City of Blood

by Martie de Villiers

  That night I talked to Grace about finding a job. She already knew about my plan. Lungile had told her.

  ‘You are not to go and ask for work at the petrol station,’ Grace said, looking at me over her reading glasses. ‘You are not to be a petrol joggie.’

  ‘I asked Lungile not to tell you,’ I said.

  Grace just laughed. I told her about Lucky Mosweu and how the Nigerians were after him.

  ‘What will they do if they find him?’ Grace asked, but she knew the answer as well as I did. ‘You must try to find this boy, Siphiwe. Warn him.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ I said. ‘Where do I start? And if the Nigerians find out that I’m asking questions . . .’

  Grace’s face softened. ‘You must do what you think is right,’ she said.

  I went to bed with her words still running through my head. Do what you think is right.

  Gem squash was easy to grow. No-hassle vegetables, Grace called them. The yellow pumpkins too – they didn’t like frost, but once the winter was over they just kept growing and all you had to do was raise them off the ground a little so they wouldn’t rot.

  I felt better about what had happened the previous day. If the Nigerian had wanted to kill me he’d have done it. He just wanted me to know that he had not forgotten about me and that was OK, because I’d not forgotten about him either.

  I smiled. It was easy to be brave when you were working in the garden and not standing in the road with a knife against your throat. It was easy, here with the sun on my skin and the scent of soil all round me, to think everything would be OK, but I’d be a fool to believe that. I was stuck between the police and the Nigerian. Then there was Hope and her son. All this trouble had started because of Lucky Mosweu. I was sure he had done something to make that Nigerian mad. Mad enough to stab Hope. If I had any sense I’d stay out of his business, but I could not forget Grace’s words, Hope’s face. It must be hard for a mother to lose a son. I knew what it was like to lose a mother, a brother.

  I went to wash my hands under the tap in the corner of the yard where the red geraniums grew. Grace would soon call for lunch. I dried my hands on my trousers, and when I turned round, there was Msizi, with two slices of bread in his hand. He always did that – opened up the sandwich to lick off the jam, before eating the bread.

  ‘You said you were going to help me in the garden,’ I said, knowing that he had been with Simon, making a car out of wire for them to play with. Simon was good with his hands.

  Msizi shrugged. ‘I was very busy. Lunch is ready.’

  Dr van der Sandt’s red Toyota was parked under the pepper tree and a wagtail was attacking the side mirror. Msizi and I sat against the wall with our legs in the sun, eating the sandwiches Grace had made us. Once more my thoughts drifted to Hope’s son, Lucky. Where could he have gone? If the Nigerians were looking for me, I’d run. I would not stay in the city. I stopped. Leave Johannesburg? Where would I go? There were many roads out of the city and I never took any of them. I’d wanted to. I’d wanted to since the day my brother, Sibusiso, had died. I’d always believed that there had to be better places to live somewhere beyond the borders of this city. But I was afraid of leaving.

  ‘What is wrong with that bird?’ Msizi asked, his mouth so stuffed with bread that the words struggled to escape.

  ‘He sees his own reflection in the mirror,’ I explained, staring at the wagtail. ‘He thinks it’s an intruder. He’s defending his territory.’

  ‘He’s shitting all over the car,’ Msizi said. ‘Maybe Dr van der Sandt will give me five rand to clean it.’ He bit into the sandwich. His fingers were covered in jam.

  ‘And you will buy ice cream?’

  Msizi nodded and licked his fingers. ‘Why are there bad people, Siphiwe?’

  I had expected him to talk about ice cream, about how he liked any flavour but chocolate. Or how he liked the ice ones with the strawberry filling best. I knew this because he had told me many times.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, giving him a sideways glance.

  ‘Are all Nigerians bad, Siphiwe?’

  ‘Perhaps not all of them.’

  ‘Are all Zulus bad?’

  ‘Who told you Zulus are bad?’

  ‘Vusi is bad. He hit me.’

  That had happened two days ago. Both of them got in trouble with Grace for fighting. Vuzi was stronger and older, but Msizi was known to get into fights, so Grace had punished both by giving them extra work in the house. In truth, Vuzi was not to blame this time.

  ‘You were throwing stones at him, Msizi. You must not throw stones. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he said, licking the back of his hand.

  ‘Zulus are not bad, Msizi. Sothos, Vendas, Xhosas, Tswanas, all have bad people and good people.’

  ‘Are we good people?’

  He never stopped with his questions, this boy. What was I supposed to say? Even good people did bad things. They made mistakes. Took paths that turned out to be dead ends. I looked at the furious wagtail diving at his mirror image. The bird made me think of Msizi, who was always picking fights he couldn’t win. Why would he throw a stone at Vuzi, who was twice his size?

  In the branches of the pepper tree two turtle doves sat close together and above them the sky was bright and cloudless. My thoughts went to Sibusiso and his courage. Despite being brothers, we had been so different.

  ‘You must stop asking so many questions, Msizi,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Or else I’ll hit you.’ I clenched my fist to show him.

  Msizi laughed. ‘You won’t hit me.’

  I smiled. ‘Go get some plastic bags from Grace.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To tie around the mirrors. Then the bird won’t see himself in them and get mad and he won’t make such a mess on the car. He will spend his time looking for food instead.’

  On Fridays Dr van der Sandt left for home at three. I saw her going to her car and went to explain about the bags before removing them, so she could use the mirrors to reverse out of the driveway. Msizi never got round to cleaning the bird shit off the mirrors – he was with Simon again, making their wire car. Dr van der Sandt said she had to go to the car wash anyway and smiled when I told her about the bird.

  ‘Such plucky little birds, wagtails,’ she said and thanked me for wrapping the bags round the mirrors. ‘Enjoy your weekend, Siphiwe.’

  ‘You too, Dr van der Sandt,’ I said.

  When I opened the gate for her, I spotted the man standing on the other side of the road, watching me. A man in ragged clothes with a cap low over his eyes. People didn’t just stand around without reason – not in this city. I closed the gate and went inside.

  ‘Grace, there is a man out in the street, watching the house.’

  ‘Haw,’ she said, and came out with me to see for herself. The man had gone, but that meant nothing. We all knew how these people worked. Thieves spied on a house before they tried to break in.

  ‘We’ll keep our eyes open,’ Grace said. ‘Tonight I shall leave the lights on at the front.’

  That evening Mantu and I went out together to lock the gate – just in case there was trouble – and we walked all round the house to check that it was safe. Before I closed the back door, I glanced out into the garden at the shapes the shadows drew on the lawn. When I was a child, those shadows would follow me, reach for me, wait for me in bed. I looked at the darkening sky, at the red glow that lingered on the horizon where Soweto was, and I felt as if there was someone out there, coming for me. But I was not a boy any more so I shrugged off the fear. I stamped my feet as I entered the kitchen and locked the door behind me. When I turned round, Grace was staring at me.

  ‘I shall activate the alarm early tonight,’ she said. ‘And tomorrow I shall ask the neighbours to look out for anything out of the ordinary.’

  Just before midnight I tiptoed through the house, peeping through the curtains to check the garden. Nothing moved. The front gate was still closed, the lawn
at the back empty. A bright, flaming moon hung low over the roof of the neighbour’s house, like a perfectly cut wedge of an orange. In the distance, sirens screamed and screamed and more joined in. I thought I heard gunshots, but it was a long way off. I went to bed, glad to be safe in the shelter and not out there on the streets.

  6

  ALFRED’S NEPHEW WAS as sharp as a blade. He didn’t need to be told what to do twice and he knew the streets – Alfred had been right about that. Not two days after Letswe had given him the job, the boy came back with information about the Nigerians. He brought photos too. One was of Mr Pink Shirt. Only in the photo he was wearing a black shirt and a Snoopy dog tie. The boy had zoomed in with the camera to show the finer detail.

  ‘I remember him,’ Letswe said, tapping the photo. ‘Three years ago he was nobody, running errands, trying to catch the eye.’

  ‘He’s Abaju’s right-hand man,’ said Alfred’s nephew. ‘His name is Matthew Obembe.’

  Letswe nodded. Abaju had moved up too. He was a big man now, hard to get at. But he’d find a gap in his defences. One gap was all he needed. He gave Alfred’s nephew the job of finding it. It was a dangerous job; Abaju would hear about anyone asking questions and he would not tolerate it. But the boy was clearly up to it. Within a week he’d come up with a plan.

  Some of Abaju’s men liked hanging out at a certain nightclub in Newtown. It was a classy place, not like the joints in the bad parts. Alfred’s nephew said he knew a man who worked there and he could arrange for them to get in, but, even better, this man knew a girl who often danced at the club and one of the Nigerians had expressed an interest in this girl. If they paid her well, she could lure him in and they could question him.

  ‘He would be able to answer all our questions,’ the boy said.

  ‘I’m sure he will be only too happy to tell us all he knows,’ Letswe said. ‘Eh, William? He will talk to us. He will not be shy.’

  William flexed his fingers.

  ‘William can make anyone talk,’ Letswe said.

  Alfred’s nephew nodded. If there was something Letswe could hold against this boy it was that he was too serious; but on the other hand, he didn’t want fools working for him.

  ‘I shall speak to this girl personally,’ the boy said. ‘I shall make sure she understands what she has to do.’

  ‘You’ve done well. You bring me good news every day. Soon we shall make our move. I’ll get my men together and we shall wake up this city.’

  ‘We need money,’ William said.

  ‘You can go to the farm and get our money. You can bring the guns too. We don’t have enough. We’ll get some money to see us through until then.’ He eyed Alfred’s nephew. ‘Have you ever killed a cop, my man?’

  ‘No, Mr Letswe.’

  He was honest, this young man. Letswe appreciated that.

  ‘You want to be my man, you must kill a cop. They are not hard to kill, you can ask William. Tomorrow we shall go out to look around the city and I’ll show you an easy way to solve cash-flow problems. You will get your chance to prove yourself.’

  The boy nodded. He showed no sign of nerves.

  ‘You go with William now, get everything ready. We’ll need a fast car and dynamite. William will show you what to do.’

  ‘Dynamite?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Yes. Boom. Big bang. That is how you break the bank. And tonight I don’t want any of you around. Lucille is planning a special surprise for me.’ He chuckled. ‘She thinks I don’t know about it.’

  His name was Progress Dlamini Zebele. He didn’t like his name, but knew his mother meant well. How was she to know that a name like Progress would not advance her son in his chosen career? He had been thinking about taking a more suitable name, tried out a few on his friend David, but he had not made up his mind yet. For now it didn’t matter. He was Alfred’s Nephew. He still had to prove himself.

  His uncle Alfred was a good man to know. He had contacts. That was why he’d hung out at his uncle’s shebeen, to meet the right people, and if he’d made a list of people to meet, McCarthy Letswe would have been on top. Every boy grew up with a hero. Soccer players, boxers, musicians. For him it was Letswe. As a child he’d heard stories about him, stories used to scare children into obeying their parents. Even then Letswe’s name was whispered on the streets. He was powerful. He was feared. He was everything Progress Zebele wanted to be.

  Finally, all the hard work helping his uncle had paid off. He was McCarthy Letswe’s man. Not his right-hand man like William, but he was the youngest man to work for him and he made sure he did everything right. Mr Letswe wants a fast car, he gets one. Clean, no blood. Mr Letswe didn’t like to get other people’s blood on him. Progress knew if he watched and learned he would become rich, and perhaps one day, with a bit of luck, it would be his name, Zebele, whispered in the streets of the townships and cities of this country. But there was no rush. First, he would show Mr Letswe what he could do.

  A few days later William brought two of Mr Letswe’s men to the woman’s house.

  They arrived at a quarter past nine, just after Progress had walked in, and the old woman cooked them a large breakfast: fried eggs and sausage and freshly baked bread. Mr Letswe was happy to see the men and introduced him to them – Alfred’s Nephew, he still called him, or ‘the boy’. He was not a boy, he was twenty-four, but he couldn’t take offence if Mr Letswe didn’t ask his name.

  The men had brought with them three bags full of cash and three bags with guns: AK-47s, pistols and something that looked like a rocket launcher, and dynamite. Lots of dynamite. The cash went into the bedroom Letswe shared with the woman. Progress suspected there was a safe. It had to be a big one. The guns went into the garage.

  In order to get to the garage you had to walk through the backyard where the dogs were kept. Four of them, and each, in its own right, a killer. The ridgeback-cross was the leader of the pack, a monster of a dog, pale yellow and muscular. Progress had never feared dogs and he made a point of staring the big one down. The dog growled, accepting the challenge, but it didn’t attack. Even so, its presence made Progress nervous. He’d have to watch his back with that dog. A black-and-white bull terrier came sniffing at his trousers. Scar-face, he thought to call him, but later he heard the dog’s name was Dingane. Letswe had named them all after dead Zulu kings.

  It was when he returned from the garage that he’d walked into the woman. Lucille. An exotic-sounding name. It suited her.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the woman, who had been putting roses into a vase before he’d walked in.

  He took a moment to answer. She wore a red dress that hugged her body and had long hair and large almond-shaped eyes. Everything about her took his breath away.

  ‘I am Alfred’s nephew,’ he said and cleared his throat.

  ‘What is your name, Alfred’s Nephew?’ Her voice was low and husky.

  ‘Progress Dlamini Zebele,’ he said.

  ‘My name is Lucille.’

  ‘You are beautiful.’

  ‘If McCarthy hears you say that, he’ll shoot you.’ She smiled and touched his cheek before turning her back on him. He stared after her, then shook his head. A woman like her would not be interested in someone like him, but he could still feel her fingers brushing against his cheek and the thoughts running through his head scared him. For a moment, he wished that Letswe was dead.

  The rocket launcher lay on the kitchen table, black and slick against the wooden surface. They were drinking beer. Lucille’s mother had cooked chicken and mash with gravy and William said it was just about the best chicken he’d ever tasted. Lucille was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Gone shopping,’ Letswe said. ‘You let that woman into a shopping mall and there’s no stopping her.’

  Progress wondered about their relationship. Joseph had told him that Letswe had once killed a man for flirting with Lucille. Progress believed that. But if Letswe didn’t trust her with other men, he trusted her with everything else. There was the saf
e in her bedroom, the guns in the garage, and never once had Letswe lowered his voice when she was around and he was discussing his plans.

  ‘There are many uses for an RPG-7,’ said Letswe. ‘You can use it to blow up cars, or trucks, or helicopters.’

  ‘And houses?’ Joseph was picking his teeth.

  ‘Whose house do you want to blow up, Joseph, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just thought you could blow up a house.’

  ‘Security vans. Boom. Armed response. Boom. That’s what it’s for. Not houses.’

  ‘Cash machines?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘You’d blow it all away, money, the lot. You must use your head, Joseph. That’s why we have the dynamite. One stick should do it.’

  ‘Tonight?’ William asked.

  ‘Yebo.’

  ‘And the boy?’ They all stared at him.

  ‘He’s coming with us. We’ll see what he’s made of.’

  Progress had never robbed a bank before and he had never blown up a cash machine with dynamite. He knew people did it all the time, but still, you had to know what you were doing, getting just the right amount of the dynamite into the machine and not blowing yourself up. He’d have to pay attention. If he messed up he’d be done for.

  ‘This is the gun you will use tonight,’ Letswe said. ‘This is a man’s gun.’ He tossed the AK towards Progress, who caught it with both hands.

  They went out after midnight and when they returned the sun showed itself on the horizon, while in the same sky, the moon hung, pale, white, cut in half. Lucille was awake, waiting for him, like in the days when he was starting out. She’d stood by him through the hard times, encouraged him, looked after his interests when he was away. Twice she came out to see him when he was in hiding. He’d not forgotten that.

  ‘You will make me grow old before my time,’ she said as he walked into the bedroom. ‘I lay awake worrying all night.’

  ‘You will never grow old, baby,’ Letswe said, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘And even if you did you’d still be beautiful.’ He tossed the shirt on the floor, leaned over her, slipped the straps of her nightdress down and kissed her shoulder.