City of Blood
Page 27
I raised the gun from under the coat that hung over my shoulders. I could see the fear in his eyes. He stumbled backwards, one hand reaching behind him for his friend, the rock star, who went for the pistol tucked into his belt. Too late. Jackson Zebele appeared from his hiding place. David stood on top of a boulder to my left and opened fire. I didn’t even see where the boy was firing from.
I held the gun steady, but didn’t pull the trigger. I remembered those people who had killed my brother, recalled their anger. Was that justice? Who decided who lived or died? God? Or some old woman in a blue dress with black lace-up shoes? Three young men with guns. A Nigerian with fancy shoes. All seemed to think it was a simple matter, ending a life.
The bodies danced as the bullets found them. One by one they fell. The third man tried to crawl away with all those bullets in his body, but then he too died. And all I heard was the silence when the last bullet left the barrel of a gun. The silence of the hills above a sleeping city, of wind passing over grass and stone. I looked down at the bodies and at the blood gathering in a hollow of the rock, trickling down, the edges already drying in the morning sun. I felt empty, as if none of this had anything to do with me. I shivered and looked at the vast cloudless sky above me. Had I imagined the hawk?
Like fools, Jackson and his friends had thrown their guns aside, cheering. There came a time in a man’s life when he had to stand up for himself, stand up against the odds, like my brother did before he died. Today it was my turn. I stood watching them back-slapping, surveying the bodies, their guns forgotten on the ground. I felt the weight of the AK in my hands. Thirty bullets. And then Jackson looked up at me. Something in my eyes must have scared him. The other two fell silent. Their eyes fixed on my gun. Jackson’s lips moved. David’s brother, who had been so full of bravado a moment ago, now stood staring at me and at the gun. He shook his head and I could see that he was fighting not to panic. It was a terrible thing, this death we so feared. I had already looked it in the eye.
‘Progress Zebele,’ I said, ‘take your friends and go home. I don’t want to see you again.’
They scrambled down the hill. I waited for them to disappear down the path before I collected their guns. I climbed up a rock and hid their guns in a deep crack, but I kept my gun – I might meet trouble on the way down – then I phoned Adrian.
‘There are three dead men on the western side of Melville Hills,’ I said. ‘Matthew Obembe is one of them.’
Adrian said that he was glad to hear it. He asked if I was OK.
‘I am fine,’ I said. ‘There are three AK-47s in the crack of a red boulder above them, under a tree. You cannot miss them.’
‘I’m not going to ask where you got them from,’ he said. ‘Just make sure you don’t leave your prints on anything.’
I walked down the hill, thinking about the people who had crossed my path over the past few months. Letswe, Abaju, Lucky, Obembe, all dead.
They had taught me something, these tsotsis. I had learned that life in itself was precious and worth holding on to. On this day, with the sun bright in a cloudless sky, I thought about all the people of my country who, like me, had experienced violence and tragedy. That brought back memories of winter nights Grace and I spent talking in the kitchen of the shelter.
These were Grace’s words: for every hand raised in anger, for every bullet fired from a gun, for every drop of blood spilled on the soil of this land, there was someone crying. A mother, or a grandmother. These were the people who had carried this country through all those years of hardship. These were the people whose sweat and tears had made this country free and it was they who still suffered most. Whenever I looked around me at the people of my country, I remembered her words. I believe what she said is the truth.
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Copyright © MD Villiers 2013
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Lines from ‘Maqabane’ by Tatamkhulu Afrika reprinted by kind permission of the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency
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