Permanent Removal

by Cowell, Alan S.

  “You invited me in, Lily.”

  “And now you need me – us – to invite you out.”

  “I was not the killer!”

  “And I suppose you will say you were only obeying orders.”

  “I was never obeying orders. I did what I believed an American should do. Then and now.”

  “And him?”

  “He must speak for himself.’

  Twenty-Seven

  THERON LOWERED HIS TOTE BAG.

  “Mama Nyati,” he began. “Ladies. Miss Nyati. Ms. I am sorry.” He looked from one to the other, but only Celiwe Nyati held his gaze. His voice had lost the confidence of his delivery to the Old Deep set on the deck back in Plettenberg Bay.

  “As I have told the TRC, I killed Mr Nyati directly and I ordered and organised the murders of Mr Zinto, Mr Ngalo and Mr Mboniswa. If I had known then what I know now, I would not have carried out my mission. I would have refused. I would never have done this if I had known that our leaders knew, even then, that we would lose the war, that we had lost the war.”

  “This murder was war?” Lily Nyati said.

  “I felt it so to be. I had been in war in South West. Namibia. And this was the same war, like your husbands were in. We were combatants. I saw Nyati – Mr Nyati – as a soldier. An enemy of the state. When I killed him, I could not see him as a human being, only a soldier.”

  “Not as a father? Like yourself?” Celiwe Nyati barely whispered. “A father with children. Like me.”

  “But you had weapons,” Lily Nyati said.

  “And they had weapons, sometimes of a different kind. They had a just cause. You had a just cause. So did we. But we did not tell it properly. We were fighting for our survival, or so we thought. We thought we could not survive if we did not rule. We had more guns, it is true. They – you – had numbers. You had the strength to say no to us and when you said that in such large numbers, we realised we could no longer make you say yes.”

  “Yes, baas, you mean.” The women joined in brief, sour laughter.

  Theron hunched forward, his hands reaching out, showing the pinks of his palms.

  “It was wrong,” Theron said.

  “But it does not bring them back,” Celiwe Nyati interjected.

  “Nothing can do that.”

  “Our hearts are empty,” her mother said.

  “I cannot change that. If I could I would. If I could bring them back and take all your pain and their pain on my own shoulders, I would do that.”

  One of the widows, Gertrude Zinto, leaned forward and touched his arm, just for a second, then drew back as if jolted by a physical shock.

  “But you can explain,” Lily Nyati said.

  “I could say I was carrying out orders and I was. There were orders that Nyati should be permanently removed from society. That meant only one thing. Our bosses had decided, the police and the military, that he was causing too much trouble, too much onrus.”

  “But why did it have to be you? What entitled you to take his life?” Celiwe’s voice had sharpened again, taking on a harsh edge. “He was fighting for justice, for peace. He wanted us all to live together in peace. As humans. And you shot him like a dog.”

  Theron paused and reached into his tote bag. From it, he withdrew the machine pistol with which he had killed Solomon Nyati.

  “With this I shot him,” he said.

  The widows shrank back among themselves and one, Lucy Mboniswa, bolted for the door. I followed her and placed a hand on her arm. But I was not quick enough to prevent Celiwe Nyati running to the gathering crowd outside, shouting in isiXhosa.

  “She is telling them who I am,” Theron said after listening to her for a moment. “She is telling them I am armed and they should be armed. Is that not true, Mama Nyati?”

  “It is true,” Lily Nyati said.

  Theron placed the machine pistol on the coffee table, turning the snub, worn barrel towards himself and the wooden pistol grip towards Lily Nyati. Notches had been carved in it, too many to count at a glance.

  “With this gun, I killed your husband. He was a brave man. He died fighting me. He was unarmed and I shot him. I have brought it here if you want revenge. With this gun, I killed people in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. I give it up to you. It came to me when I captured its owner, a freedom fighter. Now it is time to give it back. The killing is over and I want peace in my country and in my heart. Only you can tell me that your husband would now forgive me, because he would know that I was a soldier and I lost and the victor can afford to be generous.”

  “You talk clever talk,” Lily Nyati said. “But let us see where the truth lies.” She stroked the machine pistol, allowing her fingers to run over the trigger guard. She swivelled it so that the barrel pointed exactly between Theron’s legs.

  “This took my husband’s life, this thing made of wood and metal?”

  Her voice rose to an interrogative crescendo.

  “You show me the murder weapon and expect what? You think I can punish a gun, make it weep, make it show it is sorry and has remorse. Make it feel my pain. But that is a trick because it was not the gun. It was not really the gun at all. It was a man, a killer, who pulled the trigger. You are the man. It was you. You killed him. Did you kill him or did the gun kill him?”

  “I killed him.”

  She raised the weapon now and levelled it at Theron’s head.

  “You shot him where?”

  “In the head.”

  “How many times?”

  “Once. It was a struggle in my car. A fight. He was trying to escape.”

  “With his hands tied?”

  “Handcuffed.”

  “And he would have died anyway? Even if he had not struggled.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are sorry?”

  “Mama Nyati, I am sorry. If you wish me to go on my bended knees I will say I am sorry. I am sorry to you and all the widows. I am sorry from the bottom of my heart.”

  “And when you had killed him you disguised it, like all the others, to make it look like another kind of killing.”

  “Yes. Black-on-black. A black-on-black killing.”

  “Black-on-black. That is a quaint expression. And what is this now. Black-on-white? If I pull this trigger it will be black-on-white? Is it less killing if it is black-on-black? Are black people less dead? Do white people live more, count for more?”

  For the first time I noticed stains of perspiration on Theron’s shirt spreading from his armpits. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He spoke carefully, weighing each word. The gun barrel swung a little crazily, but never left its target completely, sometimes locked onto his chest, sometimes his groin, sometime lined up for a straight head-shot. The weapon was capable of firing a stream of bullets, emptying its 20-round clip in a matter of seconds. In its day it had been popular with Special Forces operatives who prized its compactness – it was not much bigger than a conventional hand-gun – and its impressive rate of fire. For much the same reasons, it had also been favoured by mobsters and urban terror organisations. At this close range, Theron would stand no chance at all. She held the barrel with one hand while the other strayed over its mysterious workings – the trigger and trigger guard, the lightly oiled slide, the safety catch which she flicked between its settings in the safe, semi-automatic fire and full automatic fire. If she pulled the trigger, no one would ever report her action. Theron’s death – maybe mine, too – would be cloaked in Omertà.

  Step by step, Lily Nyati led Theron through the sequence of events that formed his testimony: the choice of ambush location (why there, at the pass? because the cars would be slowing? easy to catch?); the way the police cars were hidden; the flashing blue light and the separation of the four men into two vehicles once the snatch had been made.

  She prompted him when he stumbled as if she were his confessor – or inquisitor – prizing out the reluctant detail: who killed who, and when and where? She had gone through his story so often from the tra
nscripts that she knew it better than he did.

  Celiwe Nyati had returned to the room, following the recital as if to ensure that Theron left out no detail as he described the moment of the ambush and the silence in the cars as they drove towards Crystal Sands. Then the rising protest as the captives realised they were not being taken off to some police camp for the routine beating and interrogation, but something far worse. Then the separation for disposal by bludgeon, knife and fire. Permanent Removal.

  Celiwe paced back and forth, sometimes checking from the window on the crowd outside. When the young men caught sight of her, they roared. “Amandla!”

  Finally, Lily Nyati homed in on the detail of her husband’s last drive with Theron, the words they had exchanged, the silences, the manner in which he had attempted to strangle Theron and his failure to do so.

  Had he begged for his life?

  No.

  Had he tried to plead for the lives of the others: let them go and take me in exchange?

  Yes.

  And why had you not granted that wish? Because it was too late. Because we had planned it this way, not that way.

  Then the shot, the final single shot to the head.

  “So how did you feel during this struggle in your car?”

  “I felt nervous. It was an operation. There is adrenaline. You do not think. You act as you are trained to. You do not think until later.”

  “And later, for you, you went home to your wife and family and had breakfast?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “And told them?”

  “Some lies about late duty.”

  “Some lies? My husband’s death was just some lies? These killings of four men – Nyati, Zinto, Ngalo, Mboniswa – were just some lies? Did you go straight home?”

  “First I must report to my superior.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it was done. That was all. They knew what was happening.”

  “So then you went to your family?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “But Solomon did not.”

  “He was dead, Mama Nyati. How could he?”

  “How could he, indeed?”

  “Do you know how old I was?” Celiwe broke in. “Do you know how I was an infant on my mother’s back, wrapped up in a blanket. Do you know that I never knew him? How could I? Did you know how long I would ask my mother when my father was going to come home and she did not know what to say?”

  Lily Nyati rose and strode back and forth in the small sitting room, still carrying the gun, then turned on Theron as if imitating the prosecutor in a television courtroom drama.

  “Are you being honest with me?”

  “Yes, I am being honest.”

  “So I will ask you once again: how did you feel?”

  “I was doing my part in the war. To protect my people. To prevent a communist takeover. It was an operation. A necessary, military operation.”

  She knelt beside him and rammed the machine pistol into the side of his head.

  “You do not seem to understand,” Lily Nyati said. “I asked you to tell me how you felt about it. Before and after and during. What did it mean to you?”

  The noise level was rising outside the house, among the growing crowd of young men. I could hear slogans from the past, the thumping rhythm of a toyi-toyi dance. In my earlier days in South Africa, the sound had filled me with exhilaration. Now it elicited a terrible fear. The rage had risen. I was its target just as much as Theron.

  “Go and talk to them,” Lily Nyati told her daughter. “Tell them to be patient. Tell them it is not yet time.”

  She sat back in an armchair with a beguiling look on her face. The machine pistol was steadier now.

  Celiwe Nyati was leading the singing among the crowd – the old, haunting melodies, the chilling lyrics, composed in an era she knew only by hearsay – her father’s era.

  “Senzeni Na?” What have we done?

  It was a question I was asking of myself.

  In the distance, part-hidden behind a row of shanties, I could see a late-model Toyota, parked and immobile. Maybe it was a trick of light but I thought I saw two white faces alongside that of a black man.

  Theron licked his lips. He looked at the floor, then back up at the ceiling, then straight at Lily Nyati.

  “In one way I felt nothing.”

  “It left you cold?”

  “It left me cold.”

  “And the other way. What was the other way? You are talking as if we are all the same. Are we?”

  “We are Africans. All of us.” Theron’s eyes flickered towards the other three widows as he said this, then returned to his questioner.

  “Ha! You think so? You think African and Afrikaner is the same thing? Master and Slave. Victim and perpetrator. Overlord and underdog. Are they all the same?”

  “No. They are not. But I belong in Africa because of hundreds of years of my ancestors. I do not belong anywhere else. Not Holland or France or Germany where my people came from. I was raised to be believe we had a duty to rule Africa. But now I cannot belong anymore in Africa unless you give me my space in Africa. You were here first.”

  “Yes, we were here first. But you took it, plundered it, stole it. Like you have stolen my husband from me. So if you want to be here in my Africa you must be honest. Can you be honest?”

  “Yes, Mama Nyati. I am an honest man. A father of two wonderful boys. A husband. Blessed with a wife who says she loves me despite everything. I work for peace, against violence. I lift mines so that they can no longer hurt people. I risk my life to pay for the lives I have taken.”

  “And when you took them, those lives, was it in cold blood? Or was there something else? Were you thinking: one less of these blacks to deal with? Did you hate us? Did you hate my husband?”

  “No Mama. I did not. He was a soldier. It was not personal.”

  “Not personal! You killed him! Is that personal or not?”

  “It was war.”

  “And now it is not war and you are sorry.”

  “Yes, I am sorry.”

  “So did you hate him?”

  “No.”

  “But he was black and you were a white policeman.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you call blacks? Kaffirs?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “Say it. Say what you felt.”

  “Kaffirs. You want me to say I hated kaffirs?” A spot of wild red colour had spread across his cheekbones. Perspiration smeared dark stains across his shirt.

  “But I did not. I did not want to live in your house or you in mine. But I did not hate.”

  “But you mocked us. With your police friends. You laughed at us. You made jokes.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Because of the way we talked?”

  “Yes.”

  “And our voices in the servant’s quarters? The way the maid stole your sugar and the gardener believed in the spirits? Because we had tribes? Because we wanted to take back everything you had taken from us? Because our voices sounded strange to you?”

  “Ja. All of that. Ja.” Theron sounded as if he were short of breath. His words came in a staccato burst.

  “And our smell?”

  “Yes.”

  “And our stupidity?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. All those things. Because you hated me, you wanted what was mine. Your men wanted my women, my car, my house. I hated that you were sly. I hated that you had slaughtered my people and bombed our houses. I hated that you did not do what you were told. But I did not hate you in person, not anyone. We made a covenant with God to survive in this damned continent. So how could that be turned into hatred?”

  “But some of your own officers were black, weren’t they? Were they kaffirs, too? “

  “But I did not hate them.”

  “And are you being honest now?”

  “Yes I am being honest. I could not be more honest because I have said things I would not say to my own wife,
my own children. I want them to grow up decently. In Africa. With other Africans. Like you and your children. His children. Nyati’s children.”

  “Do you think he would want his children to play with the sons of his murderer?”

  “But we must all do that in our country. We cannot visit the crimes of fathers on sons.”

  “Do you think my husband, my late husband would forgive you?”

  “Or my father? Would my father forgive his murderer?” Celiwe Nyati had returned to the house. “Would the comrades outside this house forgive the killer of their hero?”

  “They would have no reason to. But you could explain to them, Miss Nyati. Ms. They will listen to you. Your father wanted only the best for his people and what I see outside the window is not the best for his people. The violence must end sometime, if not today then tomorrow or the next day, and when it does there will be consciences to settle, questions to answer, prices to pay. I know that. God knows I do.”

  “Do not mention God. How can a killer mention God?”

  “Please, I beg you, for it is you and your generation who can do this: break the cycle of violence. Turn the other cheek like we all learned in all our churches. Do not make my mistakes. Do not believe that violence can solve problems without creating many, many more. You are young. You have a life. Maybe you did not know your father. That is my fault – 100 per cent – and if I could change that in any way, I would. But I did know your father, in my way. And I know how much he loved his children and his country and how he fought against people like me to provide you with a future. Like Gandhi. He was a Gandhi and I called him a terrorist. But he sacrificed so you could have that future. You have won. He would not want that victory to be stained with more blood.”

  His words flowed so flawlessly – almost oratory – that I wondered how often Theron had rehearsed this pitch for mercy. Or was it just one more excerpt from a well-thumbed playbook, the high-stakes endgame?

  Celiwe Nyati would not meet his gaze but I saw that she was weeping. When I looked at him, there were tears on his cheeks too.

  “What must he do to prove he means what he says?” I asked her.