Soul Sisters

by Lesley Lokko

  They drove out of the airport parking lot and joined the late morning traffic heading towards the city. The sky was a dazzling, blinding shade of blue. Jen stared out of the window, open-mouthed. It was all so unfamiliar to her. To Kemi, it was the opposite. As strange as it seemed, it was as if she’d never left. Johannesburg wasn’t Harare, but the quality of light and the smells and the sounds were the same. The past had come crashing into the present, turning things upside down. Perhaps that was why she enjoyed surgery so much – there was absolutely no room for confusion. She leaned her head back against the seats and closed her eyes.

  35

  It was nothing like she’d been expecting. Huge, bustling, modern . . . and so bright! After the damp smog of London, the fresh, sharp air of Johannesburg was invigorating and uplifting. They’d been booked into a charming guesthouse in Melville, a pretty, tree-lined suburb close to the university. Derrick unloaded their bags and pushed open a door set into a high, ivy-covered wall. She gasped as they walked in. The garden was lush and beautifully kept, with borders of the most vibrant flowers she’d ever seen, and a water feature that sent a tinkling sound reverberating all the way to the open front door. They’d been given two adjoining cottage suites tucked away at the back of the guesthouse, hidden from the main house by a willow tree that overlooked the pool. It couldn’t have been prettier. Their rooms were large and spacious. A giant spray of Oriental white lilies stood on a wooden table in the centre of hers, filling it with their heavy perfume. There was an ensuite bathroom and a patio . . . it was gorgeous.

  ‘Ohmigod, it’s absolutely perfect!’ Jen exclaimed, bouncing happily on the enormous bed. ‘You never told me it was this . . . this beautiful!’

  ‘It’s not all like this,’ Kemi said dryly, surveying her from the doorway. ‘You’ll see.’ Brilliant sunshine streamed in through the French doors, bouncing off the glossy concrete floor.

  ‘I don’t care! It’s just perfect.’

  ‘Are you hungry? I’m starving. The owner said there’s a restaurant just around the corner. The driver’ll take us.’

  ‘Why? Can’t we walk? I feel as though I’ve been sitting down for a week!’

  Kemi shrugged. ‘He said it’s too dangerous to walk.’

  Jen frowned. ‘Dangerous? It’s the middle of the day!’

  ‘Well, that’s what he said. See the barbed wire?’ She turned and pointed to the razor-wire fence surrounding the property. ‘Apparently they get broken into all the time. There’s a security guard outside,’ she added hastily.

  Jen looked around doubtfully. It was hard to think of anyone breaking into the little paradise in front of them. ‘OK, well . . . I’ll take a shower and meet you at the front,’ she said, getting off the bed. ‘I suppose we’d better do as he says. Father’ll go mad if we get mugged on our first day.’

  Kemi nodded. She put up a hand to free her curly hair from its clip, shaking it loose. ‘Meet you in half an hour. I need to wash the plane air out of my hair.’

  The Service Station Cafe at the bottom of the hill was equally delightful. They chose a table next to the window, overlooking a ragged line of hills and some of the most sumptuous homes Jen had ever seen. The sun was high in a splendid afternoon. They ordered a bottle of white wine and two enormous salads. She was aware of how active her brain had become since their arrival. Ideas and images interlocking and colliding . . . her love of colour, light, form and texture had suddenly come alive again, after having been buried for so long. She slipped her cardigan off her shoulders, enjoying the feel of warm sunlight streaming through the glass.

  ‘You’ll burn,’ Kemi said, laughing at her. ‘Even through the glass. It’s not Edinburgh.’

  Jen grinned, putting her hands up in mock despair. ‘I know, I know. Red hair and freckles . . . not a good combination.’

  ‘In the right climate, it is. You always looked so . . . so at home in Scotland. As if you shouldn’t ever be anywhere else. It just suited you. I always used to think that.’

  Jen looked at her in surprise. ‘Really?’

  Kemi nodded. ‘I always felt so out of place. When we used to walk to school, I hated the way everyone looked at me. They all knew I didn’t belong.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. They were staring at you because you’re gorgeous. That’s what I thought. I always felt so . . . so washed out next to you!’ Jen protested. ‘It’s true! Next to you I just fade away.’

  Kemi shook her head. She took a sip of wine and leaned back in her chair. ‘I know what I know,’ she said firmly. ‘Anyhow, I suppose that’s always the way. We always remember childhood differently. Everyone does.’

  Jen nodded. ‘D’you remember the Croswells? Sam and Stacy? Identical twins and yet you’d think they’d been born into different families. Sam’s version of events was always the opposite of Stacy’s.’

  ‘And yet they’re both true. That’s what psychologists say.’

  Jen looked at her. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, just that if you asked two siblings to describe the same event, you’d get two completely different stories. But both are true. That’s what family psychologists spend most of their time doing . . . making sure each side knows their story isn’t necessarily the only one. You can both experience the same event completely differently. It’s all about your interpretation of things, not really about what happened.’

  Jen was quiet for a moment. She was aware of her breath quickening and of a sudden look of concern on Kemi’s face. She put up a hand to her own face. Her nose had started to bleed again. Something long buried was beginning to surface in her. She could feel it and was afraid.

  36

  Solam landed in Chingola, in southern Zambia, in a tiny four-man aircraft, just before seven. The airport – no more than a bungalow – was only just awakening. He was waved through customs without question and directed to a desk with a hand-painted sign – Car Rentals with the majuscule ‘R’ missing. He was served by a sulky-looking girl whose magenta-tipped hands stabbed out a vicious rhythm on the keyboard as she typed his name and details.

  ‘Sign. Here.’ She ripped the form from the printer and shoved it at him. He signed as requested. She was not to know the signature was not his own.

  Ten minutes later, he was behind the wheel of a brand-new Land Cruiser, complete with mini bar and a satellite navigation gadget that sat awkwardly on the dashboard. It was a two-hour drive from the border to Lubumbashi, assuming the border was open. It was 7.30 a.m. on a low grey morning that he knew already would lift to a scorching hot day. The humidity was intense. He loosened his tie and threw it onto the back seat, freeing his collar. The car was air-conditioned but the heat still seemed to seep through the floor.

  He drove out through the main street of the town, heading for the T3 road that would take him north to the border with neighbouring Congo. All along the roadside, vendors of wooden animals were polishing them under flamboyant red flame trees, preparing their wares. He’d never been to Zambia before; the town quickly began to unravel as he drove north, one flowery roundabout after another, until the houses gave way to a dense collection of shacks, a shanty town of the kind that could be found all over Africa. Soon there was nothing in front of him except the smooth black tarmac, the trees, and occasionally a long-tailed bird that rose up from the long-haired grasses on either side of the road. He drove without stopping, passing one village after another, meeting every now and again one of those heavily laden lorries that made the journey between capitals, bursting at the seams with bags of produce or building supplies. Every now and then he passed a sack of wood or charcoal leaning against a makeshift table by the side of the road, waiting for a buyer. People lived deep inside the landscape as they might live in a house, he thought to himself. Individual shelters and mud huts were flimsy, makeshift objects – it was the landscape that protected them, not their structures.

  As he drew closer to Kasumbalesa, the border crossing, he noticed that the villages grew larger. Smoke rose through
the forest in small spirals and there were large patches of chopped-down trees, cleared to make way for subsistence farms everywhere he looked. The tarred road had been left behind and as he got out of the vehicle to stretch his legs, he saw that it was like all the cars he’d passed on the road – covered in red laterite dust, already looking battered and old. The undersides of the fenders were rimmed with red clay and the bonnet was a graveyard of dead insects. At the border post itself, he joined a short queue of cars and lorries, and was told by a customs official to wait while he called for his superior after handing over Solam’s British passport. There was some confusion. A black man with a British passport? He produced his business card and a bank brochure with a twenty-dollar note deftly folded between the pages. Ah . . . yes, yes . . . no problem. Ten minutes later, he was waved through. It was probably equivalent to a week’s wages, Solam thought to himself, as he pulled past the rusted sign saying, ‘Bienvenue en République Démocratique du Congo’. Aside from the mines to the south and east of the town and the border crossing, there was little else here by way of employment.

  He put his foot down and made it to the merging of the Zambian T3 road with the Congolese N1 in just under half an hour. The village of Lumata passed by and soon, just before nine, he began to make out Lubumbashi, the country’s second-largest city, emerging from the flat scrubland that surrounded the outer suburbs.

  His hotel was on Boulevard Kamanyola in the centre of town, a bland, nondescript building that could have been anywhere in the world where businessmen meet to trade or make deals, legitimate or otherwise. He parked the car under one of the canopied shades and got out, stepping into the heat the way he might have stepped into a shower. It smothered him from head to toe. He picked up his bag, slung it across his shoulder and made his way to reception, sweat pooling in the waistband of his trousers and on his neck.

  The manager was seated behind a desk at reception. He got up as Solam approached, snapping his fingers for a bellhop. A young kid appeared silently; within minutes, he’d been registered and was shown the way to his room. The air conditioner wheezed ineffectually in one corner of the room. He tipped the kid a dollar and was rewarded by a megawatt smile of gratitude which embarrassed him. A disproportionate return for a commonplace gesture. The door clicked shut behind the kid and he was alone. He peeled off his shirt and trousers, heading for the shower. His meeting wasn’t until six that evening and the overnight flight, coupled with the heat, had worn him out.

  The shower was tepid but exactly the right temperature for the tropics. Any cooler and he’d have begun sweating again. It was just past noon, the hottest time of the day. He opened the door to the small veranda. Heat and silence fell upon him. There were borders of orange flowers in the garden in front of him, and the air was thick with their scent. A pair of guinea fowl wandered across his line of vision, pecking at the ground with short stabbing movements, looking for grub. A vast, strange sense of unreality swept over him. He was so far from home, in every sense of the word. This is how it starts, he thought to himself grimly. A favour here, a debt to be repaid there, and the opportunity to make more money in a single week than most people would make in a lifetime. If he were honest, it was also the excitement that had attracted him. He’d watched his mother and father – and countless others like them – sacrifice everything they had, including him, their only child, only to be pushed around like flimsy pieces of paper, subject to another’s will. Where had it come from, this sudden desire to do things differently? He couldn’t tell, couldn’t say. All he knew was that he wasn’t about to be pushed around by anyone, least of all by a government in whom he couldn’t quite bring himself to trust and a future he couldn’t quite see. Yes, this is how it starts.

  Solam shook hands with each of the men in turn. ‘Merci, m’sieur, merci,’ he murmured, one by one. The tall, thin one, who went by the name of Gloire, was the only one to return his greeting.

  ‘Au revoir, M’sieur Rhoyi.’ He pronounced it the French way, swallowing the ‘r’. ‘I ’ope to see you in Johannesburg one of this day.’

  He left the hotel lobby. He was sweating, in spite of the air conditioners blasting out icy air from every corner of the lounge. His shoes made a brisk clipping noise as he strode across the tiled floor. At the far end of the room, a pianist was hammering out a medley of Dionne Warwick songs and – absurdly – Christmas tunes. It was March! No one seemed to notice. Waiters in red fez caps scurried in and out of the groups of tables, balancing trays aloft, looking every bit as harried as waiters anywhere in the world, faced with a crowded room. And it was certainly crowded. The Grand Hôtel Lubumbashi was clearly the centre of all the city’s activities. Behind him, like a piece of taut turquoise satin, the hotel’s swimming pool shimmered through the gauzy curtains. Families sat by the poolside, parents talking to each other across the heads of their children or across tables, as nannies watched over their offspring. Fat businessmen sat almost immobile with very young girls who ate methodically and silently whilst their benefactors spoke quietly into their mobile phones. A few white faces, just the usual smattering of local diplomats and businessmen, the latter identifiable by the hungry, almost feral look on their faces. They were all hustlers. Lubumbashi was a city in which deals were made, in their hundreds, in their thousands. Every second of every day. From diamonds to guns to copper to coltan.

  He ran lightly up the steps and crossed the upstairs lobby. From behind the long reception counter, he was being watched, he knew. He’d been in town less than twenty-four hours and he could practically smell the tension in the air. It was the scent of money. Money and greed. Two men passed him on his way out. Solam felt their mood of confidence, the tense composure of men who are always alert and ready for a deal gone south, a double-cross . . . even for death. He walked out into the thick-headed humidity and flagged down a cab. He had the sensation of stepping into a boxing ring or the gladiators’ pit, only he didn’t know who he was fighting, or why.

  Yes, this is how it starts.

  37

  The last stretch of the new freeway linking Johannesburg to Pretoria had been completed since he’d last driven there. The shanty town that had once crept up close to its edges had been bulldozed to make way for a new park, freshly planted trees blowing unsteadily in the autumn breeze. He drove fast, concentrating on the road and not the afternoon ahead. Sunday lunch? His mother had been insistent. A few old friends of his father’s had been invited . . . they never saw him any more . . . what else was he doing on a Sunday afternoon? He’d put the phone down and gone to take a shower, his mood already dark. There were countless other things he’d rather be doing on a Sunday. He’d turned away from his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. There was another reason he was reluctant to meet his parents. He’d never been able to hide anything from Iketleng, and the knowledge of what he’d been up to over the past couple of weeks was etched into his soul. She’d take one look at him and read it, practically every sordid detail.

  He tried not to think about the afternoon ahead. The drive set him between hills of brilliant, verdant green. To his left, the brooding shape of the Afrikaner Voortrekker Monument, and, to his right, a signpost leading to a hotel. The city was come upon almost instantly, no transition from the dry hills to the steel-and-glass canyons that marked its downtown. He drove on past the graceful Parliament that was now his party’s official home, past the line of huge palm trees and the prison, and out through the other side of the central business district, towards the elegant suburbs where his parents now lived. The house was an official residence, paid for by the state; no expense spared, he noted. It was his first time at their new Pretoria home. Now that Oliver was the Gauteng Premier and a member of the Executive Council, he could be reasonably assured that he and Iketleng would be taken care of for life. Still, no matter how luxurious it was, it was still small compensation for the long, lonely years spent languishing in jail, Solam thought to himself. The house was at the top of one of the long, winding roads that
branched off into cul-de-sacs, each with a more spectacular view than the other. It was in the Cape Dutch style, two handsome bays on either side of an enormous, studded wooden door with beautiful, sweeping gardens falling away down the hill.

  He parked the car on the side of the street and nodded to the two uniformed officers standing stiffly to attention as he approached. He had been recognized, he saw from their faces, but protocol was protocol . . . he handed over his driving licence and government ID badge and walked through the small metal detector before being allowed through the gate. There were four other cars in the driveway. A couple of sleek Mercedes, his mother’s Audi and a small Kia, looking lost and incongruous amidst the bigger, flashier engines. He jogged lightly up the steps to the garden, wondering who else had been invited to lunch.

  A uniformed maid took his jacket, showing him through the hallway to the patio at the rear of the house. The previous incumbent’s artwork was still on the walls, he noticed, as he followed her. Someone – an interior designer, no doubt – had tried to give the place a more contemporary, African feel by adding splashes of bright colour and pattern, but the cushions and fabrics sat awkwardly alongside the oil paintings and watercolours that must have belonged to the previous owners. The inside of the house had been knocked out to make an enormous, comfortable living room, overlooking both the rear and front gardens on either side. The plush chairs were grouped together in easy intimacy and there were fresh flowers everywhere. A low glass table held the morning’s papers and a cup of coffee, half drunk. He ducked under the eaves that led to the patio. He could hear voices from the garden. He wondered if he should have worn a tie, perhaps? He glanced down at his dark blue jeans and thick cable-knit sweater . . . too casual? He shrugged. Too late now.