by Malla Nunn
Fix snorted. “Who do you think they’ve come to bury—their sister?”
Bakwena forced a smile and indicated a row of seats in front of the desk. “Be seated, gentleman. I will help if I can.”
“Very wise,” Fix said. “To refuse my friends is to refuse me.”
Bakwena sat and linked his fingers together. He nodded, giving permission for the questioning to begin.
“What’s your connection to Aaron Shabalala?” Emmanuel asked, having seen a dented black car parked outside Eternal Rest and witnessed first-hand Bakwena’s overly polite manner. White men in authority generally lapped up this “good native” drivel and the prison guard was no exception. The funeral director pursed his lips to consider the question.
“The name is unfamiliar to me,” he said in his deeply timbered voice.
A hard, metal click broke the silence that followed Bakwena’s denial. Emmanuel glanced sideways. Fix wiped the blade of a flick knife against the leg of his pants and then proceeded to dig dirt from under his fingernails with the tip. He remained relaxed, an apex predator passing time before a kill. Zweigman blew out a small breath, stunned by the sudden, subtle escalation of tension. Shabalala studied Bakwena’s face, probing for the truth.
“I’ll ask you again, just to be sure,” Emmanuel said. “What’s your connection to Aaron Shabalala?”
Bakwena breathed deeply and looked down at his linked fingers. “I am sorry, gentlemen. I don’t know the Shabalala of whom you speak.”
Emmanuel pulled out his notebook at roughly the same time that Fix lunged across the desk and slammed Bakwena’s right hand flat to the wood surface. The motion sent newspapers scattering across the floor. Sweat broke out on the funeral director’s brow. The Fix effect was instant.
“You lie to my brother, you lie to me. It is the same thing and liars, they make me nervous.” Fix held the knife at eye level and the blade danced from side to side in his agile fingers. “When I am nervous, I make mistakes.”
The point of the blade sliced down between Bakwena’s splayed thumb and index finger. Fix stabbed the point into the surface of the desk between the next two fingers and then the next. Metal found flesh on the last stab and blood leaked from the cut. Bakwena yelped in pain: a strange, high sound coming from a man of such solid build.
“You see?” Fix gestured to the blood. “That is the kind of mistake that happens when I am nervous.”
Zweigman shuffled forward but Emmanuel raised his hand, signalling him to stop. There would be time to doctor the wound after Bakwena told the truth about knowing Aaron and not before. Besides, Fix never left a job half-done. Calling him off was nearly impossible. Emmanuel leaned across the desktop and noticed that Shabalala had not moved an inch or flinched away as a result of Mapela’s attack.
“Last chance to tell me everything before my brother trims your fingers for you,” he said. Fix laid the flat of the knife blade against the first and then the second knuckle of Bakwena’s index finger, then flipped it so the sharp edge touched bare skin.
“I hardly know the boy.” The funeral director blinked away the trickle of sweat running into his eyes. “We met only a few times.”
“Go on.”
“He was a new member of the Call to Action Group. I thought him too young to join but the others said we needed new blood and fresh minds. He came to three of our planning meetings.”
“What does this action group plan on doing?” The name suggested something rash.
“Fighting fire with fire,” Bakwena said. “The National Party and the Dutch only respect what they fear. We have been too peace loving and it has gained us nothing. If we resist, the government will take notice of our grievances. To win this fight with the government, we must be an army. We must go to war.”
“Spoken like a man who’s never been in the army or gone to war,” Emmanuel said. A battle plan on paper and an actual battlefield strewn with disassembled bodies were only distantly related: one remained a neat idea while the other reflected a flesh and blood cost. Still, he could hardly argue the point. Fix had loosened Bakwena’s tongue in minutes. Violence worked.
“What exactly were your plans?” Emmanuel asked. Action took effort while talk cost nothing. The Call To Action Group might have been merely a forum for complaints.
The funeral director squirmed and clamped his lips together to seal in a confession. Fix flipped the knife into the air, caught it on the fly and stabbed the blade at Bakwena’s right eye. The tip stopped inches from the dark pupil. Bakwena’s eyeball reflected in the silver surface.
Emmanuel tensed but sat still. He breathed. He let the knife do its work. Neither Shabalala nor Zweigman moved.
“A train line supplying the gold pits … not a passenger train, you understand?” The funeral director remained glassy-eyed and unblinking. “We wanted to strike fear into the government and the rich barons who own the mines. We weren’t going to harm the mothers or their children, just destroy the equipment that keeps the white man in power.”
“Clean fights don’t exist,” Emmanuel said. “Somebody always gets hurt.”
“Aaron was there when you talked of destroying trains?” Shabalala asked. The penalty for treason was life imprisonment with only annual visits from loved ones.
“He came to the planning meeting on Friday night. We studied a map and made a list of places to destroy the track.”
Fix withdrew the knife and tucked away the blade. “Heavy business,” he said. “Kicking the white man in the wallet. I like it.”
Bakwena wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and instantly soaked the thin cotton. “Better to kick the white man there than to kill his women and children,” he said.
Shabalala leaned across the desk edge so the funeral director had no choice but to meet him eye to eye. “Why would the boy join a group such as yours? He is from a good family with a good mother and father.”
“It was because of the father that he joined,” Bakwena explained. “The white hospital refused to treat his father’s lung sickness even though they have many machines and empty beds. The father offered money but the doctors sent him away. Now the father is dying far from home.”
“A great hurt made worse …” Fix mused. “That is the white man’s way.”
“This explains Aaron’s weak alibi,” Emmanuel said. “Telling the truth meant putting everyone else at the planning meeting in the dock for treason. Aaron limited the danger to himself.”
Would Bakwena have done the same? Emmanuel wondered.
“I understand,” the Zulu detective replied. “He stayed quiet to save the others from prison.”
“How committed are you to the revolution?” Emmanuel asked Bakwena.
“The revolution is my life’s work.” The funeral director’s rich voice was perfectly suited to giving church sermons and delivering fiery speeches from the political stage. “I will not rest till every black African is given equal rights in all things. I am not alone in this. There are many, many more who feel as I do.”
“Good,” Emmanuel said. “You have a chance, right now, to turn your words into actions. Go to the Sophiatown police station and make a formal statement. Tell them that Aaron Shabalala came to your house on Friday night at around 9.30 and stayed for an hour. That’s all it needs to be. Sixty minutes. Give him an alibi.”
Bakwena said, “My politics are well known to the police. I myself am very well known here in Sophiatown. The police will use this opportunity to question my friends, my family … everyone that I know. The Call To Action Group will be in danger.”
“Tell them that Aaron came to discuss the cost of a funeral. His father is sick. It makes sense.”
What would it take to move this armchair revolutionary from behind a desk? A miracle, Emmanuel suspected.
“The risk is too great my friend,” Bakwena said. “One wrong word and the Sophiatown police will call in the Special Branch to investigate. Every chain has a weak link. The Special Branch will find that link and bre
ak it. All of us who were at the planning meeting will be condemned to life in prison. Better to sacrifice one life than five.”
“So long as that life isn’t yours.” Andrew Franklin’s cowardice and Bakwena’s ruthless self-preservation were symptoms of their broken country. “Aaron didn’t break during questioning but you, the great leader, can’t promise the same.”
“Shabalala is strong. He will keep his silence while we work to overthrow the government. We will achieve our goal and South Africa will be free. Shabalala’s sacrifice will be remembered in the history books. I gave him my word.”
“For what it’s worth,” Emmanuel said. The funeral director had the voice of a revolutionary but lacked the necessary courage to save one of his own men from the gallows.
Fix twirled the knife, ready to end this endless talk, talk, talk. “Five minutes,” he said. “I will make this man do as you please, brother.”
“I don’t doubt it but we can’t control him once he walks into the police station.” They needed a definitive solution to Aaron’s dilemma: one that didn’t call Lieutenant Mason’s attention back onto the Brewer case. A statement quietly lodged over the Christmas break would likely go unnoticed until well after Johan Britz had had the time to unpick the police investigation.
“Two minutes,” Fix begged. “Our dove will sing the right tune.”
“Mr Bakwena has no power but in words,” Shabalala observed. “First he will sing for us then he will sing for whoever has him trapped in a cage. He will exchange the lives of the others to save his own. Of this I am sure.”
Emmanuel rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension there. If Lieutenant Mason or the Special Branch offered Bakwena a deal, he’d likely take it. The funeral director didn’t have the strength to pull Aaron from the fire. They had to find another way.
“The girl.” Zweigman spoke up for the first time. “She is the true weak link. We know that she lied. We have proof. Now we must get her to tell the truth.”
Mason would, sure as summer rain, present the red Mercedes Benz and Aaron’s school badge into evidence. If Cassie withdrew the statement naming Aaron, the Lieutenant had little more than a “receiving stolen goods” charge. Six months in a juvenile facility was preferable to waiting out a death sentence in the company of hard criminals. Johan Britz could whittle six months down to three if Cassie reneged on her statement.
“She’s our best chance,” Emmanuel agreed. Especially now that Andrew Franklin had confessed to their relationship.
“Shit, man.” Fix slid off Bakwena’s desk with a click of his tongue. “You are too soft. You must be tougher than your enemies and more cruel, or you will never win.”
“Remember that piece of advice when next you meet Lieutenant Mason,” the Sergeant Major said. “The prize for runner-up will be a free trip to the hospital or six feet under.”
“I’m going to be the last man standing,” Emmanuel responded to the voice in his head. Aaron’s freedom and Davida and Rebekah’s safety depended on it. He gave Bakwena a last fleeting glance on the way to the door. That Shabalala’s son had lied to protect other people, no matter how unworthy they were of the sacrifice, was a small compensation and provided only cold comfort in the circumstances.
Bakwena slumped in his chair and patted a handkerchief to his sopping brow. He straightened his waistcoat and breathed deeply, slowly rebuilding the façade of a successful businessman with the courage to talk openly against the government and the police.
“We’re done here,” Emmanuel said and left the office. What they’d do next was none of Bakwena’s business.
“The daughter will speak?” the Zulu detective said when they’d regrouped on the cracked pavement outside the funeral home.
“We won’t give her a choice,” Emmanuel said. “Clearwater Farm is three, maybe four hours north of here, depending on how the road is. We’ll leave in an hour. Pack for an overnight stay, just in case.”
Fix held up pale palms like a man being robbed in daylight. “Me and the bush do not mix. There is too much quiet. A man needs noise to think and make plans. I will not set foot where the corn grows.”
“Then stay and keep Sophiatown in line while we’re away,” Emmanuel said.
Fix had once spent five days digging rocks from the fields and subsisting on a diet of thin porridge and a daily piece of bread after being illegally transferred from police custody to a dust bucket farm named Shiloh. It took Britz, the Dutch lawyer, three days to track Fix from the police lock-up to the slave labour farm.
Britz brought charges. The police officers involved were reprimanded and the farmer given a suspended sentence for “mistreatment”. Fix returned to the township with an abiding hatred for the countryside and a true measure of just how little the law cared for his interests.
“Go well, my brother.” Fix slapped Emmanuel’s shoulder and gave the traditional farewell. “Enjoy the countryside but remember to take your gun.”
*
An ugly yellow sun blazed above the stunted trees and red anthills. Parched land stretched out to the far horizon. The girl huddled in the shade of a boulder and licked her cracked lips. Her leg ached. She’d picked out all the glass she could find in the cut but there might be more buried where she couldn’t see: she imagined tiny shards encrusted with dirt, poisoning her blood.
No, she shook off the thought. The real problem was water, or rather, the lack of it. After kicking in the window she’d run into the night and kept running. She’d moved through brush and dried grass, spiked thorn bushes and stone outcrops until dawn. The grunts and growls of unseen animals prowling the dark had spurred her across the moonlit veldt.
She struggled to her feet and searched the surrounding area. She could sleep off the exhaustion of the long night but her dry mouth and raw throat needed water to heal. Three gentle hills broke the flat horizon. The distance to the hills was impossible to gauge but they called to her with the possibility of rock pools to swim in and groves of shade trees to sleep under. She’d be safe from the big man there. A day or two to rest and she’d move on to search for the road that led back to the city.
22.
Emmanuel angled the sun visor to block the harsh light that hit the windscreen. Thirsty land, flat and brown, flashed passed the car windows. Spiked thorn trees, gnarled wild pears and yellow grass cried out for a ground-soaking thunderstorm.
“The rains are late,” Shabalala said of the dusty fields and the gaunt cattle huddling in the grey shade of the Acacia trees. “If they do not come soon there will be hard times.”
Emmanuel imagined the hard times had already begun for those without a permanent source of water on their property. A dry summer meant a lean and hungry winter.
“Five more miles to the turn off.” Zweigman checked the odometer and peered through the heatwaves that shimmered on the horizon. The blank sky and harsh terrain were alien to his European eye, yet he found a strange and powerful beauty in the blooming prickly pear trees and the blue, distant hills. One wrong turn, though, and you’d die of dehydration or loneliness.
“There …” The doctor pointed to a weathered signpost with an arrow that indicated a bumpy dirt road. Three properties shared the sign: “Welkom”, “Lion’s Kill”, and last on the list, “Clearwater Farm”.
“I hope that name isn’t wishful thinking.” Emmanuel turned onto the rough track. “We have no water on us. Or food.”
They had stopped to eat at a roadside café with a solitary non-whites table covered in a fine red dust. One mouthful of the “special beef stew” and they’d agreed, the three of them, that eating dirt might be a tastier option. They’d arrive at Delia Singleton’s house thirsty, hungry and with a long list of questions for her niece. The harried farmer’s wife would be well within her rights to turn them off the property before sundown; what were three grown men but just more mouths to feed in what looked like a time of deprivation?
The road dissected the veldt, brightened at intervals by flashes of green
foliage and red aloe flowers. Five miles in from the main turn-off came a faded sign for “Welkom”, the first of the three properties to share the access road. At seventeen miles, another sign, painted in bright red pointed to the second property.
“Lion’s Kill,” Zweigman mused aloud. “That is a strange name for a farm.”
“I think it is a hunting reserve,” Shabalala said. “Rich men pay much money to hunt lions and buck.”
“The returns are better than planting corn, that’s for certain.” Emmanuel shifted to low gear to better navigate the washboard gullies and potholes. The road had not been graded or patched in a long while. A wire fence marked the beginning of a new property boundary line. An elegant wrought-iron sign pointed the way to “Clear Water”. A sprawling white farmhouse appeared two miles off the turn; the high silver roof peaked against the sky. The distance from the homestead, and the scope of the landscape around it, created the impression of a prosperous European estate growing out of the African bush.
Reality hit at the mouth of the gravel driveway. Tall weeds grew in the dusty garden at the front of the house and strips of rust ate away at the iron roof. Rows of withered corn rustled in a field to the east and the baked lawn spread out like a brown carpet.
“Whoop … whoop … whoop …” the sound came from a stand of mature mango trees planted on the right side of the drive. Emmanuel checked the branches. Four dirty white children hung from tree limbs and howled as the car drove by. A scraggy, red-haired teenager sat barefoot and shirtless on the front steps and whittled away at the end of a stick with a penknife. Emmanuel parked the car.
“Huh …” Shabalala made a sound that encapsulated their joint surprise. This vision of white ruin populated by feral white children was the last thing any of them expected when they’d turned off the tarred road at the signpost to Rust de Winter.