He helped his mother in the house. Once a week she did a big cleaning in the kitchen, and on those days he would climb the stairs with their wide polished banisters to collect the dirty clothes and damp towels from the floors of the bathrooms, the dressing room, and the bedrooms.
Joshua stood in front of Mrs. Malherbe’s long oval mirror, wearing the long-sleeved khaki shirt and shorts. He had never bothered with mirrors before. But he looked grown-up now, he thought: serious.
He gazed deep into his own eyes. They were dark brown, like his mother’s, with veins in the white parts. He had a long face, with a dimple on one side when he smiled, but his mother’s face was broad, with high slanted cheekbones. He wondered what his father’s looked like.
He glanced down at his hands and turned them over slowly. They were dark on the backs and light on the palms. Why was that? He turned them again, considering. Aside from the darker creases across them, his palms could almost pass for white. But he couldn’t. His coppery darkness meant he lived in the dark. In the back of the white house. Under the stairs. In the backyard. Down at the bottom of the garden. At the bottom of the heap.
These clothes made him feel different. Just like a darker, smaller version of Robert. He had legs and arms, like Robert. Teeth that were even and white. Strong hands. But would he ever drive a car like Robert’s? Would he ever be so happy?
He heard a footstep on the stairs, grabbed an armful of washing from the floor, and dashed for the back stairs, his heart beating fast.
It was morning; bright and cold. Joshua ran across the yard, came into the kitchen, and stopped. His mother and the gardener were standing, looking at the radio on the windowsill. Goodman never came beyond the back door. And even more astonishing, Tsumalo was leaning against the doorjamb, holding a tin mug.
The radio was saying something that Joshua could not understand. Something about stones. Something about schoolchildren. Something about shooting.
“Mama, what —” he began urgently.
“Sssst!” They all turned on him.
Then the man stopped talking. Beauty turned off the radio. There was silence among them.
“Aaai,” said Beauty. “It is no good.” She was trembling.
“It is what we want. It is the only thing.” It was Tsumalo. He crossed the room and clattered his mug into the sink. “You want to stay as you are?”
He looked scornfully at Goodman, who said nothing, just looked at the floor.
“I am afraid,” said Beauty.
“Afraid!” His face was close to hers. “What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing has already happened. And it has happened to you.”
His forehead shone with sweat, and there was a tiny bubble of foam at the corner of his mouth.
“The worst thing is how we live. Like animals. Like oxen for the plow. Like beasts! When they don’t want us anymore, they can shoot us. Just like they shot Sipho!”
Joshua felt a fist close hard about his heart. His mother flew across the room and held him, as if that could erase what he had just heard. But it was too late.
Sipho. Sipho. He tore himself away and ran out of the kitchen, down the path, into the shrubbery. When Tsumalo found him, he was up the oak tree, fist stuffed in his mouth, tears streaming down his face. Sipho.
Tsumalo reached up and laid his heavy hand on Joshua’s back. “I am sorry. I should not have said. I thought you knew.”
Joshua said nothing. Streams of snot ran down from his nose, and he scrubbed at them with his new khaki sleeve.
“Your brother was a hero. He died”— Joshua gasped and cried out for the first time —“he died fighting the police. But remember, he was a hero. Because of people like him”— Tsumalo grasped Joshua’s resisting form in his arms —“you and I will be free one day.”
Joshua wriggled from Tsumalo’s hold, dropped to the ground, and ran again. Tsumalo did not follow him.
Mr. Malherbe was still away in Jo’burg on business, and soon Robert had to go too, the red Alfa chuntering up the road, and the house returned to its usual torpor, basking in the winter sunlight, the sound of Beauty’s polisher whining over the floorboards.
Betsy swam in the pool and made them laugh, solemnly treading a circle with her huge paws, her ears spread out on the water beside her.
There were no more news reports.
Joshua cried in the night for Sipho. Beauty shushed him gently, half asleep, turning and holding him close; he could feel her own body shaking with suppressed sobs. “I am sorry that I did not tell you about Sipho,” she told him in the dark. “You are still so young. I did not want you to grieve for him.”
One morning he got up early and tiptoed across the yard to get her a proper cup of tea. But as he stood on the red-polished stoep, fitting the Yale key in the door, he thought he heard a heavy tread inside the house. Mr. Malherbe. He ran back, thudding into the bed with his feet cold from the yellow dust of the yard.
He lay in the half-light, listening to the doves practicing uncertainly in the trees. Then Beauty began to stir, and he got up to put on the Calor gas ring to boil water. He would have to use an old tea bag from the night before. He put sweet Carnation milk in the cup and brought it to her, the steam spiraling in the cold air.
“I went to bring you real tea,” he said. “But I heard the Master.”
She smiled at him and put her hand softly on his head, then took the cup and drank. “He is still away,” she said.
Later, as he ate cornflakes and milk on the back step, he heard strange stuttering roars in the distance, with gaps in between. It seemed to be coming from near the Red Cross children’s hospital at the side of the common.
He didn’t like the noise. It seemed to make the house shake. It sounded like big guns. He put the bowl down, stood, and looked toward the back of the yard, in the direction of the big square of open ground where the children’s hospital stood on one side and the white girls’ school on the other.
He went back into the kitchen. “What is this noise?” he asked her.
“It is only the roadworks,” she said. “They are drilling the road to make it wider.” She checked the wall clock and switched on the radio. They sat down at the table.
The green baize door swung and swung on its hinges. Mrs. Malherbe swept into the room and stopped, her attention caught by the pips on the hour. Slowly, she pulled out a chair and sat down, chin propped on her arms, eyes fixed on the sunlit yard wall by Beauty’s room with its tracery of vine branches. When the bulletin finished, she twisted the dial to zero and stood up.
“From tonight, and until the Master comes home,” she said, “you are to sleep in the house. You and the boy”— and she nodded at Joshua.
“Make up a bed in the back spare room. And I want Goodman to put extra bolts on the doors. The side doors too and the swing door. Betsy will have to sleep out here. She can take her chances. We should have a proper dog.”
It was strange to be in this big room. The walls were the green of a Granny Smith apple in the half-light. The ceiling was high and all around the edge it had a pattern, like the complicated curls on the sides of a cake. In the middle there was a circle, with little creamy scallops, where the light hung. The curtains moved a little at the bay window. The streetlight shone onto the ceiling.
Joshua’s eyes began to close, though he fought sleep. His mother was still downstairs, cleaning up, and he wanted to stay awake until she came upstairs. He wished Betsy was up here too, snoring comfortably in her basket. The upstairs was so quiet, with its big dark rooms off the wide corridor. He could hear Mrs. Malherbe in her room. A drawer banged shut.
He clenched all his muscles and grasped the blanket’s nubbled edge in his fists. He would not fall asleep. He would not. He would not.
A sound woke him. Car lights ran across the ceiling, and the rattle of the engine told him it was a diesel.
Then another noise. He slid out of bed and hopped from the cold floorboards to the rug. He stood at the window and looked down at
the garden.
At its far end, the floodlights flicked on, and it was washed in a lurid green light. The pool swam, blue as an extra sky, behind its hedges. A movement caught his eye beyond the filtration tank. The lights were doused, and suddenly he understood.
This time it was different. The silence was heavy. When they saw him, a little sigh ran around them like a breeze.
Then: “They were children,” said one. “Kids like him.”
“Amabhulu zizinja. The Boers are dogs, to kill children.” Another voice came out of the darkness.
Joshua felt Tsumalo’s hand on his shoulder. “This boy,” said Tsumalo. “His brother was killed. They shot him like a wild beast.”
“Sipho,” he added the name softly. “His name was Sipho.”
“Amabhulu zizinja.”
“Amabhulu zizinja.”
“Amabhulu zizinja.”
“Go to bed now,” said Tsumalo. “This is no place for you.”
“Hamba kahle, boetie. Go well.”
“Go well.”
“Go well.”
In the morning, his mother was not in the bed beside him.
She was in the kitchen, making the tea. The radio was on, playing soft music, and tears were running straight down her plump cheeks.
“Hayi,” she said. “Hayi. It is not right. All those children!” And she hugged him hard. He felt her body quaking. He was frightened. She wouldn’t let him go. She was hurting him. He squirmed.
Mrs. Malherbe came in, and they broke apart. Normally, she would have glared and said: “Beauty, where is my tea? You know I like it at seven sharp.”
But she didn’t say anything; she just crossed to the radio and turned it up as the pips came on. She stirred the teapot, poured two cups, and put one on the table in front of Beauty. She poured a glass of milk, handed it to Joshua, and sat down heavily.
They listened in silence.
The doorbell rang. Beauty began to get up.
“No — I’ll go,” said Mrs. Malherbe.
They heard her say, “Who is it?” They heard the bolts slide and the heavy door shift over the thick hall carpet.
Then she was back. Robert was with her. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, there was a bloody gash on his arm, and his face was bruised. He leaned heavily on the table and sat down carefully.
“What happened?” Mrs. Malherbe whispered. Her face was suffused with color; it ran in a mottled rash down her neck.
“There were riots in Guguletu,” he said brusquely. “Haven’t you heard?”
Mrs. Malherbe shook her head. She hugged herself with one arm, and pressed her fist to her mouth.
Beauty filled an enamel basin with water and brought it to the table. Joshua fetched the first-aid kit. Then he stood by the door while Mrs. Malherbe cut away Robert’s sleeve and swabbed at the blood. It floated in the water.
“It was a massacre,” said Robert, and waved at his arm. “Whites spend their lives worrying about Armageddon. Well, it’s here. It’s bloody well here. Only not for us.” He slammed his good hand on the table.
“Hold still,” Mrs. Malherbe said. “Or I’ll never get this finished.” Her tone was brisk; her color had returned. She wrapped a bandage over the cotton and gauze, pulling it tight and securing it with tape.
Robert drew in his breath sharply. “I need to file,” he said. “I need a table, a typewriter, and a phone. I can’t get back to the office. Ma?” Mrs. Malherbe nodded.
Robert’s blue eyes found Joshua’s, and he scrabbled in his pockets and tossed a jingling bundle at him along with a smile. “The car’s in the drive. Clean it up for me? It’s caught a couple of rocks. Luckily the windshield’s survived.”
“Thanks,” he added over his shoulder as he left the room.
The typing stopped and started; stopped and started. Then the clattering halted and they could hear Robert talking on the phone. Finally, he was finished.
He appeared at the kitchen door. “I’m famished,” he said. “And I’ve missed your food, Beauty. Any chance of something to eat?”
“The lunch, it will be ready soon, Master Robert.” Beauty looked up from the carrots she was chopping into coins and smiled at him. Joshua watched from the red stool by the stove. She never smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Malherbe.
“How is the Master’s arm?”
“Oh, Beauty. Please don’t call me ‘Master.’” And he smiled back at her. “How’s Tsumalo? Still here?” Robert helped himself to a beer from the pot-bellied Frigidaire, flipped off the cap against the counter’s metal edge, and took a swallow.
“Yes, Master. He is still here. It has been a good hiding place.”
“What a joke. Do you know how long they have been looking for him? He is a famous man, your Tsumalo. There is graffiti on De Waal Drive. It says, ‘Viva Ngenge, Tsumalo is King.’ They think he is in Maputo.” Robert laughed, delighted.
Joshua went to look through the porthole in the green baize door.
“Sssst! The Madam, she is coming!” Panic caught at his voice.
Robert picked up Mrs. Malherbe’s gin and tonic from the table and went through the swing door without a pause.
“Let’s sit on the stoep,” they heard him say. “Hard to believe it’s winter; it’s so warm outside.”
It was after supper. Robert leaned against the red Formica counter with a mug of coffee while Beauty washed up. “So where’s Tsumalo — out holding a meeting?” It was a joke, Joshua thought. Tsumalo could not go anywhere far, although the leg was less swollen and his limp less pronounced. Joshua had begun to smuggle books from Mr. Malherbe’s study out to the shed.
Tsumalo had begun by laughing. The first book Joshua found for him was by George Adamson. “Look. Born Free,” he had said, holding up the book with the bearded man and the lioness on the cover. “That’s me. Born to be free.”
But when Joshua brought him books by Marx and Orwell and Huxley, he stopped laughing and went silent as he looked at them, though he threw the Kipling against the wall —“Racist pig!” he said — and laughed at the school history book. “Look,” he said. “Simon van der Stel. He was the first Dutch governor of the Cape. And do you know what? He was Colored. But does it say that here? No, it doesn’t.”
“You must be careful,” Joshua said. “I must put them back.” He picked up the Kipling and the dark gray History of South Africa, Standard 9–10, with its paper covers. He smoothed them down and crept back into the house with them. He waited until Mrs. Malherbe had gone to bed and then slipped them back onto the study shelves, exactly where they had come from. Always in alphabetical order. He knew his ABCs. He was OK.
But no one ever noticed. If Mr. Malherbe had once read the books, he certainly didn’t anymore. When he was home, he sat in the study with his whiskey after dinner, falling asleep over the newspaper. He never glanced at the shelves. There were rows and rows of orange-backed books with black penguins on the spines. Joshua tried to read them sometimes, struggling over the words; he smuggled them out to the room so his mother could read with him.
“I was lucky,” she told him. “I went to a mission school. They were good teachers. Now I am glad because I can read with you.”
Joshua liked to borrow the old Enid Blytons on the bottom shelf. They were easy to read, though the world she wrote about was strange. There was a girl called George. And a boy called Julian. There was danger but it was only pretend danger, angry men who did not ever do anything really bad, and picnics by the sea, and parents at the end, and safety, and cocoa, and a dog called Timmy.
There were never policemen who beat you for no reason. There were never adults who behaved inexplicably. There was never, ever murder, blood, or death.
Oh, the stories he could tell! He had learned most of them from his grandmother, but he liked to embellish them with extra bits. He told them to Tsumalo sometimes, sitting in the shed at night, talking with a little candle stuck on the packing case at the end of the bed.
“. . . And then they ran away to the mo
untains and lived on suurvygies and eucalyptus leaves and baked tortoise forever and ever and ever.”
How Tsumalo laughed! He took Joshua’s head in his hands and gazed at him and said: “If I ever have a son, I want him to be just like you!”
But sometimes Tsumalo would want to lie and read quietly, and he would shake his head and say, “Yes, yes!” to himself, and Joshua would be forced to read the comics that he had already read: Superman and Batman and Robin, Richie Rich and Archie and Veronica. He liked Veronica. He thought she was like Anna. She was so mean. He thought he would like to be like that — then no one would ever dare to be mean to him.
Other times, Tsumalo would make him read aloud. It was supposed to be good for him. “If you are going to be a free man, you must know how to read well,” said Tsumalo. “It is the most important thing in the world. If you can read, you can teach yourself anything. Anything!”
And he would stop and gaze out the window of the shed with its tacked-on flowered curtain that Beauty had made, and narrow his eyes and say dreamily, “Yes, you must learn how to read like a white boy.”
Mummy says you’re going to kill us all.”
Joshua turned around. He had the polish and cloth in his hand. He couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but he knew it was Anna’s. He put the tin down carefully by Robert’s car. Was she in the tree?
“Over here, you moegoe!” But he still couldn’t see her.
“Pssst!”
He looked at the fence. He could see the knothole. Nothing.
He shrugged, picked up the tin, and dolloped some of the pink gunk onto the red hood of the Alfa. There was a jagged hole in its smooth surface. He would have to be careful.
He could feel the outrage coming from behind him, and he smiled to himself as he spread the polish.
There was a hot breath at his elbow. He looked down at Anna. He hadn’t realized how small she was. She was wearing a striped T-shirt that failed to quite meet the waistband of her shorts, exposing a creamy roll of flesh.
The World Beneath Page 5