Tandia (29 page)

'Come, darling, we are going now to the Taj Mahal,' Madam Flame Flo chuckled. 'You will meet him there, I will introduce you.' Juicey Fruit Mambo had drawn up in the Packard and was waiting to help Mama Tequila into the back. They were surrounded by the dancing women who had left the hall and now were dancing in the street. Urchins crowded around the car and suddenly Tandia felt a warm hand in her own, as what felt like a small ball of paper was pushed into her hand. She looked to see Johnny Tambourine withdrawing his hand from her own; Dog Poep Ismali, Flyspeck Mendoza and Too Many Fingers Bembi also surrounded her, and behind them stood the rest of the gang.

Tandia hardly had time to greet them when four Black Jacks, the township policemen, burst into the circle of people surrounding the car. A policeman grabbed Johnny Tambourine while the others each grabbed Dog Poep Ismali, Flyspeck Mendoza and Too Many Fingers Bembi and started to beat them with their night sticks. The four small boys began to scream as the heavy sticks beat at their shoulders and backs and a crowd gathered around. Tandia looked quickly down into her hand, and saw that she was holding several crumpled pound notes. Without even thinking about what she was doing she slipped her hand through the slit of her cheongsam which came almost to the top of her thigh, and hooking her forefinger over the top of the waist elastic, she slipped the notes into her panties, In almost one movement she turned and slashed at the face of the nearest policeman with her nails. The black policeman who had been laying into Too Many Fingers Bembi backed away clutching at his face.

'Leave him, you bastard! Leave him, you hear!' Tandia screamed at the man and turned and slashed at a second policeman, missing him as he pulled back from her sharp talons just in time.

'Stop!' The voice was a roar and the crowd, including the Black Jacks, stopped, alarmed at the sound. Juicey Fruit Mambo stood in the centre of the circle, huge and menacing.

In the few seconds before the black policeman could react he opened his huge mouth and smiled, his gold incisors gleaming. The crowd gasped and then Juicey Fruit Mambo turned to the black policeman. 'Why you want to beat dis boy for your stick?' he asked in a low, threatening voice.

'They have stolen money! They have stolen money from this woman!' the Black Jack sergeant pointed to a woman who stood on the edge of the crowd. Tandia, turned tO,look at the woman who was large and wore lipstick and bright blue eye make-up painted over her eyelids. She was gross, and Tandia knew instantly she was a street whore. She had the same look of the drunken woman who had been thrown into the police cell with her the day she had been raped.

'That's the one!' the woman shrilled, pointing at Johnny Tambourine, 'and also him and him,' she shouted, jabbing her finger at Too Many Fingers Bembi and Flyspeck Mendoza.

'Hester, you drunk you hear!' It was Madam Flame Flo's voice. She had climbed out of the Packard and, breaking into the, circle, she now stood in front of the large black woman.

'I am not drunk, these boys they attacked me and they took my money. Five pounds!'

'Five pounds you earned from lying on your back!' someone, a woman's voice, called from the crowd. There was sudden laughter.

'Hester, you owe me that much. You owe me five pounds. You are clean, you hear? The debt is wiped, but only if you say, only if you tell these policemen you made a mistake?' The sergeant spoke up. 'We must search them.' He grabbed Johnny Tambourine and pulled him towards him. Juicey Fruit Mambo's hand came down hard on the policeman's shoulder, but he was smiling.

'The boy will show you,' he said. 'All boys they show you.' Johnny Tambourine removed his shirt and then pulled the lining of his shorts out. A single two-shilling piece landed on the dirt road together with three marbles, several lead washers, four screws and a length of string.

'I got it for selling peanuts at the fight, God's truth!' he said, stooping to pick up the coin. He stood there in his dirty khaki shorts held around his waist by an old leather belt.

'Take also the belt,' Juicey Fruit instructed. Johnny Tambourine removed his belt and held onto his shorts to prevent them from falling to the ground. Juicey Fruit stuck his thumbs into his own belt so that his trousers came away from his abdomen slightly; then he did a little wriggle, which brought laughter from the crowd. 'Make also so!' he instructed. Johnny Tambourine grinned and swivelled his hips dancing from one foot to another, playing to the crowd in a parody of a dance. Juicey Fruit Mambo turned to the police sergeant. 'You see, no money here,' he said, grinning. 'Now all boy make like same!' he declared, pointing to Flyspeck Mendoza and Too Many Fingers Bembi.

The two boys quickly followed suit, revealing pockets which contained very much the same sort of things that spilled from Johnny Tambourine's.

Madam Flame Flo brought her hands to rest on her hips. 'I open my big mouth, now I must pay, hey. These boys is innocent but still I will cancel the money you owe me, Hester. But first you must withdraw the charges, you hear?' The big whore smiled. 'I made a mistake,' she said to the sergeant. 'All the boys in this township they look the same.'

The policeman who had been scratched by Tandia was standing directly beside the Packard, the palm of his hand covering his cheek. Mama Tequila's fat arm appeared out of the window and tugged at his sleeve. She was holding a one-pound note…'Medical expenses,' she said. The black policeman, glancing quickly to see if they were being watched, took the money and touched the peak of his helmet.

The sergeant lifted his night stick menacingly and pushed at Hester roughly. 'Go! Go, you fat whore, before I arrest you. You are wasting the time of the police!' He turned to Madam Flame Flo. 'Your driver, he is very lucky, next time he will not be so lucky, hey.'

'Come around to the shebeen tomorrow, I will have something for you,' Madam Flame Flo said quietly. If the Black Jack sergeant had heard her he didn't react. Scowling at her, he walked away, calling to the crowd to disperse.

'Come, Tandia, come, Juicey Fruit, we must go to the Taj Mahal. I think we have enough demonstration for one night, hey?' Madam Flame Flo climbed into the back of the car with Mama Tequila. 'Let's get the hell out of here, jong…before the proper police come!'

'I'm sorry, Aunty Flo,' Tandia said from the front of the car. 'I didn't mean it, but they were hitting the kids!'

'You did right, Tandy, but not in Sophiatown. We just lucky they were Black Jacks and not SAP. If you attack a proper policeman like that he will shoot you, no problems!'

'Tandy! You a fucking arsehole, you hear!' Mama Tequila spat. 'You put our lives at risk, what for? For a bunch of fucking snotty-nosed kids! You must be crazy, you hear!'

'Dis boys, dey her friend, my friend also!' Juicey Fruit announced from behind the wheel.

'And you, you black bastard, you crazy also!' Mama Tequila screamed at the big black man.

Tandia remained silent and waited for more from the angry woman. Instead, Juicey Fruit started to giggle and then to laugh and Madam Flame Flo followed. Mama Tequila was also laughing as they drew up outside a large corrugated iron shed that seemed to be vibrating from the hot jazz music coming from within. They had arrived at the Taj Mahal, the biggest and the most notorious shebeen in the township.

Mama Tequila had elected to be taken home, and Juicey Fruit Mambo let Madam Flame Flo and Tandia off, promising to return before midnight. The joint was jumping as the two women entered. It was a huge tin shed with a lofted open roof which had windows set into the roof thirty feet above the floor. The lighting was indifferent and the effect was of smoke and music, noise and pink strobe lights that cut across the dance floor in the centre, pulling the jiving couples from darkness into light and back again.

The band sat on a platform structure built at the end of the room several feet above the heads of the dancers and the drinkers. Benjo 'Gwigwi' Mrwebj who had earlier played clarinet at the fight was leading the Three Jazzalomos with Jacob 'Mzala' Lepers on the bass and Sol'Beegeepee' Klaaste at the piano. The sound was hot and sweet and the booze was moonshine, Barberton served in jam tins. An occasional half-jack of brandy was raised quickly, furtively to the mouth, a gulp and back into the pocket, guilty blood too good to share except with your nice-time girl.

Madam Flame Flo, with Tandia in tow, worked her way through the crowd of drinkers and dancers. The tables were full, overcrowded with the nice-time girls seated on the men's laps. Those who couldn't find a table stood against the walls. It was impossible to talk, and people drank and shook and grooved to the music or found a place on the dance floor, the jazz and the noise sealing them from each other. Those who had girls danced and used their hands to touch the parts that best expressed their thoughts and smiled for the time they would spend in a dark alley afterwards when the Barberton and the dancing and the jazz had left their thighs aching for release and a crumpled pound note had passed from hand to the safety of a brassiere wet from dancing.

Madam Flame Flo, signalling for Tandia to follow, stooped slightly and passed under the band floor, opening a half sized door cut into the wall at the back of the large shed. They squeezed through the narrow doorway and Tandia found herself in a large room with half-a-dozen tables. The room was lined and painted and on the walls in neat frames all of one size were photographs of musicians and nightclub performers. From the ceiling two large fans rotated. About thirty people sat at the tables, smartly dressed men and five pretty women in evening dress. The tables were all furnished with good glasses and bottles of brandy, gin and whisky. Despite the fact that the bandstand was only separated by a wall, the music filtering through, though loud, allowed for talk.

Mr Nguni, the tall African boxing promoter from the fight, rose from a table nearest the small doorway at which five men sat. Tandia caught a glimpse of Gideon Mandoma before the bulk of Mr Nguni blocked the table from her view. Her heart began to pound and she felt weak at the knees, as though her legs were about to give way from under her. She wet her lipstick with her tongue and swallowed hard, trying to conceal her nervousness. 'Welcome, Madam Flame Flo,' Mr Nguni said, extending his huge hand. Then turning slightly, while still holding Madam Flame Flo's hand, he greeted Tandia. 'Welcome to Sophiatown, Miss Patel, we are most happy to have you with us,' he said, smiling. 'Come, you must sit at our table. There is someone I would like you to meet.'

The big man moved aside so that Tandia and Madam Flame Flo could pass. Tandia found that she was standing almost directly in front of the table. The men, with the exception of Gideon Mandoma, half rose in their chairs before sitting back again. Gideon Mandoma rose fully from his chair.

Mr Nguni indicated the people at the table. 'You all know Madam Flame Flo?' They all nodded. Mandoma smiled and, extending his hand, shook Madam Flame Flo's.

'Nice one, Gideon, you made mincemeat of that Irishman tonight!' Madam Flame Flo said. He smiled and thanked her politely.

Mr Nguni held Tandia lightly by the elbow. 'Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Miss Tandia Patel from Durban.' Mr Nguni indicated the four men with a sweep of his hand, not bothering to introduce each individually. Tandia smiled and acknowledged the seated men, whereupon Nguni turned and placed his large hand on the boxer's shoulder. 'Miss Patel, may I introduce you to Gideon Mandoma?'

Tandia's eyes met those of Mandoma and she held his gaze. She knew she was being over-bold, that she should have glanced up at him and then away, pretended indifference, or shyness, played the shy-young-woman-meets-nice-young-man game. But she couldn't. She was held by the boxer's gaze as though mesmerised. She knew at once she had found what she wanted; she had found the antidote for Geldenhuis. She could love this man as much as she hated the other. At close quarters, Gideon Mandoma was even more beautiful than she could possibly have imagined.

Gideon Mandoma smiled, 'the brilliant white smile that she had seen earlier in the church hall. 'Welcome, Tandia.' He refrained from shaking Tandia's hand but instead indicated the chair beside him. 'Sit, please.' He watched as she lowered her eyes and seated herself. Then he sat back into his own chair. 'I saw you at the eviction protest meeting tonight. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Do you have courage to match your beauty?'

Tandia could feel his eyes on her as she raised her own to look at the boxer. Mandoma's expression was serious and showed no hint of condescension. He seemed to be asking a serious question and was not simply trying to humour her. 'I will take my courage from you, Gideon Mandoma/ she said quietly, 'but I will bring you something also.' Tandia paused and forced herself to look away and then lower her eyes. 'My daddy, Natkin Patel the boxing referee, he always said, to win a world championship a boxer must have hate. Without hate the pain is too much and raw courage is not enough.' Tandia looked up again and her beautiful green eyes burned fiercely into those of the black boxer. 'To win this fight for our people…' Tandia paused.

She spoke barely above a whisper, yet her voice carried to him clearly. 'I will bring with me the hate you will need, Gideon Mandoma.'

The afternoon was well advanced when Peekay wakened. Despite the lateness of the day the heat beat down on the tin roof of the round miner's hut, his home for nearly sixteen months.

It would be another month before the rains came to the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt. One morning he'd come up from underground, his ears ringing from a night spent blasting rock, and it would be there: the hot, dry, insect-crackling night would have turned into a perfectly still, rain-misted morning. He'd remove his hard hat, unclip his miner's lamp, place it into the re-charging rack, and walk out and stand with his face held up to the pewter-coloured sky, allowing the soft drizzle to drench him, his body soaking up the first cool, wet morning for nine months. It felt so good and clean, like the beginning of the world.

But mostly the Copperbelt was like now, this last afternoon. His skin itched and felt clammy, beads of perspiration ran down his armpits, and the sheet on which he lay was damp.

Peekay stared at the ceiling fan above him. Fixed from the centre of the cone-shaped roof, it rotated in jerky movements, like a man with a slight limp forced to run for the bus. He searched around the perimeter of the fan until he found the blowfly. Almost always there was a blowfly, a big fat one with a shiny body the colours of oil spilled on water. He watched as, sensing the danger, it banked away from the fan to crash straight into the finger of God, a coil of yellow fly-paper which dangled from the ceiling.

Sweat trickled down Peekay's chest and a painful erection aimed its barrel directly at him. Virginity was a real bastard. He imagined his pointing cannon putting an end to his misery, firing directly at him, the ball whistling across his belly, over the rise of his chest, entering just under his chin, up through the roof of his mouth, the grapeshot exploding inside his head and scrambling his brains. The headline in the
Copperbelt News:
COCK CANNON KILLS OXFORD MAN IN MINING DISASTER!

His hands were swollen from the fight with the giant Botha in the Crud Bar the previous afternoon. The big man had tried to kill him in what had turned out to be an unfair contest. The huge, clumsy Afrikaner diamond driller, driven insane with the pain of a powder-headache, caused by the gelignite he'd sniffed in the course of his job, and attempting to drink himself into oblivion, and a young, fast and angry welterweight.

Peekay dwelt on the history which had brought the confrontation about: the tiny Afrikaans boarding school where, thirteen years earlier, a frightened five year old had been thrown in a backveld school system designed to foster a hate for the English. Here Botha, the fourteen year old who ruled the school and who was known as the Judge, had set about persecuting the defenceless English-speaking child.

The effect of the Judge's persecution never left Peekay and his hate had erupted on a hot afternoon a thousand miles from where it had begun, Peekay burned with mortification as he recalled his blinding anger, how he'd removed a razor-sharp pocket knife from his trousers and, straddling the unconscious Botlia, had used the blade to cancel the crude swastika tattooed high up on his left arm. The retribution he'd etched with Botha's blood had been more than simple revenge; was he, too, infected with the same sick violence his childhood tormentor had shown towards him? How else could he explain the fight, this savage, appalling action?

For sixteen months Peekay had risked his life nightly blasting on a grizzly in the mines; now, as he was about to leave, like the fly banking to avoid the fan he'd flown into the finger of God.

Peekay was tired. At eighteen he ached inside with a tiredness which stretched back to the boarding school when the Judge had tried to break his small spirit, He'd barely survived that year and in the process had learned how to camouflage himself, how to protect his fragile ego. He'd never again entirely emerged from the camouflage.

Some of us hide by being so utterly normal, a digit in a sea of equal numbers; others hide from the front. Peekay had turned his childhood trauma into a succession of conquests. Only he was aware that the gifted, confident child others perceived was inwardly fearful of the retribution which came from failure. He had determined never to be beaten again, either physically or mentally. When he fought the Judge he was fighting himself.

He rose slowly from his sweat-soaked bed. He glanced down at his rigid member. This! This is a part of it! The sex urge constantly overtook him and numbed his mind. He thought of the French and Belgian whores who came over from the Congo in a chartered DC 3 every three weeks to 'service' the miners. Peekay didn't want the first time to be with a whore, having to pay for it. But now, after yesterday, he wondered why. He wasn't really any different. When it all boiled down, the law degree he was planning to take at Oxford wasn't going to turn him into a civilised man; underneath he was a cruel, animal bastard like the rest of them.

Peekay had imposed a number of conditions on the method of his deflowering. These sexual aspirations had been brought about very largely as a consequence of having read the entire collection of Mickey Spillane detective stories which he'd inherited from the previous occupant of the hut. The neatly stacked paperbacks with their lurid dime-store covers were arranged along the ledge of the only window in the hut, almost as though the books had become a part of the window. Peekay's resolve to eschew the French whores and wait until the real thing came along had been confirmed when he read how Mike Hammer, Spillane's detective hero, had seduced a beautiful and sexy heiress. He'd read that Hammer slipped his rough hands, more accustomed to fondling the butt of a snub-nosed forty-five, through the pink ribbon straps of her night lingerie, peeling them slowly over her perfect shoulders. Then he took her into his arms. Her skin was as smooth as whipped cream on a satin bedspread.

It was the final sentence which had set Peekay's blood racing. He resolved to keep his virginity intact until life delivered him just such a whipped-cream experience. For he'd convinced himself that if he could achieve a single act of perfect lovemaking, all his carnal desire would melt away and manhood would click into place like a well-oiled rifle bolt.

At eighteen Peekay was Amateur Lightweight Boxing Champion of South Africa, undefeated in one hundred and sixteen fights. He'd set his sights on becoming professional Welterweight Champion of the world.

As if this wasn't enough, he wanted more. He had brains to spare, more than he could possibly need to be a world champ, which he correctly saw as something you became and, in a matter of two or three years, were no longer. For his
real
future he had decided to read law at Oxford.

Peekay was aware these two ambitions were somewhat incompatible. But for almost as long as he could remember he'd been two people, or put more precisely, the same person who was thought about quite differently by two sets of people. There were those who talked about his being a future world champion and who had never heard of Oxford; and those who knew him as a brain, a small-town kid, the son of a widowed dressmaker, who had made them proud by winning a scholarship to a private school for the sons of the rich and who now had a place at Oxford University.

Somehow Peekay had managed to keep both groups in his life happy. He Was highly ingenuous and people took to him easily, often taking strength from him as well as becoming loyal either to the boxer or to the brain, one or the other aspect of his personal disguise.

Only Hymie Levy, Peekay's beloved friend, believed with him that both ambitions were possible and not contradictory

Peekay had met Hymie on their first day at boarding school and they'd remained friends. Hymie was the son of a Jew who had fled Poland just prior to Hitler's invasion and who had "become a millionaire carpet manufacturer and retailer. Despite being born rich, Hymie was street smart, a loner who was naturally cautious and usually two steps ahead of most people in the thinking department. Where Peekay reached out, Hymie pulled back. Where Peekay accepted, Hymie questioned. Where Peekay trusted, Hymie was suspicious. Peekay's defence system, born out of his early boarding-school experience, made him a quiet sort of person. Hymie adopted loudness as his defence. The poor boy and the rich, the Jew and the Gentile. Together they made a formidable combination.

Parted for the year and a half Peekay had been in the mines, the bond between them was, if anything, stronger. They thought of themselves as a duo and even, in the long term, inseparable. They would both graduate in law; Hymie would manage Peekay to a world championship fight, and eventually they would practise together in Johannesburg. While Peekay had been earning money in the copper mines to pay his own way through university, Hymie had already started at Oxford.

Peekay walked over to the small paraffin fridge which stood directly under the window. He withdrew two small metal trays of ice each marked with a band-aid and sandwiched his erection between them. The shock of the ice cold contact made him jump but it worked every time and after only a few moments he returned the ice trays to the fridge. Then he pulled on a slightly sweaty jockstrap and a pair of boxing shorts and stepped up to the speedball which hung from a central rafter just below the fan.

He began to work the beautiful tear-shaped leather ball, ignoring the pain -from his swollen hands. The beautiful drumming rat-tat-tat-tat of his fists on the leather ball soon calmed his mind; although he hadn't fought for nearly eighteen months, he knew he hadn't lost any speed. His body was harder than it had ever been and his mind, after working a grizzly, was a good deal tougher. A couple of months sparring with good partners and his timing would be right on the button. He'd be ready for his first fight in England.

After twenty minutes at the speedball Peekay's entire body was a lather of sweat. But he felt good, clean. He couldn't undo yesterday. He'd go over to the cottage hospital and see Botha. Explain to him. Apologise. It probably wouldn't help but he'd do it anyway. The Boer bastard would be surprised, think Peekay was going soft; what had happened to him in the fight was fair in the violent kind of world they both shared.

He walked over to the door and took a towel from a hook.

Slipping off his boxing shorts and jockstrap, he wrapped the threadbare towel around his waist and left the hut to walk over to the shower block. Tonight was his last shift underground. After tonight, the next time he went underground would be in a London tube. For some days Peekay had been trying to keep down his excitement, but now it rose in him, tingled inside of him ignoring his attempt to push it away. He did a spontaneous little dance in the dust.

Hymie met Peekay at Southampton where the Union Castle liner docked. They looked an odd combination; the blue-eyed Peekay in a cheap suit, carrying a battered suitcase, his body tanned and hard, his crew-cut just beginning to grow out; and Hymie, dark-eyed, pudgy and pale-faced, in corduroys, duffel coat and college scarf, his dark hair worn just short of a mane. They climbed into Hymie's little tan Ford Prefect and set off for Oxford.

Peekay, who had expected to find a bleak, cold England, was not prepared for the sublime shock of a perfect late September day. The idea of four distinct seasons had always fascinated him; it was tidy, clean and precise, the habits of an old and fastidious land. Now, in this quiet coming to the end of summer, there was a kind of purity which Africa could never possess, like the organ notes in a Bach cantata. Here no dust-devils danced across the cracked red earth, mocking the day-after-day thunder of Mojaji's drums as they attempted to beat the spring rains from a brazen, remorseless African sky. In this brassed and yellow autumn afternoon, England was more than Peekay had ever imagined.