Deon Meyer (27 page)

 

 

Miriam Nzululwazi and Immanuel the shoeshine man had argued with such conviction that Mpayipheli was a good man. The minister had sketched another picture, the tragedy of the once trustworthy soldier gone bad. Very bad.

 

 

Where was the truth?

 

 

Will the real Thobela Mpayipheli please stand up.

 

 

The only way to find the truth, she knew, was to keep on digging. Keep asking questions and sift the wheat from the chaff.

 

 

Eventually Nic phoned in Orlando Arendse’s contact numbers. “You can try, but it won’t be easy,” he said.

 

 

She began phoning, one number after another.

 

 

“Orlando who?” was the reaction without exception. She would tell her story, in a breathless hurry before they broke the connection: it was about Thobela Mpayipheli, she just wanted background, she would protect her source.

 

 

“You have the wrong number, lady.”

 

 

“So what is the right number?”

 

 

Then the line would go dead and she would ring the next one. “My name is Allison Healy, I’m with the
Cape Times,
I would really like to talk to Mr. Orlando Arendse in absolute, guaranteed confidence… .”

 

 

“Where did you get this number?”

 

 

She was taken unaware; “from the police” was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. “I’m a reporter, it’s my job to find people, but, please, it’s about Thobela Mpayipheli… .”

 

 

“Sorry, wrong number.”

 

 

She rang all five numbers without success and slammed the flat of her hand down on the desk in frustration and then went to have a smoke on the sidewalk outside, short, angry drags on the cigarette. Maybe she should threaten. “If Arendse does not speak to me, I will put his name and occupation in every article I write about this. Take your choice.”

 

 

No. Better to try again.

 

 

When she pulled the notebook of numbers toward her, the phone rang.

 

 

“You want to speak to Mr. O?”

 

 

For a second she was lost. “Who?” she said, and then hurriedly, “Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”

 

 

“There’s a blue-whale skeleton in the museum. Be there at one o’clock.”

 

 

Before she could respond, the phone went dead.

 

 

* * *

The big whale hall was in twilight, dim blue light represented the deep, the taped sounds of the massive animals lent a surreal atmosphere as the colored couple, a young man and girl, wandered hand in hand from one display to the next. She did not consider them until they were right next to her, when the man said her name.

 

 

“Yes?” she answered.

 

 

“I have to search your handbag,” he said apologetically, and she stood rooted until insight caught up with her.

 

 

“Oh.” She handed over the bag.

 

 

“And I have to frisk you,” said the girl with a suggestion of a smile. She was nineteen or twenty, with long pitch-black hair, full lips, and tasteful but heavy makeup. “Please raise your arms.”

 

 

She reacted automatically, feeling the hands skillfully sliding over her body; then the girl stepped back.

 

 

“I’m going to keep this until after,” said the man, holding up her tape recorder. “Now please come with us.”

 

 

Outside, the sunlight was blinding. Ahead lay the Kompanje gardens, pigeons and fountains and squirrels. They walked wordlessly on either side of her, leading her to the tea garden, where two colored men sat, somewhat older with stern faces.

 

 

Heads were nodded, the two men stood, the girl indicated to Allison to sit. “Nice meeting you,” she said, and they were gone. Allison sat with her handbag pinched under her arm, feeling that she would not be surprised if Pierce Brosnan loomed up beside her and said, “Bond. James Bond.”

 

 

She waited. Nothing happened. Families and businesspeople sat at the other tables. Which of them were Orlando Arendse’s? She took out her cigarettes and put one to her lips.

 

 

“Allow me,” said a voice beside her, and a lighter appeared. She looked up. He looked like a schoolmaster in a tailored suit, blue shirt, red spotted bow tie, hair graying at the temples, but the deep brown face was etched with the lines of a hard life.

 

 

While she held her cigarette in the flame he said: “Please forgive the cloak-and-dagger. But we needed to be sure.” He sat down opposite her and said, “Rubens.”

 

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

 

“A game, Miss Healy Rubens would have painted you. I like Rubens.”

 

 

“He’s the one who liked fat women.” She was insulted.

 

 

“No,” said Arendse. “He is the one who painted perfect women.”

 

 

She was off-balance. “Mr. Arendse …”

 

 

He pulled out the chair opposite her. “You may call me Orlando. Or Uncle Orlando. I have a daughter your age.”

 

 

“Is she also in the …”

 

 

“Drug business? No, Miss Healy. My Julie is a copywriter at Ogilvie. Last year she won a Pendoring Award for her work with the Volkswagen Golf campaign.”

 

 

Allison blushed deeply. “Please excuse me. I had the wrong impression.”

 

 

“I know,” he said. “What will you drink?”

 

 

“Tea, please.”

 

 

He gestured to a waiter with the air of a man accustomed to giving orders. He ordered tea for her, coffee for himself. “One condition, Miss Healy. You will not mention my name.”

 

 

Her eyebrows asked the question.

 

 

“To throw my weight around in the newspaper is one way to draw the attention of the SAPS,” he said. “I can’t afford that.”

 

 

Are you really a drug baron?” He did not look like one. He did not speak like one.

 

 

“I always found that name amusing. Baron.”

 

 

Are you?”

 

 

“There was a time in my life, when I was young, I would have answered that with a long rationalization, Miss Healy. How I merely fulfilled the need of people to escape. That I was merely a businessman supplying a product greatly in demand. But with age comes realism. I am among other things a supplier. An illegal importer and distributor of banned substances. I am a parasite living off the weakness of man.” He spoke softly, without regret, merely stating the facts. Allison was amazed.

 

 

“But why?”

 

 

He smiled at her in a grandfatherly way at an obvious question. “Let us blame apartheid,” he said, and then laughed softly and privately and switched to a Cape Flats accent and nuances like speaking another language. “Crime of opportunity,
męrrim, djy vat wat djy kan kry, verstaa’ djy.”

 

 

She shook her head in wonder. “The stories you could tell,” she said.

 

 

“One day, in my memoirs. But let us talk about the man of the moment, Miss Healy. What do you want to know about Tiny Mpayipheli?”

 

 

She opened her notebook. She explained about the minister’s declaration, the allegations that Mpayipheli was a fallen hero, misusing his skill. She was interrupted by the arrival of the tea and coffee. He asked her if she took milk, poured for her. He put milk and three spoons of sugar with his, sipped it.

 

 

“The spooks came to me last night. Asking questions with that attitude: ‘we have the power and the right.’ It is interesting to me, the way everything changes but nothing changes. Instead of chasing the Nigerians that are taking over here. How is one supposed to make a living? Nevertheless, it made me think, last night and this morning, when Tiny was in the news. I thought a lot about him. In my line you see all kinds. You learn to recognize people for what they are, not for what they are trying to show you. And Tiny … I knew he was different from the moment he walked in my door. I knew he was just passing through. It was as if he was there, but not his spirit. For years I thought it was because he was a Xhosa in a colored people’s world, a fish out of water. But now I know that was not so. He was never an enforcer at heart. He is a warrior. A fighter. Three hundred years ago he would have been the one in front, charging the enemy with spear and shield, the one who reached the lines while his comrades fell around him, the one who kept stabbing until there was only blood and sweat and death.”

 

 

He came back to reality. “I am a romantic at heart, my dear, you must excuse me.”

 

 

“Was he violent?”

 

 

“Now there’s a question.
What is ‘violent’? We are all violent, as a species. It simmers just below the surface like a volcano. The lucky ones go through their entire lives without an eruption.”

 

 

“Was Thobela Mpayipheli more inclined to violence than the average person?”

 

 

“What are we trying to prove here?” he said with some anger.

 

 

“Have you seen today’s
Argus
?
”

 

 

“Yes. They say he is a war hero.”

 

 

“Mr. Arendse …”

 

 

“Orlando.”

 

 

“Orlando, the intelligence services are pursuing this man over the length and breadth of the country. If he is a violent and criminal man, it places a whole different perspective on what they are doing. And how they are doing it. The public needs to know.”

 

 

Orlando Arendse grimaced until the lines of his face creased deeply.

 

 

“That is my problem with the media, Miss Healy You want to press people into packages, that is all there is time and space for. Labels. But you can’t label people. We are not all good or bad. There is a bit of both in all of us. No. There is a lot of both in all of us.”

 

 

“But we don’t all become murderers or rapists.”

 

 

“Granted.” He took a packet of sugar in his fingers, twirling it around and around. “He never sought violence. You must understand, he was big. Six foot five. If you are a dealer on the Flats and this big black bugger walks in the door and looks you in the eye, you see your future and it doesn’t look good. Violence is the last thing you want to provoke. He carried the threat of violence in him.”

 

 

“Did he resort to violence sometimes?”

 

 

“Lord, you won’t give up until you have the answer, the sensation you are looking for.”

 

 

She shook her head, but he continued before she could protest.

 

 

“Yes, sometimes he did use violence. What do you expect, in my line of business? But remember, he was provoked. In the days before the Nigerians started messing us around, it was the Russians who tried to get control of the trade. And they were racist. Tiny worked a couple of them over right into intensive care. I wasn’t there, but the men told me, whispering with big eyes as if they had seen something otherworldly. The intensity was awesome. Raw. What frightened them most— they said he enjoyed it. It was as if a light shone out from him.”

 

 

She scribbled in her notebook, hurrying to keep up.

 

 

“But if you want to define him like that, you will be making a mistake. He has a lot of good in him. One bad winter we were in the city late at night, other side of Strand Street in the red-light district, collecting protection money, and he was watching the street kids. And then he went over and gathered them up— there must have been twenty or thirty— and took them to the Spur Steakhouse and told the management it was their birthday, all of them and each one must get a plate of food and a sparkler and the waiters must sing ‘Happy Birthday’ That was a party for you.”

 

 

She glanced up from her writing. “He made a choice in those days. He came to work for you. I can’t understand why an MK veteran would go to work for a drug baron.”

 

 

“That is because you were never an MK veteran out of work in the new South Africa.”

 

 

“Touché.”

 

 

“If you committed your life to the Struggle and won, you’d expect some kind of reward. It’s human, an inherent expectation. Freedom is an ephemeral reward. You can’t grasp it in your hand. One morning you wake up and you are free. But your township is just as much a ghetto as yesterday, you are just as poor, your people are as burdened as before. You can’t eat freedom. You can’t buy a house or a car with it.”

 

 

He took a big swallow of coffee. “Madiba was Moses and he led us to the Promised Land, but there was no milk or honey.”

 

 

He put his cup down.

 

 

“Or something like that.” And he smiled gently. “I don’t know what to say to you. You are looking for the real Tiny, and I don’t think anyone knows who that is. What I can say is that in the years he worked for me, he was never late, he was never sick; he did not drink or sample the produce of the trade. Women? Tiny is a man. He had his needs. And the girls were mad about him, the young ones— seventeen, eighteen— they ran after him, pursued him with open desire. But there was never any trouble. I can tell you his body was in the work, but his mind was elsewhere.”

 

 

Orlando Arendse shook his head in recall. “Let me tell the thing with the French. One day we were walking in the city, down St. George’s, and there were these tourists, French, standing with a map and wondering, and they called me over in their bad English and they were looking for a place. The next thing big, black Tiny starts babbling in French like you won’t believe. There in front of my eyes he became another person, different body different eyes, another language, another land. Suddenly he was alive, his body and mind were in one place together. He was alive.”