Those Who Love Night

by Wessel Ebersohn

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Yudel could see that Chunga was thinking and that it was probably about Abigail, possibly realizing that Yudel was no threat to his need for her. “So you came for Abigail, because you have this unusual connection with her?”

  And at last the opportunity had presented itself. It was a slim one, but he had to take it. “I also came because of my fascination with Tony Makumbe.” He only saw the reaction in Chunga because he was looking for it, but it was clear and it had been immediate. The eyes had narrowed and the face had tensed. “He suffers from a form of schizophrenia that interests me.”

  “You have no schizophrenics in South Africa?”

  “Of course we do, but none that I know of who write beautifully. And none that I know of who have been plunged deeper into their illness by the suicide of his sister.” Again Yudel thought he saw a reaction, a tensing of the face, no more than a muscular twitch.

  “You seem to know a great deal, Mr. Gordon.”

  “Not as much as I would like to.” This was the time to press forward. Whatever the dangers, if he wanted to know the truth, this was his opportunity. “Especially one who had that reason for suicide.”

  Yudel waited for the response he knew would come. “And what was that reason?” It had come slowly, but his eyes had never left Yudel’s face.

  “She couldn’t face Wally, her father, going over to the side of the government who had murdered her mother.”

  Chunga’s face turned away from Yudel with an expression of disgust. “What the fuck do you know, Gordon? Wally never went over to the government’s side. He died the night Tony’s mother died.”

  “Not according to my information.” Yudel prodded the matter a little further. “I’ve been told that Tony’s father hated his son’s homosexuality.”

  “Where do you come up with this shit?”

  “Few heterosexual men are at ease with a homosexual son.”

  “Christ, Gordon, what the hell are you talking about? The man died when Tony was two or three, a small child. Wally could know nothing about his homosexuality.” Chunga was looking at Yudel through disbelieving eyes.

  It was time for Yudel to backtrack. “I can’t vouch for my sources.”

  “You’re damned right you can’t.”

  “I also wondered if the manner of his mother’s death had caused his schizophrenia,” Yudel said.

  Chunga had turned his head slightly to one side, so that he had to look at Yudel out of the corners of his eyes. It was an expression that said that he had overestimated this man. He had been dealing with a fool all along. “I have to hear this. Please enlighten me.”

  “Well, I understand that Janice Makumbe was a beautiful woman. Some would say an irresistibly beautiful woman.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?” And yet he seemed to be agreeing.

  “I think that may have added to the horror of the way she died. How Five Brigade killed Tony’s mother in front of him and raped the dead body while he was watching.”

  “Jesus Christ.” It was with an effort that Chunga stopped himself from rising. “What the fuck are you talking about? Nothing like that ever happened.”

  But you seem to know so much about what did happen, Yudel thought. And where were you at the time? “Perhaps her death was what they call bad karma. She was not faithful to Wally, you know.”

  This time Chunga could not stop himself from rising. His eyes were blazing with both fury and panic. He had snatched a sheet of paper from a tray on his desk. “Here, this is for you.” He handed the sheet of paper and the thousand dollars to Yudel. “Now get the fucking hell out of my office and out of my country,” he roared.

  From the door, Yudel looked back. Chunga was swallowing down his whiskey. The hands that held the glass were shaking. His own half-tot remained untouched.

  46

  Chunga had been wrong, perhaps deliberately, about Abigail being at the hotel. She was waiting on the pavement, next to the hired car. At last the rain had started. It was still only a scattering of big drops, though, not yet enough to bring real relief to the dry Zimbabwean earth. High above, a bolt of lightning crackled and roared through a late-afternoon sky which, under dense cloud, was already in deep twilight.

  Abigail waited for Yudel to approach, as if she might not be sure of a friendly welcome. She was clasping her hands together. “I didn’t desert you. I didn’t. They escorted me out of the township and…”

  “And since then you’ve been making a nuisance of yourself. I know. Our friend, Director Chunga, told me.”

  “Our friend?”

  Yudel had his sheet of paper in one hand. He waved it at her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Notice to leave the country in twenty-four hours.”

  As she read the order, a few large drops of rain splashed over it, causing some of the ink to run. She handed it back to him. “So it’s over, then.” And yet, looking into his face, she saw an excitement that did not fit the circumstances.

  “Perhaps not,” he said.

  “What is it, Yudel?”

  “We have to go somewhere now. Immediately.”

  “Where?”

  “To old Loise Moyo.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do this with me.”

  Abigail drove quickly through the city streets, skilfully dodging the uneven places. Something in Yudel had conveyed to her this unexpected urgency. “Has something happened? Have you learned something?” She had to repeat herself to break through the barrier of thought that had suddenly enclosed Yudel. “What have you learned?”

  “Not yet. The old lady first.”

  By the time they reached the building where Loise Moyo lived, the rain’s intensity had increased, but Abigail found parking right in front of the door. They had to avoid children playing in the lobby and on the stairs, but the old woman’s door stood open. She was sitting on the edge of her bed and singing softly to herself. The young woman and her children were nowhere to be seen.

  “Mother…” Abigail began.

  “Oh. I think it’s my wealthy young friend again.” She looked in Abigail’s direction through eyes that could not focus.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Is your friend with you today, the one who speaks little?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Moyo, I’m here. We want just one more thing from you.”

  The old woman shook her head. “I hoped you wouldn’t come back. Last night I could hardly sleep after your visit.”

  “This time it’s a small matter,” Yudel said. “We would like to see the photograph you have, the one of Janice Makumbe.”

  She reached toward the pile of boxes next to the head of her bed and lifted the top one to put it on her lap. “I think I still have it. But I can’t find it for you. My eyes…”

  Abigail, who had been looking at Yudel as if he may finally have stretched her belief in him too far, took the box from Loise. “We will look, but how will we know it’s her when we find the picture?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Yudel said.

  Abigail unpacked the cardboard box carefully, placing each item on the bed next to Loise. The first was a plastic Madonna whose eyes were turned piously heavenward. After that, she removed a tin box with a hinged lid. The lid carried an advertisement for the toffees it had once contained. A tiny winged fairy, of the sort found in music boxes, was wrapped in tissue paper. A creased and battered school report card carried the name Katherine Makumbe. The last item was Loise’s Bible, its cover cracked and its pages well-thumbed.

  “There are no photographs, mother,” Abigail said, “none at all.”

  “Oh my. I was sure there were pictures.” She turned her face toward the sound of Abigail’s voice. “Have you looked inside the Bible, child?”

  Abigail lifted the Bible and shook it gently. A few photographs fell onto the bed. The first one she touched was an old and cracked head-and-shoulders of a beautiful young woman, perhaps in her early twenties. Her
chin was raised in a way that gave the impression of haughtiness. She looked boldly into the lens of the camera. Neck and shoulders were naked. Abigail dropped the photograph and walked unsteadily to the door.

  Yudel caught up with her on the stairs. “My God, Yudel, what does it mean?”

  “Come. We must go.”

  “Wait.” She was holding him. “That’s me in the photo.”

  “I know.”

  She started unsteadily down the stairs with Yudel trying to steady her, then she stopped again. “Do you still have the thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give it to her. Give it to Mama Loise.”

  47

  Abigail drove, distracted, through the Harare streets. Within a block, the car had gone heavily through more than one place where the tarred surface was eroded away. The rain that had been no more than a shower was now coming down with the intensity of a real African storm. Sheets of big drops swept across the streets, hammering on the roof and windscreen of the car. Visibility had been reduced to perhaps a block. The crowds that not long before had filled the streets had now miraculously disappeared. Only a few people remained, huddling in the doorways of shops or office buildings.

  Abigail switched on the headlights. It did little to improve visibility, but at least the car could be seen from the front. Out of the corners of her eyes she could see Yudel, hunched forward in his seat. He still seemed unsure about how the welter of information they had gathered fit together. She felt rather than saw him turn toward her. “I pushed him too far. At that moment he didn’t realize what I was thinking, but he is no fool. When he does realize—and it may be soon—I shouldn’t be close at hand. None of us should be.”

  “Yudel, tell me. You tell me now.”

  “He’s the father of both Tony and Katy. He was Janice’s lover. Do you remember Mama Loise saying that Wally didn’t have much manly strength?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And that the flame of being a woman was strong in Janice?”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe she meant he was impotent. As for Janice, she was drawn to Chunga in a way that she couldn’t resist. They would both have been in their early twenties at the time. Remember, he was a policeman in Plumtree and she was just down the road in Bizana.”

  Abigail knew that what Yudel was telling her was the truth. “And where do I come in?”

  “He saw your photograph in The Herald. This is why he’s been trying to be close to you ever since you got here. Any one of his men could have done what he did. He just wanted to be with you, and it was because you look so much like her.”

  “My God, Yudel, you can’t be sure of this.”

  “You remember what Ephraim Khumalo told Freek about the way Chunga provided food to the starving community of Madikwe Falls? And old Loise told us she and the children were there. Now in the prisons, according to Mpofu, the seven have been eating better than the other prisoners, and this is not a country in which political prisoners are treated kindly. In each case a kindness … no, a father’s caring … is camouflaged by helping others too. First the tiny community of Madikwe Falls, and now the other activists who were picked up with Tony. And all down the years, when money had come for the children, Loise had never known where it was coming from. On top of this, the Plumtree police brought the children to her. And Tony knew. I don’t know how, but he knew. There’s a passage in his writing that reads: The corrupt seed, too, results in a harvest—but what is the value of such a harvest? Look only to the seed, for that is where the guilt lies.”

  Yudel fell silent for a moment, still in thought. “Is there more?” Abigail asked.

  “Jonas Chunga knew that Tony had planted the bomb at party headquarters. Freek told me how Ephraim Khumalo had said that the CIO had enough evidence to prosecute, but never did. Helena told us that someone had tried to kill Tony. Soon after that, seven of the group were picked up by the CIO. Helena would snort at the idea of the CIO protecting them. And she would be right. It was Jonas Chunga’s way of protecting his son. Picking up the others as well masked what he was really doing. His daughter had already killed herself, at least partly because of his politics.”

  Abigail had allowed the car to coast to a stop. “Yudel.” Speaking had become very difficult. The wheels scraped against the pavement in front of a marble-faced building, one of the city’s few with corporate pretensions. “I need you to drive now.” The rain was thundering against the roof and windscreen of the car. She opened the door on her side.

  “Should we change over now?” Yudel had to shout to make himself heard above the sound of the rain.

  “We have to.” Abigail struggled to get the words out. “I can’t drive now.”

  Yudel and Abigail got out into the rain to change places. She stopped him in front of the car. Their clothes were already saturated by the torrent. Above the noise of the rain and with water cascading over her face, she shouted to Yudel. “He wanted Janice, not me? Are you certain?”

  “Nothing in all this is certain, but I believe so.”

  “How terrible,” she gasped, “but how wonderful, how damned liberating to know that I’m not really the one he wants.”

  Yudel’s own confusion had been as great as Abigail’s. Only since his meeting with Chunga had the confusion begun to clear, and only since seeing Loise’s photograph had his thoughts crystalized.

  In Yudel’s view, one more matter could be left untouched, but it was not so for Abigail. “Did Jonas kill Krisj?”

  She was reaching out to him with both hands. He took them in his. “We’ll never be able to do anything about the killing of that man,” he told her. “Let it go. Nothing can be done about it now.”

  She had brought her face right up to his to be able to hear him. “I can’t let it go. Tell me.”

  There was no avoiding this woman. “I think he ordered the killing.”

  “Why? For what possible reason?”

  Yudel could feel rainwater running down his back. In the light from the headlights he saw it pouring over Abigail’s face, as if she were in a shower. “Helena and her friends all assumed that there is a connection between the attempts on Tony’s life and the killing of Patel. But the two had nothing to do with each other. I misunderstood Loise when she was unable to say directly what men saw in Tony that brought shame upon him. She thought there was nothing wrong with being that way, but that she knew men did not like it. I thought she was talking about his schizophrenia. Suneesha Patel had come much closer, telling me how she hated Tony’s relationship with her husband. And Chunga’s contempt for Patel had been clear. The idea that this Indian man of no importance was his son’s lover would have been something Jonas Chunga would never be able to bear. If his finger was not on the trigger the night Patel died, then I feel sure he gave the order.”

  At last they got back into the car. “There’s more, isn’t there?” Abigail’s voice sounded more secure now. A new strength had appeared with the powerful release of emotion.

  “Yes. In my anxiety to learn everything, I’ve endangered us all. I tested all this by imputing his actions to Wally who, like Chunga, was also a police officer. I told him that I knew that Wally had gone over to the government side and that his daughter had killed herself for that reason. His reaction was profoundly enlightening. I thought he was going to attack me. I also lied to him about what the Five Brigade soldiers had done to Janice.”

  “Why, Yudel? For heaven’s sake.”

  “I needed to see his reaction to try to establish that my thinking about him and Janice is right. But I fear that I went too far. He’s no fool. Once he calms down, he’ll realize what I was up to. I hope it’s not before tomorrow.”

  Reaching the hotel, they ran through the rain for the entrance. The lobby was lit by candles. Perhaps the standby plant had failed. They crossed the lobby toward the stairs still running, scattering rainwater with every step. They were just starting up the stairs when the lights flickered briefly, then came on. “
In this weather,” Abigail said, “it’s a miracle.”

  She stopped Yudel on the landing. Her face was filled with the wonder of a new discovery. “They’re in the police cells in Plumtree, aren’t they?”

  Yudel looked into her excited face. “I believe so,” he said.

  In the gloom of the stairs, her eyes were bright points of light. “Jonas comes from that area and was in charge of the police station there. He would know the local police. And Plumtree is almost on the Botswana border, some five hundred kilometers from here. The length of time Paul Robinson says it took them to be delivered and for the truck to return is about right. They must be there, Yudel.”

  “The only way to find out is to go there.”

  “No,” Abigail said. “There is another way.”

  48

  There were no attendants on duty at the first filling station to which Helena guided Yudel. She had answered at the first ring when he called her. “We need your help,” he had told her.

  “Have I seemed reluctant so far?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  A wind had come up, sweeping the rain in long bursts under the roof that covered the pumps. The glass-fronted room where the attendants normally sought shelter was in darkness.

  At the second, a handwritten sign read, “No petrol during power failures.”

  “Even when the power’s on, it seems,” Helena said. She stared at the lifeless pumps for only a moment. “I have an idea. I know a transport operator who owes me a favor. He has his own tanks.”

  “Let’s go there,” Yudel said. He was thinking about Rosa and whether Abigail had contacted her. He knew that this weather was their greatest ally. It was surely going to keep even Jonas Chunga and his CIO indoors. Few crimes were committed on such nights as these, few rebellions conducted and even fewer arrests made. Such matters were usually kept for better weather.

  The transport operator’s dwelling was in a few rooms behind his yard, where two small trucks were parked. Yudel could see the two-hundred-liter fuel tanks mounted on steel frames at above head-height. At least it was a gravity feed. If the power went off, the force of gravity could still be relied on. He could see no shelter anywhere. The dirt of the yard had already turned into a swamp. Water was pouring down the sides of the tanks. Yudel wondered if refuelling was possible without getting as much water as fuel into the car.