Those Who Love Night

by Wessel Ebersohn

  As the sirens faded, cars started moving again. Patel restarted the engine and accelerated gently away. “What in hell was that?” Abigail asked.

  “The old man’s motorcade. He must be on his way to the airport to meet some bigwig.”

  “Does it happen often?”

  He shrugged. “Quite often—twice a day on Borrowdale Road, as he comes to the office and returns home.”

  “And everyone has to stop?”

  Patel smiled. “Only if you don’t want to be shot.”

  “I’ve heard of this. I thought it was an exaggeration.”

  “A lot about our country must seem like an exaggeration.”

  They were passing through the outskirts of the city now. Over the years, Abigail’s memory of Harare had faded like an old photograph that had been left in the sun. Those had not been the worst years. The bloodletting of the Gukurahundi was past, and the other lunacy was still to come.

  Despite fading and blistering signage and discolored paintwork, the doors of small enterprises were open for business. A man was adding fuel to the tank of his car at a small filling station while two others stood in line. That these enterprises had survived at all was, to Abigail, a sign of the indomitable spirit of ordinary Zimbabweans. In contrast, a few stripped bodies of cars rusted at the roadside.

  “Can people afford to buy food?” she asked Patel.

  “We pay in American dollars now. It’s much better than it was in the days of the Zim dollar, when inflation was so high that some prices changed twice a day. In those days we had to barter to survive. Even now, some of my clients pay me in food—maybe some eggs, a chicken if I’m very lucky. I handled the transfer of a house last month for ten pockets of potatoes, to be paid at the rate of one pocket a month.”

  Patel cleared his throat in the manner of a man about to say something important. “Our clients, the Organization for Peace and Justice in Zimbabwe, are very pleased that you’re here.” It was said in the same proud way that he had when telling her that he was the sole member of his law firm.

  “Do they have any money?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid.” He glanced quickly and anxiously at her. “Does that make a difference?”

  “I can work without being paid,” Abigail said. “I hope we have no major expenses though.” She looked at this serious man in his ill-fitting clothes, driving his old car. “How many members do they have? Thousands, I hope.” She already had a fair idea of the answer and realized that the question was cruel.

  “Thirty-one, actually.”

  “And you’re among them?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re both attorney and client. That’s an unusual situation.”

  She could see a line of perspiration forming along the top of Patel’s forehead. “I’d hate to be cross-examined by you in court.”

  Like all good cross-examiners, Abigail was not easily distracted. “And the missing seven, are they also members?”

  “Yes.”

  “So twenty-four remain—you and twenty-three others.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any of them over the age of thirty?”

  “Oh, yes. Me and Paul Robinson, a commercial farmer who had his land confiscated, and one or two others. And our group also has solid overseas connections.” When she kept looking at him, he added, “In Europe.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that we have allies ten thousand kilometers away.” Abigail sighed deeply. “You’re not putting my head into a noose, are you, Krisj?”

  “If I am, my head will be right next to yours.”

  It was not much consolation, but she could see he meant it. “Why are there so few members?”

  “We’re not a political party, Ms. Abigail. We don’t go looking for members. We are just committed Zimbabweans.”

  They had turned away from the main artery into town and had entered a pleasant suburb. The gardens were wooded and the houses did not have the worn look of the buildings she had seen so far. Patel stopped the car at the glass front door of a small hotel. The brick walls on either side of the main building carried electrified wiring along the top. A modest sign attached to the wall next to the motor gate gave the establishment’s name as McDooley’s Inn.

  “It looks like a nice place,” Abigail said.

  “Yes, and the owner’s an opponent of the dictatorship.”

  Good for them, Abigail thought. I will be living in a guesthouse whose owners oppose the dictatorship, and surrounded by a bunch of kids with the same sentiments, seven of whose colleagues have disappeared off the street. And the dictatorship is still in place and, according to the papers, whatever moderating influence existed in the coalition has now been withdrawn. On top of all this, there is little doubt that they are already aware of my presence here. What other favorable factors could I have forgotten? she wondered.

  “Ms. Abigail,” Patel said uncertainly. “I suppose you’d like to rest before we meet our clients tomorrow?”

  “What I’d like is to be home in Johannesburg with my husband.” The car had come to a stop and Abigail leaned toward Patel. “As that is not a reasonable possibility, I’ll see these clients of ours today. Get them together for a meeting this evening.”

  “Ms. Abigail, I don’t know if it’s possible to assemble them all so quickly. I do think…”

  “Do you want me in, or don’t you?” she interrupted him.

  “I do, but…”

  “Then get them together this evening. I’m not here on leave.”

  13

  The old scout hall was situated on the edge of one of the city’s shack suburbs. The day had passed, but the building had no ceiling and it had retained much of the day’s heat.

  Abigail had not known what to expect when she first met her clients. Krisj Patel had already told her that most of them were young. There were also very few of them, so clearly they were brave. Her experience of political activists, especially those who were young and radical, was that they were good at shouting slogans, but not good at viewing their own behavior introspectively. Most of the activists she had contact with since being an adult had been active in places where there was no danger to themselves. She had seen them protest outside the New York offices of companies that did business in apartheid South Africa, or take part in marches in London to draw attention to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. They were always loudly certain of the correctness of their causes and passionate about righting the wrongs they had read about or seen on television.

  The twelve people who had gathered in the old scout hall were altogether different. They were quiet, talking in undertones, knowing that they could not afford to draw attention to themselves. They had come in just three cars. The cars had been parked in separate places, none of them within a hundred meters of the hall. By Abigail’s calculation, the organization had another twelve members in addition to those present and the seven who had been detained. The other twelve seemed to have thought better about gathering with their fellow conspirators in a season when government had decided to come after them.

  They were a disparate group. The one man who, like Patel, was over forty, was introduced as Paul Robinson. He was a gray-haired farmer who had lived in the country since childhood. She would learn later that six months earlier he had been driven from his farm by a heavily armed gang of fifty, who had claimed the land in the name of redistribution to the masses. He had won a court order instructing them to vacate the farm, but they had stayed and the police had shown no interest in his court order. His nose was discolored with the red-blue tint of the habitually heavy drinker.

  A man called Prince, no older than twenty-five, was concerned for his wife, who was among the seven who had been taken. A university student, who had recently been barred from the campus because of her political activities, was hoping that Abigail would help to get her sister released. Most had no such direct link to the missing seven. They were just brave people who believed in justice and wanted to see it done in their country.

  Tw
o serious-faced young women had been introduced as Tanya and Natasha, the Makwati twins. Both shook hands solemnly with Abigail and thanked her for coming.

  “This can’t go on forever,” said Tanya.

  “We won’t be staying long,” the other twin said. “We have to relieve Abel.”

  “Abel?”

  “It’s our shift to watch the gate at Chikurubi. We all take turns. If they move our people, we’ll know.”

  “Do be careful.” Abigail had not been able to stop herself. That was so damned obvious, she thought. Of course they would be careful.

  “We are very careful,” Tanya said.

  Abigail immediately recognized the woman in T-shirt and jeans. While the others had crowded around Abigail, she had hung back, leaning against a wall much as she had at the airport, her thumbs again hooked into the pockets of her jeans. To make contact, Abigail had to approach her. “Helena Ndoro,” the woman said, as they shook hands.

  “You were at the airport this morning.”

  “Yes, I wanted to get a look at the person who’s come to save our friends.”

  Abigail heard the faintest trace of mockery in her voice. “You don’t believe that I’ll be able to?”

  “I believe you’ll do what you came to do. Perhaps you’ll even win your court order. But it’ll make no difference. Some of our members have had court orders awarded to them by brave judges before this.”

  “Maybe we’ll be lucky,” Abigail said.

  “Maybe we will.” Unexpectedly she reached out, her fingers brushing one of Abigail’s arms. “I came tonight, didn’t I?”

  The hall had no table. Abigail and the members of the Organization for Peace and Justice in Zimbabwe sat in a circle on folding chairs. The chairs had long since lost whatever varnish they once had and creaked when anyone moved. They all looked at Abigail, waiting for her to start. “The first thing I need to know is under what conditions the authorities picked up your colleagues.”

  Prince was first to speak, explaining that when he had returned from work his wife was gone. The neighbors told him the CIO had taken her. The student whose sister had been taken, had a similar story.

  “Helena, you tell.” It was Robinson, the farmer.

  “I’m not sure what I saw,” Helena said.

  “Tell us anyway,” he said.

  “I was a block away when I saw one of their double-cab pickups with the CAM registration pull away from outside the flats where I stay. They travel only in those vehicles and no one else has those registration plates.” Her voice was flat, altogether without emotion. “I don’t know why, but I followed. They went straight to Chikurubi. I didn’t see who was in the back. When I got home the other people in the building told me they’d taken Petra. I never actually saw it, though.”

  “Petra’s your friend?”

  “Petra’s my partner.”

  Oh, you brave people, Abigail thought, following CIO and prison vehicles, watching the prison gate, holding clandestine meetings in this ruin that was once a scout hall. You’re so brave and your opponents are so ruthless and your chances of victory are so slim. Unbidden, a different thought entered her mind. And you, Abigail Bukula, what are you doing here?

  “Tomorrow,” she said aloud. “Tomorrow Krisj and I will prepare our papers and the day after we’ll serve them on the government. The fact that we are acting openly, in front of many witnesses and that I am a South African, may help to protect us. I think the rest of you are in greater danger than we are. Please be extra careful.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Helena said. “They seemed to be trying to pick us all up that day. They just missed me. I should have been with Petra when they came. They went to the homes of all the others.”

  It was a possibility that had never occurred to Abigail. “They came to the homes of everyone?”

  “Everyone,” Helena said.

  “But they haven’t tried since?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “There’ve been assassination attempts,” Helena said.

  “On your members?”

  “Yes. We’ve been fired on.”

  “How many times?”

  “A number of times.”

  “Which of you?”

  “I’m not sure how many…” Helena began.

  “Just Tony,” Prince said. “They shot at him twice.”

  * * *

  The last thing Patel said to Abigail when he dropped her off at the hotel was to ask if she was afraid. She seemed to act without even a trace of fear, he said.

  “There’s no fear while I’m active,” she said. “Tonight when I’m alone and I start thinking, then the fear will come.”

  “Ms. Abigail…”

  “Krisj…” She paused to make sure that she had his attention. “… can’t we make it just Abigail?”

  “Yes, I’m sure we can. I believe we can.”

  “Good.”

  “Abigail, it was wonderful of you to come. Now that I know you feel fear too, it is so much more wonderful. After all, doing something that does not scare you is not very heroic.”

  “You’re a sweet man, Krisj. Thank you.”

  14

  Inside, the hotel was comfortable and clean, but with the cleanliness of desperation. Carpets worn down to the webbing had been carefully vacuumed. Cracks in tiles had not been allowed to gather dirt. The pictures on the walls had probably been produced by local craftsmen and bought along the roadside, making up in brightness for what they lacked in originality. In the foyer and the dining hall, photographs of the stern-faced president looked down watchfully on the hotel guests.

  The dinner the hotel served was passable. For a country in which most were underfed, it was outstanding. The proprietor, a white woman who introduced herself as Marjorie Swan, made a point of coming to talk to Abigail. “It’s a real honor having you here,” she said. Her smile deepened the lines on a face that showed the signs of being much exposed to the African sun.

  What the hell have Krisj and the others been telling people? Abigail wondered. “Thanks for having me,” she said.

  “We would always find room for someone like you.”

  With only three other people in the hotel restaurant, making room did not seem to be much of a problem. “Nice of you to say that.”

  After the proprietor had gone, she ate only a little of the dinner. The thought of so much hunger being so close had spoiled her appetite. One look at the roast pork and potatoes on her plate was enough to bring the meal to an end. She asked for coffee to be served in her room and went upstairs.

  The room was one floor above the street, and large by the standard of most hotel rooms. Like the rest of the hotel, its furnishings looked as if they were being cared for to make them last. Anything that broke was repaired, not replaced. In a corner near the window a vividly painted plaster moulding of a snarling tiger doing battle with an equally angry elephant added color to the room.

  Abigail switched off the light and went to the window. The day’s heat had been replaced by the enfolding warmth of the African evening. She swept the curtain aside. For perhaps half an hour she stood still, looking down into the street, trusting her skin color and black suit to make her, if not invisible, at least not readily noticeable.

  Abigail’s eyes stopped at every shadow, studied every walking figure and every window on the far side of the street. The few cars that she saw came slowly past, perhaps in fuel-saving mode.

  Could they be watching? Everything she had learned about this country had told her that the CIO had informants everywhere and knew all there was to know about anyone who was in the country. She had no way of knowing just how accurate the stories of killings and torture might be.

  She considered that she could be spending the night in her ten-million-rand house, as comfortable and well-served as any human being on the planet. So she was on a forced sabbatical, so what? Gert Pienaar had been arrested on spurious grounds, but released pret
ty quickly. None of it looked that serious now. What the hell am I doing in this place with its worn carpets and old cars and hungry people, just down the road, on every road? she asked herself.

  The street remained empty, and eventually there was no reason to remain at the window. She closed the curtains and sat down in the room’s one easy chair. Before she had left home, she had her cell phone enabled for international roaming. Now she dialed her home number. It rang for too long before she heard her own voice encouraging her to leave a message. “Robert, please call me before you go to bed,” she told the recorder. Then she tried Robert’s cell phone, but received no response.

  Abigail’s thoughts tumbled toward an internal tirade that had to do with Robert’s current whereabouts and who he was with. But an effort of will drove them back to the task that lay ahead of her. She realized that she could win her court order and that the government could pretend to comply, but simply claim not to know anything about the seven. We’d release them if we had them, they might say.

  I’ll have to find a way around that, she thought. I’ll have to find a way to close off that escape route.

  She tried to call home again, and again reached the answering device. She ended the call and, looking among the items in her briefcase, took out the photograph of Tony. The extreme leanness and the unnaturally large eyes bothered her, but she found the little smile around the mouth reassuring. It seemed to be saying that there really were no grounds for worry. Everything would yet be fine.

  But damn you, Tony—where are you? What are they doing to you? And is it in any way possible that my efforts will make a difference to you?

  Sleep came slowly to Abigail that night. She usually had a few sleeping pills in her bag for such occasions, but this time she had forgotten to pack them. When she did sleep, dreams that she thought had been left behind years before returned to disturb her night. It was years since they had last plagued her. Now menacing figures again peopled the gloom in the corridors of her mind. She tried to shake them off, even to bring herself back to consciousness, but found herself locked in passages that offered no chance of escape.