Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  After about four months I had the full cast removed and was given a half-cast, which enabled me to walk without crutches. During this time I enrolled at the Gordon Flack-Davidson Academy of Design to study fashion design. I also stopped dealing in marijuana. There were several reasons for this, one of them being that Derek and I had had a falling-out over a stash we’d stolen. Catching a bus to the city and back with a half-cast was horrendous, so after two weeks my dream of becoming a clothing designer came to an end. I threw in the towel, something I later deeply regretted.

  I got back onto the Joburg-Durban run and my drug habit escalated out of control. At one stage I found myself in Durban with nothing but the clothes on my back and my gun. I had lost all my possessions, including my motorbike. Some of my belongings were in Joburg. I was skin and bone, sleeping in a bus shelter in a coloured area at night and making do during the day. With the last coins in my pocket, I found a phone booth and called Joan.

  Joan and Malcolm had got married in 1980, and he and I had always got on well. I didn’t see them all that often – mostly when I needed money or help or was in trouble. Joan and I became really close when we lived in Arcadia and, although I was the wild younger brother and was often in trouble, she always looked out for me. In a way, I suppose she really took the place of my mother. Not only did she show me devotion and caring, but she also felt a deep responsibility for me as well. She was always coming to my rescue, a pattern that began in our childhood and continued into our adulthood. Now Joan told me to make my way to Vereeniging, south of Joburg, where she and Malcolm were living. They would fetch me from wherever I managed to get a lift to.

  A new shopping centre, Three Rivers, had just been built in Vereeniging. One thing it lacked was a delicatessen, and so Joan and Malcolm had decided to open one there. It was called Deli-World. I was given the responsibility of managing the place. The centre was L-shaped and our shop wasn’t in a great position. It was right at the end, which meant that we got no passing trade. We sold an assortment of fresh cold meats, cheeses, chocolates and a variety of mixed nuts and dried fruit. On Sundays in the early hours of the morning, we would drive to Kaufman’s Bakery in Joburg, on Louis Botha Avenue, opposite a drive-in fast food place called the Doll’s House. There we would pick up many dozens of freshly baked bagels and be back in Vereeniging in time to open up. The bagels were a big hit with our Jewish customers.

  Sadly, the delicatessen was doomed not to succeed. For one thing, I started giving credit to some of the African workers who frequented the centre, and for another I would help myself to my favourite foods every day – biltong, rare roast beef, nuts. I just loved the nuts. My sister would argue that I ate all the profits, but this was not strictly true. Unfortunately, we ran at a loss from the day we opened and eventually we were forced to close our doors.

  One good thing about living in Vereeniging and working at the deli was that I got clean and I stopped dealing.

  In 1983 I moved back to Joburg and stayed with my old school friend Craig in a flat in Berea. Prior to leaving Vereeniging I had organised a job with one of the clothing companies I’d worked for previously. I had always been good at what I did, even when I was stoned. I was given an already established sales round, one that was generating quite a substantial income. Being back in Joburg and reconnecting with my old friends, it was hardly surprising that I started smoking weed again. I seemed to go through these cycles: stop, stay clean for a short while, work, make money, use drugs, lose everything. By now I understood this pattern, and I thought I would limit my smoking to weekends only. On Saturday nights I always went to a club, where I would drink as much as was humanly possible and smoke weed well into the early hours of the morning. At that time there was a quaint club on the edge of the city called DV8, where a lot of punk rockers used to hang out. Everybody was tripping out on LSD and, club-wise, Joburg was happening. People of all ages flocked to the clubs to have a good time.

  I remember the first time I ever took LSD was during the day. It was called a microdot, a small, round, hard substance that looked like a slightly compressed lentil. There were six of us and we were raving out of our heads. I remember we walked into this fruit shop. Everything became more colourful and intense. We proceeded to eat the fruit. I don’t know what was so funny, but we were hysterical with laughter. Maybe it was the look on the shop owner’s face. He couldn’t believe our audacity and he did nothing to stop us. I almost died from laughing. We must have looked like raving lunatics. Laughing and provoking the owner, we left the shop without paying. I suppose he was only too happy to see us go.

  One night, Craig and I got really fucked out of our heads on Mandrax. I think it had been almost two years since I’d smoked Mandrax. Craig had been going to these African clubs on the far side of the city, where on several occasions he had picked up some hot black chicks. Until then I had never ‘crossed the colour bar’, but I had often wondered what it would be like, so on this particular night I agreed to go with him.

  Once at the club, besides one other white male, we were the only white guys there and the black chicks seemed to hover around us. At first I couldn’t actually see myself picking somebody up and taking her home, but as the evening progressed and the drunker I got, the more I entertained the idea. After smoking a joint on the roof later into the evening, Craig picked up two chicks. He introduced me to them at the bar. They acted all shy around us and remained at a distance, giggling and whispering to each other, but never addressing a word to Craig and me. Eventually, we left the club with the two girls. They sat in the back of the car huddled together, but, again, they never uttered a word. When we arrived at the flat, Craig took his chick to his bedroom while I escorted the other one to the lounge, where the lights were pretty dim. She came and sat next to me on the couch. She had make-up plastered all over her face, and her perfume was so strong I thought I might choke. I put my arm around her and my hand came to rest on her breasts. I gave them a slight squeeze but all I could feel was foam. I squeezed a little harder – still nothing, only a padded bra. Although I was drunk and fucked out of my head, this still struck me as strange. I put my other hand on her leg and in one swift movement I pushed it up her skirt and grabbed her crotch. Jesus, fuck! The woman had a huge cock and balls! Shocked, I jumped up so high I almost hit the ceiling. At the same time I pulled out my .38 Special.

  ‘Get the fuck out of here, motherfucker!’ I yelled. Grabbing the bitch – I mean, the guy – by the scruff of his neck, I dragged him to the door. There, pointing my gun straight in his face, I pulled the door open and threw him outside. Then I ran to the bedroom where Craig was under the covers in a hot embrace with his partner. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t noticed that he was with a man, so I shouted at him, ‘She’s a fucking man!’ He turned around to face me, mouth agape, his bloodshot eyes widening. I was waving my gun around.

  ‘What?’ he responded.

  I noticed that he was half-dressed and then I noticed that the person in bed beside him was also topless, except that this person had breasts. Jesus, what was going on? Pointing to the ‘thing’ next to him, I said, ‘You! Get out of here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Craig said.

  ‘Yours must be a transvestite,’ I told him.

  By this time the ‘thing’ was panicking, grabbing her top and scrambling to get off the bed. I helped her out the back door in the kitchen. Then I met up with Craig, who by this time was sitting on the couch in the lounge holding his head in his hands. He seemed to have sobered up very quickly. He looked at me in disbelief, but neither of us uttered a single word. Not then, nor ever after that. We simply erased the night from our minds.

  In 1984 riots were breaking out in the townships of Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Katlehong and Evaton in the Vaal Triangle. The trigger was the advent of the tricameral parliament, but it was apparent that these protests marked the beginning of the end of apartheid. The country’s economy was in serious trouble, and inflation and interest rates had reached all-time hi
ghs. Foreign investors began to withdraw their money and white professionals began to emigrate in big numbers. There was also a rapid decline in the Jewish population, especially in Johannesburg. Estimates showed that about 2 000 were leaving the country each year – and among these were many of my school friends. These were troubled times.

  The company I worked for targeted the black market and most of my customers lived in the townships. Early on during the riots I had occasion to go to Sebokeng township. Shops had been burned down, overturned cars lay in the streets, and protestors were everywhere, armed with traditional weapons. When I arrived at my customer’s house, he was shocked to see me and expressed fear for my safety. He urged me to leave at once and get the hell out of Sebokeng. He advised me not to come back until things had calmed down.

  As I was leaving, a gang of youths noticed me. Wielding their weapons, throwing stones and shouting abuse, they ran after my car. I was thinking, Hey, man, I’m on your side. Fuck apartheid. But I had the sense to know that this probably wasn’t the time to tell them. The fact that I was white was all they knew and if they had got their hands on me, I doubt that my political stance, such as it was, would have made a difference to my fate.

  My biggest fear was getting necklaced, a form of killing that had become popular in the townships during this time of unrest. People who were seen as government sympathisers or spies were publicly beaten and then had a tyre slung around their neck, which would be doused in petrol. The unfortunate person would then be set alight while he was still alive.

  There was chaos in the townships. In contrast, life in the white suburbs was relatively calm and people went about their daily business without being exposed to danger. In this climate of violence and uncertainty, using drugs was one way of closing our eyes and switching off our minds to the many injustices our fellow South Africans endured under apartheid. For me, getting high was an escape from myself. That dark hole into which I’d fallen so deeply had become my sanctuary. Nothing was of any consequence down there. The pain of my past, present and possible future were numbed into oblivion. I had built my own prison and was doing my time as best I could.

  During the mid-1980s the escort business was booming in Joburg, and the most prestigious agencies with the hottest girls operated in the city. Prostitution, the world’s oldest profession, always attracts a criminal element. Most of the girls were on drugs and many of them turned to selling their bodies to support their addiction. It was a market I stumbled on purely by accident. One of the girls I’d gone to school with had become an escort, and, through visiting her, I met other prostitutes and I started supplying them with drugs. As a result I spent a lot of time hanging around the escort agencies in town.

  The girls were great customers. They always had cash and never asked for credit. The owner of one of the agencies was a Hungarian guy. He knew my family, and his son, with whom he jointly ran the agency, soon became a good friend of mine. He offered me a job as a driver, which also entailed providing protection for the girls. I would take them on house calls and check that the clients were safe. I was also responsible for collecting the fee due to the agency.

  There was an incident when a steamer (a term we used for men who paid for sex) got violent with one of our girls. She managed to lock herself in one of the bedrooms in his house. Fortunately for her, there was a phone in the room, so she was able to call for help. Two of us were sent to her rescue. When we arrived, we kicked the door down. In such instances, in my experience, you hit first and ask no questions. As we entered the house, this pot-bellied businessman, half-drunk, came at me, but before he could do anything I pistol-whipped the fucker. Then we found the girl, who was terrified. We let her out of the house and then we ransacked the place, breaking furniture and any other valuable stuff that caught our eye, warning the businessman that if he ever touched another of our girls or reported us to the cops, we would kill him. The guy pissed his pants. He couldn’t stop apologising.

  I hated men who beat on women. When I raised my gun and was pointing it in his face, suddenly memories of the abuse my mother had suffered at the hands of Janos came to my mind, and all that anger I had felt as a child triggered a psychotic reaction in me. I was about to pull the trigger when my companion grabbed my shoulder.

  ‘Don’t shoot, man,’ he said. ‘Don’t shoot.’

  I lowered my weapon, but it was touch and go.

  A lot of the girls rented houses together, and, when I was not working at the club, I would be at one of the prostitutes’ houses, just visiting and doing my usual deliveries. I often smoked with them.

  This was how I met Janet. She was a petite girl who had two beautiful kids, nine and eleven years old.

  As the supplier, naturally I would have the honours of busting the pipe. One day we had loaded marijuana mixed with two Mandrax in a broken bottle neck, and one of the guys fired me up. After browning the pipe, we added on top what we called ‘Cremora’ (another two Mandrax). With three burning matches, I sucked and puffed, then had a boss of a hit. Before I released the smoke, Janet put her arm around my neck. Running her fingers through my hair, she pulled me towards her, placed her lips on mine and sucked the smoke from my lungs into hers – fuck, I got an instant erection. (Mandrax is also an aphrodisiac.) Our mouths locked, and the rush, combined with the sexual arousal, was incredible. I placed my hand on Janet’s breast, feeling her nipple harden to my touch.

  ‘Hey! What the fuck? Pass us the pipe!’ said one of my mates.

  For a moment Janet and I had become unaware of all the others. Spit was drooling out of my mouth and my eyes went blurry. All I could think about was fucking her real hard until she screamed from pain and pleasure.

  When it came to Janet’s turn to hit the bottle neck, I placed my mouth over hers and drew the smoke into mine. Then we left the lounge, went into her bedroom and literally ripped each other’s clothes off. Janet was tiny; I lifted her in the air and, while standing, lowered her onto my phallus, her hand guiding me. Fuck, it was great! The bitch was a little nymph – she scratched and clawed at my back and we rolled onto the bed and fucked in every position I knew.

  One thing about many of the prostitutes, and this included Janet, was that they were generally clean and they never fucked a steamer without making sure he wore a condom. I took a lustful fancy to Janet and she became my chick. I tried not to think about the guys she was fucking for money. For the next month we saw each other almost every day and fucked each other in as many days.

  But then Janet made a fatal mistake. She told me she loved me. The urgency to terminate our relationship and run began to gnaw at me.

  One of my regular Mandrax customers had just come out of prison. Integrating back into society was proving difficult for him and so he reverted to doing the crimes he had done time for. This guy was a professional housebreaker and he would fence stolen goods for Mandrax with me. I was always in the market for gold chains. Whenever we exchanged goods for drugs he would make Janet and me a few pipes. I couldn’t help noticing that my new friend in crime had the hots for my bitch. Among his stolen goods was a Winchester single-barrelled shotgun.

  One evening, while Janet was taking a bath, I brought up the fact that he was staring at my girl in a way that displayed his desire for her. His first reaction was denial, and he apologised if he had offended me.

  ‘Relax, man,’ I told him. ‘If you really want her, I’ll make you a swap. Ten Mandrax and the shotgun and she’s yours.’

  We shook hands on the deal.

  One morning around 11am, I was at Janet’s house. Except for the maid, all the girls were out. I was on my own. I loaded a Mandrax pipe, lit it and took a deep drag, the familiar chemical taste burning my throat and filling my lungs with smoke. My mind went into a spin. As I exhaled, I looked up and out through the window into the back garden. Right at that moment, I saw four plainclothes cops jumping over the wall, their guns strapped to their bodies.

  What the fuck, I thought. Their timing couldn’t have bee
n worse. I dropped the pipe in the dustbin, ran to the kitchen and made sure the security gate was locked. I yanked the key out of the lock and pushed it into a loaf of bread. Then I ran back to the bedroom and grabbed the dustbin and the folded piece of paper in which I had crushed three Mandrax, enough to get me a prison sentence.

  I bolted out the front door with the dustbin and hid it in the garden. My car, a white Ford Laser 1600i, was parked in the carport, but I didn’t have enough time to jump in and drive away, so I ran out the front gate and into a block of flats right next door to the house. I caught the lift to the sixth floor, and made my way up the stairs to the roof. From there I had a full view of the house. After about 30 minutes I saw the four cops climb back over the wall again. I sat and waited another 30 minutes before walking back to the house, thinking Fuck, that was a close shave! I retrieved the pipe and the folded piece of paper with the Mandrax in it, and finished smoking. Then I got in my car and drove round the block to the house behind the one Janet lived in. Some other prostitutes and their kids lived there.

  Two of the girls were sitting on the veranda and they waved at me to indicate that the cops were gone. I wasn’t about to take any chances, so I called them over to my car and one of them volunteered to come with me while we talked. I asked her if the cops had found anything on them. She said no, they were lucky, there was nothing in the house, but she was quick to add that it was me the cops were actually looking for. If they spotted my car anywhere in the area, they’d said, they were going to blow it up. My car was easily recognisable. Not only did many of the prostitutes around there know it was mine, but so did all the Mandrax merchants from the streets of Bertrams to the township of Newclare.