City of Blood

by Martie de Villiers

  Letswe laughed. ‘You don’t like anybody, my man. You are bad-tempered. Like a rhinoceros, you are. Find us a spot to park.’

  Ten minutes later they were walking down Simmonds Street, passed the Standard Bank.

  ‘Not this one,’ said Letswe.

  ‘What about the First National?’ asked Thabo.

  ‘Maybe.’ They kept walking. Letswe had noticed two security cameras already. ‘They are ruining this city. Making it hard for people to earn a living.’

  ‘Remember that Nedbank we hit last year,’ Joseph said. ‘That was a good one. We can take out the cameras again.’

  ‘ABSA on the corner. William, go have a look.’ While William walked down the street, they waited in front of a shop selling electronics. Letswe pretended to be interested in the window display. ‘Soon every street in the country will have a camera spying on people,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you send William, boss?’ Joseph asked. ‘Look at him standing there. He’s attracting attention.’

  ‘You are right,’ Letswe said. ‘He’s too big to do undercover. Next time, I shall send you and Thabo, but not now. I want you to wear a suit, look sharp. These cameras are bad news. The city has changed too much. Tomorrow, we’ll pick a bank.’ He took his phone out of his pocket, made a call. ‘Where is Lucille, boy?’ he snapped into the phone. ‘I phoned twice. Having her nails done?’ He laughed. ‘OK then, but take her home and come to meet me. We have work to do.’

  A good thing he’d spoken to Lucille, because on Saturday Letswe finally asked his name. He was walking next to Letswe in a market in the city. Letswe loved the city’s markets – the buzz, he said – he liked having people around him.

  ‘What’s your name, my man?’

  The question had stopped Progress in his tracks.

  ‘Jackson Zebele, sir.’

  ‘Jackson?’

  Progress nodded. He couldn’t understand why Letswe looked amused, but then he did have a strange sense of humour. It was nothing to do with the name. It was a good name – strong, no nonsense.

  ‘Jackson it is then,’ Letswe said. He turned round to scan the crowd. ‘Always watch your back, Jackson. Don’t trust other people to do it for you.’

  Progress nodded. Letswe had asked his name. He should be happy, for it meant he was one of them, but instead of happiness, he felt sad. Sad? It was loneliness. And it was eating away at him. He could not think of anything but her. The one thing that he could not have, he wanted.

  ‘You want to make money you must take risks, Jackson. That’s how the world works.’

  Progress nodded again. Letswe ate an apple while he was talking. Letswe talked a lot, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention to other things. His eyes missed nothing, and at times Progress felt as if Letswe could see into his mind. That scared him, but he knew if it was true, he would have been dead. If Letswe knew how he felt about Lucille . . . if he knew what had happened between them. He swallowed hard. Last night he had not been able to stop thinking about her. When he’d dropped her off at home, she had grabbed his arm, fear in her eyes.

  ‘McCarthy must never find out,’ she’d said.

  ‘He won’t. He’d kill us both.’

  ‘You are a good man, Progress Zebele,’ she had said then. ‘You must take care of yourself.’ He had the feeling that whatever was between them was over before it had even started.

  ‘Blowing up ATMs is chickenshit,’ Letswe’s voice droned on. ‘Big money is better. Cash in transit. High risk, high yield, but if you fuck up you’re a dead man. Same with bank jobs. Hard to pull off. These days it is easier to break into a prison.’

  ‘Why would you break into a prison?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘To get some peace and quiet, Joseph,’ Letswe said.

  Progress laughed. There were times when he liked Letswe, when he joked or made a sharp comment, but there were times he hated him. The better he got to know him, the more he understood why he was so feared. He was intelligent, capable of memorising faces, places, numbers, anything. He could tell you where the security guards would be, the cameras, how long it would take the cops to show up. He was decisive. Single-minded. Paranoid. Often, out of the blue, he’d double-back and check if he had been followed. And he was cruel. Very cruel. Progress knew one thing: he did not want to become Letswe’s enemy. But the harder he tried to keep his mind off Lucille, the more he thought about her.

  Letswe was talking again. ‘These Nigerians, they are sly, Jackson. Remember that. Do you know how they operate? They have a man who’s an informant for the pigs – the pigs think he works for them, but he doesn’t. He tells them only what he wants them to know. He tells them on flight so-and-so from Cairo there is a man named John and he has drugs on him. They don’t tell the pigs about Jack and Jill and Pete and Jo and the others on the same flight. John goes down. The pigs are happy. The Nigerians are happy. John, now, he is fucked. They don’t care. Abaju thought he could betray me like a mule. He thought he could give me to the pigs and keep on doing business. He will die. I will feed him to my dogs.’

  Progress nodded.

  William had fallen behind and Letswe turned back. They stood looking at William. He’d been in a funny mood all day; earlier he’d thrown a punch at Thabo over something he’d said. Luckily for Thabo, William had missed. Now William stood frozen, his mouth open, staring into the sky.

  ‘What is the matter with you, William?’ Letswe asked.

  ‘Butterflies,’ said Thabo.

  William grunted.

  ‘We are looking at butterflies,’ Letswe said, scratching his head. ‘We are all standing here like fools, staring at the sky.’ He pointed at the people around them. ‘Soon the whole city would be at a standstill staring upwards because of you, William. Come now, let’s go and keep your eyes on the ground. Keep them wide open for I don’t want trouble to sneak up on me.’

  PART TWO

  IN THE PRESENCE OF ANGELS

  14

  THERE WAS A lot you could tell about a city’s past by walking through a cemetery as old as this one. For example, I discovered that there was an accident involving dynamite in the city of Johannesburg in 1896. Further on, I came upon a grave where four unknown soldiers were buried in 1902. Foreign soldiers. How sad to have a grave like this, far from home, without a name, without a chance that your family would ever find you. Perhaps it didn’t matter when you were dead.

  I kept walking and found a memorial for Boer War British soldiers and a flat grey stone marking the spot where three brothers from Rosettenville were buried in 1922. The inscription on the stone told their story. They were shot dead for trying to escape the police during the mineworkers’ rebellion. They were unarmed. The youngest was seventeen. It seemed that even in those days, there was a problem with justice in this country.

  There were angels everywhere. They were carved out of grey stone; some stood staring at the trees; some sat on the headstones, hands folded together, looking deep in thought. Perhaps they knew more about the city than us – the people who lived here.

  Thabang had said that Lucky was hiding in a shack in Braamfontein cemetery. The problem was that this was a big cemetery. There were many paths lined with trees and in some places all the headstones looked alike. It would be easy to get lost here, but it was a good hiding place. You didn’t go looking for people in a cemetery. Dead people maybe. Even so Lucky Mosweu must be mad. I wouldn’t choose to hide here.

  I kept heading to my left, aiming for one of the corners furthest away from the entrance. If there was a shack it would not be near the entrance. That was where the guard was. It wouldn’t be near the crematorium either. Not in the centre. That was where the memorials were and here the municipality looked after the lawns. They would not allow someone to put up a shack. On the outskirts there was not that much grass to maintain, more hard soil and gravel. I glanced at the sky. Once more the rain had caught me outside and now big, fat drops exploded against my skin and on the earth where it raised the smell of
dust to my nose – the smell of rain in Africa.

  Further down the path, at a place where three paths met, stood a small building that looked like a church: round, with a steep tiled roof with a cross on top and arches like in old church windows. I ran there to escape the rain. Inside was a water fountain with black-and-white tiles. Here I stayed, waiting for the rain to stop, hoping it would be soon, because I didn’t like this place. It felt like some kind of tomb. I didn’t like the silence and the way the branches snaked over the roof as if they wanted to grab hold of it.

  It was as the boy had said: a shack in Braamfontein cemetery. In a quiet corner on the station’s side amid the trees, with shrubs growing wild. It looked as if the municipality had given up on this piece of land. The shack was four walls and a roof built with slabs of rusty corrugated iron, loosely stacked on top of each other. Between the trees, rows of black headstones stood close together as if the gravediggers had worried that they would run out of space. The inscriptions on some of these headstones had been wiped away by the wind, and those I could read, told how old they were.

  Perhaps some of these people had great-grandchildren who were alive today, but I doubted they would be in this city any more. People moved all the time. Only the dead remained in one place. I shook my head. I did not like cemeteries. It made me think of my mother and father buried in Soweto, and of my brother. No gravestone marked the place he had died. I carried him with me, in my head, and in my heart, everywhere I went.

  Dead leaves the colour of rust had come to rest on the shack’s roof, making it look as if it was part of the earth. The shack had two windows and a door. The windows were glass but the frames didn’t match – probably stolen from old building sites. The door was made out of planks, nailed together. I could imagine it in winter, with the wind and the frost seeping through the gaps in the walls. Once winter got into this shack it would take a long time to leave. Even now, after the rain, the air was cold in the shadows of the trees. It was not a good place to live.

  Above me, water dripped from the leaves, and under my feet the soil was soft and damp. I reminded myself that I had walked a long way to get here and that I could not turn back now. If Lucky was here, I would tell him that his mother was looking for him, that she had been stabbed and that he should stop hiding and do something to help her. I didn’t know what he did to make the Nigerian that angry, but he had to find a way to make it right again.

  ‘Lucky Mosweu,’ I called, ‘are you here?’

  No answer. I didn’t know what to do. I called again. Nothing. I walked round the shack, through the bushes, and got burdock clinging to my trousers for my trouble. A high palisade fence stood not far behind the shack. Torn plastic bags hung on the spikes like washing on a line.

  The boy had made a mistake after all. This could not be the right place. I felt better thinking that there was no one there. I had tried to find him, I told myself. I could go home now, but instead of going back, I went to the shack’s door. I had to duck to avoid a low-hanging branch. I knocked and was greeted by silence. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  It took a while before my eyes became accustomed to the dark. I saw a table and a chair, a bed – a thin mattress on planks with a stack of bricks at each corner. A yellow blanket on top. By the door, a cracked mirror was taped to the wall with the same kind of tape we used to seal boxes at the charity. A can of baked beans stood on the table, open, with a plastic spoon in. I leaned over the table. A row of black ants marched up the wall. A leather jacket hung over the chair – a new jacket. Someone would not leave a jacket like this lying around.

  I held my breath. I was a fool to have walked in here like this. Someone lived here. He’d watched me approach through the trees. He had waited for me. And now he was behind me. I sensed his presence seconds before the floor creaked under his weight. I waited for him to speak, but he said nothing. When I turned my head, I stared into the barrel of a gun.

  ‘You want to die, eh?’ he said.

  I shook my head. His eyes were large. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He had his finger on the trigger.

  ‘Why are you looking for Lucky Mosweu?’ he asked. ‘Who are you? Who sent you?’

  ‘Hope Mosweu asked me to find him.’ I cleared my throat. ‘His mother. She is looking for him.’

  He lowered the gun. ‘She sent you?’

  ‘She asked me to find him.’

  He lowered the gun further. ‘I am Lucky Mosweu,’ he said.

  He was as tall as me – Hope had been right – and strong, with muscles that showed because he wore only a white vest with his black jeans.

  ‘My mother sent you?’ he asked again.

  I nodded and now that the gun was no longer pointing at me, I took time to look at him properly. The jeans he wore looked new, and he had a shiny silver watch on his wrist. He looked well for a man who lived in a cemetery.

  ‘Your mother is looking for you,’ I said. ‘She wants to know that you are OK. She wants you to know that the Nigerians are after you.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said and spat out of the door.

  ‘You must leave the city,’ I said. ‘You must take your mother and sisters with you or else they will be killed.’

  ‘I can’t leave now.’ He pushed the gun into his belt and rubbed his face with both hands like a man waking up from a deep sleep.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have no money,’ he said.

  That should not stop him from leaving. He couldn’t find a job in the city while the Nigerians were searching for him. If he went somewhere else, he might be able to find a job and get money.

  ‘My name is Siphiwe.’

  ‘I am Gideon Mosweu,’ he said. ‘But my friends call me Lucky.’ He flashed me a wide smile. We shook hands.

  ‘Welcome to my home,’ he said. ‘I can offer you a chair. I only have one, as you can see, and it’s broken, but it’s OK if you sit still. I can offer you a beer, but it’s not cold. Fridge packed up.’

  His eyes danced. He seemed glad to have a visitor. He kept the beer under the bed. There was also some canned food. I wondered who’d bought the food for him or if he’d gone to the shops to get it himself. He gave me a bottle of Black Label.

  ‘So you live here,’ I said. ‘Are you not afraid of ghosts?’

  ‘I’m not a superstitious man,’ said Lucky Mosweu. ‘Dead people don’t bother me and I’m just here temporarily. Until I have my stuff sorted out. Once I’m ready, I shall get my own place, a nice house. Not in Jozy. My mother and sisters can come and stay there with me. I shall look after them.’

  I glanced at the small white bone he had on a string around his neck.

  ‘It’s for luck,’ he said. ‘A girl gave it to me.’

  ‘Not to keep the baloi away?’

  ‘I told you. I don’t believe in all that evil-spirit nonsense. I’m not old-fashioned.’

  He suddenly stopped talking and rolled his eyes towards the window. He gripped the gun and swung round, facing the door. I saw the veins in his neck swelling. His finger went to his lips and he waved me back. There was someone outside. I heard it too. You could not walk softly on dead leaves.

  Lucky Mosweu had the gun in his left hand, his right fist clenched, ready to throw a punch. His chest moved up and down as he took deep breaths before he leapt out of the door, pointing the gun and shouting, ‘Do you want to die?’

  I heard a shriek and moments later Lucky appeared again, holding Msizi by the collar, dragging him into the shack. Msizi screamed and tried to kick him.

  ‘I told you to go home,’ I shouted at Msizi. He was always getting himself into trouble, never listening to what he was told. He could have been killed. He could have got himself shot. Lucky released him and put the gun back into his belt. He crossed his arms, showing off his muscles. Msizi had stopped screaming and he now stared at Lucky with wide eyes.

  ‘Who is this little man?’ Lucky asked, frowning down on him.

  ‘I’m Siphiwe’s bro
ther,’ Msizi said, out of breath. He pulled at his collar to straighten his shirt and refused to look at me. ‘What kind of a name is Gideon?’

  Lucky threw his head back and laughed. ‘You have been listening at the window, eh? You are a brave little man. Cheeky too.’ He still had his arms crossed. ‘Gideon is a name from the Bible. It’s the name of a great warrior. A hero.’

  ‘You read the Bible?’ Msizi frowned. I knew what he was thinking. He was confronted with the Bible every Sunday for an hour and a half at church. To Msizi it meant one thing: he had to sit still and be quiet or else get in trouble, and trouble usually meant that Grace would grab hold of his ear and pull him right up to her, where he would stay until Moruti had said Amen at the end of the service. I wanted to pull his ear now. He’d been following me all along, through the city and through the cemetery. It was dangerous for a boy to walk through the city alone like that.

  ‘Sit down,’ Lucky said to him. ‘Not on the bed, you’ll break it. Sit on that paint drum. There’s Coca-Cola under the bed, help yourself.’

  Msizi was happy to do that and sat quietly drinking the Coke while Lucky and I talked. Lucky wanted to know about his mother and sisters. I said his mother was better now, but that she was struggling to get by selling mangoes. I told him that she had been in hospital and that the Nigerian had stabbed her. He rubbed his face again.

  ‘She’s OK for now,’ I said, ‘but that man might try to kill her again. Why is he after you?’

  ‘He wants money. He says I owe him.’

  ‘Do you?’

  He shrugged. Msizi now had hiccups because he had drunk the Coke too fast.

  ‘We must go,’ I said.

  ‘Will you come again?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I shall tell your mother that you are OK and if she has a message for you, I shall bring it.’ I didn’t know why I offered to do this. I was certain that I would regret it later. Lucky Mosweu was trouble. I should stay away from him, but I couldn’t help liking him.