A Dry White Season Page 4

  As they came to know each other better Ben discovered more about Gordon’s background. As a young boy he had arrived from the Transkei with his parents when his father had found employment in the City Deep Mine. And since he showed interest in reading and writing from an early age he was sent to school – no cheap or easy undertaking for a man in his father’s position. Gordon made steady progress until he’d passed Standard Two, but then his father died in a rockfall in the mine and Gordon had to leave school and start working to supplement his mother’s meagre income as a domestic servant. For some time he was houseboy for a rich Jewish family in Houghton; later he found a better paid job as messenger for a firm of attorneys in the city, and then as an assistant in a bookshop. Somehow he managed to keep up his reading and the manager of the bookshop, pleased by his interest, helped him to continue his studies. In this way he eventually passed Standard Four.

  At that stage Gordon went back to the Transkei. A traumatic experience, as it turned out, since there was no work for him back home, apart from lending a hand with the paltry farming activities of a great-uncle: planting maize, scouring the veld with a lean dog in search of hares for meat, sitting in the sun in front of the hut. He’d left the city because he couldn’t stand life there any more; but it proved to be worse on the farm. There was something fretful and desultory in his blood after the years he’d been away. All the money he’d brought with him had gone into lobola – the dowry for a wife; and barely a year after his arrival in the Transkei he returned to the only place he really knew, Johannesburg, Gouthini. After a brief unsettled spell he landed at Ben’s school.

  One after another his children were born: in Alexandra, then Moroka, then Orlando. The eldest was Jonathan, his favourite. From the outset Gordon had resolved to rear his son in the traditions of his tribe. And when Jonathan turned fourteen he was sent back to the Transkei to be circumcised and initiated.

  A year later Jonathan – or Sipho, which Gordon said was his “real” name – was back, no longer a kwedini but a man. Gordon had always spoken about this day. From now on he and his son would be allies, two men in the house. There was no lack of friction, since Jonathan obviously had a mind of his own; but on the main issue they agreed: Jonathan would go to school for as long as possible. And it was just after he’d passed Standard Six and secondary school was becoming an expensive business, that they turned to Ben for help.

  Ben made enquiries at Jonathan’s school and the family’s church and, finding everybody in agreement on the boy’s intelligence and perseverance and promise, offered to pay for Jonathan’s school fees and books for as long as he continued to do well. He was quite impressed by the youngster: a thin, shy, polite boy, always neatly dressed, his shirt as starkly white as his teeth. In exchange for the financial support, Gordon saw to it that Jonathan agreed to help out in Ben’s garden over weekends.

  At the end of the first year there were smiles all round when Jonathan produced his school report, showing an average of over sixty per cent. As a reward for his achievement Ben gave him an old suit that belonged to his own son Johan – the two boys were roughly the same age – as well as an almost new pair of shoes and two rand in cash.

  But in the course of the second year Jonathan began to change. Although he was still doing reasonably well he seemed to have lost interest and often played truant;/he no longer turned up over weekends for his stint of gardening; his attitude became sullen and truculent and a couple of times he was openly cheeky with Ben. According to Gordon he was spending more time on the streets than at home. Surely no good could come of it.

  His fears were soon realised. One day there was trouble at a beer-hall. A gang of tsotsis – hooligans – attacked a group of older men, and when the owner tried to throw them out they ran amok in the place, smashing everything in their way. The police arrived in two vans and carted off whatever youngsters they could lay hands on in the vicinity of the beer-hall, Jonathan among them.

  The boy insisted that he’d had nothing to do with the commotion, that he’d been on the scene purely by accident when the fighting broke out; but the police witnesses testified that they’d seen him with the gang. The trial was very brief. Owing to a misunderstanding Gordon didn’t attend: he had been told it would take place in the afternoon but when he arrived at the courtroom it was all over. He tried to protest against Jonathan’s sentence of six cuts, but by that time the flogging had already been administered.

  The following day he brought the boy to Ben’s home; Jonathan had difficulty walking.

  “Pull down your pants and show the Baas,” ordered Gordon.

  Jonathan tried to protest, but Gordon promptly undid the belt and slid the soiled and blood-stained shorts from his son’s body, exposing the six cuts incised on his buttocks like six gashes with a knife.

  “That’s not what I’m complaining about, Baas,” said Gordon. “If I know he did wrong I will give him a beating on top of this. But he says he is innocent and they didn’t believe him.”

  “Didn’t they give him time to state his case in court?”

  “What does he understand of the court? Before he knew what was going on it was all over.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it now, Gordon,” said Ben unhappily. “I can get you a lawyer to appeal, but that won’t heal Jonathan’s buttocks.”

  “I know.” While Jonathan was fumbling fiercely with his shorts, Gordon stood watching him. After a while he looked up and said almost apologetically: “Those buttocks will heal in time, Baas. I’m not worried about them. But those marks are right here.“ With barely repressed indignation he put a hand on his chest. “And I don’t think they will ever heal.”

  He was proved right. Jonathan no longer showed much interest in school. According to Gordon he’d become resentful against the “Boere” and refused to learn Afrikaans. He started talking about things like Black Power and the African National Congress, which scared and depressed his father. At the end of the year Jonathan failed. He didn’t seem to care in the least: for days on end, Gordon reported, he would simply disappear from home and refuse to answer any questions about his whereabouts. Ben was in no mood to continue what he now regarded as wasting money on his studies. But Gordon pleaded very strongly.

  “Baas, if you stop now it’ll be the end of Jonathan. And he will infect the other children in my house too. Because this is a bad sickness and it can only be cured by the school.”

  Ben reluctantly agreed. And, somewhat to his surprise, the next year started in a more promising way than the previous one had ended. Jonathan continued to be secretive at home, given to moodiness and sudden outbursts; but he did go back to school. Until June,the sixteenth to be exact, that Wednesday, when Soweto erupted. The children massing in the school playgrounds like swarms of bees preparing to leave their hives. The marches. The police. The gunshots. The dead and wounded carted off. From that day Jonathan hardly showed his face at home any more. Dazed with fear and worry Emily kept the little ones indoors, listening to the explosions, the sirens, the rumbling of the armour-plated vehicles; at night there were bonfires of bottlestores, beerhalls, administration buildings, schools. And in the streets the charred skeletons of Putco buses.

  It happened in July, in one of the demonstrations which by then had become an almost daily ritual: children and youths assembling for a march to Johannesburg, police converging in armoured trucks, long rattling bursts of automatic gunfire, a hail of stones and bricks and bottles. One police van was overturned and set alight. Shots, shouts, dogs. And from the clouds of dust and smoke some children ran to the Ngubenes’ home to report, breathless with excitement, that they’d seen Jonathan in the crowd surrounded and stormed by the police. But what happened afterwards, they couldn’t tell.

  By late evening he hadn’t come home yet.

  Gordon went to see a friend, a black taxi-driver, Stanley Makhaya, a man who knew everything about everything in the townships, and begged him to sound out his contacts for news of Jonat
han. For Stanley had contacts on both sides of the fence, among the blackjacks as well as in the deeper recesses of the underworld. Whatever you needed to find out in Soweto, said Gordon, Stanley Makhaya was the one man who could help you.

  Except this once, it seemed, for even Stanley was stumped. The police had picked up so many people on that particular day that it might take a week or more to obtain a list of names.

  Early the next morning Gordon and Emily set out in Stanley’s great white Dodge, his etembalami, to Baragwanath hospital. There was a crowd of other people on the same mission and they had to wait until three in the afternoon before a white-uniformed assistant was available to lead them to a cool green room where metal drawers were opened in the walls. The bodies of children, mostly. Some in torn and dusty clothes, others naked; some mutilated, others whole and seemingly unharmed, as if asleep, until one noticed the neat dark bullet-hole in the temple or chest and the small crust of dried blood clinging to it. Some wore tickets tied to a neck or a wrist, an elbow or a big toe, bearing a scrawled name; most were still nameless. But Jonathan was not among them.

  Back to the police. There were no telephones working in Soweto in those days; the bus services had been suspended and for the time being there were no trains either. Once again they had to call on Stanley Makhaya’s taxi to take them, however hazardous the journey, to John Vorster Square. A full day’s waiting yielded nothing. The men on duty were working under pressure and it was understandable that they were crusty and brusque when approached for information on detainees.

  After two more days had passed without any news of Jonathan, Gordon came to Ben for help. (No one had been surprised that he hadn’t turned up at his work lately. There was such widespread intimidation of black workers in the townships that very few risked going into the city to their jobs.)

  Ben tried his best to cheer him up: “He’s probably gone into hiding with some friends. If anything serious had happened I’m quite sure you would have heard by now.”

  Gordon refused to be persuaded. “You must talk to them, Baas. If I ask, they just send me away. But if you ask they will give you an answer.”

  Ben thought it wise to approach a lawyer, one whose name had been prominent in the newspapers recently in connection with scores of youngsters brought to court in the wake of the riots.

  A secretary answered the telephone. Mr Levinson, she regretted to say, was busy. Would Ben be prepared to make an appointment for three days later? He insisted that the matter was urgent. All he needed was five minutes to explain it to the lawyer on the telephone.

  Levinson sounded irritable, but consented to take down a few particulars. A few hours later his secretary phoned to tell Ben that the police hadn’t been able to give any information but the matter was being attended to. And it was still receiving their attention when Ben arrived at Levinson’s office three days later.

  “But it’s ridiculous!” he protested. “Surely they should know the names of their own detainees.”

  Levinson shrugged. “You don’t know them as well as I do, MrCoetzee.”

  “Du Toit.”

  “Oh yes.” He pushed a silver cigarette case across his enormous cluttered desk. “Smoke?”

  “No thanks.”

  Ben waited impatiently while the lawyer lit his own cigarette and exhaled the smoke with a show of civilised relish. A tall, athletic, tanned man, his smooth black hair slick with oil, long sideburns, neatly trimmed moustache, Clark Gable redivivus. Large well-groomed hands, two solid, golden rings; tiger-eye cuff-links. He was working in his shirtsleeves, but the wide crimson tie and crisp striped shirt lent formality to the studied nonchalance of his bearing. It was a difficult interview, interrupted constantly: by the telephone, the well-modulated voice of a secretary on the intercom, or an array of assistants – all of them young, blond, lithe, competent, with the poise of entrants for a beauty competition – coming and going with files, rustling papers, or confidentially whispered messages. But in the end Ben managed to arrange for Levinson to follow up his telephone appeals to the police with a written demand for specific information.

  “Now don’t you worry” – with a hearty gesture reminiscent of a soccer team manager offering his confident prognosis for the coming Saturday – “we’ll give them hell. By the way, do we have your address for the account? I presume you’ll be responsible for the costs? Unless” – he checked his notes – “unless this Ngubene chap has money of his own?”

  “No, I’ll look after it.”

  “Right. I’ll be in touch then, MrCoetzee.”

  “Du Toit.”

  “Of course.” He took Ben’s hand in a firm conspiratorial grip, pumping it like a mother bird feeding its young. “See you soon. ‘Bye.”

  A week later, after another telephone call, there was a letter from John Vorster Square: their query, it stated, had been referred to the Commissioner of Police. After another week had passed without further reaction, Levinson addressed a letter directly to the Commissioner. This time they received a prompt reply, advising them to take up the matter with the officer in charge at John Vorster Square.

  There was no reply to their next letter; but when Levinson made yet another sarcastic phone call to the Square, an unidentified officer at the other end curtly informed him that they had no knowledge whatsoever of any Jonathan Ngubene.

  Even then Gordon didn’t give up hope. So many youngsters had fled the country to find asylum in Swaziland or Botswana that Jonathan might well be among them. It would be in keeping with his behaviour of recent months. They just had to be patient, there would be a letter soon. In the meantime they had four other children to look after.

  But the uncertainty, the anxiety, the suspicion persisted. And they were hardly surprised when, about a month after Jonathan’s disappearance, the young black nurse arrived at their home.

  She’d been trying for nearly a week to find them, she said. She was helping out in the black section at the General Hospital. Ten days ago a black boy of about seventeen or eighteen had been admitted to a private ward. His condition seemed to be serious. His head swathed in bandages. His belly bloated. Sometimes one could hear him moaning or screaming. But none of the ordinary staff had been allowed near him and they’d posted policemen at his door. Once she’d heard the name “Ngubene". And then she’d learned from Stanley – yes, she knew him, didn’t everybody know him? – that Gordon and Emily were looking for their son. That was why she’d come.

  They didn’t sleep at all that night. The next morning they went to the hospital where an impatient matron denied that there had ever been anyone by the name of Ngubene in her wards; nor had there been any police on guard duty. Would they please go away now, her time was valuable.

  Back to Ben; back to Dan Levinson.

  The hospital superintendent: “It’s preposterous. I would have known if there had been such a case in my hospital, wouldn’t I? You people are always raking up trouble.”

  Two days later they received another visit from the young nurse. She’d just been sacked by the hospital, she told them. No one had given her any reason for it. Only a few days ago she’d been commended for her conscientiousness; now, all of a sudden, her services weren’t required any more. However, she assured them that the black boy was no longer there. The previous evening she’d slipped round the building and climbed up the waterpipes to peep through a fanlight, but the bed had been empty.

  Two more letters by Dan Levinson to the police failed to elicit even an acknowledgement of receipt.

  Perhaps, Gordon grimly insisted, perhaps it really had been just a rumour; perhaps there would still be a letter from Mbabane in Swaziland or Gaberone in Botswana.

  In the end it was Stanley Makhaya, after all, who found the first positive lead. He’d been in touch with a cleaner at John Vorster Square, he said, and the man had confirmed that Jonathan was being held in one of the basement cells. That was all the man had been prepared to say. No, he hadn’t seen Jonathan with his own eyes. But he knew Jonath
an was there. Or rather: had been, until the previous morning. Because later in the day he’d been ordered to clean out the cell and he’d washed blood from the concrete floor.

  “It’s useless just to write another letter or make another phone call,” Ben told Levinson, white with anger. “This time you’ve got to do something. Even if it means a court interdict.”

  “Just leave it to me, Mr Coetzee.”

  “Du Toit.”

  “I’ve been waiting for a break like this,” said the lawyer, looking pleased. “Now we’ll give them the works. The whole titty. What about dropping a hint to the newspapers?”

  “That will just complicate everything.”

  “All right, have it your way.”

  But before Levinson had framed his plan of action he was telephoned by the Special Branch with a message for his client Gordon Ngubene. Would he kindly inform the man that his son Jonathan had died of natural causes the night before?

  2

  Once again Gordon and Emily put on their Sunday clothes for the trip to John Vorster Square – by that time the trains were running again – to enquire about the body: where it was; when they could get it for burial. One would have expected it to be a simple and straightforward matter, but the enquiry turned out to be yet another dead end. They were sent from one office to another, from Special Branch to CID, told to wait, told to come again.

  This time Gordon, for all his old-worldly courtesy, was not to be moved. He refused to budge until his questions had been answered. In the late afternoon a sympathetic senior officer received them. He apologised for the delay but there were, he said, some formalities that still had to be attended to. And an autopsy. But everything should be finished by the Monday.

  When on Monday they were once again sent away with empty hands they returned to Ben; and with him to the lawyer.