Whitethorn (83 page)

It must be explained, at the time, even the most liberal of South Africans, usually English-speaking, secretly thought of the African race as inferior to the white. A murder trial where there was nothing to gain but some sort of pyrrhic victory, which, in the process, reopened old racial wounds, was no honourable win for any system of justice. It might even have been possible that Mattress's wife and son, Mokiti Malokoane, also known as Joe Louis, didn't even know he'd been murdered. They might simply think he'd disappeared, as so many black men who left Zululand or their homelands to find a job to support their family had done in the past.

I hadn't tried to find Mattress's family. Perhaps, incorrectly, I reasoned that until I attempted to bring his murderers to justice there wasn't any point. (Who's the insensitive racist now?) I felt that by the time I was able to contact them, their grieving for his disappearance would be over. Then, if I were to win the case and see the Van Schalkwyk brothers convicted, at least they'd know that somebody cared.

It was almost time to leave Pissy Vermaak. I'd made arrangements to meet Mike Finger later in town for a drink, and to attend another heavily chaperoned dance at the YWCA. ‘Pissy, I got to go. Thank you for being so frank with me.'

‘That's okay,
Voetsek
, I owed you, but you got to promise you won't tell anyone at the barracks, you hear?'

I laughed. ‘That's an easy promise. They're already so grateful you're gone, I'm a big hero anyway.'

Pissy laughed, then looked suddenly serious. ‘
Voetsek
, maybe I can help you some more about the
kaffir
's murder.'

‘Oh? How's that?'

Then he dropped his bombshell. ‘Look, there's something else, something that didn't come out in the newspapers, in the
Zoutpansberg Gazette
. The
kaffir
's balls and prick wasn't there, they was cut out.'

I stared at Pissy, too shocked at first to comprehend. ‘Jesus!' I exclaimed. Then I came to my senses. ‘How do you know this, Pissy?'

‘I've seen it.'

‘Seen it? How? What?' I was sounding like an imbecile.

‘Mevrou. She showed me. They were, you know, his testicles and cock, floating in this half-size canned-fruit jar, pickled in a half-jack of Tolley's five-star brandy.'

I felt, well, I didn't know at the time how I felt, numb I suppose. I know I wanted to throw up, then I felt incredibly sad and suddenly very angry. ‘Pissy, you're a consummate liar, if you are making all this up I'll find out and I promise you I'll tell the mine about your epilepsy!'

‘I swear it on my mother's grave!' he said, looking extremely hurt. ‘I wouldn't lie to you about a thing like that, man!'

The fact that he didn't have a mother or even know if she was dead was by the way. I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. ‘Tell me everything, Pissy,' I demanded. ‘You've got a good memory, I want every fucking detail, right down to if she farted or sneezed or scratched her arse.'

He smiled, recalling. Mevrou would often scratch her bum, digging her stumpy fingers deeply into her elephantine crevices.

‘It was the Sunday night after the Sunday when the murder happened and she'd come back from visiting her farm in the high mountains. After supper she said I must come to the clinic to take some medicine because, it was true, I had a bad cough and I must bring my pyjamas also, because otherwise I'd keep the dormitory awake all night. So I did. I had my medicine and went to bed in the sick room and I must have fallen asleep. I woke up, I don't know how late because how could I tell, the window of the sick room looked out on the long
stoep
and there was always a light on at night and the light was on in the sick room. Mevrou was sitting on the edge of the bed and she had one hand on my shoulder, shaking me.

‘ “
Ja
, now you awake, hey,” she said. I'd seen her drunk on brandy before when, on other times, I was in the sick room. She'd sit in the front room till late and drink, and sometimes she'd wake me by giving me this big kiss on the mouth.
Sis
, man, with the brandy breath it tasted terrible. “You are my little
skattebol
, Kobus,” she'd say in her drunk voice. Sometimes she'd fall over the bed, over my body, and I couldn't move until she got up. But now, this time she was different. Her hair was all over the place, some falling over her face, and her nightdress was pulled away from her one shoulder to her waist on one side with her arm out, so one big tit was also hanging out nearly to her waist. She had some sweat, like little bubbles under her nose, you know, where she had her woman's moustache, and her eyes were all blood-red. I can tell you, man, I was frightened she was crazy. “
Ja
, Mevrou, I am awake,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

‘ “Some medicine for your cough, Kobus, sit up,
jong
,” she said to me.

‘I sat up but she wasn't holding the cough mixture and a spoon, jus' this small canned-fruit jar, half-full of brown stuff. I didn't know then it was brandy and I thought it must be some sort of medicine maybe she'd brought from their farm. You know,
boere medisyne
. “Look, Kobus,” she cackled.

‘ “What is it, Mevrou?” I asked her.

‘She held the jar up to the light. “Your revenge!” she said, and then she really began to laugh like crazy. She brought the jar down and held it in front of me, close, so I could see into the brown stuff. “What do you see? Tell me, Kobus!” She sounded angry.

‘ “I dunno, Mevrou, it looks like a black worm and two little eggs. Is it
muti
?”

‘She thought this was very funny and laughed some more, like she was hysterical and couldn't stop, the tears were rolling down her fat face. Then at last she said, “
Ja
, Kobus, this is the
muti
, the medicine, you give a stinking
kaffir
when he puts his dirty black
piel
inside one of our children, inside an Afrikaner child!” She clasped the jar against her naked tit, holding it against her heart in both hands. “They going to send you to Pietersburg, to the orphanage there.” She began to cry. “You like my own child, Kobus!” Then she put the jar down on the table near the bed. “Come to Mama,
skattebol
.” She reached out and pulled me against her big breasts, the nightdress covered one and the other one sticking out. She started to rock me and she smelled of brandy and stale sweat from under her hairy arms, and she held me so tight with my face against her I could hardly breathe and I started to cough. Then she let me go and she reached for the jar and handed it to me. “Here, hold it, Kobus, feel how it is to have revenge! That black cock is safe now, it can't hurt you anymore!”

‘ “
Nee
, Mevrou!” I pushed away from her. “I don't want to. It's not nice.”

‘ “Kobus, lissen to me, I want you to hold it so you know an Afrikaner child is always safe from a dirty
kaffir
's black
piel
. Here, take it, hold it,” she put her hand on her naked breast, over her heart, “against your heart so you'll
never
forget! Then I'll keep it forever for you, you hear?” She smiled. “It's our little keepsake,
skattebol
.”

‘I took the jar and held it against my heart, I could feel it was thumping like anything. I can tell you, I was shaking all over my body. “Now, look inside, Kobus, you must be proud of your
Volk
, we God's own people, we don't wait for a so-called police enquiry, we have our own justice, God's justice, an eye for an eye. Suffer little children to come unto me, sayeth the Lord.” '

Pissy looked directly at me. ‘I guarantee, somewhere on the Van Schalkwyk farm is that canned-fruit jar.'

Half an hour later I met Mike Finger in a bar in town and we had a couple of quick beers. Apart from greeting him I didn't say much, my mind still reeling from the visit to Pissy Vermaak.

‘You seem preoccupied, old chap,' Mike said halfway through the second glass of Lion lager.

‘
Ja
, I apologise, I've just been to see Vermaak at the hospital.'

‘That's decent of you, I would have thought you were glad to see the back of him.'

I smiled. ‘My barracks owes you a big favour, Mike.'

‘Not at all, you were right to come to me. He was, as you observed, genuinely sick, least I could do.'

‘There were just one or two details I needed to clear up with him,' I said, explaining but not explaining my visit.

‘Tom, I have news, I'm going back to Kenya,' he announced.

I was silent for a moment. ‘I'm going to miss you, Mike. I hope we can keep in touch.' I extended my hand. ‘I've come to value your friendship a lot.'

‘That goes both ways,' he said, taking my hand. ‘Drink up. Then one more beer before we go to that ghastly dance. I have something to suggest to you.'

I swallowed what was left of my beer and the barman poured two fresh ones.

‘Tom, tomorrow the list comes out for the officer training interviews. I've spoken to Colonel Stone and suggested that if you agree, you come back with me to Kenya and do your officer's training with my regiment. The idea is that you get some first-hand experience of fighting the Mau Mau, and then we write a training manual for the Rhodesian Army.'

‘Whoa! Take it easy. I'm due at Oxford for the Michaelmas term in October.'

‘The training, because of the circumstances, is only three months, there's plenty of time.' He smiled. ‘Besides, I have a sister, Sam, who goes by the unfortunate nickname among her friends of Midget Digit. She's only five feet and having a surname like Finger has decided drawbacks. Not just for her, at school the sportsmaster never tired of calling out, “Finger, pull your finger out!” I think you and Sam would get on very well.'

As I said before when he'd mentioned the possibility of officer training, it beat the hell out of working a grizzly. ‘There could be a problem, if I train in Rhodesia the mine is obliged to pay my full copper bonus. I'm not sure this would be the case if I trained in Kenya.'

‘Can't see the difference, you'd be seconded from the Rhodesian Army anyway, the way I am here from the Kenyan forces. Will you consider it?'

‘When do I have to give you my answer?'

He smiled, and seemed a little embarrassed, then looked straight down into the foam-flecked top of his beer glass. ‘Well, tomorrow actually.' He looked up. ‘Tom, I'm sure you'll enjoy meeting my family.'

I grinned. ‘What are you trying to say, Mike? That I'm not going to be given a choice?'

He took a deep slug of beer from his glass, almost emptying it, then placed it down with a smack of the lips. He grinned at me and said, ‘Yes, something like that. You're in the army now, Rifleman Fitzsaxby.'

I was silent for a moment, nodding my head, trying not to look sheepish. ‘By the way, you never did tell me why you were seconded to the Rhodesian Army?' I asked in an attempt to wrong-foot him, as he'd just done to me.

‘Malaria and Major Chris Peterson of the Kenya Special Forces, the latter being the more serious and odious reason.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Christ, we should get going if we hope to get a dance, I'll explain it all to you some other time, Tom.'

C
HAPTER NINETEE
N

A Mighty Smiting of Love and Hate

OVER THE SEVERAL DAYS before we left for Kenya, Mike Finger briefed me in depth on the state of emergency. Mike was anxious that I understood his point of view, which, I must say, often surprised me. The news coming out of Kenya was of a terrorist force that had reverted to barbarism, killing white settlers, with women and children being dismembered and their corpses burned. I couldn't recall a news bulletin or background commentary in a newspaper ever giving a reason why one particular tribe, the largest and the one thought to be the most ‘civilised' of the six Kenyan tribes, would rise up to fight the British in such a fanatical way. ‘Why isn't it a civil war involving all the tribes?' was one of my more obvious questions to Mike.

In all the discussions we'd had Mike seemed to be somewhat ambivalent about the state of emergency. He was Kenyan-born and his small dusty home town of Thika and the surrounding area of coffee and sisal plantations had been subject to attack by the Mau Mau, with one white family, close neighbours, murdered. Yet he didn't go on with the same rhetoric of hate coming from the Kenyan news sources, something I would constantly be subjected to from the farmers and settlers when I arrived there.

‘Tom,' he'd often say, ‘I willingly fight against the Mau Mau because as terrorists their methods are barbaric and cruel and cannot possibly be justified; they are killers, murderers of women and children, not just of whites but of their own people. We simply have to eliminate them.' Then he'd pause and say, ‘But that doesn't mean that they don't have a good reason to fight us. They see themselves, no matter how fanatical and barbaric, as freedom fighters, and while you'll never hear it said among Kenyan whites or the British administration, we are largely to blame for this uprising.'

‘Was this the reason you were sent to Rhodesia, I mean, for speaking out?'