A Trojan Affair

by Michael Smorenburg

In a flash, Dawie was out and running, running for his life, like a jackal pursued by the hounds of his deepest fears. He was listening for a yell to return, listening for the brute to challenge him, straining to hear the dreadful snicker of a pistol’s slide. And then, when he was beyond gunshot range, he expected the inevitable turn of the police van’s engine and squealing stuttering tires in hot pursuit.

  Instinctively, he avoided the direct route home, veering instead into a side street and then an alley. Like a hyena slinking along fences, he blended into the background of oncoming night.

  Mid-afternoon, he’d been on the phone, walking back from school. It hadn’t been Baas JJ’s airtime either, it had been airtime he’d bought with extra money he’d earned by washing the car of one of his regular customers. Dawie had a business doing odd jobs in the town.

  He’d been so proud of that phone and guarded it with his life, keeping it in a woollen sock so that it wouldn’t get a scratch. Curiously, it had refused to work on the farm and only worked in town. When he’d brought the older broken phone to town, it too began to work. The problem had vexed him, and being a bold lad he’d asked Baas Bauer, his farm’s owner, directly why the Baas’ phone worked, but his would not.

  “The phone network is blocked on the farm,” the Baas had told him. “This is why my people don’t like this SKA. My phone works because it has Wi-Fi and I am using my computer Internet router, not the phone network. Your little phone doesn’t have Wi-Fi.”

  Dawie understood the difference between mobile signal and Wi-Fi, but when he tried to explain it to his people, they were having none of it, laughing at him for being duped. The Baas was lying to them, again; more of the white man’s tricks to keep them at a disadvantage they concluded.

  The community also wanted to know how he’d come by the mysterious new phone he’d acquired. He’d of course told the truth to his people; that Baas JJ had given him the money to buy the phone, so that he could help grandpa and that he could also take care of important business.

  He’d regretted betraying his promise so readily, but it was impossible to hide the phone, and he had no better story to explain how he’d come by it.

  Most believed him, though a few were deadly jealous; they’d begun the rumours about theft. He’d ignored them, not dignifying lies with more than the minimal truth.

  The phone had already been very useful and Dawie was constantly contemplating by what other ways he might exploit it. Because he had the phone, from a spot he’d jogged to along the road closer to town, he’d arranged for Grandpa to be picked up by Dara’s mom and taken to the clinic in two days. One of the goats Dawie kept in a private arrangement with their landlord, Baas Bauer, had been sold for meat to a labourer on another farm who Dawie had heard was getting married. His social life and opportunities to meet up with Dara were taking shape with this valuable asset in hand.

  Indeed, the phone had quickly become a central pivot to his life. With his own investment into airtime, he’d begun to make a tidy profit renting use of the phone to the other families that lived and worked alongside his family. It entailed them taking a hike until there was sufficient signal to make a call, but unless the receiving party was standing by near their farm at a location where there was signal, no call would connect. It was a huge step backward for everyone who had become accustomed to the free access to signal that had for a decade and more become widespread, to then suddenly have it cut to accommodate the new SKA infrastructure.

  He was certain Baas JJ would not mind—the Baas had not said he could not use it in these ways.

  In the few days since he’d acquired this asset, he’d become so comfortable and complacent with it that he had it out of the sock and was talking into it when the police van had rolled quietly up alongside.

  “Nou waar kry jy dit?” JJ’s father had asked him as he unfurled his vast frame from the van. The constable’s question was rhetorical; he’d already heard it was stolen.

  A surge of adrenaline had pulsed to every extremity and Dawie had babbled his reply, not making sense. And the less sense he made the more sceptical the policeman’s expression as he’d opened the cage on the back of the van.

  “Klim maar in,” he’d invited Dawie in a friendly manner, and the phone was relieved from his hand as he’d stepped into the cage.

  During the trip back to the police station, Dawie had slunk down as low as possible, terrified somebody would recognize him in his school uniform.

  His mind had been barraged by a myriad of conflicting imperatives. Baas JJ had said his father was a good man, just suspicious. But he could not betray the Baas and reveal how and why he’d come by the phone, because the Baas had specifically linked the necessity for the phone with important and secret matters that had to do with his own father—the man now arresting him.

  I’ll tell them a rich Baas from the city has given me the phone to help my parents and neighbours. He hatched the story during the short trip; it was the truth after all. It just didn’t have all the facts and he had assured himself that it should clear matters up.

  There’d been no more time to think it through as they’d crunched to a halt outside the police headquarters and the van’s rear door lock unhitched, yawning open. He’d been quickly ushered through the charge office where a member of the public had been making a statement to the black sergeant.

  As they disappeared into the gloom of the cellblock, Kruger had offhandedly mentioned catching a “hotnot dief”, a little coloured thief, and the stranger making the statement had nodded approvingly.

  As the open-handed slaps had come, Dawie, who had been at the end of enough abuse in his life to judge it, could tell that they were expertly delivered; just hard enough to hurt, yet not so hard that their sound would carry to ears that might help. The handcuffs to the bars had bitten into his flesh with each blow that had sent him reeling.

  He repeated his story between cracks against the head, but was quickly cornered in its details; he’d not thought far enough through it to concoct an identity for the mysterious and benevolent stranger he alleged had funded the gift.

  “So you’re a hard boy?” Andre had said with a calm practiced cruelty, “I know how to make a hard man humble.”

  The gate had clanged and bolted. Ten minutes later Kruger had reappeared carrying a section of car inner-tube and a spray can. Dawie’s mind exploded in terror; he knew what was coming.

  The big man had grabbed him and with skilled deftness pulled the section of car inner-tube over the boy’s head.

  The rubber had sealed Dawie’s eyes and breathing. He’d instantly been locked into a claustrophobic world of terror—the rubber extinguishing his ability to breathe.

  Ten seconds felt like a minute, and twenty felt ten times longer.

  He’d felt the blackness of suffocation stalking him and had started to taste terror as his throat clutched spasmodically. His chest had heaved, his body straining with futility against the biting cuffs that unforgivingly held him.

  Kruger had picked the precise moment that the boy would black out and lifted the cloying rubber from the boy’s chin just enough for him to suck air. In the midst of that desperate clutch for breath, the Constable sprayed a squirt of pepper gas, then dropped the rubber seal back in place.

  Dawie had exploded into an insane rage and his haunting growls had fought against the muffling, desperate to be heard.

  Five seconds passed, then Kruger had stepped forward and rolled the rubber back enough so that the boy could retch and clutch for air freely again, but not so much that he could see.

  “Now I want you to tell me the truth,” he’d spoken very gently but firmly, almost like a father might.

  Dawie had cried like a baby. Choking on his own vomit and pouring saliva, his resolve to protect his new friend, Baas JJ—the torturer’s own son—broken.

  “Dis Baas se seun, Baas, your own son,” he’d disclosed. “Dis Baas JJ wat dit vir my gegee het.”

  Andre had ripped the tube from Dawie’s head w
ith a ferocity Dawie could scarcely believe. Dawie could see nothing for the tears and the burning, but he could hear the Constable’s breathing—snorting with each breath like a ferocious bull about to charge. He braced himself to receive a clout that never came.

  “My own son hey?”

  The cell door had clanged to a close and the footsteps had retreated. The door into the office had ripped open and slammed shut and he was left in his private hell, hanging from the cuff attached to the bars.

  After fifteen minutes, Dawie’s eyes had cleared and he could see again. The black sergeant had come and unlocked the cuffs through the bars. He’d said nothing, just took the cuffs and left.

  It had been many hours before Dawie was given his release.

  Now, as he ran, he wondered about the phone, about the dashed dreams its confiscation meant for him. About the anger Baas JJ must surely have for him losing such an expensive device and betraying whatever serious business it was that he’d embroiled Dawie in.

  He arrived at Tjaardt’s house when it was almost dark.

  The family was eating and the doorbell rang six urgent times before Susanne—who everyone called Sussie, Afrikaans for Sister—reached it, irritated by the insistent intrusion.

  She peered out through the peephole at the swollen, distorted face with terrified swivelling eyes urgently begging a sanctuary. The doorbell rang a seventh and eighth time before she realized who the haunted stranger was.

  “TJAARDT!!!” she involuntarily yelled as she ripped the door open and fumbled for the keys to the security gate. “DAWIE…! What in God’s name happened to you? TJAARDT!”

  The whole family arrived as one, cramming the doorway to take a look.

  Dawie began to cry. He knew a big boy should not give in to public tears, but the relief of finding a safe harbour broke over him like a wave and he sank down where he stood and sobbed.

  Sussie swarmed over him like a blanket, enveloping him in her ample bosom and effortlessly plucking him to his feet in a single lift with the adrenaline shock of his appearance.

  In quick order he was laid out on the couch, and wetted cloths were rotated quickly through a bowl of warm water and used to douse the chemical sting that still raked his eyes. Milk was brought for him to slake away the burn in his throat and he was consoled and caressed by everyone from every angle as they craned and cooed over him.

  As best he could, Dawie related his ordeal.

  “Die fokken vark!” Sussie growled. She’d always hated Kruger and habitually called him a fucking pig; today she spat it with boosted venom.

  She kept saying it, and between the oft-repeated cusses devising every manner of threat that ran from blatant vigilante reprisal to a Constitutional Court application.

  Eventually, Dawie’s condition was stabilized and the next step put into practice.

  Dara was called, and Marsha was put on the line. The address was provided and she promised to be there without delay.

  By the time Marsha arrived, Bennie Pieterson, the town’s mayor and Tjaardt’s uncle, had been in attendance for some time. He lived three doors down and was hailed in the first few moments as soon as Sussie knew it was serious.

  Bennie had ordered everyone to leave the room and they did so, retiring to the kitchen, keeping uncharacteristically quiet there as they each tried to catch snippets of what Bennie was saying to Dawie a corridor away.

  But Bennie wasn’t yet saying anything of interest. Dawie just told his story over and Bennie grunted and said encouraging things to keep the flow and details coming.

  When Marsha and Al arrived, Dawie was just about complete with his story, and Sussie took the opportunity to re-join the action. She admonished all of the others to stay in the kitchen and busy themselves with bringing tea for the guests.

  Bennie and his credentials were introduced, and he took the lead now and retold the story in summary, careful to include those legal issues of abuse that were damning—and there were many.

  “I’m just overwhelmed with what’s going on in this little town,” Al said when Bennie had finished.

  “It’s not always like this,” Bennie assured him.

  “I’m sure—for an outsider it’s a lunatic asylum,” he went on. “I mean, my son—now this. I thought this sort of thing was left decades behind us! If the press gets hold of this in the context of what the international community aims to do to transform this place, it’s going to be dynamite.”

  “That’s a concern, but I can’t deal with anything but this. I’m going right now to lodge a case against the police.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Sussie added and was already pulling on a sweater.

  “No. I’ll go alone. I don’t want to inflame this any more than necessary.”

  “How do you walk into the police station and ask the policeman who just violated the law to open a case against himself?” Marsha asked.

  “Calmly,” Bennie replied.

  Chapter 26

  “Die fokken hotnot… kont,” Andre raved.

  He was home in the kitchen, beginning to explain to Johanna why it was already 10 p.m. and he’d not called to say he’d miss their habitual 7 p.m. dinner. He’d never normally utter words like ‘fucking’ and ‘cunt’ in front of his wife, but he’d descended several rungs below rational thought and decency.

  Moments earlier, clinging to decency by a slender thread, he’d stormed through the door and ordered Sonja, who was sitting with her mother at the kitchen table and fretting about why father was so late and not answering his mobile phone, to her bedroom.

  As he had been about to leave the shift three hours earlier, the Captain—Andre’s black Station Commander—had come in through the door in a black mood.

  The Captain had snapped at Andre that he was to immediately hand over his service pistol, which was summarily confiscated to the Captain’s private safe.

  “You are on suspension… wait here until I call you!”

  Sitting where he was told to sit, Andre had seen that troublemaker, Bennie Pieterson, arriving and disappearing behind the Captain’s closed door.

  “Fok!” he’d said to himself.

  A few minutes later the door had opened and Andre’s co-worker, the duty officer, had disappeared in and the door had shut.

  Another few minutes later, Andre had been called in but not offered a seat.

  “Burgemeester Pieterson called me at home. I think you know what this is about,” the Captain had snarled at Andre.

  Andre had stood and endured the worst tongue lashing of his life. Never had anyone spoken to him like this, and now it was coming from a black man. It took all of his will to not reach across the table and throttle the life out of the Captain.

  Now he was home and on suspension, pending investigation.

  How stupid he’d been, he admitted to himself, to pick on the nephew of the Landdros. But he’d heard rumours that the boy had stolen a phone, and the boy had flaunted it so openly, almost challenging Andre. The perceived sleight had driven him mad with rage.

  On the drive home, he’d dreaded this moment, telling his wife, their relationship so strained of late.

  “I’ve just put down the phone to JJ,” Johanna said. It was all she’d needed to say. Her eyes said everything else—her disgust and disappointment in him.

  After Dawie had claimed in the cell that JJ had given him the phone, Andre had stormed back to the charge office and gone over the numbers stored in it, and there, listed as “J” was a number. He’d pushed dial and after four rings his son’s voice was like a fist slamming into his ear. “Dawie my boy, have they brought the papers yet?”

  On impulse, Andre had cut the call and a minute later the phone had rung. Accusingly, the screen displayed “J”.

  “Ja?” Andre had answered, “I’m investigating something here,” he’d said to his son.

  “Pa?” JJ had fumbled a response. “Why are you answering this, Pa?”

  “I picked this boy up with the phone—he says you gave it to
him.”

  “I did. Why did you pick him up? Where is he?”

  “He couldn’t tell me where he’d got it… gave me a long bullshit story. There’s so much theft these days from these little donners so I detained him till he could remember.”

  “What have you done to him?” JJ had been in an instant panic, his worst fears imagined. He knew too well that his father was a disciplinarian of the old type. He believed that the only language these local kids understood was brutality.

  “He’s all right. Now that I’ve cleared it up, he can go.”

  “Pa, if you have done anything to him…”

  “Nothing he didn’t deserve,” Andre had assured sternly.

  “For fuck sakes, Pa,” JJ had boiled over and lost his temper. “Fuck you, Pa, if you have hurt that boy…”

  He’d never spoken like that to anyone and now he’d said it to the man who had been his guide and hero for more than half his life.

  “I see…” Andre had sounded shockingly calm and distant. “Now I see how an atheist treats his father,” Andre had blurted his deepest disappointment. “A boy who once had God and respect.”

  “You are really losing your mind,” JJ had told him directly, not caring anymore for keeping the peace. “This has nothing to do with the horseshit you’re constantly trying to swing on me. This has to do with your bigoted miserable self, and your inability to learn and to change. The world you inhabited is dead, Pa. It is dead. It is rotten. It is rotten, and I have walked away from it and my mother and my sister will walk away from it too…”

  In the silence of the moment that had followed, JJ regretted having added his last utterance. It was not his place to disclose what he knew was coming in the family, but years of kowtowing had peaked, and he’d no longer cared to guard his tongue.

  “Ja, well, you have chosen your path then.” Andre too had crossed a boundary of caring. “You are with the enemy now; equipping the enemy. Tot die bitter einde, seun,” he’d spat out as though it was a lash to JJ’s face, and then he’d cut the call.