A SONG IN THE MORNING

by Gerald Seymour

  He did not know what was on Magazine Hill, and ignorance was a comfort, his only ally.

  * * •

  "You're not usually here on a Sunday morning, Sergeant."

  "Overtime, Carew. I get time and a half on a Sunday morning. I need the money, what with retirement coming.

  You can always get overtime on a Sunday. The young fellows don't want it. They want to be with their families, get outside the city, get away from here."

  Jeez had eaten his breakfast. His breakfast on a Sunday morning was the same as on any other morning. Jeez had eaten porridge made from maize, with milk. And two slices of brown bread, with thinly smeared margarine and jam.

  The same as on every morning that he had been in Beverly Hills. He had three more breakfasts to eat. He would be gone before breakfast was served on Thursday. He had drunk his mug of coffee. He knew that he would get one meal that was different to all the other meals inside Beverly Hills. On Wednesday afternoon he would have a whole chicken for his dinner, cooked by the chef in the staff canteen. For the last meals there was always a whole chicken for the condemns who were White. He couldn't remember where he had heard that, whether it had been from way back when he was on remand, or whether he had read it in the newspapers before his arrest. It was a part of the lore of the condemns that they were given a whole chicken the dinner before they were hanged, just as it was part of the lore that the Blacks only had half a chicken. Jeez couldn't believe that, that the pigmentation of the skin made the difference between two legs and two wings and two breasts, and one leg and one wing and one chicken breast. And he wouldn't get to know, because he was buggered if he was going to beg an answer from Sergeant Oosthuizen.

  Jeez wasn't sharp that Sunday morning.

  So dull that he didn't even question Oosthuizen's claim that he was only at work to get time and a half for his nest egg. There was a weakness in Jeez's legs and in his belly. It was with him more frequently, as if he had a cold coming on, and the microbe was fear. Couldn't rid himself of the fear, not when he was locked in his cell, not when he was alone, particularly not when the high ceiling light about the wire grille was dimmed, when he was alone with his thoughts of Thursday morning and the rambling night sounds of the gaol.

  The sounds carried into the upper areas of the cells and through the open windows to the catwalks, and from the catwalks they eddied to the next window and floated down from there to the next cell, and the cell beyond that.

  The young White, the one who hadn't been there for more than a few weeks, always cried on a Sunday morning, in the small hours. Oosthuizen had told Jeez that he had been an altar boy, was a Roman Catholic, and cried because when he had been a teenager he was out of bed early on a Sunday morning and away to his local church for first Mass. Oosthuizen had confided that the young White was getting to be a pain with his crying. The old White, charged with killing his wife for the insurance, he coughed and spat each morning to clear the nicotine mucus from his throat. Oosthuizen said that the old White smoked sixty cigarettes a day. Oosthuizen had once said, in his innocence, that the old White would kill himself by so much smoking.

  There was the crying and the coughing and the slither tread of the guard on the catwalk, and there was the sound of a lavatory flushing. There was laughter from out in the corridor, where the prison officers played cards to pass away the day.

  Faintly he heard the singing.

  Just a murmur at first.

  The edges and clarity were knocked off the singing by the many windows and the yards of the catwalk that it passed through. The singing was from right across the far side of Beverly Hills, from A section or B section. Jeez saw Oosthuizen fidget.

  "Who's it for?"

  "I'm not allowed to tell you that."

  "Sergeant. . ." Jeez held Oosthuizen with his eyes.

  Oosthuizen pulled at his moustache, then shrugged, and dropped his voice. "For the boy who's going on Tuesday."

  "Who is he, Sergeant?"

  "Just a Coloured."

  The whole place was mad. There was a worry that a man smoked too much and might harm his health before it was time for him to have his neck stretched, which might just do his health a bit more harm. There was worry that a prison officer who was retiring on Thursday might get into trouble for a quiet conversation on his last Sunday morning.

  "What's he like, the fellow who does it?"

  "You trying to get me on a charge sheet, Carew?"

  "What's he like?"

  The voice was a whisper. "He's damned good. . . Doesn't help you to think about it, forget what I told you . . . He's as good as anywhere in the whole world. He's fast and he's kind, a real professional."

  He won't hurt you, Jeez. So get a grip on it, Jeez, because old Sergeant Oosthuizen says the executioner's a hell of a good operator. Great news, Jeez . . .

  "I'll walk with you on Thursday morning, Carew. I'll hold your arm."

  Jeez nodded. He couldn't speak. He didn't think Oosthuizen had attended a hanging in years. He thought that Oosthuizen had made him a bloody great gesture of love.

  "I'm going to do the rosters so's I get Monday in here for the day shift, and then I'll have Tuesday off, and then I'll come on again for Tuesday night, and then I'll have Wednesday off and I'll be back on again for Wednesday night, and I'll stay on through . . . "

  "Why, Sergeant?"

  The words came in a flood flow. "Because you aren't the same as the others. Because you're here by some sort of accident, I don't know what the accident is. Because you're covering for something, I don't know what it is. Because you shouldn't be here. Because you're not a terrorist, whatever you've done. Because you had the way to save yourself, I don't know why you didn't take it . . . It's not my place to say that, but it's what I think."

  Jeez smiled. "Not your place, Sergeant."

  He watched the cell door close on Oosthuizen.

  A hell of a week to look forward to. Clean clothes on Monday, and fresh sheets. Library on Wednesday. Early call on Thursday . . .

  * * •

  Jan had been home, spoken to her, and gone.

  Ros waited for her father to leave for his Sunday morning round of golf.

  He played every Sunday morning, then came home for his cold lunch. In the afternoon he would do the household bills and write letters. Her father didn't take a drink on Sundays, not even at the golf club. She waited for her father to leave the house, then went to their bedroom.

  Her father always brought her mother breakfast before he left to play golf. The maid had all of Sunday off. The family fended for itself without her for one day a week. Every Saturday night and every Sunday night the maid took the long train journey to and from Mabopane in Bophutatswana where her husband was out of work and where her mother looked after her five children. The maid was her family's breadwinner. And when she was away the van Niekerks let the dust accumulate and filled the sink with dishes and were content in the knowledge that it would all be taken care of on the Monday morning.

  Ros told her mother a little of the truth, a fraction.

  Ros said that she and her brother had met a pleasant young Englishman. She said that she was sorry that she had stayed out for a whole night the previous week, and offered no explanation. She said that she was owed time from work, and she was going away with the Englishman and her brother for Monday and Monday night and all of Tuesday. She'd laughed, and said she'd be chaperoned by Jan.

  When she was her daughter's age, her mother had used to drive with her father through the night to Cape Town, for the weekend, more than 1400 kilometres each way, and sleep together in a fleapit, before they were even engaged.

  She wondered why her daughter bothered to tell her what she was doing, and couldn't for the life of her fathom why the girl was taking that awkward, intense brother with her.

  She thought it would do her daughter the world of good to be bedded by a strong young man. Half the daughters of her friends were married at Ros's age, and some of them already divorced. She th
ought there was something peculiar about her own girl's plain dressing and shunning of make up.

  She slipped out of bed. She slung a cotton dressing gown across her shoulders.

  She took Ros to her dressing table and sat her on the stool.

  She did what she had not been allowed to do for ten years.

  She took the girl in charge. She changed Ros's hair, lifted it, swept it back and gathered it into a red ribbon. She put on for Ros her own eye make-up and cheek highlight and a gentle pink lipstick. She didn't dare to stop. She could hardly believe she was permitted to make the transformation.

  She let Ros gaze at herself in the mirror above the dressing table.

  She said, "This young man, he's an immigrant?"

  "Just a visitor. He's hoping to go back to England on Wednesday or Thursday."

  Ros saw the flush of her mother's disappointment.

  Later, when her mother had gone back to bed, Ros went to her father's desk and took from the bottom drawer the key to the gun cabinet that was bolted to the wall of the spare bedroom. Gingerly she took out a pump action shot gun, a box of cartridges, and her father's two revolvers along with a second box of .38 ammunition. She returned the key before hiding the weapons and ammunition in her bed.

  * • •

  The road was straight and the ground on either side of it was barren waste.

  Jan talked, too bloody much. He turned his head and shouted through the visor of his crash helmet, and Jack had to lean towards him to hear anything through the thickness of his own helmet. For Jack it was little short of a miracle that the Suzuki moped was able to carry the two of them.

  He felt a complete, conspicuous idiot perched on the pillion, squashed into Jan's spare helmet, towering above the kid as they dribbled along at thirty five miles an hour.

  They were heading for Duduza, some fifty kilometres southeast of Johannesburg.

  Staccato bursts of explanation from Jan.

  Past mine workings, through small industrial towns, past a row of empty bungalows deserted because the White staff had left when the mine was exhausted and the homes had been left to the weather and to disintegrate alongside a shanty town for Blacks.

  They were on a straight stretch. High grass beside the road. Jan leaned back to shout.

  "A White woman was driving past here, couple of years back, before the state of emergency, she was pulled out of her car, killed. It was kids from Duduza did it. Just about here . . . "

  Jack remembered what he had seen on the Pretoria road.

  The picture was clear in his mind.

  "At that time the Whites had killed hundreds of Blacks, and Blacks had killed two Whites, but the fascist law and order lobby went to work. It was vicious what the army and police did in Duduza. Most of the mothers tried to get their boys out, in girl's clothes, get them away and over the border. Just like the class of '76 in Soweto, there is a class of '85 out of Duduza. Those kids, now, they're in A.N.C.

  schools in Zambia or Tanzania. They'll come back when they're trained. There's no escape for the Boers . . ."

  "I don't want a bloody debate," Jack yelled.

  "You'll be in a debate when we get to Duduza."

  "Then it'll keep until we get there."

  Why should anyone help Jack Curwen? Why should anyone in Duduza lift a finger for Jack Curwen? He didn't give a damn for any of their slogans. His only commitment was to his father.

  "You know that racism is endemic among Whites?"

  "Not my business, Jan."

  Warm air blowing past Jan's helmet, dust skimming from the tinted screen of Jack's visor.

  "Take the courts. Take the difference between what they do for A.N.C. fighters, and what they do for the right wing scum of the Kappiecommando or the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging, that's A.W.B., pigs. Are you listening, Jack?"

  "Jan, shut up, for Christ's sake."

  Jack heard Jan laugh out loud, like he was high.

  "Jack, listen . . . If a Black throws a petrol bomb it's terrorism, if it's the White backlash then it's arson. A Black explosion is treason, a White explosion is a damage to property charge. A Black arms cache is plotting to overthrow the state, but if he's White he's done for possession of unlicensed weapons . . . Isn't that racism?"

  "I'm not listening to you, Jan."

  "You better make the right noises when we get to Duduza, if you don't want a necklace."

  Jack wondered what the hell the kid was shouting of. He didn't ask. Right now he thought the kid was a pain. He thought that if he hadn't needed the kid he would happily have jumped, walked away from him . . . But he had involved Jan van Niekerk, and he had involved Ros van Niekerk. He was leading the crippled boy and the office worker girl towards the walls and the guns of Pretoria Central.

  "I'm sorry, Jan. You have to forgive me."

  Jan turned his head. Jack saw the wide grin behind the visor screen, and the moped swerved and they nearly went off the road.

  "Nothing to forgive. You're giving me the best damned time of my life. You're kicking the Boers in their nuts, and that's nothing to forgive . . . "

  The shouting died.

  Over Jan's shoulder Jack saw the dark line of the edge of the township. Red and black brick walls behind a fence of rusting cattle wire. Low smudges of dull colour, nothing for the sun to brighten.

  Jan had told Jack, before they had started out, that Duduza was the only place where they had the smallest chance of raising his munitions. He was too junior in the Movement to be able to contact senior men at short notice.

  Part of the protective cover screen, in place to maintain the command chain's security, meant that a junior, a Jan van Niekerk, only responded to anonymous orders in his dead letter drop. Jan had said there was a Black he had once met, at a meeting in Kwa Thema township, a lively happy faced young man with a soft chocolate au lait complexion who had said his name and said where he lived, and been too relaxed and too confident to stay with the ritual of numbered code indentifications. Jan had said that the young Black's name was Henry Kenge.

  They saw the block on the road into the township.

  Four hundred metres ahead of them. Two Casspirs and a yellow police van.

  Jan had been very definite, that he hadn't any way of promising that he would find Henry Kenge. Couldn't say whether he was one of the thousand detainees, whether he had fled the country, whether he was dead. Jan had said that trying to trace the man was the only chance he knew of getting weapons by that evening. He had told Jack that it would be many days until he was contacted through the dead letter drop. The Movement would wait with extreme caution to see whether the death of Jacob Thiroko had compromised that part of the Johannesburg structure that had known of the incursion towards Warmbaths. Jan had said that every person who had known of the incursion would be isolated for their own safety, for the safety of those who dealt with them. And they would all sit very tight for a while anyway until it was discovered how Thiroko was betrayed. Jan said he would have to be under suspicion himself, having known of the rendezvous.

  The moped slowed. Not for Jack to give advice. For the boy to make his own mind. Jack's frustration that he was a stranger, without experience, unable to contribute.

  The jerk off the tarmac. Jan revved all the power he could drag from the engine. They surged and bumped away across the dirt, away from the road and the police block.

  Jack clung to Jan's waist.

  The boy shouted, "Carry yourself well, and for God's sake don't look scared. Scared is guilt to these people.

  If you see me move, follow me. If we have to get out it'll happen fast. The mood changes, like bloody light-ning . . . and this is a hell of a scary place we're going into."

  Jack punched the boy in the ribs.

  Away to the right there was the bellow of a loudspeaker from the police block. Jack couldn't hear the words. He thought they were beyond rifle range as they slipped the cordon.

  There were holes in the fence. Jan searched for one that was wide enough for
the Suzuki and jolted through it.

  Jan cut the engine.

  A terrible quiet around them, and then a dog barking. No people. Jan pushed his moped. Jack was close behind him.

  They went forward down a wide street of beaten dirt.

  Jack thought that Soweto was chic in comparison. He saw overturned and burned cars. He saw a fire-gutted house. He saw the dog, tied by string to a doorpost, angry and straining to get at them.

  "Straight roads make it easier for the police and military to dominate. They haven't electricity here, the water's off street taps, but they've good straight roads for the Casspirs."

  Jack hissed, as if frightened of his own voice, "Where the hell is everybody?"

  "A funeral's the only thing that gets everyone out. They've had enough funerals here in the last eighteen months. It's a tough place, it's hot. There's not a Black policeman can live here any more, and the Black quisling councillors are gone.

  Shit . . . "

  Jan pointed. It was a small thing and without having it pointed to him Jack wouldn't have noticed. Jan was pointing to a galvanised bucket, filled with water, in front of a house.

  Jack thought of it as a house but it was more of a brick and tin shack. He saw the bucket. When he looked up the street he saw there were buckets filled with water in front of each house, each shack, in the wide street.

  "Means bad trouble. The water is for the kids to wash the gas out of their faces. If there's going to be trouble everybody leaves water on the street."

  "If you don't put the water out?" Jack asked.

  "Then they would be thought of as collaborators and they get the necklace. Hands tied behind their backs, a tyre hung on their shoulders, that's the necklace. They set light to the tyre."

  "Bloody nice revolution you've started."

  "It's hard for these people to touch the police, they haven't a cat in hell's chance of hurting the state. What are they left with, just the chance to hurt the Black servants of the state."