A Dry White Season Read online

  Ben’s ears were ringing. It was a curious experience: his senses were taking in acutely what was happening, yet he didn’t seem to be there. Disoriented, a total foreigner to the scene, an intruder in their grief which, nevertheless, he wanted so desperately to share, he looked at the woman in the middle of the room.

  “Emily,” he said, startled by his own voice in the silence – only the wasp was still buzzing, separated by the pane from its element outside – “you must let me know if you need anything. Please, you must promise me.”

  She stared at him as if she hadn’t heard.

  “Morena, you are kind to us, “said the priest.

  Automatically, without really meaning to, Ben put his hand in his trouser pocket and took out a ten rand note. He laid it on the table in front of her. They were all staring at him, all the mourning women, as if deliberately trying to ignore the green note on the checkered plastic cloth. And after he’d said goodbye, when he looked back at them from the door, almost in supplication, they were still standing like that, utterly immobile, like a family portrait.

  The big Dodge was like an oven after standing in the glaring sun for so long, but Ben barely noticed it. Even the group of youngsters further down the street, shouting at him and raising clenched fists as he emerged from the house, hardly registered in his mind. He slammed the car door and remained staring fixedly ahead, through the windscreen, at the innumerable rows of houses trembling and rippling in the heat. Stanley moved in beside him.

  “Well, lanie?” he said loudly.

  Ben clenched his jaws.

  “We going home now?” asked Stanley. The question sounded more like an accusation.

  Unable to explain his reaction, with a hint of panic at the thought of everything ending so abruptly and pointlessly, Ben said: “Do you think we could go somewhere and just sit quietly for a while?”

  “Sure, if you want to go. But we’d better get a move on from here, before that crowd starts stoning my car.” He motioned towards the youngsters approaching down the street in a slow, menacing phalanx. Without waiting, he started the car, reversed into the nearest side street and drove off, tyres skidding. Distant, isolated voices called out after them; in the rear-view-mirror one could see them dancing oddly in the dust, arms outstretched. A squealing, squawking chicken fluttered past the car, feathers flying, missed by inches. Stanley shook with laughter.

  Outside, Stanley’s house differed in no way from all the others in his street. Perhaps he deliberately didn’t want to attract attention. Inside, it was better furnished than Emily’s, with something of a flashy flair, but in no way remarkable. Bright linoleum on the floor, furniture from Lewis Stores, an ostentatious display cabinet filled with plates and shiny objects; on the sideboard a large tray covered with multicoloured birds; a record-rack with the empty sleeve of an Aretha Franklin record on top of it.

  “Whisky?”

  “I don’t really like such strong stuff.”

  “You need it, man.” Laughing, Stanley went through to the kitchen where one could hear him talking in a low voice to someone; he returned with two tumblers. “Sorry,” he said, “no ice. The bloody paraffin fridge has packed up again. Cheers!”

  The first gulp caused Ben to shudder lightly; the second went down more readily.

  “How long have you been living here?” he asked, ill at ease.

  Stanley laughed harshly. “You just making conversation now. What the hell does it matter?”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “You mean: Show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”

  “When you came round to see me the other night we got along so well,” Ben said, emboldened by the whisky. “So why are you holding back all the time today? Why are you playing cat and mouse with me?”

  “I told you it would be better not to come.”

  “But I wanted to. I had to.” He looked straight at Stanley. “And now I have.”

  “And you think it’s made a difference?”

  “Of course it has. I’m not sure what it is, but I know it was important. It was necessary.”

  “You didn’t really like what you saw, did you?”

  “I didn’t come here to like it. I just had to see it. I had to see Gordon.”

  “And so?” Stanley sat watching him like a great angry eagle.

  “I had to see with my own eyes. Now I know.”

  “What do you know? That he didn’t commit suicide?”

  “Yes. That too.” Ben raised his glass again, with more confidence than before.

  “What is it to you, laine?” Behind the aggressiveness in his deep voice lurked something different and almost eager. “This sort of thing happens all the time, man. Why bother about Gordon?”

  “Because I knew him. And because – “ He didn’t know how to put it; but he didn’t want to avoid it either. Lowering his glass, he looked into Stanley’s eyes. “I don’t think I ever really knew before. Or if I did, it didn’t seem to directly concern me. It was – well, like the dark side of the moon. Even if one acknowledged its existence it wasn’t really necessary to live with it.” A brief moment, the suggestion of a smile. “Now people have landed there.”

  “You sure you can’t just go on like before?”

  “That is exactly what I had to find out. Don’t you understand?”

  Stanley looked at him in silence for a long time as if pursuing, without words, a more urgent interrogation than before. Ben looked back. It was like a children’s game, trying to outstare one another; only it was no game. In silence they raised their glasses together.

  At last Ben asked: “Was the family represented at the post mortem?”

  “Sure. I saw to it there was a private doctor. Suliman Hassiem. Known him for years, ever since he qualified at Wits.” Adding wryly: “Not that that guarantees anything. Those boere know the ropes.”

  “They won’t get away with it in court, Stanley,” he insisted. “Our courts have always had a reputation for impartiality.”

  Stanley grinned.

  “You’ll see!” said Ben.

  “I’ll see what I’ll see.” Stanley got up with his empty glass.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.” Stanley went out. From the kitchen he called: “Just remember what I told you!” He returned, carrying his glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. “Can I top you up?”

  “Not for me, thanks.”

  “Be a sport, man!” Without waiting, he filled Ben’s glass liberally.

  “Emily needs help,” said Ben.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll look after her.” Stanley gulped down half his whisky, then added nonchalantly: “She’ll have to give up the house, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the way it is, man. She’s a widow now.”

  “But where will she go?”

  “I’ll wangle something.” An impish grin. “We’re trained for the job, man.”

  Ben looked at him intently, then shook his head slowly. “I wish I knew what was going on inside you, Stanley.”

  “Don’t look too deep.” Convulsing with laughter in his disarming way.

  “How do you survive?” asked Ben. “How do you manage to stay out of trouble?”

  “You just got to know how.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, watching Ben as if he were trying to make up his mind about something. From the kitchen came dull, untranslatable sounds; outside, children were squealing and a dog barked; once a car drove past at high speed.

  “That time they picked up my brother,” Stanley suddenly said, “I decided I’d go straight. Didn’t want to end up like him. So I became a garden boy in Booysens. Not bad people, and I had my own room in the yard. For a long time it went just fine. Then I picked up a girl friend; she was a nanny a block or so away. Her name was Noni, they called her Annie. Nice girl. I started spending the nights with her. But one night there was a knock on the door. Her master. Burst in on us, sjambok in his hand. Beat the shit out of us even befor
e we could put our clothes on. I got out on all fours, as bloody naked as the day I was born.” He seemed to find the memory very funny as he doubled up with laughter. “Anyway, I cleared out from my room the same night, before he could trace me.” Stanley refilled his glass; Ben’s was still full. ”Lanie, that night I saw something I hadn’t seen before, and that was that I wasn’t my own boss. My life belonged to my white baas. It was he who organised my job for me, and who told me where I could stay, and what I must do and what I mustn’t, the lot. That man nearly broke every bone in my body that night. But that wasn’t what troubled me. It was this other thing. Knowing I would never be a man in my own right. I got to be free first. So what did I do? Started right at the bottom. Got me a job at the market. Then I bought job lots to hawk in the townships over the weekend, until I could open my own shop in Diepkloof. But it was juice-less, man. To get enough capital I had to borrow from the lanies, the big boys in iGoli. Back to square one. Every month they came to check my books and take their share of the profit. You call that freedom? So in the end a few of us clubbed together to buy a car. One year, then I bought my own. Never looked back.”

  “Now you’re your own boss?”

  Stanley looked down at his shoes, absently wiping the dust from their noses with his hand. “Right.” He looked up. “But don’t let that fool you, baby. I’m only as free as the white bosses allow me to be. Got that? Simple as shit. All right, I’ve learned to take it for what it’s worth. One learns not to expect the fucking impossible any more, you learn to live with it. But what about my children? I’m asking you straight. What about Gordon’s children? What about that mob that shook their fists at us out there in the street? They can’t take it any more, man. They don’t know what we older blokes have learned long ago. Or perhaps they do. Perhaps they’re better than us, who can tell? All I know is something big and bloody has started and nobody knows what the hell is still going to happen.”

  “That is what I had to come to see for myself,” said Ben quietly.

  “Got to go now,” said Stanley, emptying his glass and putting it down. “Before the people start coming home from work and the townships fill up. Then I can’t guarantee anything.” In spite of his brusque words his attitude was less forbidding than before; and as they went out he even put his hand on Ben’s shoulder in a brief gesture of comradeship, restoring the confidence of the other night.

  Silently they drove back through the labyrinth of building-blocks resembling houses; and in that silence, behind the events of the afternoon and the uncommitted light of the sun, lay the memory of Gordon, small and maimed in his coffin in the cool bare room, his grey claws folded on his narrow chest. The rest seemed interchangeable, transferable, unessential: but that remained. And, with it, the aching awareness of something stirred into sluggish but ineluctable motion.

  As they drew up in front of the hawthorn hedge with its bright orange berries, Stanley said:

  “I can’t keep on coming here like this. They’ll put their mark on you.”

  “Who? What mark?”

  “Never mind.” Taking an empty cigarette packet from his pocket, Stanley found a ball-point pen in the glove-box, and scrawled a number on the back of the packet. “In case you ever need me. Leave a message if I’m not there. Don’t give your name, just say the lanie phoned, right? Or else write me a note.” He added an address, then smiled. “So long, man. Don’t worry. You’re okay.”

  Ben got out. The car drove off. He turned round to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate with the post-box perched on top. And all at once this was what seemed foreign to him: not what he’d seen in the course of the long bewildering afternoon, but this. His garden, with the sprinkler on the lawn. His house, with white walls, and orange tiled roof, and windows, and rounded stoep. His wife appearing in the front door. As if he’d never seen it before in his life.

  2

  The funeral. Ben had wanted to attend, but Stanley had refused point-blank. There might be trouble, he’d said. And there was. Few people had known Gordon, but his death had evoked a violent, if short-lived, response which had been inconceivable during his life. Especially since it followed so soon after that of Jonathan. An entire society seemed suddenly to have grasped at his funeral as an occasion to give expression to all the tensions and confusion and passions provoked by the previous months: a great and necessary catharsis. Letters and telegrams arrived from people who, only a few weeks before, had never even heard the name of Gordon Ngubene. Emily, who would have chosen to bury her dead in private, was forced into the midst of a public spectacle. A photograph of her sitting at her kitchen table and staring past a candle eventually won some international award.

  The World continued to give prominence to the case; soon the name of Dr Suliman Hassiem, who had attended the autopsy on behalf of the family, became almost as familiar as that of Gordon Ngubene himself. Although, on the instructions of the Special Branch, Dr Hassiem refused all press interviews, alarming particulars continued to find their way to The World and The Daily Mail, soon to be repeated as hard facts in spite of categoric and sarcastic denials by the Minister. Urgent appeals were made to all concerned to ensure that the funeral take place peacefully; but at the same time much prominence was given to reports of police reinforcements sent to Soweto from all over the Reef. And on the Sunday the townships looked like a military camp, overrun by armoured trucks and tanks and squadrons of riot police with automatic rifles, while helicopters surveyed the scene from the air.

  From early morning the busloads of people began to arrive. Still, everything appeared calm. The people were tense, but there were no “incidents” – except for the bus from Mamelodi which was stopped by riot police outside Pretoria. All the passengers were ordered to get out, to run the gauntlet of two files of police who laid into them with batons, sjamboks and riflebutts. There was something very calm and ordered about the whole operation: pure, unadulterated violence which needed no pretext or excuse and simply went its way systematically, thoroughly, neatly. Afterwards the bus was allowed to proceed to Soweto.

  The funeral service lasted for hours. Prayers, hymns, speeches. In spite of the obvious tension everything remained remarkably subdued, but after the service, in the late afternoon, as the people came streaming from the graveyard for the ritual washing of hands in the house of the bereaved, a police cordon tried to cut off the majority of the guests. Some youths in the crowd started throwing stones and a police van was hit. Suddenly it was madness. Sirens. Tear gas. Volleys of gunshots. Squadrons of police moving in with batons. Dogs. It went on and on. As soon as one township fell silent under a cloud of tear gas, violence would erupt elsewhere. It continued after nightfall, illuminated in spectacular fashion by burning buildings – Bantu Affairs administrative quarters, a liquor store, a school in Mofolo – and exploding vehicles. Throughout the night there were sporadic new outbursts, but by daybreak everything was once again, according to the media, “under control". An undisclosed number of wounded were taken to hospitals and nursing homes all over Johannesburg; others simply disappeared into the maze of houses. The official death toll was four, surprisingly low in view of the extent of the riots.

  Emily’s eldest son, Robert, had disappeared during the night. It was more than a week, in fact, before she heard from him again in a letter from Botswana. With her remaining children gathered round her, she finally withdrew, weary and dazed, to their small kitchen which bore Gordon’s photograph on the wall, surrounded by wilted flowers. And in Doornkop Cemetery a mountain of wreaths covered the mound under which lay the unknown little man on whose behalf it had all happened so inexplicably.

  The next day it was reported that Dr Suliman Hassiem had been detained in terms of the Internal Security Act.

  3

  The image that presents itself is one of water. A drop held back by its own inertia for one last moment, though swollen of its own weight, before it irrevocably falls; or the surface tension which prevents water from spilling over the edge of a gl
ass even though it may already bulge past the rim – as if the water, already sensing its own imminent fall, continues to cling, against the pull of gravity, to its precarious stability, trying to prolong it as much as possible. The change of state does not come easily or naturally; there are internal obstacles to overcome.

  Ben’s ability to resist was sorely tested by Dr Hassiem’s arrest. But even then he tried to remain reasonable. His first reaction was to telephone Stanley.

  The taxi driver was not available, but the woman who answered promised to convey the message. What was the name? Just tell him the lanie phoned, he said, obeying Stanley’s instructions.

  The call came on the Tuesday afternoon while Ben was working in the garage where, of late, he’d been finding refuge for longer hours than before among his chisels and saws and hammers and drills.

  “Lanie?” Stanley didn’t identify himself, but Ben immediately recognised the deep voice. “You in trouble?”

  “No, of course not. But I’d like to talk to you. Can you spare the time?”

  “I got to be in your suburb tonight. Let’s make it eight o’clock, all right? I’ll pick you up at the garage where we turned off to your place last time. So long.”

  Fortunately it was easy to get away without an explanation as Susan had to go to a meeting and Johan to some school function. When Ben arrived at the garage at eight o’clock the white car was already waiting for him, parked unobtrusively behind a row of dark pumps. The pungent smell of oil still lay heavily on the day’s heat trapped under the low awning. A tiny spot glowing in the driver’s window betrayed Stanley, smoking placidly.

  “How’s it, lanie? What’s your trouble, man?”

  Ben got in beside him, leaving the door open. “Have you heard about Dr Hassiem?”

  Stanley started the engine, laughing. “Of course. Close your door.” When they’d gone a block or two, he said gaily: “Those boere know their job, I told you.”