I didn’t deny it.
“Well,” said Matlala with a dismissive laugh, “this isn’t one of them. She was Wandile’s girl. His brother’s girl. Came to see Thulani. I told you that, Bill. Came to see him on the island.”
“You did,” said Bill.
“That was unusual?” I asked.
“Unusual? It was flat-out unheard of. They weren’t running a holiday camp there. We didn’t have all our girls coming round for tea.” Matlala’s attention returned to the horse, and his face softened as we watched the jockey being helped up. “Goddamn midget,” he muttered.
“They were close? The president-elect and the woman?” I asked. “If she was his brother’s girlfriend.”
“Can we drop the ‘president’ shit?” asked Matlala. “He’s Thulani to me, so let’s just call him that. You know what Thulani means? The Quiet One. That’s him. Quiet.”
The horse started pacing in a stiff-legged way, like it was taking part in a military parade. “There she goes,” said Matlala. “Now you’ll see.”
“And Thulani and the woman were close?” I persisted.
“Like hell they were.” Matlala looked at me accusingly. “He hated his brother. Hated him. You think he liked the brother’s girl?”
“If she visited him,” I suggested.
“No, no. That wasn’t a lovey-dovey holding hands and crying about the dead brother kind of visit. They weren’t running guided tours. It was something the pigs dreamed up.”
“And Thulani talked to you about it?”
“The hell he did.” Matlala was still watching the horse, which had turned its stiff walk into an anxious pacing. He reached for another biscuit, keeping his eyes on the horse. “Never spoke about it, not a word. We knew it happened because one of the guards told us.”
“But not a reason for the visit? The guard didn’t mention that?”
Matlala spared me a momentary glance. “Those guards dealt in facts. They weren’t big on conjecture,” he said, and turned back to where the jockey looked as if he was giving the man under the umbrella a salute with a stubby whip which he tapped on the peak of his helmet. Then in a motion that was like fluid pouring from a spout, the horse lengthened and accelerated away from us across the field. The sound of the hooves came afterwards like an experiment to measure the speed of sound. Matlala had stopped chewing his biscuit, and he breathed heavily through his mouth as the horse disappeared in a flurry of wet spray.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he asked in a voice hoarse with emotion. “Poetry in motion, just a thing of beauty.”
“Extraordinary,” said Bill, and he looked as if he meant it. We sat in silence for a minute, watching the horse loop out across the field and sprint along the fence at the far end.
“You tell me,” said Matlala, “why the pigs would send in the girlfriend of a hated brother. To visit a man who was becoming a leader of the resistance. You think she came in with flowers and chocolates?”
“They wanted information,” I said.
“Damn right they did. Wouldn’t have got it though. They’d read the situation all wrong.”
“He was angry? Thulani was angry about that?”
“No, not angry. Not the Quiet One. He was never angry. Just quiet. Said nothing, went quieter than ever. For weeks after. Weeks. Months, maybe. Mind you, that’s not a long time on the island. Not when you’re there for years. Twelve years I did there. Twelve years of my life in a little stone room with bars.”
“And they didn’t try again?” I asked after a suitable pause during which we reflected upon the twelve years.
Matlala shook his head and reached for the last biscuit. “No point. Must have realised their mistake. Discovered how much he’d hated the brother, so there was no point.”
“Did he talk about that? Why he hated his brother?”
“He brought it up in our group therapy sessions,” said Matlala, then allowed another chuckle to rise to the surface. “Your friend Ben-here is good entertainment value, Bill. He has unusual ideas about what it was like on the island.”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I said, trying not to sound as if I’d taken offence.
“Sure, I’ll tell you,” said Matlala, and the clown was gone. The brittle core was showing now. “When you’re thrown into the back of a truck with bars on it, and the stench of the vomit and blood of the previous occupants. Kicked and beaten with those long quirts and called every name their limited minds can come up with. Taken away from your family and your friends. Stood up in front of a room full of people who speak the oppressor’s language, with someone to beat you when you don’t give the right answers. Then locked up in a concrete room, forced to break rocks in the quarry all day, every day.” Matlala held his hands up and studied them as if looking for damage. “When you live with the realisation that you will never get off the island except in a box without breathing holes, when you hear months after the fact that your family members have died, or that they have given you up for dead. When that is your life, you don’t sit around and discuss the reasons you’re feeling angry.” Matlala watched his horse as it sprinted past the trainer and stable boy, and the sight gave him a lift.
“Thulani’s little brother had always been weak,” he continued. “He’d been the little puppy you want to hurt just to see how long it will be before he cries for his mommy. That’s what they said, the ones who’d known Thulani before. I hadn’t known him. Met him on the island, didn’t I? And Thulani had done just that. Hurt him until he cried. Often.”
The trainer turned from the fence and raised a finger to the sky, looking at the large window we were sitting behind. He added a second finger, then turned back again. Matlala raised a hand to acknowledge the gesture, but I doubt the trainer could have seen him even if he had waited for a response. The window would have been reflecting the wet vineyards and exercise fields.
“Second best time,” said Matlala with satisfaction. “That’s good, isn’t it?” Then without waiting for a reply he resumed his story. “Except that the little brother didn’t cry. That’s what they said. Would just take it. More and more of it. They used to say that he’d started the fire, you know that?”
“What did Thulani say to that?”
Matlala chuckled again. “Did I not tell you what his name means? He didn’t say nothing. No thing. Just kept quiet about it. But he wasn’t crying a whole lot over his dead brother.”
Matlala turned to Bill. “It’s in the cabinet over there, beside the fire,” he said. “Glasses on the shelf above. Ice in the fridge. The dark green bottle, that’s the good stuff.”
Bill heaved himself out of the armchair and lumbered over to the fireplace. Matlala turned to me.
“You didn’t bring your camera,” he said. It was not a question.
“Just research at this stage,” I said.
“When I helped your friend Bill with his research, he had notebooks and pencils. Even a tape recorder.” Matlala’s beady eyes regarded me with suspicion.
“I’m not sure there’s a story here. All of that will come later.”
Matlala nodded as he considered this. “Bill wrote a book,” he said, putting to shame the inadequate approach that I was taking. “Prison Island.”
“I contributed,” Bill called over from the drinks cabinet, “Didn’t write the whole thing.”
“I helped him with that book,” said Matlala, ignoring Bill’s modesty, “because something good came of it. You going to be doing something good with this? Or are you just combing the shit to see what falls out?”
“I’m doing nothing with it,” I said. “I’m looking for the truth, which surely cannot be a bad thing.”
“That all depends which truth you choose,” said Matlala. “There are so many of them these days. All different.” He gave an unamused chuckle. “This journalism,” he said. “What did you do before?”
“I was with the army. British army.”
Matlala nodded as if that confirmed his suspicions. “Posted out here?
” he said.
“I did a tour on the mines.”
“And you stayed.”
I didn’t embellish. Bill returned with three glasses on a tray. They clinked merrily as he handed them to us.
“Ben was special forces, but he’s left all that behind now,” he said. “Makes documentary videos.”
Matlala didn’t react to that but kept watching me as if he was trying to remember something.
“Glenlivet,” said Bill and raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to old stories, estranged brothers and long-lost girlfriends.”
I raised my glass and took a sip, trying not to feel disconcerted at the way Matlala was watching me. Then he smiled broadly and consumed his whisky in a single gulp.
“We’ll go and see him now,” he said. “You’ve been wasting your time talking to me about all this. Big T will answer your questions better than me.” He reached a large hand into his Armani brushed-silk jacket and extracted a tiny mobile phone. I didn’t look at Bill, who had become very still in his chair.
“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I’m sure he’s too busy to be bothered with discussing his late brother’s girlfriend.”
“No, no,” said Matlala, and his cold eyes brimmed with suspicion. “No. Let’s do this the right way. I’m meeting with him. Didn’t Rose mention it? He’s doing the second round of interviews for Cabinet. I’m sure he’d be happy to spend a few minutes talking with you two clowns.”
“He has better things to do,” said Bill.
“Like choosing his Cabinet?” Matlala laughed. “He’s got weeks for that. This is just the early rounds. He’s going to like me bringing you two in. And while he handles the press, I’ll get to work the room. Get myself a cure for this damned sobriety. Get us one for the road, Bill, and I’ll let him know you’re coming.”
Six
“I asked if the name meant anything to him,” said Bill as we followed Matlala’s latest series BMW over Constantia Nek through the saddle between the mountains and towards the coastal road that would take us to the Waterfront where Matlala was intending to present us as hunting trophies to the future leader of the country. Rose was driving Matlala’s car. Her approach was governed by the principle that right of way was determined by size of car. She expected the drivers of smaller cars than hers to make sure they were not occupying the same part of the road as her as she progressed along the windy mountain pass with her foot pressing the accelerator all the way to the floor. All the other cars on the road were smaller than hers, and so far it had worked out fairly well, although there had been some worrying moments. We rushed behind her like ambulance chasers because Matlala had warned us we wouldn’t be able to get into the private quay without him.
“That’s all, I swear,” said Bill. “Thought I was doing you a favour. I honestly had no idea he would rush us off to see the man himself.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “What is wrong with asking after his late brother’s girlfriend?”
“I don’t like it,” said Bill for the fifth time. “Don’t like any of this confrontational stuff. Give me a phone or an email, not this nonsense.”
“Why don’t you wait in the car?” I suggested.
“I’m the only reason you’ll get out of there alive. I’m legitimate, an historian. Try not to look so damned military, can you? You’re meant to be a documentary video maker.”
“I am a documentary video maker,” I said. “Don’t I look like one?”
Bill did not reply.
We arrived in record time at the entrance to the private quay, a couple of kilometres before the public entrance to the sprawling collection of shops, hotels, bars and restaurants that made up the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront complex. There we could have bumped over a few circles and been sitting behind a cold draught beer within minutes. But the entrance to the private quay didn’t work like that. Here there was a three-metre wall, topped with electric fencing and additional broken glass set into the cement just in case the two-thousand-volt shock was not deterrent enough. The huge steel gates did not open for Rose despite her aggressive approach. Instead, a smaller pedestrian gate to the side opened and a man wearing a black paramilitary uniform strolled over to the driver’s window at a pace slow enough to ensure that we realised that any haste on our part was not something that he felt obliged to prioritise. He was paid to keep people out, not let them in.
It took Rose a few minutes to fill in the details on the clipboard, and then the security guard checked her spelling without haste. He strolled back through the pedestrian gate which closed with a loud clang behind him. I wondered aloud whether things were going to turn nasty and they would open fire on us.
“I should have known you’d be nurturing military fantasies,” said Bill.
“It was a joke,” I said, but Bill didn’t look convinced. “Sandy told me you never stopped thinking like that,” he said, gazing ahead steadfastly through the windscreen. “She said it had scarred you for life.”
“Not scarred,” I said. “When you form habits that your life depends upon, I wouldn’t call them scars.”
That had sounded defensive, so I stopped right there. I knew Bill’s feelings about the military. There were some people who were impressed by the idea that I had endured one of the toughest military training processes in the world. Some people who felt respect, even awe at the thought that I had been a member of one of the world’s most elite platoons. Others who felt their own manhood threatened and would strut about like roosters to show how much more manly than I they were. Others who were disappointed that I wouldn’t tell them what it felt like to kill another human being, and others who were appalled that it was something I could tell them. But Bill was none of these. He was dismissive and vaguely irritated by the fact that a good friend of his had chosen a man such as me. Not that he felt she should have chosen him. But I was a disappointing choice: she could have done better. And although he never said it, I knew that he blamed me in some indefinable way for the fact that he had lost her. For the fact that we had all lost her. But as we sat there in silence waiting for some unseen person to approve our entry into this fortress on the sea, it occurred to me that the simple fact he had mentioned her indicated some softening of his resentment.
“It’s my fault,” said Bill. “I should have known Matlala wasn’t going to invite us around for a cup of tea. He’s a cunning little bulldog, that one. And they’re all like this with Mbuyo. I should have known.”
“All like what?”
“Like a pack of lion cubs. They bring their day’s kill back to him so that he can approve. He’s like the big alpha male lion who lies under the tree all day licking his paws and smiling for the cameras, while they’re out hunting. Then in the dark of the night they drag their kills back to camp.”
“You don’t approve of him,” I said.
Bill turned to me with a deadpan expression.
“I didn’t say that. I don’t ask myself whether I approve of him or whether I don’t. I don’t express opinions about political leaders. That’s the quickest way to end your career in this country.”
Bill removed a large handkerchief from the pocket of his linen jacket and blew his nose loudly.
“Got caught in the rain,” he said as if the few drops that had fallen on him might have brought on a man-sized cold. “You’d do well to remember that about this country,” he continued. “Things are different in the civilised First World countries of your birth and upbringing.”
“My mother was South African,” I reminded him. “She instilled in me a healthy wariness of political leaders.”
“Of course she was – Sandy told me that. I keep seeing you as a weird British-Canadian mix.”
“I’m even weirder than that.”
The gates before Rose’s car swung open silently, and Rose nudged her way inside the complex. Just when I thought we could sneak in behind her, the security guard emerged with a hand held up to the sky and stood squarely in front of my rusty old Fiat.
He looked at the car with disdain and waited until I had turned off the engine before lowering his hand and coming around to the window.
“We’re with Mr and Mrs Matlala,” I said, indicating the gates as they closed on the sight of Rose reaching maximum acceleration on the way to her allotted parking space fifty metres ahead.
“Is that the truth?” asked the guard, with the rolling r’s of the West Coast. He was an elderly man with a neat white moustache that had been stained by the nicotine of a thousand cigarettes, above which were a pair of sad, droopy eyes. It was a rhetorical question. He shoved his clipboard at me.
“We’ll need your underpants size nonetheless,” he said. “Have some important guests here today, don’t we?”
By the time security had found a parking space where my decrepit car would not embarrass the patrons or infect their glossy luxury vehicles, Matlala was dealing with his sobriety problem, and Rose was sipping orange juice on the terrace. Bill and I stood in the reception area of what turned out to be a private club, feeling under-dressed and unprepared. Well, I cannot speak for Bill, whose rich orange linen jacket made him glow like a traffic beacon at night, but I felt under-dressed in my jeans and camera jacket. The girl at the reception desk was also under-dressed, although the clothes she did have on were of the highest quality, with sparkling sequins and elegant lace details. It’s just that there wasn’t very much of them. She explained that we weren’t on any list, and therefore couldn’t proceed further, and spoke urgently into a phone while smiling uncertainly, the kind of smile that could be denied if things turned nasty. Through sliding glass doors we could see an open-plan bar area, all glass, chrome and mirrors, with subtle down-lighting over deep marble bar counters. Beyond the small clusters of men standing about with drinks and cheerful faces, the wooden-decked terrace stretched out over the sea, designed to look like we were floating on a luxury cruise liner.
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