The World Beneath (13 page)

Wordlessly they run back to the stable and lock it up again, and he shows her where to put the key back under the stone.

Then they part company, Joshua to put the bolt cutters back where he found them and to jump back into bed, and Bonny, tight-lipped, to her tent. As he lies in the dark, unable to sleep, Joshua recalls how she said: “They will know what you’ve done.”

I
t is early morning; the sliver of moon is still visible in the pale sky. There is a flurry of activity as a Jeep speeds back to the house from the stable in a plume of dust. Joshua lies with his book under his thorn tree, watching without appearing to watch, as the commander comes out of the house. He can see the men gesticulating and pointing. They all go back to the stable.

Then they drive in the direction of the river. Two men get out and wade across. They disappear into the bush. Joshua watches them go with a feeling of dread. Will they catch up with the man, sick and injured as he is? With a cold feeling, he recalls the flashlight that he gave him — Bonny’s flashlight.

But the men come back on their own.

He goes to find Bonny. “Why haven’t they questioned everybody? They must realize that someone here let him out.”

She doesn’t look at him. “He was a secret. That was the point, Joshua. No one was allowed to know he was here. Now they can’t admit that he ever was.”

Afternoon; he is lying again under his tree staring at the cerulean sky, praying that the prisoner got away. Could he have gotten far enough away by daylight? Could he have found someone to help him?

Soon his question is answered. Through the farthest gate comes a cloud of dust that grows bigger and, as it approaches, turns into a Jeep. It skids to a halt outside the house, and two men run inside. They come out with the commander.

It all happens very quickly. The back door of the Jeep is pulled roughly open, and the men pull someone out. Even from this distance, Joshua can see it is the prisoner. They are hitting him. Joshua cannot look at the stick figures in the distance that are doing these awful things. He lies flat in the dust on his stomach, with his hands over his ears and his eyes shut, as he did when he was younger, as if this would prevent them from seeing him as well as him from seeing them.

Tears stream down his cheeks into the dust. He is sobbing out loud. And there is a tiny kernel of fear there too. Will the man give him away? Can he lie here and just let this happen?

Then he jumps to his feet and runs down the hill as fast as he can. He skids to a halt right by the men, and they turn in surprise.

A silence. Into the middle of it he says: “It was me. I let him go.”

The shock is palpable. The men look to the commandant. They start toward Joshua. “No,” he says, and stills them with a hand gesture. The prisoner, whose mouth is bleeding, looks away.

Joshua finds that now he has said this, he can say no more. The commandant turns to the prisoner.

“I didn’t see who freed me,” he says, his face stony, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Someone just unlocked the door. It was open when I pushed against it.”

“It was me,” says Joshua again. The silence deepens and widens. Then, somehow, terribly, he has mentioned Bonny. “Bonny found out and she was angry with me.”

Then there is a voice behind him. A deep voice, a gentle voice, a commanding voice; a voice he knows. “It was me. I let him go.” It is Sindiso.

The prisoner draws a breath in suddenly. But he says nothing. Joshua knows what that breath means. How can he say it wasn’t Sindiso when he has just said that he didn’t see who it was?

The men grab Sindiso and twist his arms up behind his back. “Leave him,” says the commandant. It is clear to him that Sindiso is protecting the boy. And yet —

“I gave him Bonny’s flashlight — the one she gave me.” This time Joshua’s voice is stronger. Sindiso stares bleakly at him.
Don’t,
says the look.
Don’t go on and especially don’t talk about Bonny.

But he can’t stop. “Did you find it?”

Silently, one of the men pulls a flashlight out from his pocket. It looks so tiny, barely big enough to take two penlight batteries. It is bright orange and looks incongruous lying across the man’s broad palm.

“It was the girl,” says the commandant. “We should never have trusted her. She is a spy. Of course. We were stupid not to see it.”

“No!” says Joshua. “It was me. Bonny told me not to do it!”

Somehow, impossibly, this makes it sound worse.

Joshua casts a desperate look at the prisoner.

Please,
say his eyes.
Please tell them it was me, or they will think it was Bonny.

He feels as if he is struggling underwater. He can’t get them to hear or understand.

“Look,” he says, turning toward them all, his hands out as if to stop them thinking the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing.

“It was me.” He stops and draws his slight body up to his full height. “I went by the stable and heard a voice. He asked me for help” — he gestures toward the prisoner without really looking at him. “And I couldn’t bear to just leave him there. Not after what happened to Tsumalo. And my brother Sipho. And now Steve Biko!”

He pauses and takes a breath. “I told Bonny. She told me he was a traitor. She told me how he planned to betray us. She thought I understood.”

Another pause. Now he finds he can’t look at the man.

“I didn’t believe her. I let him out. I led him . . .” and his voice falters. “I led him to the river, and I watched him cross it, and then . . . then . . .” His voice begins to break. “Bonny appeared. She had followed me. She was furious with me. You mustn’t think it was her. She understands that this man is a traitor. But I don’t.”

And he goes up to the commandant and stands before him. The men move toward Joshua, but again the commandant shakes his head.

“If we believe it is not right for the government to torture us, how is it right for us to torture this man, whether or not he is a traitor?” Joshua can’t believe he is saying these things.

He is dizzy; he sways slightly on his feet. But he is still full of what he wants to say.

“If we kill him, we are no better than them.” There is contempt in his voice. “We don’t even know if he is a traitor.”

He is aware of the eyes of the commandant, which are locked on his. The man opens his mouth to speak.

But now there is a noise in his head, which seems to grow and grow and fill every space in it.

“Look out!” shouts Sindiso.

The sky is full, incredibly, of sound, and something hits him hard and throws him to the ground.

There is screaming and crying.

Then silence.

Joshua can’t move his limbs. He can’t breathe. He is pinned to the ground by something heavy. He opens his eyes and finds that someone is lying on top of him. It is the prisoner.

He wriggles himself free, but the man is still unconscious. Sindiso is crouching by him.

“Joshua, come.”

“But —”

Sindiso touches his shoulder briefly.

Joshua looks at the man, lying sprawled where he had thrown himself on Joshua as the planes came over and the bombs began to fall. His eyes are closed, his face relaxed as if in sleep.

Sindiso crouches by him and touches his fingers to the man’s wrist. He shakes his head. Joshua understands. “We must go.”

Joshua gets to his feet slowly, painfully, as if he is an old man. He looks around him.

Where the house was, there is a hole in the ground surrounded by rubble.

He can’t see Mama Bongani.

Farther away, the stables are gone. A pall of smoke hangs low over the camp.

Around him there is only silence.

I
t has been a long journey, but now they are close to Cape Town. Their lift drops them near the cooling towers, and they walk a little way back up a dirt path to the national road, away from the rotten-egg stink. “Wait here,” says Sindiso. “I’ll call you when someone stops.” He smiles at Joshua. “Not far now.”

He steps out from the scrub to the edge of the road. It is Joshua’s turn to carry the rucksack with its heavy load, and he is tired. He sits down behind a wattle bush and stretches his legs out, leaning into the springy, dusty branches and closing his eyes.

There is a squeal of brakes and the whir of a car backing up. Joshua, startled out of a half-doze, begins to scramble to his feet. But there is an odd silence, and instead of stepping out onto the road, he crouches down and holds his breath. He can see three pairs of feet through the gaps at the bottom of the foliage, staggering from left to right and back again.

Sindiso grunts with each blow. Joshua squints through the branches. He thinks that he sees a frantic eye for a moment — Sindiso’s? Then the men push him into the car and are gone. He sits down abruptly on the dusty ground. The straps of the rucksack dig into his shoulders.

Police? They must have been. Quietly, Joshua wraps his arms around his folded legs and rocks, desperately trying to quell the swelling anxiety in his stomach. He will not cry. He will not. He is grown up now. The time for crying is past. But he is racked with pain. Sindiso too? Not Sindiso. Where have they taken him? What will they do to him? He closes his eyes and remembers Sipho. Tsumalo. Steve Biko, fatally injured, driven naked through the night.

After what seems a very long time, he gets up, hefts the rucksack, and continues along the national road behind a screen of oleander bushes with their vivid red poisonous flowers. After he thinks enough time has passed, he steps cautiously out onto the road and sticks out his thumb.

Joshua jumps down from the truck. “Hey, thanks, man.” He smiles up at the driver. He slings his rucksack from one shoulder to the other. It’s heavy and no wonder; he’s carrying the limpet mines. He flexes the muscles in his shoulders. He was such a skinny kid. But he’s two years older now.

And the place: here is the road he had run down. It is narrower, dingier. The leaves on the oak trees — he looks up, expecting to see feet pedaling and a Cheshire cat smile — the leaves look rusty.

He thinks of Sindiso. Where do they have him? He remembers the sounds that came from the stable in the camp. Then he pushes them away. There’s no time to think of that now. Because he’s alone, he’ll have to move fast. There is more trouble. There are tanks in the townships again, the driver told him. He’s in a white area, and if he’s stopped, he won’t have a pass. In spite of his new height, he still looks too young to be a laborer.

In five minutes he is there, ringing the bell in the high wall. The house is no more than a few streets away from Bonair Road, where he grew up. “I’m looking for work. I’ve just arrived from the Transkei.” This is what they’ve agreed. This is a safe house, and the white couple here are expecting him — him and Sindiso.

A maid comes to open the wrought-iron gate. He repeats his lines to her — he has no idea whether she knows who he is, although her resentful look would suggest not. They walk in tandem down the brick path between neat rows of blue hydrangeas — named
Krismisblomme
for the time of year, the high summer of December. He shifts his burden again from one aching shoulder to the other; it’s been a long journey.