Blessed Are the Dead

by Malla Nunn

  “Ngiyabonga, Sisana. You are a fine child.” Kaleni patted the girl’s braided hair and gripped the Good Book awkwardly in his left hand. “Go now. All is well.”

  The girl returned to the embrace of the True Israelites and inserted herself between two large women. Kaleni struck out again toward the rock without glancing back.

  “I will walk with you,” Shabalala said, and fell in by the preacher’s side. Emmanuel held back and let the two Zulu men go ahead. The gap had to be wide enough for Kaleni to be certain that a European detective was not overhearing the conversation. White cop/black cop was the homegrown South African version of the good cop/bad cop routine used by police across the globe, and was just as effective.

  Occasional Zulu words carried to him on the breeze during the walk over the flat terrain. Emmanuel caught “water,” “bread” and “blood” but didn’t try to make connections. Shabalala would report on the conversation later. A few feet ahead the flat rock split the red earth to make a natural platform.

  “Please, sit.” Baba Kaleni motioned to the rock in the same way a prosperous farmer might offer a seat in his kitchen to a guest.

  Shabalala climbed on first and found a spot to the rear of the warm stone. He squatted down with his broad hands resting on the curve of his knees and his fedora pulled low on his forehead. It was a signal for Emmanuel to lead the conversation.

  “Take the shade,” Emmanuel said to Kaleni in Zulu. “I have protection from the sun.”

  The old man squeezed into the shadow cast by a paperbark thorn tree and rested his right arm on his lap. The river now looked like a thin silver ribbon on the horizon, the church members gathered on its distant banks smudges of white, blue and green.

  “Tell me everything you remember about this morning. From before finding Amahle to what you did afterwards,” Emmanuel continued in Zulu.

  “It happened like this. I awoke before the sun and dressed. It was dark in the hut but my wife is very neat and my church hat, my robes and my Bible were placed just so. My wife has always been like my right hand and a true helper.”

  “A blessing . . .” Shabalala mumbled before the preacher set off again, describing in minute detail the chill of the water in the wash bucket in the hut and the texture of the breakfast porridge, eaten cold and without milk.

  Emmanuel breathed in the scent of dirt and crushed grass and waited for Kaleni’s recollections to reach the crime scene.

  “After many miles of walking my legs grew tired and I stopped to rest. That is when I came away from the path.” Kaleni traced a finger over a tear in the Bible’s worn cover. “And that is when I saw her. The daughter of the chief.”

  “Saw her where?”

  “Under the fig tree. I . . .” He shook his head, embarrassed. “I thought maybe the chief’s daughter was sleeping. Even though the dew was wet on the leaves and the dawn just breaking.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the area?” Emmanuel hoped his patience would be rewarded with a name or a physical description of the man who’d guarded Amahle’s body.

  There was a pause, a mere pulse of a heartbeat, before Baba Kaleni said, “I saw no one, inkosi.”

  “You absolutely sure?”

  “The chief’s daughter was alone.” The tear on the Bible cover widened under the rub of the old man’s fingertips. “Of this I am certain.”

  “So it was just you and her on the hill?” Emmanuel leaned closer and established eye contact. This was the first pressure point in an interview. Letting a witness know he wasn’t fooling anyone, certainly not a city detective who had heard some of the most accomplished liars in the world doing some of their best work. The eye contact also contained a hint of a threat. It was a ploy but worth a try.

  “The chief’s daughter was alone,” Kaleni said again. “Of this I am certain.”

  “All right.” Emmanuel let it go. The old man had his story and he was sticking to it. “Describe the place where Amahle was lying.”

  “Under the fig tree with flowers all around. There was a red blanket rolled up and placed under her head.”

  “Did you put it there?” Emmanuel had checked the tartan blanket after leaving the crime scene. It was pure wool and made by Papworth’s Fine Fabrics in Cape Town. There was no name on it to identify the owner.

  “No.” A glimmer of a smile curved the older man’s lips. “But that I owned such a blanket. It would keep me warm in winter. My wife also.”

  Emmanuel dug his pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. “After you found her?” he prompted.

  “I went to the kraal of Chief Matebula. He was asleep and would not be disturbed. I reported the news to Nomusa, the girl’s mother.”

  “Why didn’t you go to a farm where there was a telephone?”

  Kaleni looked away to a bank of clouds massing on the horizon. “It was dawn, inkosi. I did not wish to disturb the farmers or the night watchmen who guard their homes.”

  Nor would he want to rouse their dogs. There was no curfew in the countryside, but a black man wandering before dawn wouldn’t be welcome in any house wealthy enough to own a telephone. A stupid question, Emmanuel realized. He tapped his pen to the page, bothered by a wrinkle in the timeline.

  “Was it dark when you reached the Matebula kraal?” he asked.

  “No. The sun was on the crest of the mountains and the birds were awake.”

  Colonel van Niekerk had assigned the case to him at three forty-five a.m., well before Kaleni had brought Nomusa the bad news. The woman who’d called in the anonymous tip-off must have known about Amahle’s murder prior to the discovery of her body; a woman who might be connected to the small man whose prints littered the crime scene. Emmanuel scribbled the mismatched times into his notebook and continued the interview.

  “Who do you think killed Amahle?” Patience hadn’t paid off and subtlety wasn’t for policemen with a blank list of suspects.

  “The chief’s daughter was much loved,” Kaleni said. “By everyone.”

  That pause again. A space of three seconds filled with hidden meaning that eluded Emmanuel. Was Amahle loved from afar or loved in a more physical way?

  “Did you know her?” Emmanuel asked.

  “Not well. She was not a member of my church.”

  A black bird with yellow markings flew into the branches of the paperbark tree and whistled four long notes in rotation. Baba Kaleni tilted his head and looked at the bird with joy.

  “Cut yourself shaving?” Emmanuel said, and pointed to drops of fresh blood leaking from a small wound in the preacher’s throat.

  The old man shrugged his good shoulder and said, “My eyes are weak and the mountain way is steep. I stumbled and fell onto rocks.”

  There were no scrapes or bruises on his hands and those “weak” eyes had not a half hour ago picked out a distant slab of basalt protruding from the veldt.

  “Sharp rocks,” Emmanuel said.

  “Sharp as the tip of a spear, inkosi,” said Baba Kaleni.

  Shabalala glanced up from the shade of his fedora and Emmanuel understood: The old man was telling them exactly what had happened. A real spear had pierced his throat, not stones.

  “Did you get hurt anyplace else in the fall?”

  “Yebo.” Baba Kaleni touched gentle fingers to his sagging right shoulder. “Another rock hit me here. It was round and hard as a knobkerrie.”

  Mandla’s impi were armed with spears and hardwood clubs called knobkerries and they were one step ahead of the official police investigation, questioning witnesses and demanding answers with weapons.

  “This is bad, Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “Mandla must be stopped before he harms others and frightens them away from talking to us.”

  Emmanuel agreed. Mandla and his impi had to be stopped. “Where is the Matebula kraal?” he asked the preacher.

  “The kraal is one hour past the river.” Kaleni pointed to a mountain covered with trees and a rock outcrop at the top. “It can be seen from that place.”

&nbs
p; Zulu time was set to a different clock than the one Emmanuel operated by. The trip would only take an hour if he and Shabalala ran to the kraal; in their suits and leather shoes that wouldn’t be easy.

  “Any way to get to the kraal by car?” Emmanuel asked, even though he could see only small walking tracks traversing the hills and knew that the access road to the white-owned farms was eaten away by potholes.

  “No,” Kaleni said. “You must go there on your own two feet.”

  There was no option but to go up the mountain. At a steady pace, Emmanuel hoped the trip to and from the Zulu compound would be completed in full daylight.

  “You’ll get us there and back to the car again, Shabalala?” Emmanuel removed his tie and shoved it into his pants pocket, then freed the top three buttons of his shirt.

  “I will find the way, Sergeant.” The Zulu detective shrugged off his jacket and tied it around his waist. They were going to set a blistering pace to try to close the gap on Mandla’s impi.

  “If you have anything to add to your statement, now’s the time, Baba.” Emmanuel expected nothing new from the preacher and his mind was already on the hard miles ahead. Chief Matebula and his son had to be brought into line or more people could get hurt.

  “There is but one thing more, inkosi.”

  “Yeah?” Impatient to get going, Emmanuel turned to Baba Kaleni. The preacher’s hand moved in a blur, his palm slamming hard against Emmanuel’s chest. The physical contact literally took his breath away. He lifted his own hand to defend himself and push back.

  “Wait, Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “He means no harm.”

  The heat from Kaleni’s hand burned deep into the skin. Emmanuel had never felt palms so charged. His heartbeat slowed and amplified to a boom. Time lagged. Baba Kaleni leaned closer and Emmanuel could smell river mud and grass.

  “Where are the two boys and the girl that you promised to give to your mother?” the preacher asked. “They are ghosts, still waiting to be born. You are also a ghost. You float in the land of the dead.”

  Emmanuel tried to speak but couldn’t. Pressure built in his head and his ears rang just as they had when a concussion wave from an exploding shell had knocked him off his feet outside a French village during the war. He blinked. He was twelve years old again, sitting in the kitchen in Sophiatown: The wind rattled the corrugated iron walls and rain lashed the grimy windows. From outside, he heard the squeal of children splashing in the mud and footsteps running to the front door. Then came his mother, hurrying into the room humming a tune, with her silky hair tousled by the rain and a bag of groceries in her arms.

  “You’re early,” Emmanuel said. She normally came home after dark, when candles lit up the windows and the bars opened their doors. “And you’ve been drinking.”

  “Three glasses of sherry isn’t a crime, Emmanuel.” She put the grocery bag on the kitchen table, sat down on a rickety chair and kicked off her shoes.

  Emmanuel made her a cup of rooibos tea, black with three sugars. She smiled and stared at him over the lip of the cup. He looked to the door. His father would be home soon, seriously drunk and angry with the kaffirs, the coloureds, the Indians and the rich English bosses. He’d be angry most of all with this rain-washed woman, happy and beautiful in a shack with dirt floors and a leaking roof.

  “Come here, Emmanuel.” His mother grabbed his hand and pinned it to the kitchen table. “Let me read your fortune.”

  “I don’t want you to.” He already knew the future. A fight, broken cups and plates they could not afford to replace, a black eye for her and a cut lip for him.

  “Keep still.” She traced each individual line on his palm with the tip of her index finger and said, “You’ll have three children: two strong boys and a girl with the heart of a lion. Your sons will favor you but the girl will be different, more like her mother. Life won’t be easy but you’ll have a home and a happy family.”

  Emmanuel tried to jerk his hand away but she hung on, tightening her grip. Her hair retained the scent of cooking spices and cigarettes and the peppermint candies kept in a jar at the front of the Cape Trader General Store, where she worked.

  “Promise me, Emmanuel.” She was deadly serious now. “Promise me you’ll try to make this fortune come true.”

  “I promise,” he’d said, and looked away from the fierceness of her love, the unspoken hope that one day he would leave the heaving slum of Sophiatown and build a life without violence or fear.

  Three hard taps of Baba Kaleni’s fingers against Emmanuel’s chest brought him back to the wide reaches of the Kamberg Valley. He sucked in a mouthful of air, trying to break the preacher’s spell.

  “Listen, my son.” The old man hadn’t finished ripping out Emmanuel’s internal wiring. “Pleasure is easy to find between the legs of a woman but happiness is built over time and with much effort, like a hut. The woman who shares this hut with you will help carry your burdens, and you, hers. Keep your body from strange beds and the night will reward you with stars bright enough to guide your way. In the name of the Father and the Son. Amen.”

  “Amen.” Shabalala mumbled the word but kept his face turned to the horizon. Physical pleasure and strange beds were not matters he’d ever discuss with the detective sergeant.

  “Stay well,” Baba said, and moved away.

  “Hamba khale, Baba,” Shabalala called the traditional farewell. Emmanuel remained silent, wavering between shock and embarrassment at the revelation of private events.

  “And you stay well, my son,” Kaleni said, and trundled back to the True Israelites. A gospel hymn drifted across the grassed hillside and Emmanuel glanced at his partner, trying to assess the effect on him of Kaleni’s words. Shabalala continued to study the drifting clouds with a blank expression. The preacher’s message had disturbed the easy camaraderie they’d shared earlier.

  “If you’ve got something to say, then say it.” Emmanuel took off his jacket and tied the sleeves tight around his waist with angry movements.

  “The old one means no harm, Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “The spirits of the ancestors send messages through him and he must speak these out loud.”

  “Well, the spirits have no idea what they’re talking about.” He could count on one hand—no, less—the number of strange beds he’d crawled out of in the last year. There was Janice, the divorced hairdresser from London Styles Salon with the freckled nose and dimpled chin. And Lana Rose. Two women were hardly a tide of flesh.

  Davida Ellis, the coloured girl he’d broken the law to have over twelve months ago, stayed alive only in his dreams. He’d met Davida in Jacob’s Rest, the isolated rural hamlet where Shabalala and Dr. Daniel Zweigman had both once lived. His investigation into the murder of Captain Willem Pretorius exposed the Afrikaner policeman’s secret double life and put Davida in danger. When she’d come to his room in the middle of the night, open, vulnerable and to find comfort, he forgot his professional obligation to protect the weak. He could still remember the way she tasted and the feeling of her legs wrapped around him. Sleeping with Davida was a mistake, an error in judgment. Yet he couldn’t shake the notion that if the Security Branch had not dragged them from bed they might have stayed in each other’s arms forever.

  “If you say the spirits are wrong, then it is so.” Shabalala motioned to the path. “Ready, Sergeant?”

  “You lead. I’ll keep up.” Emmanuel vowed to keep up even if it meant coughing up a lung.

  “To the river,” Shabalala said, and hit the downward-sloping terrain at a sprint. Emmanuel followed him, crushing the red earth underfoot. The sun was hot on his shoulders, the breeze cool on his face. He pushed hard to a place of pure physical sensation. Five minutes more and the world would break down to sweat, breath and aching muscle. It would hurt, but in the temple of his body he was safe and strong.

  Baba Kaleni’s words echoed in Emmanuel’s head. The promise he’d made to his mother was a wound that had scabbed over, healed and vanished. Yet with one thump on his
chest the past had come roaring back as vivid as if it were right here, right now.

  The grueling mountain climb brought his mind back to the case. Mandla’s men would need to bend to the law or be broken. Together with Shabalala, he’d find Amahle’s killer and bring him to justice. There was so much still undone in his life, but the job of detective he did well.

  5

  TWO MANGY BROWN dogs with fur hanging over their bones and an old man smoking a corncob pipe flanked the gateway to the Matebula family kraal. Behind the old man, a stick fence made of dried thorn branches surrounded a collection of thatched beehive-shaped huts.

  At the sight of two city men sweating and panting on the threshold, the old man struggled to get to his feet.

  “Sit,” Emmanuel said. “Is Chief Matebula home?” The dogs raised their heads and growled but then went back to sleep in their sun patch.

  “Yebo, inkosi.” Smoke escaped from the man’s mouth when he spoke. “But the great one cannot be disturbed.”

  “He’ll make an exception for us.” Emmanuel stepped onto the dirt path leading to the interior. Ahead was the heart of the family kraal, a dusty cattle yard with a huge stinkwood tree at the center. The path split to either side of the enclosure.

  “This way, Sergeant.” Shabalala indicated the right-hand path. “The chief’s hut is always at the back of the cattle byre.”

  They moved past squat beehive huts with grass mats rolled down over entryways. A clutch of brown chickens scratched for food in the dirt and a swarm of flies settled on the rim of an uncovered cooking pot. The only human sound was that of voices whispering behind the hut walls. There was no sign of Mandla or his men. It was as if the whole kraal were holding its breath and waiting.

  “Everyone’s under house arrest,” Emmanuel said quietly. “I wonder if the chief is afraid of a riot.”

  The crash of splintering wood and a male voice raging in Zulu came from the northeast corner of the compound. The dozing dogs awoke and barked at the sky.