Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  At that time, between the Lebanese and ourselves, the marijuana trade was divided fairly. I met up with some of the guys from my own crew and shared with them what had happened to Mark. We discussed whether we would take any action, but most of us knew that Mark had brought what had happened to him on himself, and so to involve all of us in retaliation would disrupt everything. A couple of days after that, about six of us were walking out of the Killarney shopping mall when out of the blue we bumped into Jeffrey. We stopped to talk and the subject of Mark came up. Jeffrey said bluntly that Mark had deserved what he’d got. We just let it ride and we went our separate ways.

  Months later, after a full recovery, Mark was once again in a fight. He got beaten up so badly he ended up in hospital. When I visited him there, I was shocked at his condition. I told him that if I found the guy who’d done this to him, I was going to fuck him up.

  As the days passed and Mark recovered, I got the name of the fucker who’d done the actual damage. I learnt he was an amateur boxer called Lance who was undefeated in ten fights, which pissed me off even more. Mark was really such a harmless guy. It was also rumoured that Lance had the reputation of being one of the to-do guys on the street. I already had told several people of my intention to fight him.

  By now my schoolgirl girlfriend Tessa and I had parted ways and I had hooked up with my friend Russell’s sister, Katy. One weekend, while I was at their place in Atholl Oaklands, Russell had one of his friends over, and who should it be but Lance, the very person who had fucked up Mark! The guy was right there in the living room and apparently, so Russell told me, had heard I was looking for him. I followed Russell to the living room. As I walked in, my adrenaline was pumping.

  In situations like these, I’m not much of a one for words, but the guy was dressed in a suit!

  ‘Are you the guy who beat up Mark?’ I said to him without any preamble.

  Lance nodded and gave me a challenging smirk.

  Motherfucker, I thought, moving closer.

  Then he quickly added that he lived around the corner and asked if I would mind if he went home to change into something more comfortable to fight in. What the fuck? Was this some kind of date? I was ready to take him out there and then, and I didn’t think he’d given my mate Mark any chances. But being the gentleman that I was, I agreed, although with some reluctance.

  And so Lance left. I still had a hangover from the jol the night before, so I decided to have a bath while I waited, and while I was happy and relaxed in a tub of hot water Russell came into the bathroom and rolled me a joint. He pleaded with me to go easy on his friend. Whatever happened, he said, please don’t kick his head in. I didn’t say anything, but I kept having visions of Mark’s beaten face. Soon after my bath, Lance returned, dressed in tracksuit pants, sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of running shoes. I was dressed again, too, but now that the joint had taken effect, I was kind of mellow, and not nearly as angry as I’d been earlier.

  Lance and I were about the same weight, although he may have been about an inch taller than me. I saw that he was sweating; he had clearly been warming up. My friend Derek was there, and Russell acted as referee. Russell stood between us, we squared up, and the next thing I knew Lance rushed me. He jumped up in the air and started throwing a series of punches to my head, one after the other. I held both my fists up to my face in an attempt to block his punches, but they just kept coming. What the fuck, I thought, what’s this guy trying to do?

  With my left hand I grabbed his hair on the side of his head and in one swift motion pulled him to the ground. Then with my right hand I pounded him exactly three times on the side of his face. Lance shouted, ‘Stop! Stop!’ just when I was thinking of finishing him off with a kick or two to the face, and I vaguely remember Russell asking me not to.

  Fuck, I thought, the fool was surrendering already.

  As a child, when I was in Arcadia, whenever we fought – and we fought a lot – if you were forced into submission and you uttered the words ‘I give up’, it signalled an immediate end to the fight. On principle you stopped as soon as your adversary admitted defeat.

  I had no choice but to let the bastard go, but what the hell – at least I had kept my word to Mark. Revenge had been exacted. I remember wondering to myself how this guy had gained the reputation of someone you shouldn’t fuck with when he’d capitulated so easily. Anyway, he apologised for what he had done to Mark and put out his hand, which I shook. Then he left, satisfyingly humiliated.

  Russell, Derek and I wasted no time: we quickly made another pipe.

  I hoped Mark would learn to stay out of trouble, but that was wishful thinking.

  Chapter 4

  Rags to Riches

  Soon after recovering from my motorbike accident and coming to the end of my two years’ military service, I got my first real job. I started working in the rag trade as a salesman. My chief motivation for pursuing this line of business was the company car that came with it. Strangely enough, Derek and I both applied for positions in clothing sales at the same time, although independently. We both got the job. Having my own wheels and being out on the road all day tied in well with my other line of business. So my life as a salesman at Terryvette clothing began. My hours were from 7am to 5pm five days a week. Before very long I was seeing and servicing up to 40 agents per day. I was earning good money, too: between R4 000 and R7 000 a month. Accountants weren’t even earning that in those days.

  And on the weekends I partied hard, drank, went to clubs and got high. Girlfriends came and went and generally life was good.

  According to the doctors who had attended to me during my stay in hospital, I was probably going to have a limp for the rest of my life. Being a fighter, I was determined to prove them wrong. When the plaster was removed, my leg was as thin as my arms, the skin flaky and peeling. I was advised against playing any contact sport and it was also suggested that I see a physiotherapist. Instead I joined a martial arts club in Doornfontein called Goju Ryu Seiwakai. It was run by Shihan Booth, a 7th dan who was married to a Japanese woman, also a black belt. My legs were weak, and at first I struggled to keep up with the class. Goju Ryu was full contact; at the end of every lesson we would have to free-fight, and Shihan Booth was not happy unless blood was drawn. If it wasn’t, he would personally call one of the students up and draw blood himself.

  With time, I grew stronger and I lost my limp. I attained the level of brown belt. My best friend at the club was a guy named Pat. He was a grade higher than me and had a lightning-fast roundhouse kick. We agreed that when we came up against each other in a free-fighting session we should use only our fists and not our feet. I knew I would have no chance against him otherwise. Then one day the occasion arose and we were pitted against each other. While we were fighting, out of the blue Pat kicked me square in the face. Luckily I managed to turn my head to the side, so most of the impact was on the side of my head and nose, but I still saw stars. Thinking that my nose was broken, I instinctively put both hands to my face. Shihan went mad. What would happen if I was being attacked in the street, he shouted. Would I tell my attackers to wait a second while I checked if my nose was okay?

  So we had to start again. The instant Shihan gave the instruction to continue I delivered a lunge punch straight to Pat’s face. He fell backwards and blood spurted from his cheek. As he dropped, I moved forward but found I just couldn’t deliver another blow. He was my friend, after all, even though the fucker had hurt my nose. Instead I stood there feeling sorry for him. Shihan started shouting at me to finish him off. I couldn’t believe that I was about to beat up my friend, so I just looked at Shihan and said, ‘No’. Then I turned around and left the gym. I never went back.

  I worked for Terryvette for over a year and I did really well there, earning decent money and jolling on weekends. It was a good time to be young, free and wild. Once I had gained strength in my leg and exercised carefully, I started a social football team, which we called Mandrax United, and we would play against
other social teams, of which there were many around Joburg at that time. Friday and Saturday nights, my friends and I would move among the many clubs and restaurants in town – Charlie C’s, Arlecchinos, Mike’s Kitchen and the Turn ’n Tender in Greenside. The schwarmas at Mi-Vami’s in Hillbrow were legendary, and Fontana’s in Highpoint was open 24 hours – after a night of clubbing, buying a hot roast chicken there and eating it on your own was no problem. When we were stoned, sometimes we would head over to Wurstbude for German sausage served with sauerkraut, which was great when you had the munchies, or to Milky Lane, which had the best waffles in the world.

  I was offered a job with one of Terryvette’s competitors, Crystal Clothing, which I accepted, and I got into a relationship with a girl named Penelope. We became close and in December that year she planned a holiday for us to the Transkei. In the 1980s, this was a popular destination. The primary attraction for us was not the beautiful and undeveloped coastline, but rather the excellent weed you could get there. Penelope invited two of her best friends, Kiara and Andrea, to come along with us, and I asked Marco and Gerald to join us as well. Marco was a fellow Arcadian and Gerald was a mate who played in my football team. Our intention was to spend at least a week in the Transkei, then drive down the Garden Route and hit Cape Town. In the Transkei I would buy a stash of marijuana, sell it in Cape Town and use the profit to pay for my holiday.

  We left Johannesburg the second week in December, driving in convoy – Marco in his white Kombi, Gerald in his Ford Escort and me in my Skyline. The girls had enough luggage with them for three months. They were real kugels and a whole lot of fun to be with. The drive down was a blast. Music blaring – Talking Heads or Bob Marley – all of us wearing our Ray-Bans; we were just so cool. We smoked weed the whole way and pulled over whenever we got a chance, to buy cold drinks.

  Because I was responsible for the girls, around 11pm the first night I decided to pull over. I didn’t want to risk driving at night while stoned out of my head. Heaven forbid that I should have an accident and something should happen to my valuable cargo. Already Penelope’s father didn’t exactly approve of me. So we pulled off the road and reversed into a thick covering of bushes, where we made a last pipe, after which we all passed out. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours later when there was a knock on my side window and a torch was shining in our faces. It was the police, and there were two of them. I thought I was dreaming. We were in the middle of fucking nowhere; what the fuck was going on? I also had LSD in my wallet. I rolled my window down and asked if I could help them, and the officers very politely said that we needed to move our car to a rest area allocated for trucks and cars, which was only about 500m up the road. I thanked them just as politely and rolled my window back up again. A lucky break, that was for sure!

  I woke up early in the morning just as the sun was rising and we continued on our journey. Naturally, first things first, I smoked a joint. The drive through the beautiful scenery of the Transkei interior was pretty uneventful and, surprisingly, there weren’t any roadblocks. The gravel roads were slippery from recent rain and there were lots of potholes, so driving became quite dangerous. Marco’s Kombi broke down and I had to tow him. It was hectic. There were these buses coming around corners at incredible speeds, almost wiping us out. I sobered up very quickly. Fortunately, we found a garage that was able to fix the Kombi.

  At Port St Johns we stopped at a trading store that looked like a rundown shack from an old Western but was amazingly well stocked with camping equipment and food. As we pulled in our cars were surrounded by African kids no older than 13 or 14, who seemed to have come out of nowhere. We realised right away that these kids were looking for customers: in each one’s outstretched hand was a sample of marijuana. One of the stronger-looking kids had the best quality out of the group, so I bought what he had and told him to come see us at the camp site. I didn’t know exactly where we’d be, but he said no problem, he would find us. After buying supplies for the next few days we left the store and came to a fork in the road. If you took the right fork you would end up at the municipal camp site, where there were toilets and showers but you were required to pay; if you took the left fork you came to a beautiful camp site, but with no public amenities whatsoever. The road into the municipal camp site was so steep that we reckoned it would be impossible to get out if it rained, and we could be trapped there for days. We took a vote and the general consensus was to take the undeveloped camp site, which was more alluring anyway. Driving in was horrendous all the same. The road was wet, and several times our cars almost slid over the edge. No sooner had we found a cool spot to pitch our tent than a light drizzle began to fall and the wind picked up.

  We had barely parked the cars when Andrea, in her nasal kugel tone, said, ‘I need to use the loo, Shaun.’ I just packed up laughing before reminding her that we had voted on this. ‘Is it a number one or a number two you’re wishing to do?’ I enquired. ‘If it’s a number one, you see that bush about 30m away? That would be your best bet. If it’s a number two, then that very same bush will provide enough cover for you, but take a toilet roll with you and the spade I have in the boot.’

  Andrea stared at me in complete disbelief. ‘ARE YOU MAD, SHAUN?’ she snapped. ‘In that case, I’m not going.’

  ‘Baby,’ I told her as I began unpacking our camping equipment, ‘we are going to be stuck here for a few days, so you either go and do what you have to do, or hold it in – it’s up to you.’

  Marco and Gerald helped me pitch the tent. Sadly, it was too wet to make a fire but we settled in pretty nicely. Although it was still drizzling, we took a walk to see where the beach was. It was a beautiful sight. With the weather so overcast, though, we walked back and sat in the tent and smoked marijuana. Later that afternoon the kid we’d met at the trading store came and found us, bringing with him a bundle of the same weed we’d purchased earlier. What more could we wish for? Music, a light drizzle and the best weed. To cut a long story short, we were stuck there for two days, but our little friend made sure we never ran out of weed.

  On the second day, the wind was so strong that it ripped my tent and we were forced to take shelter in the car. Everybody was miserable; by then we just wanted to get the hell out of there. Our fortunes took a turn for the better on the third day when a scorching-hot sun broke through the clouds. By lunchtime the road seemed reasonably dry, and we decided to leave while the going was good. With the poor condition of the road, I couldn’t risk taking any passengers so the girls had to hike up the hill. They were not impressed. After that bit of adventure, we went and booked into a hotel. Gerald and Marco slept in the Kombi while the girls and I had beds. After showering for the first time in three days we all gathered around and smoked a Mandrax pipe. It was such a relief being back in civilisation.

  Gerald and Marco decided to go and look for the kid who’d been keeping us in weed to find out if he could take us into the mountains. He said he could, and in fact he took us on a long drive along winding sand roads that weren’t even safe for a cattle cart. We were taken to a tribesman named Julius, who was famous for making the best liquid hash in the world. He had a whole crop growing on the other side of the mountain. Apparently his hash was sold on the streets of Amsterdam, or so we’d heard. I had a little surprise for him. I doubted whether he’d ever smoked Mandrax.

  To get to his hut, we had to leave the car 500m away and do the rest of the distance on foot. Julius, who looked like an old chief, met us at the entrance to his hut with a smile from ear to ear. He invited us inside. We all shook hands and introduced ourselves and then we sat on sections of logs cut into stools. Julius brought out what looked like a Turkish opium pipe, a bit like a hubbly-bubbly, and we smoked with him. Then I made him a Mandrax pipe. He was dizzy from that – hell, he was so stoned. We bought a 5kg coffee can of marijuana from him for R150 and assured him we’d be back in a few months’ time.

  While we were sitting there smoking, I was on cloud nine. No traffic, n
o buzz of people around, just pure tranquillity. I felt one with nature. The quiet, together with my altered state of mind and being so far removed from civilisation, really did something to me. While I was tripping out on the magnificence of nature, the sun disappeared behind these ominous black clouds. I remember pointing in their direction and saying to the guys that if we didn’t get out of there, we’d get stuck like we had been at the camp site. We knew by then that the Transkei roads turned into rivers of clay as soon as the rain came down.

  We said hurried farewells and left, but the clouds were moving faster than we were. Before we even reached the car, rain started bucketing down. We managed to drive down the mountain just ahead of it. For a while it was touch and go. No fucking around with nature.

  Funnily enough, as we got to the bottom of the mountain, a BMW came around the corner. It was one of my mates from Joburg.

  ‘Like, what the fuck are you doing here, man?’ I asked him, laughing, as we drew up alongside each other.

  ‘We’re going to see Julius,’ he answered, just like it was an everyday happening.

  I advised him to come back another day because it was too dangerous to drive. He ignored my warning and drove up anyway, and I wished him luck.

  We went back to the hotel, where I packed the marijuana into bank bags, leaving them slightly open in case the weed went mouldy. Sometimes if a crop is picked too early and stored, mould can set in very quickly and then the stuff is unsmokeable. That afternoon we relaxed at the hotel and walked on the beach. We planned to go the next day to Umngazi River Mouth, a popular holiday resort on the Wild Coast. It is set in a valley on the bank of a beautiful lagoon, with huge white sand dunes and deserted beaches around it. A perfect place for a great day out.

  Early in the morning, just before we set off, we all swallowed half a cap of LSD. We took with us about three litres of vodka, orange juice, our ghetto blaster with lots of music, boogie boards, an ice cooler and some food. We were going all out for a day of partying. We also had enough marijuana for an army. Penelope had her Nikon camera. Marco and I had our firearms. We found a place to park our cars and proceeded to cross the river mouth on foot. It was low tide so there was only a few centimetres of water to wade through.