Present Darkness (14 page)

Mama Leslie and the fat-armed woman who’d delivered the first round of food brought dishes of roast corn, beef curry and rice to the table. Mama dished out the food and murmured “Right away” when Fix tapped a fingernail on the empty scotch bottle. Emmanuel, Shabalala and Zweigman ate more, not from hunger but out of apparent necessity.

“Go and see Fatty.” Mapela scooped food up with his right hand, Muslim style, and licked curry from his fingers. “Once in a month she holds a dance out by the rail yards in Newtown. She will make a special place for you at her table.”

That’s what he was afraid of. Two Mapelas on two nights in a row made for a severe hangover and short-term memory loss.

“A dance in a railway yard,” Emmanuel said. He pictured the scene; an old train shed with men milling around, waiting their turn with prostitutes in a warren of rooms out the back. “Sounds nice.”

“No, no. I know what you’re thinking. Fatty has fixed the place up proper with music and tables.” Mapela shovelled in more curry. “Her policeman husband will be there. He has eyes and ears all over Sophiatown. He is the one you must ask about the red car.”

“He’ll talk to me?”

“Of course. Dress nice. Fatty’s dance is for white men so the Zulu will have to stay behind. Take the little Jew if you wish. I can pair you up with two beauties to go with. Sisters from the Transkei.”

“Thanks but no.” Mapela’s idea of beauty focused exclusively of the size and shape of a woman’s behind: the bigger and wider, the better. “I’ll find my own dance partner.”

“As you wish.”

Mama Sylvia brought over another bottle of Johnnie Walker, this time with the top already removed. Emmanuel felt certain that it was the first bottle refilled with cheaper booze. Mama leaned into Mapela with a lascivious smile to cover the switch. She poured a fresh round while Mapela stroked her leg.

“Sergeant,” Zweigman whispered. “I cannot drink more. I am already drunk.”

“Sit on this glass. You’ll have to drive us home.”

“Yes. Very slowly.”

An hour later with the second bottle drained and the food gone, Mapela called for Mama Sylvia who appeared in the doorway wearing the smile that women in her position wore when they knew what was expected of them and could see no way out of the situation other than acceptance. She slid onto Mapela’s lap and he kissed her full on the mouth. Or rather she let him kiss her.

“We’ll leave you.” Emmanuel staggered to his feet. “I’m for bed and a good night’s sleep.”

“Stay. Mama will find you a girl.” Mapela plunged a hand between hard thighs and massaged flesh. “We’ll make a party, just like old times.”

“I’m too old to relive old times.” He swayed against the table. The room tilted. Shabalala grabbed a handful of jacket and held him upright. “I’ll drop in on Fatty tomorrow. Give my regards to your wife when you get home.”

“Not so long next time.” Mapela’s right hand was busy so they nodded their goodbyes. Shabalala guided Emmanuel out of the lounge room and through the smoke haze and noise of the front bar. The rickety stairs were perilous in the dark. Zweigman went first, clinging to the rail like a sailor walking the deck in a gale.

“Were you like that man, Sergeant Cooper? A gangster?” the German asked when they reached the bottom and staggered in the direction of the street with Indian- and Jewish-owned shops.

“Yes, absolutely.” After escaping the physical labour and the earnest prayers on his stepfather’s farm, Sophiatown was a salvation. Three months into the dissolute life, he’d woken up on a bright Saturday morning, sated but not satisfied. “The life didn’t suit me, though, so I got out.”

“You returned to the township?” Shabalala retraced the path to the car. He was built to absorb greater quantities of alcohol than the average South African male.

“I came back straight after high school. Seventeen years old. I had no idea where I was going. I figured I’d be like the guys I saw when I was young. You know, big cars, flash suits and girls.” Emmanuel crossed the black top, careful to keep balance. “The price of those things was too high. I didn’t realise till I was in it. Stealing I could understand. Threatening shopkeepers for protection money and collecting outstanding debts with an iron bar, that was harder. I got out, like I said.”

Shabalala navigated them through the alleys and back to the Ford. Garbage blew in the wind. Rats scuttled. They emerged a few doors from Fix Mapela’s house. The guard, now familiar with their presence, stayed on the stairs, too lazy to move. Emmanuel fumbled the keys from his jacket and gave them to Zweigman.

“You will go to the dance and talk to the policeman?” the Zulu detective asked. Distant music floated across the rooftops, a woman’s voice backed by the blast of a trumpet and closer still, the mewling of an alley cat.

“Of course I’ll go. No question. But if Aaron talks, tells you where he was, there will be no need.” Thus dodging an evening with Fatty Mapela and her select clientele of white men on the prowl. “Tomorrow. Noon. We’ll head out to the prison.”

“I will be waiting.” The Zulu detective opened the passenger door and pressed Emmanuel into the seat like a suspect under arrest. Zweigman slid behind the wheel of the Ford and started the engine. Emmanuel directed him through the grid of Sophiatown. They passed gospel halls, empty shoeshine stands and Indian stores still open late at night. Prosperous houses and businesses thinned, replaced by corrugated iron and plywood shacks. The smell of wood smoke, dry earth and sewage drifted into the car. Emmanuel remembered his earlier self; the young man who lurked on vacant street corners hungry for trouble, for food, for an escape from the relentless press of humanity. If his mother had survived and his links with the township had remained unbroken, he might be on those street corners still: older, leaner, infinitely more dangerous, and still unable to satisfy his hunger.

14.

Four Aspirin and two cups of sweet black coffee helped soften the pound of war hammers behind his eyeballs. Slowly, the garden came into focus; bright pinks and yellows against the walls of green foliage. Bees worked the summer flowers. He breathed in the Sunday morning stillness and tried to will the hangover away.

“You didn’t come to the hut last night.” Davida placed Rebekah onto his knee and sat down at the small table set up on the porch of the big house. She wore a sundress that hugged the curves of her body. A tortoiseshell clip held her dark hair in a ponytail and a simple gold bracelet encircled her right wrist. In the small, dusty town of Jacob’s Rest, she’d worn baggy trousers and loose shirts and cropped her hair short to escape unwanted attention. Now, her beauty was no longer a secret.

“I wanted to sleep with you, but I was unfit for company.”

“How come?”

“Police business.” The words kept Davida from getting too close to the messy details of his life. Angela, his ex-wife, had stood outside the locked gate to his secrets too long and eventually walked away.

“I see.” Davida glanced at the sun-flecked lawns, pecked over by an ibis hunting insects. “You come and go as you please while I sit and wait like the maid. Should I start calling you
ma baas
or detective sir, so things between us are clear?”

“It’s not like that,” he said quickly. “I don’t think of you, of us, like that.”

“Thinking is nice but it doesn’t change the weather, Emmanuel. You come to my bed when it suits you, but now, in the daylight, you shut me out.” She made deliberate eye contact. “I’ve been kept in a corner before and I’m not interested.”

“Tell the woman where you were for Christ’s sake,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“Or you’ll have to fight to get into her bed again. I’m not going to spend the rest of my days sleeping with you and the mess inside your head by myself. Cough it up, boyo.”

“I was in Sophiatown last night, drinking with Zweigman, Shabalala and an old friend named Fix Mapela.” Rebekah closed a fist around his finger and squeezed tight. “We drank a lot. Me, especially. Zweigman drove me home. I couldn’t have found my way through the garden to the hut even if I’d tried.”

“Sophiatown. That’s mainly for them.”

“Mainly for blacks, yes,” he said. “But not completely.”

“You drank with Dr Zweigman and Shabalala at the same table?”

“Yes.”

“So there are places in the township where people mix together …” Despite being the secret daughter of a white man and a mixed-race woman, Davida’s upbringing closely approximated that of a privileged European. Sent to a good boarding school where the Queen’s English was taught and the racial divisions reinforced, her world remained sheltered. The thought of races mixing publicly thrilled her.

“When I was growing up, there was a lot more crossover in Sophiatown,” he said. “Now, it’s unusual.”

“Lucky Emmanuel. You ignore all the signs and go wherever you like.” The anger surged back, this time cloaked by a smile. “It must be nice, being a white policeman.”

“We still have to obey the law,” Emmanuel said. “Just not so strictly.”

The child that snuggled on his lap proved Davida was right. Last night’s drunken debauch in the shebeen confirmed it, too. He slipped between worlds, helped by a police ID and a willingness to lie. Davida’s dark skin and mixed-race beauty were extraordinary. Yet the same physical attributes also shrank her possibilities to a list of occupations the government deemed worthy of a non-white woman: maid, teacher, nurse, nanny and factory worker. If there was enough money for university, she could study to become a doctor or lawyer, but that outcome was rare, and she could never work in those capacities in the white world.

“What she said earlier was dead right, soldier,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“You’ll cross over the lines tonight and come home with the smell of cigarettes on your clothes and alcohol buzzing in your head. Meanwhile she’ll be in that little hut with a baby and no place to go. What has a whites only area got to offer her, besides other white men like you? That’s why she’s furious. If you want to keep this girl, even for a little while, you’ll have to give her more than promises.”

“You want to come dancing with me?” he asked, the filter between thought and speech nudged aside by a reckless desire to please.

“What?”

“Dancing. With me, tonight. Do you want to come?”

“Where’s this?” Excitement mixed with apprehension replaced the earlier flare-up of anger.

“A friend’s place,” Emmanuel said. Rebekah chewed a finger with rubbery gums, a prelude to cutting teeth. “A makeshift club, not a house.”

“You sure?” Single, pregnant women kept their lost virginity and their swollen bellies secret. They disappeared from church picnics, socials and youth clubs. Davida was a mother, but still young and full of life and hadn’t danced in over a year.

“I’m sure,” he lied. Leaving the walled compound brought risks. Fatty Mapela’s mood and the atmosphere of the club were impossible to predict in advance. If “dance” were a euphemism for “brothel” they’d leave—straight after he’d talked to Fatty’s temporary husband about the stolen Mercedes.

“The police …” Davida leaned across the table and wiped the corner of Rebekah’s mouth with a napkin, stalling her “yes”.

“Police will be at the dance so the chances of a raid by the immorality squad is close to zero. I’ll take care of any roadblocks between here and there.” Bullshitting the road patrol if they were pulled over meant flipping the ID, dropping Colonel van Niekerk’s name and citing official business. They’d let him pass. The brighter officers might be suspicious, while those operating on a dimmer voltage would try and fail to hide their envy at having a sweet brown girl in their power. They’d let him go, disturbed by their own suspicions and crude fantasies.

“My mother could take care of Rebekah till we get back.” Davida tentatively stroked their daughter’s head, smoothing the silky strands under her palm. Her mother, Lorraine Ellis, called Lolly by her family, lived in the housekeeper’s cottage built flush against the walls of the big house. This arrangement paid tribute to the notion of racial segregation while allowing ease of movement between the cottage and Elliott King’s bedroom.

“Are you certain there won’t be any trouble?” Davida said.

“I’m certain.” A prudent man might calculate the cost of making a mess of this night out but desire outweighed caution. He wanted the chance to take his beautiful girl out dancing like they were an ordinary couple.

“Detective Cooper. Telephone for you.” Mrs Ellis, Davida’s mother, stood in the doorway to the big house, gazing slightly to the right of the table. She refused eye contact, and had done so from the time he turned up at Zweigman’s medical clinic after finding out that he was a father.

He arrived after midnight with nothing to offer but a desire for get close to Davida and their baby. Mrs Ellis gave him a cold face while Davida said nothing at all, just opened the door, lit a candle and held it close to the cradle where Rebekah slept. The child took his breath away. He’d done nothing to deserve such a perfect gift. He turned to Davida to say as much. She kissed him and stopped any discussion of the past or the future. He kissed her back, accepting her act of grace.

“Thanks.” Rebekah kicked her feet in the air while Emmanuel transferred her to Davida’s arms. He drank in the effortless beauty of mother and daughter, their luminescent skin and grey eyes. How long could this impossible situation last …