The Top Prisoner of C-Max

by Wessel Ebersohn

  That was a nice way of putting it, Yudel thought. Less developed? Some of them kept the convicted behind prison walls and fed them barely enough to keep them alive. That was as far as development went.

  ‘I was hoping you could spare a few days for me. I know it’s a lot to ask.’

  Yudel had intended to give her a lecture on the dangers to be found in prisons and what could happen to anyone who was not careful, especially someone who looked like her. But if she had visited and studied that many American prisons, his advice would be meaningless. ‘Have you never felt threatened in a prison?’ he asked.

  ‘Only once. And that was in a women’s prison.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Yudel muttered.

  Beloved blushed.

  Before they left, she stopped him from arranging transport back to head office. ‘I’ll drop you,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  Since her arrival and the performance in the yard, word had spread through the staff that something unusual was taking place and that the focus point of that occurrence was worth looking at. On the way to the front entrance and the parking area, almost all of the prison’s more than fifty staff members seemed to have found a reason to be in or close to the passages they had to pass through. Warders, both senior and junior, clerks, technical supervisors, even a few visitors from head office, and every prisoner in the vicinity tried to get the best possible view of Yudel’s companion. It was a gauntlet such as the prison had never seen. Halfway to the front entrance, a voice Yudel recognised as belonging to an old repeat offender yelled, ‘There’s my man, Mr Gordon. Go for it.’

  As for Beloved, for the moment she seemed to forget Yudel. She walked with head bowed just enough to reflect shyness mixed with boldness. Her posture was erect and there was just enough wiggle in her walk to reflect a sexuality that did not need underscoring. At one point he spoke to her, asking where she was staying, but she did not seem to hear. The members of this new audience were being captured just by her walking past them.

  The pink cabriolet was hers. Yudel felt a little uncomfortable getting into the passenger seat. As soon as they were seated, Beloved let down the roof. ‘Do you like my car?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s very striking,’ Yudel said.

  She giggled softly. ‘The car or the colour?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘The car is hired and you’re quite an old conservative, aren’t you?’

  ‘Is the emphasis on old or conservative?’ he asked.

  She giggled again. ‘Conservative, definitely conservative.’

  He looked at the merriment in her face, knowing that she was having fun at his expense. ‘I don’t think of myself that way.’

  ‘Well, you are. When can I have you to myself for a day?’

  ‘I’ll look into that.’

  ‘Don’t take too long. Remember the minister’s instruction.’

  Yudel looked quickly at her, wondering if this was a threat, but she giggled again. Damn, he thought, I’m letting this kid toy with me.

  ‘I’m joking, Yudel.’ As she stopped the car in front of Poynton Building to let him out, she placed a hand on his nearer arm. ‘Thank you very much. I really do appreciate your help.’

  Yudel was aware that she was assuming help that had not yet even been offered. He nodded and started to get out.

  ‘Oh, one other thing,’ Beloved said. ‘I’m especially interested in the case of a prisoner called Oliver Hall. I hope to interview him before he’s paroled.’

  Before Yudel could respond, she had closed the door and the car was moving away. He stood on the pavement and watched it disappear into the traffic. He was too surprised and puzzled even to form a coherent thought.

  SIX

  ENSLIN KRUGER sat on a Public Works-issue cushion placed in a corner of the laundry. He was breathing heavily. His back rested against a painted, but unplastered brick wall. Officially, he was noting the articles and their quantities that passed through the laundry, but he had arranged for a young prisoner to do that for him.

  Kruger’s skin, which had been a burnt-yellow colour in his youth, had deepened to a yellow-brown. It had cracked into vertical wrinkles along the cheeks and upper lip, and even at the temples. One of the warders had remarked that asleep he looked like a Mayan mummy that had been shown on television that week. ‘Only, the mummy was better-looking,’ the warder said.

  He had been sitting in that position ever since he had come in from the exercise yard an hour before. In that time, three prisoners had approached him, each with a small amount of money, his share of relatively modest dealings in dagga and tobacco. Both drugs were illegal in the prison, but many parts of the complex smelled of them. Nothing that carried a price tag moved in C-Max without Kruger taking his cut.

  The ways he could spend the money inside the prison were limited. Some was spent on unobtrusive luxuries, some smuggled out and the rest bought considerable muscle. The muscle, in turn, ensured that the money kept flowing.

  Kruger had arranged for Oliver Hall also to work in the laundry. He was stacking prison uniforms into one of the industrial washing machines when Kruger waved a hand for him to come closer. ‘Get Dongwana,’ he said. ‘Let him come, but I want you to stay, and Somdaka. Tell him to come too.’

  ‘Right, Boss,’ Hall said. He hesitated and a sly, knowing expression came over his face. His manner of speaking had changed from the determined sophistication he pretended while in Yudel’s company. Now he was playing the role of subservience that Kruger required. ‘What about this morning, Gordon and that little queen? Do you think he’s fucking her?’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘What then? You see the way he looked at her.’

  Kruger allowed his lieutenant to wait for his reply. It was his way. At moments like this, his men simply waited for him to tell them what was really happening. None dared interrupt him. He smiled his superior, oldcon smile at Hall. ‘He’s playing Daddy. He’s got no kids, prob’ly can’t do it. He thinks he’s a daddy now.’

  You had to face it, Hall thought, the old bastard could see things no one else could. ‘Can we use it?’

  ‘A course. You can use any weak spot and this is a very fucking weak spot. The chance will come. Now get Dongwana for me. Don’ let me wait for him.’

  ‘Right, Boss.’

  The two warders whose duty it was to guard that part of the prison watched Hall go, but did nothing about it. Less than a minute later, Hall had returned, followed closely by Warder Dongwana. At the sight of Dongwana, the other two warders left their positions and stepped into the passage. It was clear that Kruger wanted privacy. Somdaka, a heavily built inmate, who had also been loading a washing machine, left his work to approach Kruger and the others. The rest of the inmates went on with their work. They knew better than to show an interest in Kruger’s business.

  A small storeroom off the laundry had not been used for years. It served little purpose. When the only key went missing, no one spent much time looking for it. That the key was now in Enslin Kruger’s possession and that the room served as his court was not known to Yudel or the director.

  Kruger limped across the laundry floor, unlocked the door and sat down on the only chair in the room. Dongwana stopped in front of Kruger. Hall and Somdaka came up close behind him. He was cornered and Kruger wanted him to feel it. ‘I need something from you, Alfred,’ Kruger said.

  The warder averted his eyes briefly. The magnetism that resided in Kruger’s eyes was too great to extend the moment. ‘I don’t know. They tighten up, tighten up all the time.’

  ‘There things I need.’ It was said with no emphasis, almost gently.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know I can help this time. I want to, but I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’ even know what I want.’

  Dongwana swallowed heavily. ‘If it’s just some dagga, some sweets, even a drink, you don’t talk to me then. You don’t need me for that. I don’t want to know this, I don’t want to know what i
s it.’

  ‘I always pay, Alfred.’ Kruger was a reasonable man. What he was asking could not be seen as unreasonable. ‘I pay you every time, Alfred.’

  ‘I told you, Mr Enslin, no more. I told you last time.’

  ‘You ever get caught when you help me a little bit?’

  ‘No.’ Dongwana was a very frightened man, but trying hard to deal with his fears. He could feel the presence of the two convicts behind him. The little matter of the director’s rebuke about his having sexual relations with a female prisoner was nothing now.

  ‘You ever have trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You disappoint me, Alfred. You know I will never use this against you with the brown boer who thinks he’s in charge a this place. You know that.’

  ‘Mr Enslin—’ Alfred Dongwana was trying to explain, but he was talking to a man who had stopped listening to him.

  ‘I must tell you, you disappoint me very much, Alfred.’

  ‘Mr Enslin—’

  ‘No, Alfred, I’m disappointed now.’ Kruger nodded to Hall. ‘Boys, Mr Dongwana’s going now. Stand away.’

  Hall and Somdaka stepped aside and Dongwana began backing away. ‘You must understand—’ he was still trying to explain.

  ‘No, Alfred. I don’ understand.’

  After Dongwana had left, Hall spoke. ‘The bastard. And now? What now?’

  Kruger smiled. ‘What now? Warder Dongwana is going an’ come an’ beg me to tell him what he can do for me. That’s what now. I’ll tell you what else is now. Now get me my cellphone, the one Williams keeps behind the sink. Bring it now.’

  SEVEN

  EVENING had settled over the complex that contained Local, Central and C-Max, three separate prisons. To the west of the prisons, but within the perimeter fencing, the fairly sedate activities that were normal within the complex were taking place in the warder accommodation of small houses and flats, the canteen and the sports club. The authorities disapproved of extravagant behaviour of any sort.

  In the living room of their small flat, secure within the razor-wire fencing of the complex, Member Alfred Dongwana was watching television with his wife. The programme they were tuned to was a match being played by the national football team. They were eating fried chicken, purchased from the canteen at subsidised prices. The chicken was good and contributing to the happiness between them, as was the fact that Bafana Bafana were leading by a goal against more fancied foreign opponents. Penny had put aside her need for a coat as a matter of relatively little importance. She had not heard about her husband’s disciplinary problems or the reason for them.

  The sound was turned up and the members of an excited crowd were making plenty of noise with their vuvuzelas. It may have been for this reason that they did not hear the front doorbell the first time it was rung. At the third ring, Penny went to the door. Through the inspection hole she saw a small man wearing a grey suit. He had a sheet of paper in one hand. ‘Yes,’ she called through the door.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Dongwana, please,’ the voice came back. ‘I’ve got something from the director, a message.’

  ‘I’ll tell my husband,’ she said.

  When she got back to the living room and told him, he frowned but rose. ‘Watch carefully,’ he said. ‘If anything happens, you can tell me.’

  He opened the door. The small man was standing with his feet neatly together. He stepped back and Dongwana followed him. ‘What message?’

  The blow took Dongwana behind his left ear. He went down soundlessly and did not feel the needle where it entered the flesh of his upper arm.

  Just seconds later, Penny Dongwana heard the sound of movement, but did not look round. That would be Alfred coming back. She had not moved from her chair or cried out by the time they reached her. The first blow, a short right administered by a former professional boxer whose knuckles were shielded by a brass device designed for the purpose, crashed into the back of her head and reduced consciousness to a blur of light and movement. The second all but destroyed her upper lip and shattered three teeth. The beating took five minutes, a few hundred punches landing in that time. The three rapes took longer. They covered the damage to Penny’s face while they violated her. A face that looked like that could put a man off his stroke. The body was different. It was still a good body, despite the bruises and the cracked ribs. When they were finished, they closed the front door, went quietly down the stairs and drove away in a car the licence plates of which had been changed.

  Penny had been left naked and unconscious on the carpet of her living room. Her arms were folded over her breasts in a last, ineffectual attempt at defending herself. Her legs were still spread wide. The blood that had soaked into the carpet had come from her face. Her mouth seemed filled by congealing blood. In places, teeth were visible through her lips. Both eyes were so swollen that they protruded beyond the brow ridges. Her breath was coming in short gasps. That was how Alfred Dongwana, still drugged and barely able to walk, staggered from the bedroom to find her nearly two hours later. By that time, the televised game was over, the national side having lost.

  It was just past five o’clock when Yudel woke. He lay next to Rosa without moving for some fifteen minutes before slipping carefully out of bed. She was sleeping deeply and he did not want to disturb her. Wearing his striped pyjama pants and a vest, he made coffee and took it into his study.

  He wondered about Beloved and her interest in Oliver Hall. How had she even become aware of the prisoner? He would rather not have thought about Hall or his parole and even less about Beloved’s interest in him, but this morning he had little control of his thinking. Years before, after going through Hall’s file, he had conducted a few interviews with people who had known him at different times in his life. The picture that had been built up by that study had led him to the conclusion he had offered the minister and that she had to reject.

  By all accounts, Hall had come from an unremarkable home. His father had been a bus driver for the municipality at a time when further ambition was unlikely for a man whose parentage was part African and part European. In his community, he was thought of as a big man, a man with a regular job and decent pay where not many had jobs of any kind. He was also a man who drank no more than the occasional beer while most men drank whatever they could get their hands on. And he never hit his homemaker wife – in a neighbourhood in which many wives were bruised or had teeth broken by their men. As far as Yudel could ascertain, he had lived a contented life until Oliver reached the age of nine.

  It was common cause among the people Yudel spoke to that, of his four children, he loved the others more than Oliver. In fact, it seemed possible that he feared the boy. According to a social worker who visited the family after Oliver attacked and badly injured a smaller boy from a neighbouring family, the father had tried to hide his preference for the other children.

  It was in the year that Oliver turned nine and in the following one that Oliver’s two younger siblings died. The smaller of the two, aged only eighteen months, died in his sleep. Doctors found no explanation for the child’s death. Despite the child’s age, the family was told that it must have been a cot death, one of those mysterious incidents in which children died without obvious reason and without anyone being held responsible.

  Oliver’s sister, a year older than him, had fallen from the platform in front of a moving train. No one had seen it happen. Oliver said that he had been in the lavatory at the time. At the inquest, the train driver, who was still in a state of shock, said that he thought he had seen two children on the platform, but he could not say for certain.

  When Oliver was twelve, his brother Ashton, five years his senior, had survived an incident with a hunting knife that Oliver had stolen from a department store. Half the length of the blade had entered Ashton’s side, but it had missed any critical organs. Oliver had told the police he had been sharpening the knife on the cement back step of the house where his brother was sitting and had slipped. The police had c
onfiscated the knife and told his father not to let him play with knives. His father had protested that he knew nothing about the knife. The resolution seemed to satisfy the adults involved, but Ashton had asked to be allowed to sleep in the wooden storeroom in the backyard and, from then on, always padlocked his door from the inside.

  Four years later, the father died of a heart attack while at work. This time Oliver was not in the vicinity. He had savoured his father’s descent into depression since the two younger children had died and would have done nothing to speed up the process.

  His mother had been the only one who ever believed in him and, at the age of seventy-five, she believed in him still. She had told the social worker how Oliver had a terrible life, that he had loved his younger brother and sister deeply, and how they had been taken away from him. It was tragic, but it was God’s will. Perhaps the Lord was punishing the family for something she or her husband or their parents had done. She also described Oliver’s close and loving relationship with his elder brother as like that of David and Jonathan in the Bible.

  Throughout everything that followed, she had remained true to her son and her belief in his innocence. During his years in prison, she had intermittently declared his innocence in letters to the president, the minister of Correctional Services, more than one member of parliament, the editors of various newspapers, the director of C-Max and Yudel himself. Her son had fought for liberation and now he was being treated this way. It was a conspiracy of people who wanted to bring back apartheid. Some important people were against him. Anyone could see it.

  As a young man, Hall had disappeared from the police radar for a few years, but during that time a girlfriend had disappeared. Hall had helped in the search for her, making telephone calls to friends and relatives, and suggestions to the police. A headless and handless female torso was found a few kilometres from her home some years later, but no serious attempt was made to identify it. What the police did not know was that Hall’s favourite knife had disappeared at the same time, and knives had been a part of his life since the incident with Ashton.