Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (25 page)

Hungarians are generally hot-blooded people and quick to lose their tempers, especially after a few drinks. Janos’s best friend was a guy named Bandi, also Hungarian, and he had an Afrikaans wife. On the occasion of Bandi’s birthday one year, they threw a party and we were invited. Something happened at the party, I don’t know what. Perhaps Janos, who was a compulsive womaniser, came on to his friend’s wife, because the next thing she was freaking out and asking him to leave.

Janos, being the obstinate person he was, appealed to his friend. ‘
Bandi, a feleseged kidobot engem bazd meg a kurva anyad nem megvek sehova.
’ (Bandi, your wife has thrown me out. Fuck your bitch-mother. I’m not going anywhere.)

‘
Ha a felesegem azt akarta hogy menyel akkor job ha el mesz,
’ Bandi answered, looking over towards his wife. (If that is what my wife wants, then you should leave. Then it’s best that you go.)

Janos was always prepared for anything and he was very strong. Before the poor guy could move, Janos punched him with a pair of Perspex knuckle-dusters, producing a couple of really deep holes on Bandi’s bald head. Blood squirted all over the place. Then Janos left the party, dragging my mother by the arm. He drove home and ordered her to wait in the car. He went inside and came out with his double-barrelled shotgun. When they got back to the party, my mom almost got shot in the process of trying to calm Janos down. Fortunately, she managed to convince him that whatever he was planning to do was a bad idea, and they drove back home again.

Janos’s sexual appetite stretched as far as my sister Joan, or Babi, as we still called her then, who was around 12 years old at the time I became aware of this.

The two of us shared a room. Our small single beds were about a metre apart, and Babi’s was closest to the window, which ran from the floor to the ceiling. The white curtains allowed the moonlight to filter through and bathe the room in its soft light. One night, very late, I happened to be still awake when my stepfather came into the room. I was facing the window when his silhouette suddenly appeared next to my sister’s bed. I pretended to be sleeping but I could still see through my half-squinting eyes. Janos waited a while and then he placed his hand over my sister’s mouth, waking her up. He moved close to her and I could hear his barely audible whisper although I couldn’t make out what he was saying. At the same time his free hand started moving around under the blanket. Joan’s body wriggled around as she tried to free herself but she was no match for his strength. From what little I could tell, it was obvious that Janos was hurting her. Terrified I would be next, I shut my eyes tightly. After that, I tried to block what I had seen from my memory.

At first I didn’t really understand what had happened, but then my sister started to complain to my mother, who didn’t believe her. Then Joan started becoming openly defiant of Janos, who shied away from her. Then it happened again, and when my sister told my mom this time, she confronted Janos about his nocturnal activities. Janos flatly denied it. I was there when this confrontation took place.

‘
Hazudsz en lattalak hogy mit csinaltal ez igaz!
’ I shouted at him. (You’re lying, I saw what you did. It’s true!)

Janos was very angry. I could tell by the small vein throbbing in his temple. He wasn’t impressed with me.

‘Fogd be a pofad kisz vizilo.
’ (Shut your mouth, you little hippopotamus.)

My stepfather was a nasty specimen, and in a way it felt good to know that somehow I had managed to muster up the courage to stand up to him. All the years of physical and mental abuse had taken their toll. Even as a child, there is just so much a person can endure and Janos had now exposed himself completely. I knew that if my mother failed to take action this time, then it would be up to Joan and me to make sure he never violated us again.

My mother now accepted that something was very wrong. She was friendly with an Italian-German couple, Rosemary and Alfio, who lived up the road from us. She didn’t go into too much detail but she asked if my sister could stay with them for a while. They already had two kids, a son and a daughter, Felicia and Flavio. I remember the kids very well because of the mucus they always seemed to have hanging between nose and upper lip and how it gathered dust.

From the very first night she took refuge there, Alfio visited my sister’s bedroom and subjected her to the same sexual molestation as Janos had. This went on for a whole month until Joan couldn’t take it any more. Although she was afraid my mother wouldn’t believe her, she came home and moved back into the bedroom she shared with me. From then on, every night before we went to sleep we would lock the bedroom door firmly from the inside.

It wasn’t long after Joan came home that Janos physically abused my mother again. This time there was a
huge
commotion, screaming and crying and the usual back and forth of Hungarian swearing that is too shocking to repeat even now. It ended with Janos slamming the door and going off to some pub to drink. My mom quickly packed a few bags and called a cab. She took us to Marika, our half-sister, who lived just on the other side of town. She left me and Joan there and she herself went off to Cape Town, where she stayed with one of her friends. Staying at my sister’s wasn’t too bad. Her husband Bela was a very nice guy and he treated us well. We stayed there for about a week before my mother returned. In the meantime, she had told Janos that she would come back only on condition that he moved out.

So finally it was just the three of us: my mom, Joan and me.

I remember it was kite season. The highveld enjoys really warm summers, with late afternoon thunderstorms. August was the windy month. Just before the end of winter and the beginning of spring, the winds would approach. Ever since I can remember, I loved flying kites. I probably built my first kite when I was about five years old. We would use reeds for the frame, which, although not as strong as bamboo, served well enough. In those days, once the light frame was assembled we would cover it in newspaper, mixing flour with water to make glue. Watching your kite take flight as you run holding onto the string, then releasing more string as it gains height and rises higher and higher into the sky, was a quite unbelievable joy for a small boy. I felt a sense of control over nature, and for those moments I would become so enraptured by my kite soaring through the sky; sometimes I would imagine I was a pilot flying an aeroplane, and at others I would be a bird. My passion for kite-making remains with me to this day.

During the 1980s, Mandrax, which is the trade name for methaqualone, was fast becoming the drug of choice in Johannesburg. In the 1960s and early 1970s it was generally prescribed for insomnia, but in 1977 it was taken off the market and classified as a banned substance. The drug is highly addictive, and it has various side effects, especially when mixed or used with alcohol or marijuana. It is physically and psychologically addictive and it causes much physical damage, including deterioration of the bone marrow.

Mandrax also gives you this indescribably intense rush. Smoking it, I would often black out and fall over, but it was the most incredible sensation. Spit would dribble from my mouth, my eyeballs would roll back in their sockets, and my entire body and all my senses would become numb.

When it was taken off the shelves, crime syndicates continued to manufacture it in garage laboratories, and this became a very profitable enterprise. On almost every second corner in Newclare there were drug pedlars, and territories were tightly defended by the merchants. Gang wars over territory were not uncommon. I became a regular customer in Newclare, and I got to know all the merchants. I’d pull up to one of the corners in my car and a kid would come up to me and ask how many I wanted. It was that easy. They would serve you right there on the spot.

I moved continually between Durban and the highveld, maintaining my Mandrax and weed supply and looking after my customers in the Joburg clubs and suburbs. I was smoking Mandrax more or less on a daily basis, and I joined and then left (or got fired from) various rag trade jobs. The only things that were consistent in my life were dealing and drugging.

There were times, though, when I was clean. During one of these times a guy I had worked with at Jabula Clothing broke away from the company and we got the idea of starting our own company, to be called Indango Clothing. We took on a partner, Antonio, who was the youngest of the three of us. Antonio had no experience in the clothing business, but he somehow persuaded his Italian father to invest in the company. We agreed on R60 000 to get us up and running, although nothing was put in writing. Initially, we were given R20 000, with the balance to follow.

In this line of business, when you are given credit, you need a cash flow to buy stock. Despite things starting off well for us, we soon needed the balance of our start-up capital. Antonio’s father was involved in some shady deals. He was buying stolen cars from Europe, which were coming in to South Africa via Swaziland. Apparently, the law was onto him, so when I reminded him about the R40 000 he’d promised us, he told me to make do with what we had. This had not been our deal. Unless he came up with the money, I told him I would walk. Unfortunately, a couple of days after our conversation, Antonio senior left the country. Antonio junior was a party animal and he often came to the office stoned out of his head.

Before long Indango Clothing folded.

One time, when I was living in Yeoville, a good friend of mine, Barney, who lived in Houghton, had ordered a couple of LSD caps for himself and his university friends to celebrate the end of term. On this particular day, close to dusk, Dennis met me at the commune to go along with me on the delivery.

I already had Barney’s LSD but we were both craving to smoke Mandrax, so before we went to Houghton we drove to Bertrams, near the Ellis Park rugby stadium, to score. This was an area where whites, coloureds and blacks coexisted peacefully. The part we were heading for was fairly deserted. There were only a few abandoned houses there and an open field with a few old trees. You would always find groups of coloured guys there, gathered around a fire, on the pavement, or just hanging about together, either smoking it up or selling drugs. I was a regular customer and knew most of the merchants. It was usually a quick in-and-out operation.

As we turned the corner, I immediately noticed that the street was deserted. At the end of the street, and stretching right across it, were some fairly big rocks that had obviously recently been placed there, presumably to prevent a car from driving through. Something was amiss.

Anyway, I pulled up next to the house where I usually scored. There was nobody in sight. Dennis gave a whistle and we heard someone shout ‘
Die boere!
’ At exactly that moment, a car turned the corner at high speed. Instinctively, I knew it was the cops. At this time I drove a Cressida station wagon, which was as sluggish as a turtle with three legs, but tonight it had to prove its worth. I accelerated towards the rocks in the road, ramped the pavement, and cut across an open field. The car behind us followed suit – it was a Datsun 1200. The drug police were known for driving those fast little fucking Datsuns. I could make out about five occupants.

My Cressida was an 1800, but, because of its size, I knew there was no way we could outrun them. They would eventually catch up with us, no matter how much of a head start we might have had. In an effort to get away, I jumped red robots, went up one-ways, cut across a double dual road, but still I could not lose them. At one stage the Datsun stopped altogether and three of its occupants got out to make their car lighter and even faster.

Dennis suggested we eat a few of the LSD caps and throw the rest away.

‘No way, man,’ I said. I still planned on delivering those caps to Barney.

Keeping one hand on the wheel and without slowing down, with the other hand I hid the LSD under my seat, tucked into the leather upholstery out of sight. It wasn’t long after that that the cops cut in front of me at a stop street, forcing me to come to a halt. Two of them jumped out of their car, while Dennis quickly rolled up his window, advising me to do the same. It was too late. As I turned to face the cop on my side, he took a punch at me and hit me square in the mouth. At the same time, he gave a shriek and pulled his hand back. Gratifyingly, one of my teeth must have pierced his knuckle; I could see the blood dripping from his wound.