Talion

by Beyers de Vos

  It is in exactly this piece of no man’s land that, years ago, she found her first body. The rain was coming down in persistent sheets; the raindrops sat on her top lip and tasted like iron. The body was naked, blue. Covered in dirt and thorns. Covered in maggots. The raindrops turned small and white and slippery, sliding down her face, her skin prickling as if she were being eaten by tiny scavenging mouths.

  She didn’t throw up. She has a strong stomach.

  ‘Nolwazi?’

  The voice startles her and her hand shifts automatically to her gun. She turns.

  Frik is standing behind her, tall and smiling.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks. As far as she knew, he has never set foot inside Mamelodi.

  ‘I saw your car, thought I’d check. I tried to call you,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘This is where I found it.’

  ‘Found what?’

  ‘Rebecca. Her name was Rebecca.’

  ‘Who’s Rebecca?’

  ‘The first body I ever found.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Yes,’ she almost laughs at the lameness of his response, ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘No, I am here to visit an old friend.’

  ‘Sorry. I should have guessed you were from around here.’

  She looks at him, tall and pale in the whitewashed sunlight, looking at her with warmth and curiosity – and something else. Pity, perhaps. She hates it. He smiles at her. ‘You still owe me that ice cream,’ he says.

  She says, ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not from around here. My mother lives in Waterkloof.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘What does your mother do?’

  ‘She’s a doctor.’ She looks away as she says it.

  ‘Really? Which hospital?’

  ‘Little Company of Mary.’

  ‘No shit, my mom’s a cleaner there.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘I know there isn’t,’ he says.

  ‘Well, I better get going. See you, Frik.’

  10

  Slick killed his father on the same day that Mrs Yengeni’s shack burnt down.

  The shack burnt quickly, the metal sheets folding in on themselves, beaten; the smoke was yellow and dirty and seared Slick’s eyes. The neighbours, who had dampened most of the fire to make sure it couldn’t spread, stood watching the smouldering shack and the sobbing Mrs Yengeni outside it, and all agreed that this fire had been inevitable. It was known, even to young Slick, that Mrs Yengeni, a foreigner whose husband had died recently in the mines, was a drunk. A drunk who was famous for passing out on her dirty mattress and forgetting to turn off her rusty stove. The consensus drifted through the air with the smoke: This was bound to happen . . . Let’s just be grateful it wasn’t worse.

  But Slick had seen his father flick (carelessly) his cigarette butt across the low fence into Mrs Yengeni’s yard. He had seen it fall into the gap between her floor and the uneven ground, a gap filled with newspaper to stop rainwater from seeping into the floorboards and stray cats from taking shelter there. The not-completely-put-out cigarette stump had fallen into that gap, found friendly kindling, and brought Mrs Yengeni’s shack and Mrs Yengeni to their knees.

  Slick wasn’t the only one who had seen this act of casual and habitual vandalism. His mother had seen it too, and she’d bookmarked the moment in her cold and vengeful memory with a shake of her head and a sip of her home-brewed beer. And what Slick’s mother marked, Slick marked too.

  That evening, as the sun and the dust disappeared from the township, replaced by shattering laughter and foul-mouthed music, his mother confronted his father about the destruction of Mrs Yengeni’s shack. His father, who had been in the crowd while Mrs Yengeni’s shack had burnt, and who had agreed with Mr Motsele, the man who ran the spaza shop, that Mrs Yengeni didn’t deserve any mercy from them, said: ‘What does it matter? She was a stupid old woman. Her shack would have burnt down eventually. Building a new one will give her something to do.’

  Slick’s mother didn’t say anything, but she walked over to her own stove and began scooping some pap into a bowl.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Slick’s father.

  ‘I’m taking her something to eat,’ his mother said. ‘It’s the least we can do.’ Slick knew that Mrs Yengeni was spending the night under a blanket provided by his mother, too, but said nothing.

  ‘I’m not sharing my food with that woman.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ His mother continued scooping the pearly porridge into the bowl, staring at her husband, not blinking.

  Violence in Slick’s young life was something that usually arrived unexpectedly and moved swiftly. He could never see it coming, and could not protect himself or his mother against it. His father’s temper was not slow; it needed no kindling.

  But Slick’s mother fought back. She took up her frying pan and brandished it in front of her. ‘Not tonight, husband. I have enough bruises.’ The fight was short and intense. His mother was no match for his hardened father, who swept her weapon aside in a few seconds and begun pummelling his wife. She folded herself up on the floor and took the beating.

  The fists came without mercy.

  His father made no sound as he punched. To the ears of a young Slick, it didn’t sound much different to his parents’ infrequent sex. His father hit his mother until she was absolutely still. Then he turned towards Slick. Slick knew immediately that tonight was different. Usually, his father dealt three or four punches before he gave up and sauntered out of the house; usually, he gave Slick a passing flick against the head. But tonight there was something else in his father’s eyes, something Slick had not seen there before, deep and red. He knew that his mother was dead. He also knew that behind him, buried underneath the bags of cornmeal, there was a gun.

  As his father began stumbling towards him, Slick’s hands found the cold metal thing. Slick doesn’t remember how his little fingers found the trigger, or the strength to pull it. But the shots reverberated through the floor of the shack, sending ripples down his small spine. The aftershock threw him backwards, into the wall of the tiny room, and he didn’t have much time to recover.

  He heard voices, people gathering. His father’s corpse lay between him and the door.

  He had no choice but to run.

  He burst from the door head first, keeping his eyes down, running like he had never run before, like the ghosts of his parents were chasing him. He was through the sparse sea of legs collecting in front of his shack before anyone noticed. Distantly he heard the voice of Mrs Yengeni: ‘There goes the little bastard! He’s running away! Catch him, catch him, catch him, before he kills again!’

  Now, almost twelve years later, looking down a street not unlike the one he ran down that night, Slick imagines he can see his eight-year-old self running towards him, eyes wide and face wet. And he knows what it is he saw in his father’s eyes that night. It was the cold-blooded burn of heroin. A burn that changed the course of his life.

  The past is not a place he tries to spend too much time in. People tend to exaggerate the amount of influence a childhood has on you. Of course, when you tell the story of your life, your natural inclination is to start with your birth, your upbringing, your parents. Lots of emphasis is placed on these early years in the stories people tell about themselves, which Slick thinks is a selfish strategy: Look, people seem to be saying, look at all the things that happened that were out of my control.

  But lately he’s been thinking a lot about how it all started. All the violence.

  ‘Oy, bossman? Where to?’ comes a voice, clashing with the echo of his memories.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where to? We just gonna stand here on the side of the road?’

  Slick points to a tavern across the street, a red glow hidden behind a door plaste
red with beer labels. ‘In there,’ he says.

  ‘You don’t think people will notice us together?’

  ‘Don’t worry, whitey, you’re with me. No one will care.’

  ‘It’s quite quiet today.’

  ‘Yes, that helps too. Let’s go.’

  There are only a few other customers this early in the day; they don’t even look up from their drinks as Slick and the man whom he has come to think of as ‘his friend’ shuffle into the bar. They find a table in the back corner, behind the broken pool table. His friend orders a Black Label, and the girl who serves them (small, head down) leaves them be, but not before Slick notices the open cut on her forehead, the woozy look in her eyes. His friend notices it too. ‘That girl isn’t South African.’

  ‘No,’ Slick says, ‘no, she’s not.’ He longs for the silence of his house, the empty uncomplicated silence. ‘Let’s make this quick. Any news on the Hatfield busts?’

  His friend is looking around the bar, distracted, Slick guesses, by the exotic township otherness. The sharp smell of home-brewed beer, the sounds of people laughing in other languages, the brittle poverty. ‘Why did we meet here?’ his friend asks.

  Slick doesn’t have time for small talk. ‘Because I have business here. I have to pay a guy.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘For taking care of a problem. Now fucking tell me what I want to know.’

  ‘Jeez, boss, relax. You have nothing to worry about. The Hatfield raids got them nothing. No one has found any connection to you. They questioned Bra Joe again, but he can’t tell them anything. It’s a smart game, having students deal for you. The drug squad have turned their attention back to the big guns. Not us. They can’t trace your stuff back to you.’

  ‘Any update on where the anonymous tip came from?’

  ‘No, I can’t trace it. Probably just one of his customers.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Slick pauses, deciding whether he should reveal more. No, not yet. Instead, he says, ‘So can I send Steve back in?’

  ‘Give it a few weeks, and use a different locale, obviously. And no more of those stupid shoes.’

  ‘Great.’ Slick relaxes a little, letting the anger and anxiety of the last few months drain out of him. It had been a fucking nightmare having to pull out of Hatfield like that, having no runners on the ground. A costly nightmare.

  ‘Hey, boss?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Could I have my cash a little early this month?’

  Slick tries to keep his voice steady. ‘No, you’ll get your fucking money at the end of the month like you fucking usually do.’

  His friend knows better than to argue. Instead, he says, ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, any news on that phone?’

  ‘The report came in a few weeks ago. All his records. But don’t worry, boss, I buried it. No one is going to find out about that phone.’

  ‘Good, and make sure—’

  A noise from the kitchen interrupts them – a muffled cry, quickly followed by the door slamming shut, then a thud. None of the other customers, slumped over their drinks, have reacted, but Slick’s companion immediately stands up, hand at his gun, so that Slick can clearly see a badge sticking out from under his belt.

  ‘Sit the fuck down,’ Slick hisses. ‘Do you want people to see you’re a pig?’

  ‘But it sounds like there’s trouble?’

  ‘So what? This is Mamelodi – there’s always trouble. What do you care?’

  ‘I’m a pig, aren’t I?’

  ‘Ja, a crooked one.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I can just sit by and let someone get hurt.’

  ‘It’s over now, right? It was just someone burning their hands. Leave it.’

  ‘Sounded like more than that to me.’

  Slick sighs. ‘Leave it alone. I need something else from you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need you to do some digging for me on a guy.’

  ‘This wouldn’t happen to be the same guy who did all that to your face?’ To his credit, his friend looks him straight in the eye when he says this, and doesn’t flinch when Slick runs a coarse finger over the cut in his cheek, still caked in blood.

  ‘He’s a teacher. Making trouble.’

  ‘He has a name, this teacher?’

  ‘His name is Abraham. Abraham October.’

  11

  After she found Rebecca, after the body was taken away, Inspector Pamela Malope took her aside and said, ‘Take deep breaths and meet me around the corner in ten minutes.’ Exactly ten minutes later, she appeared, her heels clicking oddly on the dirt road, looking more sophisticated than anyone Nolwazi had ever seen. She was tall and curvy and wore her hair, grey even back then, shaved short. ‘Come on, I’m taking you for a drink.’

  They had gone into a small, unremarkable bar a short distance from the crime scene and Inspector Malope had bought her a beer and a shot of tequila and said, ‘Welcome to the police.’ And then, when Nolwazi was still quiet, she said, ‘Murder is a strange crime. When you think about it, it isn’t very common or normal. It’s been made common by the media, by television shows and films. Books, too. We’re fascinated by it, and we’re desensitised. But really, when you think about it, it’s a rare and peculiar thing.’

  Nolwazi looked at her sceptically.

  ‘Most police officers,’ she continued, like she’d made this point before and enjoyed making it, ‘won’t see a murder in their lifetime, everything being relative. Murder isn’t a parking offence – it isn’t theft and it isn’t as common as people make it seem in stories. Murder is a speciality crime, committed by a special class of criminal, and you should remember that if this is the kind of work you want to do.’

  Now, Nolwazi stares out of Inspector Malope’s window. The streets of Mamelodi are quiet today, because of the service-delivery protests that erupted yesterday, a common thing here, where people struggle so much to live. The protest had brought a brick through Inspector Malope’s window. A strong police presence is keeping people inside today, and Nolwazi is happy not to be in uniform. Uniforms are advertisements: We are the enemy. It is difficult for her to know that people no longer trust the police; that she is regarded as part of a militant machine, a fist of the state. Not a refuge any more, not a helping hand. It all changed after Marikana, of course. With hindsight, she could see that it had been a long time coming. That Marikana was just the final phase of the metamorphosis. That what had happened that day had created a new kind of police force. A terrified thing was born. It was worse in the townships. On the fringes, in the trenches. People became harder. Officers became crueller, or allowed their cruelty to be exposed, to be worn with sneering pride. It became a culture of punishment without question. And the public responded accordingly.

  It was this monster that she sought to escape when she left Mamelodi.

  She doesn’t want to generalise; she doesn’t want to make it worse. But after the attack on Inspector Malope, after the thing that happened, she had to take her head out of the sand and acknowledge a rot that had set in; had spread like a virus through the minds of the police force. We are the police and they are the civilians. Us and them. Us and them. Not we. Not together. Not community. Apartheid.

  She had to pull strings to arrange the transfer, and that irony isn’t lost on her. The system is rotten and the only way to use it is to expose yourself to the rot. But she isn’t sorry. And in the suburbs maybe she could be inoculated. Quarantined from reality. It certainly seemed to work for those people. Those middle classes. People like Freya Rust. Who walks through life with eyes wide shut. Nolwazi was perfectly happy to give that a try. To drink the little blue pills; to give up investigating murders. ‘You have to stop feeling things so intensely,’ Dr Phillippidis told her.

  Wasn’t she supposed to take things personally? Isn’t that what makes her a good police officer?

  Nolwazi wishes she could be more like the woman sitting opposite her. A woman who spent her life in the township, choosing to f
ight crime here, choosing to live among the people she swore to protect. And then, when Inspector Malope uncovered that money had been taken to hush a murder investigation – her bravery in reporting it, in agreeing to testify. She lost her job; she was intimidated, threatened. But she persevered. And then the attack. They came for her at night, with knives, with hatred. And she survived.

  ‘Why don’t you move, Mama? You can afford it.’

  ‘Because this is my home.’

  ‘But all the talk, the staring—’

  ‘Let them talk, let them stare!’

  ‘The threats?’

  ‘Their threats don’t scare me, daughter.’

  ‘You could come live with me, now that the trial is over.’ An offer Nolwazi had made before, a dozen times.

  ‘I’m not running.’

  No, Nolwazi was the one who ran. She looks at the piece of plastic taped across the broken window, the brick that was launched through it now lying peaceably on the kitchen counter, like it wasn’t a threat, a weapon. Inspector Malope follows her gaze, shakes her head sweetly, and says, ‘Here, have more tea.’

  Inspector Malope’s house is on the other side of Mamelodi, kilometres away from the dirty ditch where she ran into Frik earlier. (He never did tell her what he was doing there.) It is so different here, they might as well be in a different town: no shacks, no dirt roads, no portable toilets. Neat streets lined with neat houses, schoolchildren outside, a quiet domesticity enveloping the house, which smells like lemon-scented soap and rosemary. Only the brick a reminder of the simmering violence, the unquiet poverty, the restless corruption seething mere blocks away from here.

  Out the window, the view stretches over other houses just like this one (small, colourful) to a clean horizon, made of tall grass and the sunset-­tinged metal of the train track.

  ‘How is the new job going?’ Inspector Malope asks.

  ‘It’s going fine, Mama.’

  ‘I hear you’re struggling with a murder case.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘A little birdy.’

  ‘The colonel is a letch.’

  ‘He only looks, never touches.’