City of Blood

by Martie de Villiers

  That night it was my turn to help with the dishes after dinner. Lungile was checking that the children had done their homework and that they brushed their teeth before going to bed. Although she was bossy, the children liked Lungile. She praised them for doing well and she was good at getting people to donate to the shelter, often bringing old clothes, blankets and toys. Last month she had brought a painting. That was the strangest thing anyone had ever donated to us and I had thought Grace would not want it, because it had no practical use to us, but she loved it and the painting now hung in the living room. A heavy gold-framed painting of a blue mountain with thick grey clouds behind it. I had stared at it for a long time, wondering if that mountain was in Lesotho. Would I ever see the land my people were from?

  I went to bed at half past ten and took off my shoes at the door, so as not to wake Mantu, who shared a room with me. Mantu had been living in the shelter since he was five. He was now doing his matric. Every night Mantu went to bed at the exact same time. Ten o’clock. He’d fall asleep instantly and wake the next morning at six, when he would get up and kneel in front of his bed to say his prayers. After that he’d study for an hour before school. He was a conscientious student. That was what Lungile said about Mantu. She was fond of using big words.

  I entered the dark room and went over to my bed in the corner. I didn’t need to switch the light on. I knew my way around. Everything had its place: two beds, two desks, two wardrobes and a chest of drawers, of which I used the top two drawers. I pushed my shoes in under the bed and lay down. As my eyes became used to the dark, I made out Mantu’s shape on the other bed, his head buried under the blankets. I envied him, falling asleep so easily and sleeping so deeply.

  When I first came to the shelter, I slept very little – some nights I didn’t even bother to try. I would go and sit by the window and look out. Once, Grace had found me. She’d taken me to the kitchen where she’d given me warm milk with mashed banana in.

  ‘It will put you to sleep,’ she’d said.

  Perhaps it worked, for I did learn to sleep, but the dreams were always waiting. Dreams of death: people shouting, fists and sticks. Eyes full of hate. Slowly fading, until only one dream remained. One nightmare. So clear I could hear the sound of a train on the track. I closed my eyes and waited.

  A cold breeze blew through the streets reminding me of the recent winter, of frosty mornings and bare branches. I walked with my head down, thinking about the conversation I’d had with Grace after the visit from the police. It was hard to understand. We had become so helpless, so caught up in the cycle of this city. And that helplessness could turn into anger in a flash. I had seen it happen. I’d seen how anger spread through a crowd, like a river in flood, bursting its banks, flattening all that stood in its way.

  A car’s horn blew behind me and sent me racing across the road. An old man stood on the corner, watching me.

  I greeted him in Sotho. ‘Dumela, ntate.’

  ‘Sawubona,’ he replied in Zulu. ‘Are you from the shelter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know Grace,’ he said and looked down the road as if expecting to see someone familiar come his way.

  I nodded. Everybody knew Grace.

  I should have watched where I was going, but my head was busy with silly dreams and I didn’t notice the silence in the street around me. I didn’t notice that I was the only one taking the short cut through the alley. It was only when I reached the other end that he stepped out of the shadows. I turned to run, but the small policeman with the sharp eyes leaned against the wall at the other end of the alley. I was trapped, and scared, because of what I saw in the white man’s eyes. I recalled the stories I’d heard about the police, how, in the old days, they made people disappear.

  ‘Siphiwe, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘No!’ I backed away from him. This was not the old days. This was the New South Africa and this white cop should not be doing this.

  ‘Don’t run, boy. There’s nowhere to go.’

  ‘I’m not a boy. I am a man.’ I tried to hide my fear by talking loudly, by standing tall, but he was a big man and the alley’s walls were closing in on me.

  ‘Oh, you’re a man, are you? That’s why you can’t look me in the eyes, eh? Because you’re a man? Well, I have news for you, Siphiwe. You’re not a man, you’re too shit-scared to be a man.’

  He made me so angry that I tried to punch him, the way the Nigerian had hit me, but he pulled his head back and laughed at me. Then his large hands gripped my shirt and he lifted me off the ground as if I weighed no more than a bag of potatoes.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Siphiwe. I’m a policeman. If you hit me, you’ll get into trouble.’ His face was right in front of me and his breath reminded me of the coffee Grace brewed for her and Dr van der Sandt in the mornings. The policeman’s eyes were pale, like the sky on a winter’s day, and his lashes were as white as his hair.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, still gripping my shirt. ‘I just want to talk to you.’ I tried to kick him and he lowered me to the ground. ‘You’ve got some spirit in you after all. Don’t do that again.’ He pointed his finger at me. ‘Listen to me now, eh? If you shut up and listen, I’ll let you go. If you don’t, you’ll get into trouble. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes.’ He meant he would take me to the police station where he would tell them that I’d hit and kicked him and they would believe him and not listen to me. They would lock me up.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about the man who stabbed Hope Mosweu.’

  ‘Who is Hope Mosweu?’

  ‘Don’t play dumb.’ He frowned, but didn’t seem angry any more. ‘We can’t stand by and do nothing. You saw what happened there. Someone tried to kill her. An old woman, for fuck’s sake. She cannot defend herself. Please, Siphiwe, who will help her if you don’t?’

  I looked down at the rubbish strewn at my feet: a piece of burnt cardboard, a crushed beer can, an old Lotto ticket. A mouse scuttled down the alley, away from us.

  ‘We have a lot in common, us,’ the cop said. ‘We’re young. This is our country. Look at these people, fucking it up. Our future, our children’s future.’

  ‘What do you want from me, cop?’

  ‘Show me the man who stabbed that woman.’

  ‘He will kill me.’

  ‘Only if you let him.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to say. You with your muscles and your gun and your bulletproof vest. You’re going home to a big house and your nice white family. I must stay here and walk these streets every day.’

  ‘We all live behind bars, Siphiwe.’

  We glared at each other like two angry dogs.

  ‘Will you help me?’ he asked.

  The breeze picked up and blew a plastic bag against my legs.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ I said.

  I thought about it as I walked away. We can’t stand by and do nothing. Who will help her if you don’t? True, but I had to keep the Nigerian in mind. If he wanted me dead, I wouldn’t stand a chance. That cop wouldn’t be able to stop him. I glanced over my shoulder. The alley was empty. There was another thing the policeman had said. Someone tried to kill her. Tried? Was he saying that the woman was still alive after the Nigerian had stabbed her in the stomach? After all the blood she had lost? I didn’t believe him.

  I turned left and went to Loveday Street for the first time in three weeks.

  4

  BEING A POLICEMAN gave you no protection whatsoever; on the contrary, it made you a target. Adrian had known that when he’d joined the SAP and not much had changed in the four years since. Each time he went out into the city there was a chance that someone might take a shot at him, simply because he was a policeman, because he was white, or because if he was dead, they could steal his gun. They sure as hell wouldn’t get it off him any other way. Anyhow, they didn’t need much of an excuse to kill a cop. That was why you needed a good man to cover your back and he coul
dn’t have asked for a better partner than Robert Kaleni. An experienced policeman, tough, street-smart.

  Robert waited at the other end of the alley. They walked back to the car in silence. Robert offered him a smoke, then a light.

  ‘What’s his story?’ Robert asked.

  ‘He’ll think about it.’ Adrian sucked on the cigarette. ‘You’re wrong about him. He’s not stupid and he does care. He cared enough to help that woman. All he needs is a push in the right direction.’

  Robert’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t understand you, whitey. You’re a big, strong man but your heart can be like butter sometimes. I tell you, watch that boy closely. If he’s not stupid, he’s dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous? I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t you worry. Come on, bru. Let’s go.’ He’d liked Robert from the day they’d met. A short, wiry Zulu man with a sharp brain and an eye for trouble. Robert lived modestly with a woman who wasn’t his wife, but who had given him two children. His wife lived on the farm near Empangeni that Robert had bought with money he had saved and scrounged and won in bets. It seemed Robert had liked him as well – he’d even tried to teach him Zulu, although he constantly complained about his lack of progress.

  Adrian had joined the police a month after he’d finished school. His mates had told him that he was crazy, that he’d get killed, that there were no career prospects for a white man in the SAP, but he’d never regretted his decision. Not once. It was hard to explain what made him choose this job. Hard to explain to people who’d never looked into a victim’s eyes, who didn’t understand what it was like to be afraid, powerless. It was too complicated, too personal.

  As they turned left out of Troye Street he saw them: a man dragging a woman by the arm. Adrian took his foot off the accelerator. The woman pulled herself free. They were facing each other. The man had his hands out in front of him as if he wanted to grab hold of the woman again. She backed away. The man slapped her. She stumbled, her arms raised above her head to fend him off. Adrian slammed on the brakes so hard that the car skidded sideways. He ignored the horns blowing behind him. He ignored Robert shouting at him. He was out in the street within seconds and before the man could hit her again he had him by the shirt, lifted him up and backed him into the wall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted at the man. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Adrian, put him down,’ Robert said next to him.

  Adrian let go of the man, but didn’t give him time to recover his balance. He slapped him across the face, hard, the way he’d hit the woman. The man, now on his knees, was screaming at the woman to call the cops.

  Adrian clenched his fist. ‘We are the cops, you idiot.’

  ‘Adrian, get in the car.’ Robert had been shouting that same sentence at him over and over, but he was too hyped up to hear him. His heart was beating so fast it felt as if he’d just finished a hundred-metre sprint. He still wanted to punch the guy, but the worst of the rage had worn off.

  ‘Don’t you fucking hit her again,’ he shouted.

  ‘Adrian!’ Robert dragged him away. ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘OK.’ Adrian stepped back. ‘OK. Don’t you let him hit you,’ he said to the woman, who stood there with her pale, bruised face, staring at him as if he were crazy. He walked over to the car, taking deep breaths to calm down.

  ‘You OK?’ Robert asked.

  Adrian nodded.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Robert said. ‘C’mon, move.’

  Adrian got in the passenger side, not saying a word. Robert started the engine, put the car in gear. On the pavement the woman was helping the man to his feet. Robert pulled into the traffic, not talking, not looking at him either, but giving him time to compose himself. Like he’d said, he couldn’t have asked for a better partner.

  5

  THE WOMAN WAS back. She was back behind her mangoes. Her hands danced over the fruit, her eyes over the street. She had survived. I watched her for a while to be sure it was her and then raced back to the shelter.

  ‘Grace!’ I had no breath left when I got there.

  Grace stood, hands on hips, in the door of her kitchen. I told her about the woman.

  ‘She’s alive, Grace,’ I said once more.

  ‘You told me, Siphiwe.’

  ‘But he stabbed her, I saw him.’

  ‘Us women are strong, Siphiwe, not like you men. We are strong. Go give her this.’ Her hand slipped into the front of her dress. That was where she kept her money. ‘Fifty rand, and say it’s for the mangoes.’

  I took the money.

  ‘Siphiwe.’ Dr van der Sandt spoke behind me. She often did that – sneaked up on people. How she could walk so quietly on those high heels, I didn’t know. She opened her handbag and removed a red leather purse, which was thick with receipts. She handed me more money. ‘Give her this as well,’ she said. ‘And, Siphiwe, perhaps you should tell the police what you saw that day. Then this man would stop hurting people. It will be the right thing to do.’

  Her hands were soft. She wore a wedding ring, but no other jewellery. She had given me another fifty rand.

  When I gave the woman the money, she clapped her hands to thank me.

  ‘The shelter took the mangoes,’ I said. ‘Sorry I cannot give you more.’

  The notes disappeared into the front of her dress.

  ‘My name is Siphiwe.’ Did she remember me? Did she remember that I held her hand? She was thin and frail like a bird, like the wagtail living in the shelter’s garden. Her dress was sky blue – well worn – and she wore brown shoes with no socks. Her name was Hope Mosweu. She was a Tswana from Mafikeng and, like Grace, she talked a lot. She was the mother of two daughters and a son. Her daughters were in school, the eldest was fourteen, the other nine. She’d had another daughter who had died long ago. I told her my parents too had died, but said nothing about my brother.

  ‘Where is your son, sister?’

  She shook her head and looked down at the empty boxes by her feet, then she glanced at her mangoes again.

  ‘Why did that man stab you?’

  ‘That is a bad man, that one.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a very bad man. You must look out for him. Your son should come and look out for him.’

  ‘They will kill him.’

  ‘Your son? Why would they kill him?’

  She shrugged. ‘They are bad people. That man with the knife. He is the one who wants my son dead.’

  ‘You must leave this place,’ I said. ‘You must not stay here. You should go back home to Mafikeng, or some place better.’

  She pushed the mangoes into the shade.

  It was easy to say leave. Easy for me to tell her what to do. She was a mother, a grown woman, with a family to care for, and I was just nineteen. Why would the Nigerian want to kill her son?

  ‘Where is your son, sister?’ I asked again and she lifted her gaze to meet mine.

  It was strange, the way parents named their children. Did they just look at them and decide, this one will be Hope and this one will be Grace? There was a boy at school with me whose name was Freedom, and I knew a man named Innocent but he might have taken that name himself, because he was in and out of prison all the time. Perhaps he’d hoped that it would help his case, if he appeared before the magistrate with such a name. In Africa a name said a lot about a person.

  As I walked back to the shelter, I thought about the woman who had survived being stabbed in the stomach. Hope. She had asked me to find her son.

  ‘Will you look for him, Siphiwe?’ she’d asked. ‘Will you find him? His name is Gideon, but people call him Lucky. He’s tall, like you, but not so skinny.’

  How, I asked myself, did I find a man in this city if he didn’t want to be found? I couldn’t just go around asking people: do you know where Lucky Mosweu is hiding?

  Three blocks away from the shelter a black BMW pulled in next to me. One moment I was alone with my thoughts, and then they were there. I smelled tyres burning as they braked
. The rear door flew open before the car came to a halt. They’d stopped with the front wheel on the pavement blocking my way. The Nigerian was on top of me before I could think of running, the same Nigerian who had stabbed Hope. He had his knife out again. I expected him to use it and leave me in the street the way he’d left Hope, but he didn’t stab me. He grabbed me and shoved me against the wall and put his knife against my throat.

  ‘You talked to the cops, boy?’ he shouted. ‘You talked to the cops?’

  ‘No,’ I yelled back at him. A thin scar cut across his left eyebrow. His breath stank of onions.

  ‘You’re lying to me.’

  ‘I didn’t tell them anything. Why would I tell them?’

  He removed the knife from my throat, but still held me against the wall. At his shoulder was another man, short with bleached hair, and behind him, inside the car on the back seat, I saw a tall man in a white suit. He was talking on his phone and didn’t bother to look at me. But seeing him, my heart began beating even faster. I had heard about that man – the one in white: Sylvester Abaju. He was a very bad man.

  ‘That’s good,’ the Nigerian in front of me said. ‘You keep your mouth shut, eh?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Hurry up,’ called the driver.

  The Nigerian pointed his knife again, like someone else would point a finger, and when he spoke, spit flew past me. ‘Keep your mouth shut.’

  They jumped back into the car, slammed the doors and raced off. Across the road, a woman stood gaping at me. I took a few strides and stopped again because my legs were shaking. But I was OK. He hadn’t hurt me. I touched my throat. He hadn’t even broken the skin. He’d just wanted to scare me. I hoped he could see that I was scared and that he would now leave me alone.