Tandia (85 page)

Near the gate on the right leading into the police station compound was an area of no-man's-land about ten yards wide. Every once in a while, to the cheering of the crowd, a young man would run into the clearing, place his pass on the ground and set it alight. This was sheer bravado; the PAC instruction was for the men to leave their passes at home and offer themselves up for arrest as not having their passes on them, an offence which led to imprisonment. They were to stand with hands held out, waiting for the police to walk over and handcuff them and take them away. But by the time Juicey Fruit Mambo arrived, too many people had been arrested this way and the police were simply ignoring the gestures and even the foolhardy burning.

After each such burning a white police sergeant with a blond crew cut would pick up a megaphone and say, 'That's all right, bum away, man! We have your pitcher on our camera and we will get you another time. Without a pass we will find you because, man, you going nowhere, no job, no place to live, you a nobody!' The crowd would laugh in response to this warning and even the police sergeant seemed to, be enjoying himself.

But he was right of course, and the crowd grew less enthusiastic about destroying the one document that at least allowed them to stay in the township and work. The peaceful demonstration was beginning to fizzle a bit, though everyone seemed happy enough. Overhead the planes circled and every once in a while a Sabre jet would dive, coming in low over the crowd, the ground trembling with the shock waves it made, but it had the opposite effect to that intended and seemed to add to the carnival effect of the demonstration. The people remained unafraid. The big bad wolf had huffed and puffed to no avail. Everyone was a bit pleased with themselves; the point had been made and nearly five thousand people had turned up in a township that never protested. It was a show of strength, some claimed, far more significant than that shown in Langa or even Evaton, where a crowd of twenty thousand people had been dispersed earlier in the day when the same Sabre jets and Harvard bombers dived menacingly low over them. 'Those Evaton people scare easy, man! There will be no more peaceful townships, the government has been warned!' people were saying to each other as they prepared to go home for a late lunch.

It was about half past one when an old man, using a long smooth stick to lean on, hobbled into the clearing in front of the police station. He was diminutive and so old and poorly dressed that many of the people started to laugh. He approached the gate, nearer to the police station than most of the pass burners had ventured and, in the manner of very old people, he came to a slow halt and turned stiffly, looking over his shoulder at the crowd. Then he took his pass from a threadbare coat which hung well below his knees and slowly brought it up so that eventually he held it aloft, above his shoulders.

Juicey Fruit watched fascinated. The old man must have been in his eighties, and he had a scrawny tuft of white beard and snowy white hair. He looked like a country person, his clothes clean though in rags and his body bent from the sort of work a man does in the fields or walking all his life behind a plough, his bones welded stiff by arthritis and the years of sleeping hard on a grass mat. Now the old man lowered himself into a crouched position, leaning heavily on the stick. He placed his pass on the ground and then the stick; and, taking a box of safety matches from his coat pocket, with trembling hands he tried to set his passbook alight.

The crowd were enchanted by the sight and were cheering and chanting 'Afrika!', showing the thumbs-up sign and shouting
'Izwe Lethu'
A small group near the fence on the left of the police station, where a couple more Saracens were parked, their machine guns trained on the crowd, started to sing
NKosi Sikelela i' Afrika.

But, as so often happens with gestures, the old man's hands trembled too much or the breeze which had suddenly risen was too strong, for he was unable to light the document. Juicey Fruit Mambo, observing his predicament, rushed forward and bent down beside him.

'You are brave as a lion, my father. You have the courage of a bull elephant, but your hands are old, I will help you. Give me your pass and I will add it to my own and together we will light the fire which will show the white devils our contempt!'

Juicey Fruit Mambo took his passbook from the inside pocket of his jacket and, picking up the old man's grubby pass, he helped him back to his feet. Then he stooped to pick up the stick. It was of a dark wood and smooth as satin to the touch. This is a stick which was a very good friend to this old man, he thought, and turned the stick around so that the more pointed end reached his shoulder. 'We will hold this burning of our passbooks up to the heavens, my father.' The old man barely came to Juicey Fruit Mambo's waist as the huge Zulu punched a hole through the passes so they rested on the end of the beautiful old stick.

The crowd were showing their delight at the sight of the huge black man, with his front teeth missing and the two pointed gold incisors flashing in his mouth, and the ragged little man. It was a metaphor not lost on them; the age and endurance of Africa taken together with the hugeness and strength of the African people. At that moment they knew they could win. If it took a hundred or even a thousand years they would win. The roar from the crowd was becoming deafening.

The mood of the white men guarding the police station changed and they hastily stubbed out their cigarettes and held their sten guns at the ready, releasing the safety locks. The machine guns fixed to the turrets of the Saracens arced over the crowd in a silent warning. There was nothing except the increased noise level to suggest the crowd was getting out of control; the two kaffirs in front burning their passes seemed to have captured its imagination. The big guy with the bald head in the well-tailored suit, he must be somebody important, a PAC organizer or something. The sergeant who'd been on the megaphone entered the police station and in an immortal statement not intended in the least to be funny, reported to Lieutenant Geldenhuis, 'Sir, the natives are becoming restless. Better you come and speak to them. They are expecting someone from Pretoria, a senior person. Is someone coming?'

Jannie Geldenhuis finished the last of his coffee before rising and walking out of the station. He was pretty sure that the crowd was under control, there were none of the usual signs that political agitators were working them up. No stones had been thrown and few among the crowd even carried sticks. He was anxious to keep the status quo; he didn't want it to appear on his record that the quietest township on the Rand had erupted into chaos almost immediately it had come under his control.

In fact, he'd been unhappy about the extra recruits and the presence of the Saracens. These new men were raw, not accustomed to crowd control. It was the usual overkill by the people in Pretoria. The last thing he wanted was a senior officer from Pretoria trying to take over. He removed his revolver from his holder and slipped off the catch, more as a gesture to his own men than as an intended threat to the crowd.

Juicey Fruit Mambo produced his zippo lighter and, removing the top, he poured a little lighter fluid on the passbooks. Then he replaced the top and, activating the lighter, held it carefully to a corner of the passbooks, waiting until he was sure they were well alight. Then he lofted them high into the air above him to the delight of the crowd. 'Look, my father, your gesture is not wasted, the people, all the people they salute and respect you,' he shouted down to the old man.

At this precise moment Geldenhuis stepped out of the police station. He would later replay in his mind what had happened, but in truth he was never quite sure. Something in his brain snapped and he was suddenly standing naked and back in the pink room at Bluey Jay with a screaming Tandia crouched over the pink satin bed in front of him. Blood ran from his penis and he was in terrible pain. The door into the room crashed down and a huge, snarling black man with two gold incisor teeth, his eyes popping with madness and his great hands stretched out to reach for his neck, was coming towards him. He reached for his police revolver on the carpet, knowing he was about to be killed. The explosion roared in his head as he fired in a crouched position. The firing seemed to go on and on ana when the mist cleared in front of his eyes the crowd was fleeing and bodies lay everywhere. A machine gun from one of the Saracens was still raking the bodies lying in the dust. They jerked, animated by the impact of the automatic fire as the hot ballistic teeth ripped into them. Some black people sat in the dirt, still alive, screaming from their wounds. One huge woman held her hands cupped in her lap; they were filled with her own intestines. She didn't scream; her shoulders shook as she sobbed, a small private sobbing ceremony for the death enveloping her in the hot afternoon sun.

Juicey Fruit Mambo lay face down, his body covering the old man's. Part of his head had been tom away by a dumdum bullet which would have killed him instantly. There was a stir, as though miraculously the huge black man still moved; then the ancient little man rose from under him and brushed the dirt from his ragged coat. With one hand held to his back, he stooped to pick up the stick which had fallen from Juicey Fruit Mambo's grasp; the passbooks still burned and he brushed them off the end of the stick where they continued to bum, a tiny sacrificial fire. Then he rested the stick on Juicey Fruit Mambo's heart, holding it upright. 'I invite your spirit to enter the sacred stick,' he said quietly. 'Come, I will take you home.' Then he stood upright again facing the Sharpeville police station. Slowly, his neck stiff as a turkey cock, his rheumy eyes passed along the line of white policemen as he raised his clenched fist into the air, his thin reed-like voice cut through the silence.
'Lumukanda ehla!
Come back, Lumukanda!' And the white men who stood wrapped in the silence of their slaughter, their guns still smoking, knew something had happened, something had changed in Africa for ever.

It was quarter to two on a cloudless late summer day in the once peaceful township of Sharpeville. The world would never be the same again. Somojo, the greatest of all the African witchdoctors, leaning heavily on the spirit stick which carried Juicey Fruit Mambo back to his shadows, hobbled away, picking his way through the dead bodies, most of which had been shot in the back. Around the old man's neck hung a tiny leather bag. He could feel the comforting thump of it against his chest cavity as the ancient gold coin within it knocked against him. He spoke to the stick in his hand. 'You have not died in vain, spirit of a brave man, I have called and it is time! It is time for Lumukanda, the child of the morning star, to return.'

Somojo the Swazi, the greatest of all the living witchdoctors, made this promise to Juicey Fruit Mambo.

Later that afternoon, when they'd loaded the sixty-nine dead into the back of two trucks for the mortuary, holding them by the arms and legs and swinging them, then letting them go so they landed on an awkward pile of arms and legs and blood-soaked torsos, a thunderstorm struck. The usual thing: quick as anything, big clouds arriving out of nowhere, a typical late summer high veld storm. It did what such a storm always does; rushed in, a fearful conniption of water, wind and muddy fuss. When it was over, all the blood which had soaked into the hard ground in front of the Sharpeville police station had been washed away.

That night the sky was more beautiful than usual with the stars so close you could almost reach up and touch them. This was unusual; the soft coal the people bum in their cooking fires in the townships mists the evening sky with smog which blocks out all but the most determined stars. But the rain had somehow washed the sky clean and the stars above Meadowlands were as bright as they are in the bush. Johnny Tambourine, Too Many Fingers Bembi, Flyspeck Mendoza and Dog Poep Ismali waited outside Tandia's house for Juicey Fruit Mambo to bring her home in the Packard. Too Many Fingers Bembi suddenly pointed upwards, 'Look! Over there, a falling star!' he shouted excitedly.

Peekay was utterly devastated by the news of Sharpeville. For him it was the end of hope and the beginning of a deep fear that insanity was going to win in the beloved country. The killing fields had come back to South Africa; hostilities had broken out again in the three hundred year war based on greed, fear and revenge.

Peekay found himself facing a terrible moral dilemma. A liberal South African who believed in justice, a sense' of fairness and the rights of every man, woman and child to an equal place in a society based on freedom of opportunity - in the post-Sharpeville South Africa it could only be thought of as the ridiculous credo of a hopeless dreamer.

The black people had had enough, and Peekay's love for them was swept away in the torrent of hurt, anger and betrayal they felt. Now they demanded the right to avenge the injustice and to play by the same cynical rules of vengeance as those used against them.

On the day following the massacre, Peekay accompanied a distraught Tandia to the mortuary near Sharpeville. When they arrived hundreds of people were waiting around the squat red-brick building to claim their dead. They were mostly women, their eyes swollen from weeping, some with their men and rather more with small, runny-nosed children clutching at their skirts.

Under similar circumstances, a white crowd would have been loud and demanding, impatient with the tedious paperwork performed by a battery of clerks recruited from elsewhere who sat under the bluegum trees behind portable tables. It was well into the morning yet none of the bodies had been processed for release and some of the people had been waiting since dawn. But Africans are familiar with the despair of waiting and they'd come expecting no less. The people of Sharpeville had not yet indulged in the luxury of anger; overcome with grief they waited, confused and beaten in the still hot autumn day, for the white man to restore their dead to them.

Peekay, who'd phoned earlier for an appointment, arrived with Tandia at precisely eleven o'clock to be met by the white mortuary official, Klopper.

Klopper had a nickname among the Africans, who called him
'Inkosi Asebafa,
Lord of the Dead'. He liked this name a lot and lost no opportunity explaining it to any white person he might meet. Klopper was about as big in the dead-body business as you could get and held absolute power in Soweto which, he was fond of pointing out, housed Africa's largest mortuary.

His presence in Sharpeville on temporary transfer from Soweto to take charge of body sorting was an indication of how seriously the government regarded the matter of the previous day's massacre. Klopper was not easily intimidated and he wouldn't stand for any nonsense. He was just the sort of man to have on hand when you were thinking of having a massacre and wanted a calm, orderly aftermath.

Peekay had met him before when he'd been a witness in the Tom Majombi case. Klopper seemed to him to be a man obsessed with death, though in his mind he seemed only to equate it with the black people. He had witnessed so many violent and unnatural deaths - the stabbings, mutilations, muggings, ritual murders, clubbings and domestic beatings which make up' the daily count of the dead in the black townships - that he seemed to have forgotten that people die of natural causes, or for that matter, that white people die at all.

He didn't see the Sharpeville massacre as any more than destiny catching up with another sixty-nine kaffirs. It wouldn't have occurred to him to blame the white police officers involved for the incident. White men do their duty and sometimes kaffirs become dead as a consequence. There was nothing wrong with that.

He was standing outside the mortuary scratching his balls and enjoying the late morning sun when Peekay and Tandia drew up. Klopper was an obese, ruddy-complexioned man who, despite being completely bald, gave the impression of being overly hirsute. He affected an untidy beard roughly trimmed about two inches below his chin. Coming up to meet it, as though it was stuffing spilling out of a rent in his chest, a wild tuft of white hair mixed into his beard. His arms, too, were covered with thick, almost matted black hair and the short sleeves of his open-neck shirt were rolled as far up his arms as they'd go so his biceps appeared to balloon out of them like Popeye arms. He was at least six feet tall but possessed the legs of someone a foot shorter, so his ballooned torso seemed precariously balanced, as though it was always about to topple from its unsteady and undersized pinning. This impression was reinforced by a strong smell of brandy, suggesting that he might be somewhat tipsy. Klopper looked dangerous, as though he had been designed for violence.

He drew his right hand from his trouser pocket and raised it casually in greeting at Peekay and Tandia's approach.
'Goeie more, Advokaat,
it's a nice day after the rain last night, hey?' Klopper's voice was cheerful, though his greeting seemed to ignore Tandia completely.

'Good morning, Meneer Klopper,' Peekay said, smiling, though his voice was formal. He turned to Tandia. 'May I introduce you to Miss Patel, my legal partner.'

Klopper offered his hand to Peekay, still ignoring Tandia. The two men shook hands briefly whereupon Klopper's fat fingers plunged back into the interior of his khaki trousers to resume their jiggling. His head slightly. to one side, squinting, he examined Peekay, as though trying to read his thoughts. Finally he smiled, showing a lot of gold in his mouth but no laughter in his small, black eyes. 'If you want trouble you must go some place else, you hear? The trouble here is over yesterday already. Today is all peace and quiet.' Tandia felt the anger rise up in her. It wasn't Klopper's rudeness - she was prepared for that - but this mocking tone. She'd cried for Juicey Fruit Mambo most of the previous night and by early morning she was back in control of herself. By the time Peekay picked her up in Hymie's Mercedes for the drive to Vereeniging, he'd been surprised at her composure.

But now, simply by opening his mouth, this huge, stupid Boer with his fat guts spilling over his belt and his fingers working his elasticized testicles brought back her distress. He seemed to typify everything Juicey Fruit Mambo despised. Even in death this gross human had dominion over him. She struggled to fight back her tears, but the anger she felt threatened to overpower her. 'Tonight!', she comforted herself, 'tonight Gideon meets to launch
Umkonto we Sizwe,
Spear of the Nation. Please God let them allow me to be the first woman to join!' she prayed silently.

She'd left Peekay's flat in Hillbrow very early that morning. Gideon had been called to an all-night ANC meeting and Peekay had taken her to his flat in Hillbrow from the office soon after the news of Sharpeville had come through. He'd spent the night trying to comfort and calm her. Tandia had been too distraught to resist when Peekay had held her in his arms and rocked her and soothed her with quiet, reassuring words. At one stage he'd tried to sing her to sleep with a Zulu lullaby. He had a nice voice, clean and unselfconscious and the melody with its beautiful Zulu words was so hauntingly familiar that she fantasised that her own Zulu mother must have used it, sung to her when she was an infant.

Later, when the sparrows were beginning to chirp in the eaves directly above his top-floor window, when Peekay thought she'd fallen asleep, he stretched her out and covered her with a blanket and slipped a pillow under her head. Then she'd felt his lips touch her brow as he whispered, 'Sleep now, sweet Tandia. Sorrow has a season, but it will pass.' Then she'd heard the squeak of a loose floorboard under the carpet as he tip-toed from the room; soon after, she'd heard the shower running.

With Peekay out of the room, Tandia started to cry again, this time not knowing whether it was for Juicey Fruit Mambo or herself. Peekay's barely sensed kiss and the manner of his words were the gentlest thing she could ever remember happening to her. They contrasted so with Gideon's words when, less than an hour after the news of the Sharpeville massacre, Madam Flame Flo had phoned to say that Juicey Fruit Mambo was among the dead. Tandia had become almost hysterical and Gideon made very little attempt to comfort her. 'Tandia, Mambo was a Zulu. He died like a Zulu should die. I would be happy to die like him. He will be happy, his shadows will be happy and the people of his
isigodi,
they will be happy. There is no need for grief!' He'd spoken as though he was giving her an instruction, a lesson in how he expected her. to behave; and then, without touching her, he'd left her for an urgent meeting at Moroka township.

Soon after dawn, despite Peekay's protests that he must take her all the way to Meadowlands, Tandia insisted he only drive her to Johannesburg Central where she proposed to take a non-European taxi home. When Peekay had looked upset, she'd explained, 'Peekay, they rise early in the townships. By now the place is bustling with people hurrying to catch an early train. What do you think my neighbours will think if I arrive at my doorstep at dawn dropped off in a big black car by a white man?'

Peekay grinned, suddenly understanding. 'About what my neighbours would think if they'd seen you leaving my doorstep at dawn?'

'No wonder you're such a crackerjack barrister!' Tandia said, trying to sound cheerful.

Tandia needed to go home to bathe, to change into a black dress, and to pick up a brief she'd been working on. Peekay would pick her up around mid morning, using the intervening time to get a court order to have Juicey Fruit Mambo's body removed for burial in Zululand. This would normally have been extremely difficult, if not impossible in the time, but it had been quickly arranged after a phone call to Magistrate Coetzee.

The taxi had only just pulled away and she was fumbling in her bags for the keys to her house when a youth of about sixteen appeared suddenly at her side. Tandia gave a start. 'Hi Tandy, long time no see.' The boy had a nice smile and it was obvious he was friendly. Then Tandia recognized him.

'Johnny Tambourine!' Despite her distress she was glad to see him.

'When we heard about Sharpeville and you didn't come with Juicey Fruit Mambo last night, I told the others to go away. I thought, for sure, something bad has happened.'

'Oh, Johnny they killed him. They shot him!' She began to cry again.

'Don't cry, Tandy,' Johnny Tambourine put his hand on her shoulder and, taking the key she was holding from her hand, he opened the front door of her little house. 'Sit, I'll get you some water or something.' He looked about him, trying to decide where the kitchen might be.

'Thank you, Johnny, I'm fine,' Tandia sniffed, rubbing her swollen eyes. 'I must look a mess,' she smiled through her tears. 'I didn't know you'd seen Juicey Fruit Mambo. Please sit, I'm being rude.' She moved to sit on the edge of a small sofa and pointed to a chair.

'Ja, only yesterday, we made a deal, we done some business.' Johnny sat casually on the arm of a chair that matched the design of the sofa, crossing his legs to show a pair of bright red socks which matched his cardigan. He seemed a young man very much in control.

'Business? You had some business with Juicey Fruit Mambo?'

Johnny Tambourine scratched his head, then realized he was still wearing his cap. He removed it from his head, placing it on the chair beside him. 'Ja, we got a contract to look after you. Me an' Dog Poep Ismali an' Flyspeck Mendoza an' Too Many Fingers Bembi, all four, we going to protect you from now on; it's all agreed and signed for.'

Despite considerable effort on her part, Tandia was unable to persuade Johnny Tambourine that she was perfectly safe on her own. Exhausted from lack of sleep and in some exasperation, she'd finally agreed to a trial week under the protection of the four boys. It was another wonderful, typical ham-fisted Juicey Fruit Mambo scheme wrought out of his love for her and the least she could do was pretend to go along with it until the boys grew tired of the game and went back to loitering, three-card scams, mugging and petty theft.

Johnny Tambourine considered that his job had started right there and then and he'd come with her in the car to Sharpeville, sitting quietly in the back seat of the car while she and Peekay confronted Klopper.

'We've come to identify one of the deceased and to arrange for the removal of his body, Meneer Klopper,' Peekay said politely to the large man.

Klopper removed his hands from his trouser pockets and to their surprise came to attention; then he lifted himself onto his toes, which caused him to wobble dangerously as he leaned over them. The entire performance was meant to intimidate. 'I must say, man, you don't look like a relation of anybody we got here, Advokaat.' Klopper stabbed a blunt finger in Tandia's direction, acknowledging her presence for the first time. 'Not her too! We only got black kaffirs here. Who was it who died? The garden boy or the house girl at your place, hey?'

Peekay removed an envelope from the jacket of his suit. 'He was a friend,' he said quietly. He handed the envelope to the big man. 'It contains a court order entitling me to make a positive identification and, gives me authority to remove the body.'

Klopper smiled. Taking the envelope and holding it by the corner he tapped it several times into the open palm of his left hand. 'That's nice. A friend, hey? A white man who has black kaffir friends,' he squinted down again at Peekay, 'That Tom Majombi, you know the kaffir who become dead in the Geldenhuis trial, he was your friend also, hey?' He laughed suddenly and turned to Tandia. 'I would be careful if I was his friend, you hear? All his kaffir friends, they become dead!' He stressed the word kaffir, making it obvious that it included her. He continued to look at Tandia, a thin smile on his fat face. 'You hear what I'm saying?'