A Dry White Season Read online

  He didn’t always react so positively. Most of the notes from those months talk about depression, worry, doubt, uncertainty. Tension at home, with Susan. Quarrels on the telephone, with Suzette. Tiffs with colleagues.

  It was possible to get used to those episodes of petty intimidation which recurred regularly, to learn to live with them, even to get bored by them. But there were others too. Finding a hammer-and-sickle painted on his door one morning. On another day, as he got into his car to drive home after school, the discovery of all four tyres cut to shreds. The anonymous telephone calls, often at two or three o’clock at night. Susan’s nerves were giving in, leading to hysterical outbursts or bouts of crying that left both of them dismayed.

  What Ben found most unsettling was to be confronted, in his class-room, by large printed slogans on the blackboard, inanities which sent sniggers through the class. Somehow his colleagues also knew about it; and once, in the presence of all the other staff members, Koos Cloete asked scathingly: “How can a teacher expect his pupils to look up to him unless his own conduct is beyond reproach?”

  18 September. Noticed Johan looking dishevelled after school. Shirt torn, one black eye, lips swollen. At first he refused to say anything. In the end I managed to wheedle it from him. Couple of Standard Nines, he said. Been taunting him for weeks, calling his father a nigger lover. This morning he couldn’t take it any more. Did a good demolition job but there were too many of them. Worst of all: while it was happening one of the teacherscame past and pretended not to see.

  He still wasn’t intimidated. “Dad, if they start again tomorrow I’m going to beat the shit out of them.”

  “What’s the use, Johan?”

  “I won’t have them insulting you.”

  “It doesn’t hurt me.”

  Johan spoke with difficulty because of his swollen mouth, but he was too angry to be quiet: “I tried to reason with them, but they wouldn’t listen. They don’t even know what you’re trying to do.”

  “You sure you know?” I had to ask him, however hard it was.

  He turned his head so that his only good eye could look squarely at me. “Yes, I know,” he said impetuously. “And only if you stop doing it I’ll have reason to be ashamed of you.”

  He appeared very embarrassed by what he’d blurted out. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. And I didn’t want to add to his discomfort by thanking him. We sat staring straight ahead while I drove us home. But in that one startling, wonderful moment I knew it was worthwhile after all: if only for the sake of hearing those words from my son.

  As we stopped beside the house he looked at me again, winking with his good eye: “Better not tell Mum what it was all about. I don’t think she’ll like it.”

  Of a completely different order was the shock Ben received when he returned to Dan Levinson’s office for a consultation about one of the people who had come to him for help. Levinson was as brusque and as busy as always, but what upset Ben was the visitors he had with him – the two advocates who had acted in the inquest on Gordon’s death, De Villiers on behalf of the family, Louw for the police.

  “You have met, haven’t you?” Levinson said.

  “Of course.” Ben greeted De Villiers heartily, then turned to Louw with a scowl. To his surprise the latter was very cordial. And the three lawyers spent another fifteen minutes chatting and joking before the advocates left.

  “I never thought I’d meet Louw in your office,” Ben remarked uneasily.

  “Why not? We’ve known each other for years.”

  “But-after Gordon’s inquest—?”

  Levinson laughed, patting him on the shoulder in a comradely gesture. “Good heavens, man, we’re all pros. You don’t expect us to mix our jobs with our lives, do you? Well, what is it today? Incidentally, did you get my last account?”

  6

  Early in October four or five of Ben’s colleagues were called in by the Special Branch and questioned about him. How long they’d known him, what they knew about his politics, his activities and interests, his association with Gordon Ngubene; whether they were aware of his “regular” visits to Soweto; whether they ever visited him and, if so, whether they had ever met blacks in his home, etc.

  Young Viviers was the first to come back to Ben to tell him all about his interview. “But I told them straight they were wasting their time, Oom Ben. I said quite a few things, I think, which they should have been told a long time ago.”

  “I appreciate it, Viviers. But—”

  The young man was too agitated to wait for him to finish. “Then they started asking questions about myself too. Whether I was ‘co-operating’ with you. What I knew about the ANC and so on. In the end they became all fatherly and said to me: ‘Mr Viviers, you come from a good Afrikaans family. We can see you have strong feelings about things. Well, it’s a free country and every man is entitled to his own views. But there’s one thing you’ve got to realise: it’s people like you the Communists are looking for. You don’t realise how easy it is to play into their hands. Before you know where you are, they’re using you for their own purposes.'”

  “I’m sorry, Viviers,” Ben said. “I didn’t want you to get involved too.”

  “Why should you be sorry? If they think they can intimidate me they have a surprise coming.” Adding, with a smile of satisfaction, “Just as well it was me they called in for questioning. Some of the others might have said some nasty things about you, I know what they’re like.”

  But soon, of course, it became known that Viviers had not been the only one. Ben had become used to hearing from friends that discreet inquiries had been made about him. But the deliberately organised way in which it had taken place this time, and the fact that his colleagues had been drawn into it, was a blow to him; as was the suspicion that the whole move had been arranged in such a way as to make sure that it would reach his ears. He was not worried by the thought that anything of significance might have come to light in the process: what dismayed him was that there was nothing he could do about it, no countermove he could possibly make.

  The other teachers involved in the interrogation did not dismiss it as lightly as Viviers had. To the jovial Carelse it had been, like nearly everything else in his carefree life, a huge joke. He openly talked about it in the common-room, finding in the episode ammunition for weeks of unmalicious and inane joking:” How’s the terrorist this morning?”-“I say, Oom Ben, can’t you lend me one of your bombs? I’d like to blow up the Standard Sevens “-“How’s the weather in Moscow today?”

  A few of the others began to ignore him more pointedly than before. Without looking at him Ferreira, of English, hinted about “some people who are going to burn their fingers".

  Koos Cloete broached it, in his usual aggressive manner, in the common room at tea-time:

  “In all the years I’ve spent teaching it has never yet been necessary for the Security Police to come and discuss one of my teachers with me. I’ve seen it coming, mind you. But I never thought it would actually come to this.”

  “I’m quite prepared to sort out the whole matter with you,” Ben said, finding it difficult to restrain his anger. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Anything can be twisted to make a good impression, Mr Du Toit. All I can say to you at this stage is that the Department has very strict regulations about this sort of thing. And you know it as well as I do.”

  “If you will allow me half an hour in your office, I’ll explain everything.”

  “Is there something you don’t want your colleagues to hear then?”

  Ben had to draw his breath in deeply to retain his self-control. “I’m prepared to tell you anything you want to know. Anywhere. If you really are worried about me.”

  “It’s more important to make it out with your own conscience,” said Cloete. “Before you become an embarrassment to the school.”

  Not wanting to say anything untoward, Ben went back to his own classroom. Thank God there was a free period ahead. For a long time
he sat unmoving, pulling at his pipe, staring across the rows of empty desks. Slowly his anger abated. Clarity returned. And, with it, the knowledge of what to do. It was so obvious that he found it hard to understand why he hadn’t thought about it before.

  Early in the afternoon he went back to John Vorster Square. In the parking garage in the basement he took the automatic lift. He wrote Colonel Viljoen’s name on the form the guard pushed towards him. Ten minutes later he was back in front of the same desk where he had been so many months before. This time Viljoen was alone; but even so, Ben remained conscious of people appearing noiselessly and invisibly in the door behind his back, staring at him, disappearing into the corridors. He had no idea of where in the big blue building Stolz was; perhaps he wasn’t even there today. Still he was aware of the man’s presence. His dark staring eyes. The thin line of the white scar on his cheekbone. And somewhere behind this awareness, with the sudden violence of a blow in the solar plexus, the memory of Gordon’s face and frail body, his hat pressed against his chest with two hands. If it was me, all right. But he is my child and I must know. God is my witness today: I cannot stop before I know what happened to him and where they buried him. His body belongs to me. It is my son’s body.

  The amiable, tanned, middle-aged face opposite him. The grey crew-cut. Leaning back in his chair balanced on two legs.

  “What can I do for you, Mr Du Toit? I do feel honoured.”

  “Colonel, I thought it was high time we had a frank discussion.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that. What is it you would like to discuss?”

  “I think you know very well.”

  “Please be more specific.” The hint of a small muscle flickering in his cheek.

  “I’m not sure how you people operate. But you must be aware of the fact that your men have been waging a campaign of intimidation against me for months on end.”

  “You must be exaggerating, Mr Du Toit.”

  “You know that they searched my house, don’t you?”

  “Simple routine. I trust they were polite?”

  “Of course they were. That’s not the point. What about all the other things? Questioning my colleagues about me.”

  “Why should that upset you? I’m sure you don’t have anything to hide.”

  “It’s not that, Colonel. It’s – well, you know what people are like. They start talking. All sorts of rumours are being spread. One’s family has to bear the brunt.”

  A quiet chuckle. “Mr Du Toit, I’m no doctor but it seems to me what you need is a good holiday.” Adding, with the smallest hint of an undertone: “Just to get away from it all for a while.”

  “There are other things too,” Ben persisted, refusing to be put off. “My telephone. My mail.”

  “What about your telephone and your mail?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re not aware of it, Colonel.”

  “Of what?”

  Ben could feel a throbbing in his temple. “When I come into my classroom, I find insults scrawled all over the board. There was a hammer-and-sickle painted on my front door. I’ve had my car tyres cut to bits. Night after night we’re pestered by anonymous phone calls.”

  The Colonel allowed his chair to tilt forward, back on the floor. He leaned over. “Have you reported all this to the police?”

  “What’s the use?”

  “That is what they’re there for, isn’t it?”

  “All I want to know, Colonel, is why don’t you leave me in peace?”

  “Now wait, wait a minute, Mr Du Toit. You’re not trying to blame me for it, are you?”

  He had no choice but to persist: “Colonel, why is it so important to you people to stop my inquiries about Gordon Ngubene?”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  It seemed as if he would never be allowed an opening. And yet he had persuaded himself that with this man, unlike all the others, he could be frank; and that he would get an equally frank reply. He’d thought that they would speak the same language. For a while he sat staring at the framed photograph of the two blond boys, standing at an angle on the desk between them.

  “Colonel,” he said, suddenly impetuous, “doesn’t it haunt you sometimes? Don’t you wake up at night about what happened to Gordon?”

  “All the available evidence was placed before a competent magistrate who examined everything in depth and gave his finding.”

  “What about the evidence that was deliberately kept from the court?”

  “Well, now! Mr Du Toit, if you possess any information that may be of use to us I trust you won’t hesitate to discuss it with me.”

  Ben looked at him, rigid on his straight-backed chair.

  The Colonel leaned over more closely towards him, his tone darkening: “Because if there are facts you are deliberately hiding from us, Mr Du Toit – if you give us reason to believe that you may be involved in activities that may be dangerous both to yourself and to us – then I can foresee some problems.”

  “Is that a threat, Colonel?” he asked, his jaws very tight.

  Col Viljoen smiled. “Let’s call it a warning,” he said. “A friendly warning. You know, sometimes one does something with the best of intentions, but because you’re so deeply involved you may not realise all the implications.”

  “You mean I’m being used by the Communists?” He foundit difficult to tone down the sarcasm.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “That’s what your men told one of my colleagues.”

  Viljoen made a brief note on a sheet of ruled paper lying on the desk before him. From where he sat Ben couldn’t decipher it; but more than anything else that had happened during the interview it made his heart contract.

  “So you really have nothing to tell me, Colonel?”

  “I was looking forward to hearing something from you, Mr Du Toit.”

  “Then I won’t waste your time any longer.”

  Ben got up. When he came to the door the Colonel said quietly behind him: “I’m sure we’ll see each other again, Mr Du Toit.”

  That night, when they were all asleep, except for Johan who was still studying in his room, three shots were fired from the street into Ben’s living-room. The TV screen was shattered, but fortunately there was no further damage. He reported it to the police, but the culprit was never found. The doctor had to be called to attend to Susan.

  7

  He was diffident about going to the press, even after discussing it with Melanie.

  “I don’t think you have any choice left, Ben,” she said. “There was a time when you had to keep it as private as possible. You and Stanley and I, all three of us. But there’s a point of no return. If you keep it to yourself now they may try to silence you altogether. Your safety lies in making it known. Andif you really want to do something for Gordon you’ll just have to use the press.”

  “And how long before they start using me?”

  “The final choice remains your own.”

  “I’m sure your paper would love the scoop!” he said in a sudden gust of aggressiveness.

  “No, Ben,” she said quietly. “I know I’m being a very bad journalist now but I don’t want it to break in my paper. Go to an Afrikaans paper. That’s the only place where it will really carry any weight. You know what the government thinks of the ‘English press'.”

  Even at that point he still tried to postpone it by first making an appointment to see George Ahlers, the company director his sister Helena had married.

  The office, the size of a ballroom, was on the top floor of an ultramodern building overlooking most of the city. Heavy armchairs, low glass table, mahogany desk with a writing surface in calfskin. Long boardroom table surrounded by fake-antique chairs; cut-glass water carafes and blotters in leather frames at every seat. Elephant’s-ear and Delicious Monster in large ceramic pots. The whole room dominated by the lordly presence of George Ahlers: large-limbed and athletic, well over six feet tall, in navy suit and pale blue shirt, a tie proclaiming dazzling go
od taste. He had a balding head with a fringe of longish grey hair over his ears. Ruddy face. Cigar and signet ring.

  In his worn brown suit Ben felt like a poor relation coming to ask a favour – a feeling aggravated by George’s show of urbanity.

  “Well, well, Ben, haven’t seen you in years. Have a seat. Cigar?”

  “No thank you, George.”

  “And how’s Susan?”

  “She’s fine. I’ve come on business.”

  “Really? Did you inherit a fortune or what?”

  After he had explained the matter George’s joviality was visibly dampened. “Ben, you know I’d just love to help you. Frightful story. But what can I possibly do?”

  “I thought big businessmen like you might have access to the government. So I wondered—”

  “Your father-in-law is an M.P., isn’t he?”

  “He’s already given me the cold shoulder. And I need someone with contacts right at the top.”

  “It’s hopeless, Ben. You’re making a sad mistake if you seriously think big business in this country has an open door to the government. In an industrial country like the U.S. maybe. But not here. There’s a one-way street running from politics to business. Not the other way.” He blew out a small cloud of cigar smoke, relishing it. “Even supposing I can approach a Cabinet Minister – just for argument’s sake – what do you think will happen? In my position I’m dependent on permits, concessions, goodwill.” With perfect timing he tapped the ash from his cigar into a crystal ashtray. “Once I get involved in this sort of thing it’s tickets.” He changed into a more comfortable reclining position. “But tell me, when are you and Susan coming over to see us? We’ve got so much to talk about.”