The prisoner draws a breath in suddenly. But he says nothing. Joshua knows what that breath means. How can he say it wasn’t Sindiso when he has just said that he didn’t see who it was?
The men grab Sindiso and twist his arms up behind his back. “Leave him,” says the commandant. It is clear to him that Sindiso is protecting the boy. And yet —
“I gave him Bonny’s flashlight — the one she gave me.” This time Joshua’s voice is stronger. Sindiso stares bleakly at him. Don’t, says the look. Don’t go on and especially don’t talk about Bonny.
But he can’t stop. “Did you find it?”
Silently, one of the men pulls a flashlight out from his pocket. It looks so tiny, barely big enough to take two penlight batteries. It is bright orange and looks incongruous lying across the man’s broad palm.
“It was the girl,” says the commandant. “We should never have trusted her. She is a spy. Of course. We were stupid not to see it.”
“No!” says Joshua. “It was me. Bonny told me not to do it!”
Somehow, impossibly, this makes it sound worse.
Joshua casts a desperate look at the prisoner.
Please, say his eyes. Please tell them it was me, or they will think it was Bonny.
He feels as if he is struggling underwater. He can’t get them to hear or understand.
“Look,” he says, turning toward them all, his hands out as if to stop them thinking the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing.
“It was me.” He stops and draws his slight body up to his full height. “I went by the stable and heard a voice. He asked me for help” — he gestures toward the prisoner without really looking at him. “And I couldn’t bear to just leave him there. Not after what happened to Tsumalo. And my brother Sipho. And now Steve Biko!”
He pauses and takes a breath. “I told Bonny. She told me he was a traitor. She told me how he planned to betray us. She thought I understood.”
Another pause. Now he finds he can’t look at the man.
“I didn’t believe her. I let him out. I led him . . .” and his voice falters. “I led him to the river, and I watched him cross it, and then . . . then . . .” His voice begins to break. “Bonny appeared. She had followed me. She was furious with me. You mustn’t think it was her. She understands that this man is a traitor. But I don’t.”
And he goes up to the commandant and stands before him. The men move toward Joshua, but again the commandant shakes his head.
“If we believe it is not right for the government to torture us, how is it right for us to torture this man, whether or not he is a traitor?” Joshua can’t believe he is saying these things.
He is dizzy; he sways slightly on his feet. But he is still full of what he wants to say.
“If we kill him, we are no better than them.” There is contempt in his voice. “We don’t even know if he is a traitor.”
He is aware of the eyes of the commandant, which are locked on his. The man opens his mouth to speak.
But now there is a noise in his head, which seems to grow and grow and fill every space in it.
“Look out!” shouts Sindiso.
The sky is full, incredibly, of sound, and something hits him hard and throws him to the ground.
There is screaming and crying.
Then silence.
Joshua can’t move his limbs. He can’t breathe. He is pinned to the ground by something heavy. He opens his eyes and finds that someone is lying on top of him. It is the prisoner.
He wriggles himself free, but the man is still unconscious. Sindiso is crouching by him.
“Joshua, come.”
“But —”
Sindiso touches his shoulder briefly.
Joshua looks at the man, lying sprawled where he had thrown himself on Joshua as the planes came over and the bombs began to fall. His eyes are closed, his face relaxed as if in sleep.
Sindiso crouches by him and touches his fingers to the man’s wrist. He shakes his head. Joshua understands. “We must go.”
Joshua gets to his feet slowly, painfully, as if he is an old man. He looks around him.
Where the house was, there is a hole in the ground surrounded by rubble.
He can’t see Mama Bongani.
Farther away, the stables are gone. A pall of smoke hangs low over the camp.
Around him there is only silence.
It has been a long journey, but now they are close to Cape Town. Their lift drops them near the cooling towers, and they walk a little way back up a dirt path to the national road, away from the rotten-egg stink. “Wait here,” says Sindiso. “I’ll call you when someone stops.” He smiles at Joshua. “Not far now.”
He steps out from the scrub to the edge of the road. It is Joshua’s turn to carry the rucksack with its heavy load, and he is tired. He sits down behind a wattle bush and stretches his legs out, leaning into the springy, dusty branches and closing his eyes.
There is a squeal of brakes and the whir of a car backing up. Joshua, startled out of a half-doze, begins to scramble to his feet. But there is an odd silence, and instead of stepping out onto the road, he crouches down and holds his breath. He can see three pairs of feet through the gaps at the bottom of the foliage, staggering from left to right and back again.
Sindiso grunts with each blow. Joshua squints through the branches. He thinks that he sees a frantic eye for a moment — Sindiso’s? Then the men push him into the car and are gone. He sits down abruptly on the dusty ground. The straps of the rucksack dig into his shoulders.
Police? They must have been. Quietly, Joshua wraps his arms around his folded legs and rocks, desperately trying to quell the swelling anxiety in his stomach. He will not cry. He will not. He is grown up now. The time for crying is past. But he is racked with pain. Sindiso too? Not Sindiso. Where have they taken him? What will they do to him? He closes his eyes and remembers Sipho. Tsumalo. Steve Biko, fatally injured, driven naked through the night.
After what seems a very long time, he gets up, hefts the rucksack, and continues along the national road behind a screen of oleander bushes with their vivid red poisonous flowers. After he thinks enough time has passed, he steps cautiously out onto the road and sticks out his thumb.
Joshua jumps down from the truck. “Hey, thanks, man.” He smiles up at the driver. He slings his rucksack from one shoulder to the other. It’s heavy and no wonder; he’s carrying the limpet mines. He flexes the muscles in his shoulders. He was such a skinny kid. But he’s two years older now.
And the place: here is the road he had run down. It is narrower, dingier. The leaves on the oak trees — he looks up, expecting to see feet pedaling and a Cheshire cat smile — the leaves look rusty.
He thinks of Sindiso. Where do they have him? He remembers the sounds that came from the stable in the camp. Then he pushes them away. There’s no time to think of that now. Because he’s alone, he’ll have to move fast. There is more trouble. There are tanks in the townships again, the driver told him. He’s in a white area, and if he’s stopped, he won’t have a pass. In spite of his new height, he still looks too young to be a laborer.
In five minutes he is there, ringing the bell in the high wall. The house is no more than a few streets away from Bonair Road, where he grew up. “I’m looking for work. I’ve just arrived from the Transkei.” This is what they’ve agreed. This is a safe house, and the white couple here are expecting him — him and Sindiso.
A maid comes to open the wrought-iron gate. He repeats his lines to her — he has no idea whether she knows who he is, although her resentful look would suggest not. They walk in tandem down the brick path between neat rows of blue hydrangeas — named Krismisblomme for the time of year, the high summer of December. He shifts his burden again from one aching shoulder to the other; it’s been a long journey.
The Madam and the Master are in a wood-paneled room. They have the blinds drawn, and slatted sunlight lies across the dim carpet. He blinks. “Hello.” No, here that sounds wrong. He is not g
oing to say, “Morning, Master; morning, Madam,” as he would have done before. But he is aware that he is standing almost at attention.
Now he’s used to not being black. Or, more accurately, used to not being subservient. This is what exile has done for him. Nevertheless, he ducks his head shyly.
“Please sit down,” says the woman, smiling. He is offered something to drink. They are having black tea in bone-china cups. He asks for a Coke.
He perches on a low wing chair and finds he is transfixed by the sight of two massive stuffed fish in glass cases, high on the wall.
He drags his attention to the couple, who, he finds, are both smiling at him, with kindness and a slight edge of amusement.
“My son and I caught those,” says the man. He looks down. “He lives abroad now. So they remind me of him. Happier times”— and he looks up, directly at Joshua, who catches his breath. He can feel the man’s sorrow from here. And instantly he thinks not of his own father, but of his friend Sindiso. Tears spring to his eyes. Stupid!
He explains what happened to Sindiso. “What a terrible, terrible thing. And you so young,” says Mrs. Brown. She looks at him sympathetically. “So young and so brave.” He shakes his head fiercely. He will not cry. But if he shuts his eyes, he can still see it.
Joshua opens his eyes. The Browns are looking at him. They expect him to say something. He shrugs. “I am all right,” he says.
He hesitates. “There is one thing. I still have the limpet mines.”
How strange, thinks Joshua, that he is staying in the house on the corner that he used to run past in fear of the two Dobermans. They are both dead, gone to chase black people in dog heaven, perhaps. The wrought-iron gates stand shut all the time now, and the new couple have a boxer and a Rhodesian ridgeback. Thankfully, once they are introduced to him, they leave him alone; he is inside the magic circle.
He is to stay in the gardener’s hut; there is no gardener anymore. It’s more comfortable than the one Tsumalo had used. There is a proper bed and an electric light. And he is welcome to use the inside bathroom; he doesn’t have to share a bath with the dogs. He wonders whether Mandisa, their maid, knows about Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s political affiliations. It’s not discussed; she brings his meals with a slight pursing of the lips and doesn’t offer any conversation.
During the day he sits quietly outside the hut on the camp chair they’ve provided. They lend him a book of poems by exiled poets. It’s banned; their son sent it. Inside it he finds the lines:
All our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender,
but somehow tenderness survives.
Does it? he thinks. Does tenderness survive? He thinks of the couple in the house, alone, with their son in America. They had decided to stay. They knew the cost. They could be picked up any day. He wonders about Mandisa. He’s noticed that unlike Mrs. Malherbe, they use her Xhosa name and not an English name. She seems hostile. But it’s hard to tell. Perhaps she is just being careful. He puts his head back and closes his eyes against the sun, then reads on:
I am the exile
am the wanderer
the troubadour
(whatever they say)
gentle I am, and calm
and with abstracted pace
absorbed in planning,
courteous to servility
but wailings fill the chambers of my heart
and in my head
behind my quiet eyes
I hear the cries and sirens.
He closes the book. Again he feels the unbearable closeness of number 23. He has walked past it, in the early morning before anyone is up. Who lives there now?
Mr. Malherbe had stayed on, he had heard in the camp. He imagines him, more and more bitter, sitting by the pool, swilling that brandy muck he drank. One day the new maid came in and found him dead. His throat had been cut as he lay in his bed. There had been no dog to raise the alarm; not even a useless basset hound. Nothing had been taken. Not a thing. Not a bottle of whiskey from the bar, none of the silver. Nothing. The side door on the downstairs veranda was standing open, its glass smashed where they had gotten in.
When all is told, he cannot believe that the man who killed Mr. Malherbe would need to account for himself, was doing any more than setting the weights a little straighter in the scales of justice.
As he plans to do himself. He is going to set a limpet mine in the shopping center where Sindiso had planned to do it. Although he does not want to do it.
There is still no news of Sindiso. He imagines him there, sitting on the low stone wall by the shed, with his legs stretched out in front of him in the evening sun. His eyes are locked on Joshua’s, and his gaze is severe.
“You must remember, Joshua,” Sindiso had said, “that this bomb will be very important for us. It will say that even the white areas, the areas where white people go shopping and meet for coffee, the very places they think are the safest, are not safe. There is nowhere that is safe. We don’t want to kill anyone. The shops will be closed. But the message will be strong.”
Joshua wants to argue. What about the night watchman? What about passersby, coming home from the bioscope — the cinema? He tries to answer but can’t; then he wakes, stiff in the canvas chair, his mouth dry. The sun has gone behind the plane trees and he is cold.
The Browns have told him that they would take him there in the station wagon. He would need to lie down in the back, they said, with the rucksack. They would take him near to the place, a turnout on the national road, and leave him there. That would be the safest thing.
He knows the city. He will get back on his own, hitchhiking like last time. It will be harder without Sindiso. They had looked like a father and son, he’d thought. People were more likely to stop for them and less likely to be suspicious.
Joshua catches sight of himself in the scratched mirror on the shed wall. His eyes look a little wild. His face has broadened, the chin has gained definition, but it’s still a narrow face, an anxious face, he thinks, a face that already bears the marks of his life. He closes his eyes and takes three deep breaths. Is this the right thing to do? It is designed to frighten, not to kill. But still . . .
Then he thinks again of Sipho. Tsumalo. Biko. And now Sindiso. And his shoulders straighten. He stands tall. He opens his eyes and stares into the mirror again. He is a man now. He will avenge them all.
A hand on his shoulder. “Time to get up.” It’s Mr. Brown.
Joshua is awake instantly. He has slept with the rucksack beside him. He’s dressed beneath the sheet. “I am ready,” he says, and jumps up.
He doesn’t feel ready. There is a dream that is disappearing, though he wants to hold on to it: he is in a big crowd in a city square, and above him on a balcony there is a man. The cheering stops and the man begins to speak — “It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Then — no, it’s gone. All that remains is the roar of the crowd and the elation that had flooded through his body. Where was it? Who was it? There is a name they were chanting over and over: Mandela. Mandela.
“Nelson Mandela!” he says to himself. “Of course!” But he is in prison, on an island five miles out in Table Bay.
There’s no time to think of this now. He bends awkwardly and pulls up the sheet. “Don’t worry about it; please, Joshua, we’ll do it.”
In the back of the station wagon is a blanket. It is navy blue, soft, and smells of Omo washing powder. He climbs beneath it, stowing the rucksack behind the front seat. It will be OK. Limpet mines are quite stable, Sindiso said.
Mr. Brown gives him a wristwatch. It has a scratched face and a worn chestnut leather strap. “You’ll need this,” he says. Mrs. Brown smiles at him from the front seat.
She has a kind face, with a faint tracery of lines across it that appear when she smiles, which she does a lot; pale blue-gray eyes and faded blond hair. What if he killed someone like her?
He feels sick and dizzy. He smiles wanly at her, pulls the blanket over his head, and closes his eyes.
On the way into the shopping center, he walks by a group of children. They must be on a nursery school outing. They are crowded around their teacher, shouting and calling. He keeps his head down. He has his overalls on and a cap pulled low, a disguise he hopes renders him invisible.
He glances at them just once and catches the gaze of a blue-eyed boy with straight white-blond hair. The child frowns at him for a moment, as if he recognizes him, then turns away and places his hand in the hand of his teacher. As they pass out of sight, he turns again and looks directly at Joshua.
It is only a glimpse, but it stays with him.
A limpet mine is an awkward, heavy thing. He is in a toilet cubicle, a tight fit even without a rucksack that has two of the metal spheres packed into it. He almost wishes that someone had stopped him. Then he wouldn’t be climbing onto the toilet seat and fishing around behind the high old-fashioned cistern for a spot to attach it by its two big magnets.
As he struggles to fix the heavy thing in place, he struggles to remember where he has seen that steady gaze before. Of course. Robert. The boy looked like Robert.
Joshua shakes his head, clearing his vision.
He stops dead, leaning on the wall, the mine cold and metallic against his hands where he is holding it against the cistern. For a swift moment, he is a small boy too, in the dust of his own backyard, floating paper boats in the little stream of water he had made by the tap, his mother in the kitchen, Goodman edging the lawn. This whole world, this difficult, dangerous, cruel world, is waiting for him — waiting to pounce like a leopard from a tree in the veld on the tiny, big-eyed duiker that tiptoes by on its delicate legs.
He can still hear the explosion of the policeman’s gun and see Tsumalo being shot and falling, being shot and falling, again and again. The shower of glass, the opening flower of blood, the spreading red on his mother’s white apron.
But he can see, too, the dust of the camp, the bowed head of the prisoner, the commandant’s eyes locked on his, and he can hear his own words: “If we kill him, we are no better than them.”
The World Beneath Page 9