Vultures in the Wind

by Peter Rimmer

  The three boys took to the school as hungrily as they had taken to the food, doing any jobs after school with a willingness born from the hot flames of adversity. The year finished with the annual influx of Transvaal tourists who bought the hand-made crafts and pickled foods that kept the colony in just enough money to buy the necessities they were unable to produce themselves. After a ‘whip-round’, one of the boys was sent back to Soweto by bus to tell the mothers that their boys had found a home which suggested the small glimmer of hope that they would now be allowed to grasp an education without which they would live and die in poverty.

  The January school term in Soweto was a non-starter, the children and teachers politicised to the point where they were high on the promises of liberation theologists and the liberation movements in exile. They believed the struggle was almost over and that, if they rampaged through the streets burning tyres and attacking government property, which included their schools, they would reach up and grasp the magic of ‘one man, one vote’, and vote themselves rich. Instead of instant freedom, the piles of uncollected garbage grew, sanitation broke down, the repair crews refused to enter the troubled townships, and the comrades ran riot, beating up any child who attended school.

  At the end of January when the tourists had all returned home to their safe white suburbs, small black children began to appear on the beach, all of them without visible signs of support. The three boys greeted their friends and marched them off to Matthew Gray. To ensure that he did not make the wrong decision he asked Lorna to park their own three children with Raleen and together they set off to walk the cliff-tops and think through the problem that was changing the face of their colony. When they returned to the rondavel on the third day, they had made up their minds.

  “What I’m suggesting is that I use some of the money I placed in a trust to give these children a proper education,” Matt said to Sophia van Hoek. “I can pay for you to go to England to obtain a degree in education. I want nothing to do with the department of education in Pretoria or Umtata. I once tried using my money to give away food. It did not work. In two years, when you come back, you can set up a proper school. Charles can’t stay here forever. He can take you over. That is, unless any of you can think of a better idea.” His eyes were soft and smiling, the crow’s feet deep at the corners.

  “You see, the moment we do something for people, we become responsible. In the end, no one will give us any thanks. Or else we can close down our school. It’s early days. No change has yet been made. Now, I haven’t painted for three days. It’s for you all to make up your minds. Talk about it and let me know.”

  They were all sitting on the stoep of the Vuya restaurant, spending a little of the money they had earned from the tourists on cold beers. The weather was hot again and the sky out to sea a deep indigo, tinged with purple. No one said anything and, looking from one to another, Matt realised it had been easier to theorise on the top of the cliff in the moonlight with a small wood fire to give them comfort.

  “It won’t work,” said Charles. “Much as I’d like to take Sophia to England, old chap. Won’t work. You’d be flooded. Couldn’t cope. You see, the apartheid state is no different from a lot of others. Trying to keep a white or First World ship watertight. If the Western democracies opened their doors to everyone, they’d also sink. None of their welfare or education systems could survive the flood of poor people who would try and climb on board, old chap.

  “South Africa is a whole lot of little bits of First World floating in a sea of Third World, and it’s protecting itself through the laws of apartheid in the way the British clamped down on immigration to keep out the West Indians and the other darker citizens of our erstwhile Empire. Australia no longer has a white Australian policy, but instead brings in immigration laws that require an education or wealth in its new Australians that only the Western democracies or white South Africa could offer. America doesn’t welcome everyone anymore, only the people they want to improve their economy… You offer a First World education to the Third World without restrictive laws and you’ll sink with everyone, leaving nothing. Too many of them, not enough of you.

  “Take it up at the United Nations, old chap. Try and tell them the rich and wise must educate the poor, and every rich country on the Security Council will use its veto. Open up the world to a free flow of its peoples, offering everyone equal opportunities, and Western wealth will collapse in five years. They like to talk about race relations, but they should talk about wealth relations. Your idea, noble as it is, won’t work, old chap. Either the First World sets about educating everyone, or no one. This crap about giving them democracy first is passing the buck for someone else to find the solution.

  “‘One man, one vote’ and a Westminster constitution did no one any good in the Third World. Now the poor sods are free, it’s their fault they are starving. India has a caste system to keep the poor off the backs of the rich and didn’t they howl about apartheid. Morality! The Western democracies don’t know how to spell the word… Won’t work, old chap. Brave idea. Once they kick out apartheid as they must, we will all come down to the same level, except for a few politicians who’ll transfer whatever they can get their hands on to a safe, white controlled ship of state like Switzerland.

  “To solve the problem you walked the paths to think about, it needs everyone with education and wealth to contribute, but the most difficult thing in a democracy is for the elected government to increase taxes. Trying to tax an Englishman or an American to pay for African education would create a laugh right across Europe and North America. Two per cent of the gross national product for aid is about the mark. Bit of feel good charity the loose change of the rich. But, my word do they make their hypocrisy sound righteous! Over there they are safe; over here, the whites are not, because the problems are physically closer. And you can’t try and educate the blacks of South Africa from Second Beach, even with the best will in the world.”

  There was complete silence as everyone shuffled in their seats.

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you being, serious,” said Sophia, looking at Charles for the first time since he had arrived at Second Beach.

  “There aren’t many serious subjects that interest me. International hypocrisy is one of them. Cousin Matt, you’re on the right track, but you’ll never get enough people to help. Now can I buy you all a beer? You think we might have enough money to run to supper? Only Jesus was able to feed the five thousand with a handful of fish. Starving ourselves won’t change anything. That’s the reality of Western thinking. All this human rights for everyone are words to make them think they are offering a difference.

  “It’s the human condition, good people. Some are rich and some are poor. You can even ask the Russians. Communism is their way to empire. Religion and trade was the British way to do it. Fascism was Hitler’s. Apartheid is the brain-child of the Afrikaner. The Americans invented the power of the dollar to make them rich and howl for free trade, not the free movement of people.”

  The word reached Matthew Gray from the paramount chief. The Transkei police were about to arrest the minstrel boy and extradite him back over the South African border. The pressure from Pretoria, from where the money came to balance the Transkei budget, was too great.

  Matt put down his paintbrush and moved out of the rondavel more quickly than Lorna had seen him move in months. He was down the patch and across the beach before the police truck arrived. Raleen was baking.

  “Where’s boy?”

  “Surfing.”

  “We’ve got to get him out. Police. They’ll have him in an army detention camp within a week if we don’t move fast. Pack food, clothing and a sleeping bag. Bring it to Third Beach. We’ll meet you in the milkwood trees. They won’t be able to follow over the cliff path in a truck.”

  The police arrived at the bakery hut an hour after Raleen and Lorna had left with the boy’s rucksack packed with essentials. The local police were happy to find the man gone, and Blac
k Martin told them he had left a month ago.

  When all but the minstrel boy returned to Second Beach that afternoon, Matt sent word that he wished to see the paramount chief, and returned to his painting as if nothing had changed.

  “We must get him out of Southern Africa,” he said to Raleen, who was in tears. “I’m sorry… A tourist must have seen him.”

  “How are you going to get him out? The airports will be watched.” Her life was repeating itself and there was nothing she could do.

  “Luke. He owes me one. The ANC have got to get your boyfriend out of the country. We’ll hide him until we can send him to a safe house.”

  “He’s white, Matt. How do you hide a white man in a black man’s house in South Africa? They’ll kill him. Say he had an accident. Why won’t they let people be happy? Anyone that’s happy they want to hurt. They always get you. They hate the white liberals more than the blacks. They’ll kill him. Then what do I do? I can’t go through that again… Not again.” She was crying, sobbing, her world having crashed around her again.

  There was an old hut high above on the cliff, over the cave the minstrel boy found, in the base of the rock face where the igneous rock had left a soft cove the sea had gouged out over the millennia. It was dry and smelt of old fungus, but the worst storm would not reach that far back.

  He groped his way in the dark, carrying his rucksack and guitar until he could go no further, and sat on a flat ledge of rock to rummage through his few possessions for a box of matches. He had felt dry wood with his bare feet and yesteryear’s seaweed was drier than paper. Ten minutes later, he had a small fire burning, which he plied with old wood from a ship lost during the last voyage of Bartholomew Dias in the fifteenth century.

  The flames caught quickly and revealed an Aladdin’s cave. The flat rock he sat on was a box and around the fire were case after neatly stacked case, the markings in a language and characters that were unintelligible to the minstrel boy. He tried again to open one of the wooden crates, but there was nothing his hands could move.

  With the fire burning brightly, he took his guitar from its soft leather case and sang a shanty of the sea, an old song for which the dead sailors would have yearned when washed up on that lonely shore. He had endured worse accommodation in the years he had been on the run. If Matthew Gray had walked up the coast, he would walk down, and the gods would take care of the minstrel boy. He had known the day he deserted the army that he had no future in South Africa.

  He picked up the guitar to sing again, a song for the love of the girl he had left behind. The song was a song of parting, the inevitable, and where love ran out at the sweet moment of its beauty. It was a song of joy, as the lovers had not died; the love kept living all the years of their mortal lives, even beyond to the world where all the lovers go, where love is always true.

  The morning sun was glorious from the sea, the gulls high in the sky, the salt sea air a change from the fetid cave. And with one last look back along the shore, the minstrel boy, singing as he went, was gone on his way. When the tide came in, the sea washed the sand and even the trace of his feet was gone.

  Luke Mbeki woke on the morning of his fifty first birthday, and was unable to recollect where he was. It was dark and bitterly cold. He had slept with the window open, and snow had collected on the window sill and left a wet mush at the end of his bed. Between closing the window and returning to bed, he worked out that he was in America, and lay back in the dark, deep inside the blankets, to try and trace where his third visit to the United States had deposited him the previous night.

  Under the blankets, he looked at his watch and caught the time at just after five in the morning. Even that was no certainty, as in his travels through the States he was constantly readjusting his watch. Then he saw the date, and pushed his head up from the blankets and spoke the first Xhosa that room ever heard. “It’s my birthday,” he said. Then he sat up, thinking hard. “I’m Luke Mbeki, I’m fifty-one today, but I have no definite idea of where I am.” He was not even sure whether to get up and try to find out, as the street outside had been empty and the real time could be the middle of the night.

  Luke tried to go back to sleep, but his mind was working, and images flashed through his thoughts, ending in a sharp, vivid picture of Chelsea. From Chelsea his mind moved to his job and why he was not with his woman and his sons. With the progress came the dreary swing through America, telling his hosts of the atrocities, to which they listened in silence and then talked joyfully all about America. The night before had been quite typical… And then ping! He knew where he was! This was some kind of relief, but he would have preferred to be anywhere else with Chelsea. Congressman Rian O’Rorke of Boston, the spawning ground of the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds, the birthplace of manipulative politics, of which he and the ANC were now a part. He was in Boston, Massachusetts.

  The congressman had not been the slightest bit interested in South Africa, but only in how he could help the ANC and please his black constituents. The struggle in South Africa was a tool that the congressman wished to use to maintain his black support. To be vociferously anti-apartheid was a win-win situation for the congressman, unlike gay rights or gay-bashing, which both had supporters who voted for congressmen. The outward face for the cameras said the congressman was deeply concerned about the rights of black South Africans, but Luke was sure the man’s concern was with the votes of black Americans. A few dollars for the ‘Release Mandela Fund’ were cheap at the price

  And as Luke walked out of the door, the congressman would ingratiate himself with somebody else. The morning, anti-apartheid; the afternoon, protect the spotted owl; and in the evening, duck out of the lesbian dinner, with last minute words of pain at just not being able to get across Boston in time. The congressman, to Luke’s way of thinking, juggled a hundred ping-pong balls in the air all at the same time. The man’s job belonged to the people and he was trying to be all things to all men for as long as the ping-pong balls stayed in the air. Behind the big expansive smile lurked, for Luke, “what can I get out of this one?” Sincerity and honesty were dead, gone with the popular vote.

  Luke believed a one-party state was the only way for those who wished to govern effectively. Not every action of a government could possibly be popular. The nation had to be run by the elders, by the wise, by the men of experience, not by the whims and greed of the people. The tribal laws, adapted to a one-party democracy, where everyone voted, but for the same party, in the way they had always followed the hereditary paramount chief. That was the way to struggle for consensus, for harmony, with the party listening to the voice of the people.

  Having the people tell the government what to do on a daily basis through the opinion polls was something Luke found difficult to comprehend. Yes he was all for a multi-party, one-man-one-vote, but only to rescue his people from under the foot of the Afrikaner. The constant interchange of favours necessary to have anything done in the legislature was something beyond his understanding. To Luke, the American system was political anarchy, which was why the discipline and control of communism, was better suited to the African tradition.

  He lay back in the bed his feet still ice cold and tried to smile. Who was he to complain about their system if, by giving him desperately needed dollars, it helped a man keep his seat in congress? His last thought before he drifted back to sleep was that his feet were too far away from his head. If he was a lot shorter they would not be nearly so cold.

  Every year on his birthday, Matt tried to do something that he had never done before. On his fiftieth, he had made and flown a kite, which pleased Peace, who screamed with excitement when the contraption rose into the air and flew for all of three seconds before crashing to smithereens on the beach, narrowly missing the dog. The crazy dog had barked right underneath it until the thing had come down at its head. This year, Matt’s fifty-first, he was going to get up on a surfboard and let a wave bring him swiftly in to the shore.

  As luck would have it, the waves w
ere perfect by eleven o’clock in the morning, and the beach was infested by the colony, the village folk and a few tourists who had wanted to know what was going on. To maintain the proprieties of life, Matt wore a pair of trousers firmly tied to his waist with a piece of string, not wishing to arrive on the beach standing loftily on a wave with his loin-cloth way back in the sea. For days he had cajoled Carel van Tonder to give him the theory of surfing, and Matt now knew the right wave, the right way to point the board and the right way to rise from his knees and stand his almost two-metre frame so that he and the board would ride the wave to shore in perfect unison.

  “If you get dumped, you can break your neck,” argued Carel, right up to the time when Matt was striding down the beach, the puny surfboard, borrowed from Carel, tucked under his arm.

  “I will not break my neck.”

  “You have not surfed before.”

  “That is the whole point. Today is my birthday.”

  “People start surfing when they are kids.”

  “There was a granny who high-dived at seventy-three,” pointed out Matt.

  “You’re too tall for surfing. You probably need a very long special board.”

  “This one will do. I only have to do it once.”

  “Daddy, are you going to shoot the tube?” broke in Peace.

  “Probably not, darling.”

  “Oh dear. I told all my friends you would.”

  Matt walked into the surf and, when the sea came up to his waist, he floated the board, mounted from the left-hand side and fell off the right. He then looked back to ensure that no one had laughed. Pushing the board down between his long legs, he let it come up under his seat, adjusting the board until they were both floating nicely, and then began to paddle out to sea as he had seen Carel and the minstrel boy do on most days of the year.