyrating in close contact. “Maybe later when the music is livelier.”
The dancing couples groped and foraged across the racial divide with enthusiasm. Emmanuel scanned the room and the rusting iron walls. Most of the men were paired up and talking to women. A clutch of four European males leaned against the wall near the jukebox, leering at Fatty’s working girls, who smiled back at them. A small door at the back of the room likely led to rows of empty cubicles similar to the ones in the front corridor. These tight spaces would later be put to use with a blanket tossed on the floor and the lamps dimmed for privacy.
Fatty brought over a short whisky and a tall glass of cola with a straw and placed them on the table. She took a chair and sipped from the tumbler before handing it to Emmanuel. “How is your sister?” she asked.
“Still teaching. Still single.” He drank from the same glass. Both Mapela siblings practised their own form of Holy Communion. Fix smoked. Fatty drank. If he refused to share a glass, the conversation would end abruptly.
“Still a virgin, isn’t she?”
Emmanuel shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve never asked her.”
“You are a selfish, selfish man.” Fatty gave Davida a sly look. “While your sister sits with her knees pressed together you spread the leaves of this young bush and eat the fruit.”
Davida sipped at the cola, pretending indifference. She coughed when the liquid burned her throat on the way down. Emmanuel took a mouthful of Davida’s drink and tasted bourbon splashed with a dash of cola.
“On the house.” Fatty laughed, enjoying the joke. “I thought the little girl would like to try a grown-up drink. How long have you been out of school, child?”
“Two years now,” Davida replied, grey eyes dark with anger. “But what you say is true, I am young enough to be your daughter.”
“Oww … The child has sharp teeth. How many men have you bitten with those teeth, little one?” Fatty leaned back then and took in all of Davida. Emmanuel saw her switch to business mode, weighing up the potential worth of this beautiful, brown girl with a posh accent.
“Where’s your policeman husband?” Emmanuel asked.
“There.” Fatty pointed to a white man with close-cropped ginger hair. It was the Sergeant from the Sophiatown search who’d leaned against the police van and smoked to pass the time. The man checked the level of a bottle then picked out some bills from the moneybox on the table. He rolled them up and put them in his left sock. “He is one of my work husbands. Here for business only.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“After we dance, of course.” The music had switched to an up-tempo swing tune with trumpets and saxophone. Two couples stayed on the floor, twirling and bopping. The bass notes rumbled through the floor.
“Next one,” Emmanuel promised Fatty and grabbed Davida by the hand, giving her no choice in the matter. She jumped up from her chair. She had come out tonight to dance and shake off a year of solitude. They began awkwardly then found a groove. Their bodies swayed, swung away from each other and then moved together again. She was good. He was good enough to keep up with her. Soon Emmanuel’s breath shortened and he broke into a sweat. He’d dance till the soles of his shoes caught fire if it kept a smile on Davida face.
They stopped for a drink and the Sophiatown Sergeant took a seat at their table. The small windows had been shut to seal in the music and the voices of the guests, and the temperature had gone up a few degrees. Fatty stood at the door now, shouting questions to whoever waited on the other side.
“Cooper,” Emmanuel said. He didn’t offer an introduction for Davida who sipped bourbon and watched the couples left on the dance floor kick a jive.
“Labrant.” The Sergeant d
rank lager straight from a tall glass bottle, leaving a crust of white foam glistening on his top lip. “What can I do for you, Cooper?”
“Anything unusual about that search for the red Mercedes?” he asked.
“Now, there’s a question.” Labrant laughed, showing his yellowing teeth. “How long have you got?”
“All night, if necessary.”
“Here’s what happened. We got a call at the station; a tip-off about a stolen car. Okay, I’ll buy that. Then a street address and a description of the red car, which is pure bullshit if you know Sophiatown.” Labrant swallowed more lager, Adam’s apple chugging. “Hardly nobody has phones for a start. If they do, they don’t use them to call the police and point out the location of a luxury car. They walk down the road and talk to a cousin or a brother and the car is gone. To Mozambique, Swaziland, Rhodesia, you name it. It is not sitting alone in the township like an ugly sister at the ball. ”
Emmanuel already knew all this.
“You called Lieutenant Mason about the tip-off?”
“Course not. I mean, why the hell would I do that? Sophiatown is my town. My town.” Labrant cast a fond glance at the money tin on the bar and the European men and dark women who danced and laughed together without any regard for the new segregation laws. “Mason called me. Said he’d got a tip-off and that we could assist in the search but it was Marshall Square’s case. We were to wait for instructions. Translation; stay the fuck away from that car or I will have your nuts.”
“And did you stay away?” Emmanuel asked. Labrant was cut from old cloth, a bull-necked cop, corrupt but fiercely protective of his rights over his own turf.
“No fucking way,” the Sophiatown policeman said. “I went straight down there; found the alley with the branches in about three minutes. Then I went next door and put the hard word on a petty thief who I’ve had occasion to talk to over the years. The red car he knew nothing about, but he did spot two men sitting in a blue sedan parked on the corner. Two lit cigarettes, he said, and the engine still running. A couple of minutes passed and two more men come from nowhere, get in the back seat and they drive off. That was just before dawn.”
“Descriptions?”
Labrant shrugged. “White, maybe light skinned coloureds. It was too dark to get a good view.”
“Two men to stash and cover the Mercedes, and two for back-up in a getaway car,” Emmanuel said.
“That’s what I figured. So I took myself off to the station house and kept my trap shut. No way was that car a one man job but I got no proof of anything.”
“And even if you did have evidence, what good would it do to mess up whatever Mason was up to …” Emmanuel drank his whisky and water, enjoying the way the alcohol mixed with the painkillers that Zweigman had given him earlier. He’d taken four white beauties before leaving King’s house to put down his headache and dull the fear that came with taking Davida away from the safety of her father’s compound.
“That’s the truth of it. That car was Mason business, not mine. I’m five years off the pension and I’ve got all this to protect.” Labrant pointed to the chairs, the tables and the flashing jukebox. “New enemies I can do without. And that, my friend, is the whole story of the car.”
Two men in a blue sedan and another two who might have been gambling, drinking or fucking in the township till dawn: Labrant had wisely steered clear of Mason’s operation.
Emmanuel said out loud, “Looks like a set-up and no way to prove it.”
“Kiss the investigation goodbye, Cooper, and concentrate on more pleasant things.” The Sergeant winked in Davida’s direction. “Life is too short to take on the likes of Mason.”
Would that he could.
Fatty opened the door to a young couple, still in their teens: a nervous white youth with tanned skin and a lithe woman-child with small, high breasts. The girl’s dark fingers gripped the handles of an embroidered clutch bag and the boy’s hand shook when he handed over the door price. Fatty stroked his cheek, raising a blush. The couple were innocents entering a secret place to test their adult desire.
“Never too young to start,” Labrant said of the youngsters and drained the last of the lager from the bottle. “Now, I’ve got work to do. Enjoy.”
“Appreciate your help.” Emmanuel shook the Sergeant’s hand and turned his attention back on Davida who sipped on her spiked drink.
“You came here on business,” she said, the bourbon half gone, a flush of red brightening her face.
“You are my business.” He linked his fingers through hers. “Would you like to dance again, my lady?”
“This is no place for ladies, Emmanuel. But all right, let’s dance.”
They took to the floor a second time. Three fast tempo numbers and then, to Emmanuel’s relief, a mellow tune for slow shuffling. They moved closer, bodies in full contact. Two hearts beating together in a steady rhythm. The teenage lovers drifted by, awkward in each other’s arms.
“Who are those women sitting at the back table?” Davida asked. A tall Indian girl with a thick rope of black hair to the waist disappeared into the back area with one of the men from the wall. A second white man, broad-chested with stubby legs, chose a black girl and they too disappeared through the rear door. “Where are they going?”
“The women are prostitutes.” He saw no reason to lie. “A man chooses one he likes, they agree on a price and go back there to have sex.”
Davida drew back, bright-eyed. “All together?”
Emmanuel laughed. “Generally not.” He met her gaze briefly then looked away. Fatty was right. Davida was young. Sexually experienced yet strangely innocent. He, by comparison, felt jaded and stained by the things he’d seen and done in his life.
“You’ve been in places like that,” she said. “With women like that.”
“Similar. The experience doesn’t have to be so … commercial. Dinner, cigarettes and a spare ration pack in exchange for a night. I suppose it amounts to the same thing.”
There. It was out and said. He’d never shared the truth with his ex-wife, Angela. The truth was dangerous, destabilising. Emmanuel the good husband and Emmanuel the soldier from Sophiatown lived in separate cities with no roads connecting the two.
“Do you want me to be like one of those women?” Davida moved closer, fingers linked behind his neck, her breath warm on his skin. “Just for tonight?”
“I’ll need more than one night.”
The teenage dancers drifted by again, more relaxed now, the girl laughing. Fatty moved to answer a knock at the door. The Indian prostitute reappeared, braid undone, lipstick smudged. The jukebox arm dropped another record onto the turntable. Emmanuel barely noticed. Davida’s mouth opened warm and soft beneath his, her hips and breasts pressed close. He was lost. The taste of bourbon on her tongue, the feel of her skin beneath his palms and smell of rosewater in her hair: her body became the world. Fatty Mapela’s voice cut through the music and broke the spell of Davida’s kiss. Emmanuel looked over at the dance hall entrance. Fatty stood with her ear pressed to the wood.
“No. No. We are full,” she said. “Come next time.”
Above all else, Fatty loved money; the sound of paper notes rustling through her fingers, the solid weight of coins in her palm. She rarely turned down the opportunity to make more. Emmanuel pulled Davida closer. Hauling her to a dance in a rail yard had been a gamble and he had a feeling that he’d just lost the bet.
Boots kicked at the entry door and the wood panel smashed. The edge of the door slammed Fatty on the head. She stumbled back, platinum hair bright with blood. Two men rushed the dance hall, their faces hidden behind tight stocking masks. Two more assailants appeared, kicking the short-legged man and the black prostitute into the room via the back entrance.
“Don’t move, don’t scream,” Emmanuel whispered to Davida. “Stay by me.”
Labrant stepped from behind the bar and said, “You are making a big fucking mistake, gentlemen. Leave now and I might forgive you.”
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The larger of the two men at the front door un-holstered a revolver and aimed it the Sophiatown Sergeant’s gut. He moved the muzzle to the right and fired a warning shot into the wall. Metal groaned and men and women screamed. Fatty hugged the floor, dazed. Labrant stood with both arms raised in surrender. The patrons of the club cowered in the shadows or hunched in their chairs.
“Everyone on the dance floor and down on your knees. Move. Now!” the man at the front shouted. He stood head and shoulders taller than the rest of the gang. His minions, dressed in cheap suits, kicked chairs and shoved patrons to the centre of the room. They were empty-handed but might have hidden weapons; flick knives or holstered guns.
“Unbutton my jacket,” Emmanuel said quietly. “Slow and easy. Take your time. Stay close and they won’t see.”
Davida freed the buttons one by one, her hand sandwiched between their bodies. The dance floor filled. Men and women sank to their knees. Labrant came over last, teeth gritted with anger. Emmanuel stepped back and to the right, taking Davida with him. The teenage lovers’ table and chairs were within arm’s reach, so too the Webley revolver holstered to his torso.
A gun was handy. The problem was the crowd, though, all kneeling, all scared. A stray bullet might find one of them in the panic. If the big man discharged his firearm again, there’d be two guns discharging in the small space. Emmanuel sank slowly to his knees and mapped the positions of the gang and their strengths and weaknesses. Four men. One, possibly more, armed. The others of medium build and average height. They ringed the dance floor. Using the Webley or a chair would have to wait for the right moment.
“Wallets out. Hold them above your heads,” the gang boss said. The little guy next to him weaved through the club patrons collecting wallets from their outstretched hands. He stripped out notes and loose change and shoved the loot into a jacket pocket. Then he threw the wallets aside. Labrant reached into an inner pocket and received a fist to the head from the small man. The Sophiatown policeman shook off the blow and spat onto the ground.