Those Who Love Night

by Wessel Ebersohn

  With a violent jerk he lifted both her hands above her head and pinned them there with one of his, leaving his other free. She felt him tear away whatever protective clothing remained.

  I’m sorry, Robert, she thought. I know I got myself into this. Oh God, Robert, I’m sorry.

  “You forced me into this. You’ve been looking for this ever since you got here.” His face was pressed against hers, his mouth seeking hers. She could feel his erection against her upper thigh. Oh, Robert.

  A loud crash and an avalanche of plaster shards that sprayed around her and into her face made her turn her face away. Her eyes closed involuntarily under this new assault. Chunga’s body, so powerful a moment before, had become a deadweight. She pushed at him. Someone else was also pulling. The CIO director’s body rolled to the side, falling heavily to the floor.

  Abigail turned her head to one side to shake off the plaster dust and the pieces that seemed to be everywhere. Wiping it away to clear her eyes, her fingers closed around a larger piece. She opened her eyes and found that she had in her hand the still snarling head of the plaster tiger. One of the elephant’s tusks rested in the hollow at the base of her throat.

  Rosa was standing over her. “My dear, are you all right?” she asked.

  “My clothes have seen better days, but I’m fine.” She had rolled to the side and was sitting on the edge of the bed. “That’s more than can be said for the tiger and the elephant. Christ, Rosa, I don’t suppose it seemed to be consensual?”

  “No, it didn’t look terribly like it.” Rosa sounded excited. She was staring at the unconscious body of Jonas Chunga on the floor. She had never before assaulted anyone, let alone rendered an officer of the law unconscious. It was the first time that Abigail had seen her composure shaken. It looked to her as if Rosa was having difficulty in believing that she was responsible for the state Chunga was in. “Men don’t usually tear your clothing, when it’s consensual. At least, Yudel never did.”

  Abigail was hanging on to Rosa and laughing softly in a state of barely controlled hysteria. “No, I don’t suppose he did.”

  “And you’re far too sensible a person for it to have been consensual,” Rosa gasped.

  I wish I believed that, Abigail thought. “We’d better get out of here. Where’s Yudel?”

  “I think I heard the car arrive downstairs as I was coming in here. Get into something else, but do hurry.” Her chest was rising and falling furiously. “He’s not dead, is he?”

  “No. He’s breathing.”

  “Then we must hurry. He’s not going to be in this condition indefinitely.”

  50

  Yudel had little interest in matters of a mechanical nature, but he did know how to remove the valves from car tires. He removed all four from the CIO double-cab that Jonas Chunga had parked in front of the hotel. To get it moving again would not be the simple matter of changing a tire.

  It was still raining hard, but without the earlier violence, and this time he was sheltered by the hotel proprietor’s umbrella. As he drove away from the hotel, he threw the valves, one at a time, into the yards of houses they were passing.

  Helena had shown great enthusiasm for the sabotaging of the tires on Chunga’s vehicle, encouraging him with assurances that she would never underestimate him again, and that she had never imagined him to have such street smarts. “Where can we drop you?” Abigail asked her.

  “Like hell!” Even her agreement was couched in hostile terms. “I’m coming with you to Plumtree. You’re going to need me.”

  Yudel drove toward Samora Machel Drive, the main artery that he knew led to the Bulawayo road. Rosa was in the seat next to him, with Abigail and Helena in the back. “Not this way,” Helena said. “If he does know what we’re doing, like maybe the Plumtree crowd may have called him, then there may already be roadblocks. We’ve got to stay away from Samora Machel for as long as we can. Once we’re on the Bulawayo road there’s nothing we can do about roadblocks. But in town, that’s where they’re likely to stop us.”

  The wipers were running at maximum speed, keeping the windscreen clear enough to give Yudel reasonable visibility. Ahead the road looked clear. A single pair of headlights, one of which was blinking intermittently, was approaching from the front. The pavements were empty. “I don’t think they’ll have roadblocks yet,” he said.

  “I hate it when you think you know my own country better than I do.” Helena was leaning forward in her seat, her lips almost touching his ear. While she was speaking, a black double-cab moved out of a side street at an intersection almost a kilometer ahead, at which both the red and green traffic lights were burning brightly. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Now, for Christ’s sake, Gordon—go right here!”

  He did as she instructed. The street they had entered was narrow. It passed the back of a sandstone structure that seemed to be a government building. “Left in front of the park there,” Helena said, “but go slowly. Stop on the corner and let’s look.”

  He stopped. The street sign told Yudel that they were in Josiah Tongogara Avenue. It was altogether empty. The light of a single working streetlamp showed the rain being blown at what was almost a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. He considered that the storm would have one clear advantage. It would make things more difficult for their pursuers, if they were being pursued. On the other hand, it had almost emptied the streets.

  Two blocks ahead he could see the lights of what seemed to be a hospital. As he was pulling away, something in the electricity-supply system could no longer carry the load expected of it. The streetlights and the hospital lights went out together. The darkness was broken only by the headlights of their car and one other, approaching from the opposite direction. He could see no other signs of movement.

  Abigail had her cellphone out. “No signal. Is that because of the power failure?”

  “Maybe. I think so.” Helena was nodding. “Straight ahead, Gordon. You’re doing great…” After considering that statement, she added, “… so far.”

  They crossed street after street, stopping at each corner to look for signs of CIO or police presence. Twice they saw the headlights of vehicles, but both times they were at some distance and passed without any interest being shown in them.

  Ahead, the road ended against what seemed to be open ground. “Stop just before the corner and switch off the headlights,” Helena said.

  Rosa turned to look at her. “My dear, we won’t be able to see.”

  Yudel was bringing the car to a halt. As he switched off the lights, he reached across and placed a hand on hers. “What Helena means is that, in this weather, the only way they will be able to see us is by our headlights.”

  “Right on, Gordon. You’re almost a Zimbabwean already.”

  Helena threw open the door on her side. “I’m going to look.” Marjorie Swan’s umbrella snapped open as she stepped into the rain.

  From the car they could see little more than her silhouette; a dark form against the still deeper darkness. The road to the left fed into what was probably a main artery. A car came past from the right, its headlights a weak yellow. Helena had stepped back into the shelter of the street where they had stopped. They saw her briefly in silhouette as the car passed.

  “I can’t stand this.” Abigail was opening the door on her side. “I have to see.”

  By the time she reached Helena, the activist had moved back into the shelter of the nearest building. Abigail reached out to touch her, but the other woman leaped at the touch, in the same movement turning to face her. “Christ, don’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry.” She had stopped next to Helena.

  “Down there,” Helena whispered.

  In the distance, all of ten blocks from them, two sets of headlights were maneuvering back and forth in the road. While Abigail watched, the headlights of one fell on the other. For just a moment they could see the now-familiar shape and color of a CIO double-cab. Helena brought her lips right up to Abigail’s ear. “Even if he c
ame round as we left, they couldn’t have gotten organized so fast. They’re a bunch of incompetents.”

  “Jonas Chunga’s not,” Abigail said. “He didn’t know he’d find us at the hotel. This is a precaution. He doesn’t intend to let us out of Harare tonight.”

  “He can screw off,” Helena said. “I hate the bastard.”

  “Don’t switch on the lights till we’ve turned round,” Helena said. “We need to go back a few blocks, then turn right again.” The route she took led them back to Samora Machel Drive. “Go straight across it this time. When you’re across, switch off the lights again.”

  “You’re taking us around them,” Yudel said. Some traffic had appeared on the artery. There were now a few cars and trucks, the drivers of which had braved the rain. They came past slowly, trying to avoid skidding, almost coming to a halt at a place where a blocked stormwater drain had caused a shallow lake to form across the road. Down the nearer gutter a torrent of rainwater was pouring over the pavement.

  Yudel waited until the road was clear of all traffic, then crossed, staying in low gear through a stream of water in the nearer gutter. The engine note dropped for a moment as the car’s tailpipe was submerged. Then they were through. On the other side the car bumped over a second gutter, splashing through water that was also running strongly, but not as deep. Most of the road was under water.

  He switched off the headlights and stopped. “Where are they from here?” he asked Helena.

  “A bit in front and a few hundred meters to the right, but that wasn’t the roadblock. That’s just a patrol. I’ve got to get out again.”

  This time both Yudel and Abigail followed, stopping next to her on the veranda of an old retail building. She was pointing in the direction of the Bulawayo road. “You see up there, at the top of the rise? That’s Heroes Acre, where the heroes of the liberation struggle are buried. The road curves to the left there and drops behind the rise. There’s also a hedge.” A light flashed in the direction she had been indicating. “Did you see that?”

  “Yes,” Yudel said. He glanced at Abigail.

  “I also saw it.”

  “That’s probably the roadblock.”

  “And this will take us around them?”

  “A track I know will take us past them. We’ll cut back across to the main road once we’ve passed them.”

  “A dirt road?”

  “There’s no other way, unless we try to go through the roadblock.”

  “A dirt road will be swamp by now,” Yudel said.

  Abigail had been listening to the exchange. She felt it was time for her to enter the discussion. “There is no other way. If we try to go through the roadblock, that will be the end of our journey.”

  They hurried back to the car, splashing through puddles. Yudel moved it gently forward. Without headlights and with the rain still beating strongly against the windscreen, visibility was down to a few paces. At least the sound of the rain might drown out the engine noise, he thought.

  “We have no choice but to go back to Samora Machel for a few blocks.” Helena was still sitting forward, her head between Yudel and Rosa. “Just a little way. Leave the lights off.”

  There was no sign of the CIO patrol now. Light traffic was moving slowly in both directions. To their left, the shining tower that was the ruling party’s headquarters and the scene of Tony’s explosion looked down on Harare. On the rise that was now perhaps half a kilometer ahead, a car was slowing. Its brake lights reflected brightly off the wet road.

  “He’s stopping for the roadblock,” Helena said. The car’s lights faded from their field of vision as it passed behind an obstruction. They could see no other sign of the roadblock. A car coming from the front flashed its lights to warn them that theirs had not been switched on.

  They traveled the next block as slowly as before. Away to the right, farther than Yudel thought the roadblock would be, something flared and flickered, the light a fire would make. To survive the rain, it would need to be under shelter.

  “Go left here, at the end of the block,” Helena directed him.

  Yudel guided the car around the corner and onto the promised dirt road, moving even more slowly than before. The houses had fallen away, and they were passing through a maize field where the plants were more than head-height. The roadblock would be ahead and to their right, but the maize blocked their view in that direction. It would also give them shelter from the roadblock. The dirt surface of the road had turned to mud, just as Yudel had prophesied. It was smooth and slippery, even when traveling slowly.

  The maize cover broke as they crossed a makeshift bridge of fuel drums and concrete over a stream that was now flowing strongly. The car crept forward at walking pace. They had a view, partly obscured, of stationary headlights that were still burning. Yudel thought he saw the roof outlines of two double-cabs. One seemed to be parked across the road, cutting its usual width. The other may have been facing away from them in the direction of Bulawayo, ready to give chase if anyone tried to jump the roadblock. In the briefest flash he saw men in rainwear, carrying torches. A torch was being shone into the face of the driver whose car had been stopped. The driver was gesticulating with both hands as he tried to explain something to the men manning the roadblock.

  The rain was a still a steady downpour, angling toward them. Yudel edged the car forward. He wondered what the men at the roadblock would see if they looked in their direction. There may have been a reflection off the windows, except that with the city’s power down, there was so little light.

  The track dipped, and the screen of maize cut off their view of the road. Yudel only saw the turn in the track as the stalks of maize swept toward him. He swung the steering wheel, but the car broadsided gently over the edge of the track. He tried to compensate, but it kept going in a slide so slow that it might have been a television replay on a sports program. The wheels reached a fringe of hard veld grass. The maize was brushing against the windows on his side. The car lurched to a stop and the engine choked off. Somewhere to the right, above the sound of the rain, Yudel could hear the sound of running water.

  Helena was patting him anxiously on the shoulder. “This is not working. If we hit plowed land here we won’t get the car out tonight.”

  “You want me to switch on the lights?”

  “No. I’ll walk in front and you just follow me.”

  Rosa sounded horrified. “In this rain?”

  “I’ve got the umbrella.” She opened the door and was already getting out. With her head bowed and the umbrella held low, sheltering her from the wind, Helena made her way to the front of the car. First she guided Yudel back onto the track, then she started down the trail. To Yudel she was only a vague figure in the darkness, but one he could follow. He stayed close, keeping the center of the car directly behind her.

  “That umbrella will only shelter her above the waist,” Rosa said. “Perhaps not even. She’s going to catch her death.”

  “She can be such a pain, but, heaven knows, she’s got guts.” Abigail sounded admiring. “She’s probably right. We couldn’t have made it without her.”

  Yudel was squinting into the darkness beyond the rain-washed windscreen. “We haven’t made it yet.”

  The track twisted to the right and rose toward higher ground. “I can see them.” Abigail was on her knees, looking out the side window.

  A glance over his right shoulder gave Yudel the view she had. The double-cabs were barely visible, but the beams of their headlights were shafts of bright light. “Is there traffic through the roadblock?” he asked.

  “A small truck, I think. That car has either been let through or turned back.” While Abigail watched, the driver of the truck got out, shielding his head with what looked like a newspaper. One of the CIO men was walking to the back of the truck. “They’re taking no chances. It looks like everyone gets out and every car and truck gets searched.”

  Along the crest of the rise, a sudden screen of scrub cut off their view of the road an
d again gave them shelter. Underfoot, the track had hardened and flattened. The rain was lighter now. Helena had broken into a jog. She had folded the umbrella and was holding it in one hand. The maize had fallen away and they were passing through a small village of laborers’ cottages. After a flat stretch of perhaps another hundred meters, Helena stopped and stepped aside. Yudel brought the car to a halt next to her and she got in, shivering and gasping for breath. With a bump, the car was back on the tar of the Bulawayo road. Yudel stopped on the verge. The roadblock was a few hundred meters behind them, and clearly visible. The headlights of the double-cab that was facing in their direction had been switched off. “What now?” He found himself whispering.

  “Just go and keep the lights off,” Helena said. “And hope that they don’t look our way and, if they do, that they don’t switch those headlights on.”

  Uniformed police officers at the roadblock were busy with two cars they had stopped. The CIO men too would be more interested in the cars they had stopped than in what was happening on the road behind them. From their point of view, it should have been empty.

  Yudel moved the car smoothly forward. In the rearview mirror he could see the lights of the CIO vehicles. Helena’s teeth were chattering and she had both arms wrapped around herself. “The road will drop down into a depression a bit further on. Then you can switch the lights back on.”

  From behind, the weak light of distant headlights reached them, momentarily casting the shadow of the car onto the road in front of them. It lasted only a few seconds, then the road dipped and the headlights were no longer reaching them. The roadblock too had disappeared from sight.

  51

  He had been trying to drive the girl from the cell he shared with three of the men, but could not. Tony Makumbe heard her weeping as from a distance, faintly, the sound slowly growing in volume.

  He could see her now. She was no more than six or seven, and small for her age. He could also see the body of his mother where she had fallen when they killed her. He knew that they had been fleeing through the bushveld night. His face had been scratched by thorns and dry branches. His hands were bloodied where he had touched the scratched places. They had fled and hidden, but when the soldiers came their mother had told them to sit down and be quiet, and she had gone to meet them alone.