by John Coetzee
But I could see that Susie didn’t believe me. Still sobbing fitfully, she spoke in thin little voice. “Sipho said Uncle Bert was going to blow up the pow-wowa station, and now he’s gone and done it. I heard it blow up. It was a big bang. And what’s going to happen to us now, Ricky?”
“Nothing will happen to us, Susie. Tell Polly that too. Nothing’s going to happen. And Uncle Bert didn’t do it, see. It just happened by itself. It’s no big deal and there’s nothing to worry about. Bring me your book and I’ll read you that funny story about the Cat in the Hat.”
I was glad that old trick of mine worked again, because that made her stop crying. Although she still sobbed quietly from time to time, I sat reading the book aloud to her until she fell asleep at last, with Polly cradled in her arms. I got up and went into the kitchen, where I found my mom. She gave me a searching look.
I decided then that I would have to play open cards with her. “All I know is that there was a big explosion in the power station, Mom, and… and that Sipho’s dad and Mr Powell seem to think that Uncle Bert had something to do with it.”
The colour drained from her face. “And where is Uncle Bert now?”
“I saw him inside one of the cooling towers, Mom.”
“What on earth is he doing in there?”
“I think he’s hiding away, Mom.”
She suddenly turned away and seemed to be talking to herself. “That means he must have done something wrong again. How typical of Bert! Whenever he did something wrong when we were kids, he always went and hid somewhere for ages, where nobody could find him. And what does he think is going to happen to us if he loses his job at the power station?”
I felt an icy hand grip my heart. “Do you really think that will happen, Mom?”
“Oh, I don’t know what to say, Rick,” she said, shaking her head while searching for a handkerchief in her sleeve. “I just don’t know what to think anymore!”
Seeing her looking so distraught made me feel sorry for her, but I also felt extremely sorry for myself. “So what do you think we should do now, Mom?”
“We’ll just have to wait for Uncle Bert to come back home, that’s all,” she said, blowing her nose again.
A little while after that, we went into the living room, where we sat in silence for a long time. She eventually took up her knitting and continued making a red jersey for Susie. I tried to keep my mind occupied by reading a book. But neither of us was really concentrating on what we were doing. My mom kept dropping stitches, and I kept losing my place in the book, so that I sometimes caught myself reading the same paragraph over and over again.
At last there was a knock on the door, and my mom and I looked at each other, fearing that the worst had happened. Another knock came, and when I summoned enough courage to open the door, I was surprised to see Inez and Antonio standing there. I quickly glanced at them in turn; they were both clearly very uneasy.
“Is your Uncle Bert here, Rick?” Antonio wanted to know.
“Um … actually … no, he isn’t.”
“Do you know where he is then?”
“I… I think he’s still over at the power station,” I replied awkwardly, because I was too ashamed to tell them about Uncle Bert being the prime suspect.
Inez quickly intervened. “What on earth happened at the power station, Rick?”
“Something exploded. But… but it seems that nobody knows how it happened,” I replied, telling her only part of the truth.
“Well, tell your uncle to come over and see us as soon as he comes home,” Antonio said, and without even saying goodnight, they were gone.
“Who was that, Rick?” my mom asked when I returned to the living room.
“Just some people that Uncle Bert knows, to see him, Mom,” I said casually.
Soon after they had gone, my mom said she was very tired and, after putting Susie to bed, she said a strained “goodnight” to me. I also went to bed then, but thinking about Uncle Bert hiding in the cooling tower and not knowing what he was up to in there, I stayed awake for hours. At last I heard footsteps going up the driveway to the garage and the door opening there. I knew it was Uncle Bert, and feeling very relieved, I began to doze off. But suddenly I was wide-awake as Uncle Bert’s bakkie started up again and drove off into the night.
Chapter 6
The following morning my mom and I sat at the breakfast table, looking bleary-eyed like two miserable bassett hounds with a bout of biliary. She had also heard Uncle Bert coming home the night before and driving off again. She told me that it had kept her awake for many hours after he had gone, because it was a sure sign that he was feeling guilty about having done something terribly wrong.
I sat deep in thought, stirring my porridge. “Where do you think Uncle Bert could have gone to, Mom?”
She sighed deeply. “Oh, if I only knew, Rick.”
We didn’t talk much after that, and after breakfast I was still feeling so confused that I just went down to the dam and sat down on the concrete block. My thoughts drifted around aimlessly for a while, and suddenly a picture of my dad appeared in my head. Had he really just left my mom, Susie and me to fend for ourselves in this dump forever? I pondered. Then a sudden attack of anger hammer-drilled its way into my mind and I bent down, picked up a big stone and flung it into the water with all my strength. It made a loud splash beyond the lily pads and sent the ducks quacking and flying off in all directions.
I don’t know how long I sat there with all that built-up anger inside me. All I know is that it was a very long and drawn-out Sunday, but it wasn’t quite as bad as the awful day that followed.
That Monday morning started off with Mr Powell from next-door coming to our front door looking very serious, holding two long khaki envelopes in his hand.
“Mr Khumalo asked me to give this to Bert,” he said to my mom, grimly thrusting one of the envelopes out to her.
She he took it from him silently. Her voice, when she had plucked up enough courage to speak, sounded as tight as a knot. “Bert isn’t here.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know, Mr Powell, but I’ll give it to him when I see him again.”
He nodded solemnly while handing the other envelope to my mom. “As you probably know, my wife is in charge of the post office in the village. She said this letter has been lying uncollected for a few days and she asked me to deliver it to you in case it’s something urgent.”
My mom took the envelope from him without saying anything and immediately after he had left, she tore it open. Her face first went a deathly pale, and then it turned blood red.
“It’s about that traffic fine!” she said, flinging it down on the table while trying to fight back her tears. “I have to pay it by the end of the month or appear in court. I don’t know whether your father will be able to send me any maintenance money this month, and I have hardly any cash left to make ends meet. So that means I’ll just have to spend time behind bars, that’s all!”
I felt lame and useless, utterly helpless; I couldn’t find anything to say. I just went to my room, got my school things and went off to school with a ghastly pain gnawing at my stomach. And to make things worse, some of the thugs, especially the one with the big ears, treated me as if it were my fault that something in the power station had blown up. They kept snarling threats at me, and all I could do was to keep out of their way all day to avoid being beaten up.
Sipho was the only one who cared, because he came to me during the main break and put his hand on my shoulder. “I know this must be really tough on you, Rick. But don’t let it get you down, see. There must be some kind of explanation for that explosion.”
I appreciated his concern, but it didn’t make things get any better. As a matter of fact, everything just kept getting worse. Firstly, when I came home from school that same day, I found my mom in tears again.
“What’s wrong now, Mom?” I said, going up to her.
“I might as well tell you,” she said
, blowing her nose while I waited in suspense. “I steamed open the envelope that was addressed to Uncle Bert. I secretly read it. It says that he is suspended from work until a full investigation into what had happened at the power station is finalised.”
“Oh, Mom!” I said despondently.
“I know it was wrong of me to have opened that letter, Rick,” she said when she had finished wiping her eyes. “But I’ve been so worried about Uncle Bert disappearing like that, and I just had to find out what this letter is all about. Okay, so now we know!”
I felt a sharp pain attacking my stomach again. “Does it mean that Uncle Bert is going to lose his job then, Mom?”
Her face twisted as if she’d bitten into a lemon, and her shoulders started shaking as she turned and shuffled towards her bedroom without answering my question. That told me what I wanted to know.
The following day Sipho told me at school that his father had said a group of officials from the power company’s head office would soon be coming to investigate what had gone wrong at the power station. “And my father also said that one of them, a Mr Oldsworth, who is one of the toughest inspectors he has ever had to deal with, would be in the group as well. That might even mean he’ll put in a negative report about my father because of so-called bad management and things like that. And if that happens, my father’s career could be ruined,” he added with a grim look on his face.
My heart plunged because I could sense he meant it would be because of my uncle’s suspected involvement in the explosion, but I decided not to say anything about it right then.
Towards the end of the week, more bad news hit the village. Nobody was sure who had heard it from whom, but wild rumours began to fly around that the power station was going to be shut down for good. Voices could be heard saying that everybody would then be out of a job, and that Ashby would soon become a ghost town. There was also a lot of disturbing talk among the people of the village that Bert Lawson was to blame for all the trouble and that he was going to get what was coming to him. But there were also whisperings that the sinister doings of those ‘devil worshippers’ on the other side of the dam also had a lot to do with the explosion in the power station.
Sipho came and confirmed those whisperings late one evening while I was busy doing my homework. I heard his excited-sounding voice outside my bedroom window: “Hey, Rick, come quickly. Come and see at what’s going on.”
My mom and Susie had already gone to bed and so as not to wake them, I quickly tiptoed out of the cottage.
“I was just taking our dog out into the garden to do his business, when I saw some guys with torches going towards the dam,” Sipho whispered. “Look, there’s a torch shining again. See, they’ve got knobkerries and things and they’re going the other way around the dam.”
“We’d better get there before them and warn Inez and Antonio,” I said.
“I’ve got a torch here,” said Sipho. “Let’s go.”
In spite of the full moon hanging above the trees, it was fairly dark outside and we set off together as fast as we could go. For safety’s sake, Sipho only shone his torch whenever we came to the very uneven places along the shorter way we usually took to go around the dam. But the attackers were moving much faster than we could manage to go, and before we reached the camping place, we heard a loud commotion going on. We immediately increased our speed and soon we could see Inez and Antonio trying to fight off almost a dozen faceless thugs with balaclavas pulled over their heads, so that only their eyes could be seen peering through the holes. Some of the attackers were hitting out with knobkerries and some were lashing out with sjamboks.
“We don’t need people like you around here!” one of them shouted, striking Inez across her arm with his sjambok, which left a cut across it.
“Get away from here and don’t ever come back!” shouted another, trying to attack Antonio with a heavy knobkerrie.
Inez and Antonio fought back bravely, using all their karate skills, but the situation became very tricky when some larger men came along and joined in the brawl. Sipho and I stood watching in dismay. We would certainly be no match for these toughs. They could easily have been big brothers – or even fathers – of some of the guys at school, I thought. We watched helplessly while the fighting went on, the attackers spitting out foul language as they struck blows at Inez and Antonio.
“What have we done?” Antonio panted when he had a brief chance to say something. “Why are you doing this to us?”
“Because this is what we do to devil worshippers. That’s why!” shouted one of them.
“It’s all your mucking about here with witchcraft that’s going to make us lose our jobs, our houses and everything we’ve got,” yelled another.
Dabbing her arm with her handkerchief to stem the blood flowing from the cut, Inez called out. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“And what about that green stuff we’ve seen you making in those tubes and things?” the same fellow snarled. “It’s all got to do with all the black magic that’s going on here. And what about that snake we’ve seen you dancing around with? If that isn’t black magic, then I don’t know what is.”
“They’ve got to be burnt out of here,” another one shouted in a husky voice, and immediately he took something looking like a petrol bomb out of a canvas bag hanging from his shoulder. I looked on in horror while he struck match after match, trying to light it.
I couldn’t believe what was happening; I stood there, frozen stiff in spite of the heat of the night.
“Oh, stop him quickly!” shouted Inez in a wild panic.
That kick-started me into doing something I never would have done under normal circumstances. Heart pounding like a series of hard hammer blows against my ribs, I whispered to Sipho, “Wait here.”
Keeping to the shadows, I felt all the spit in my mouth drying up as I hurried around the back of the caravan to look for the glass box in which the python was kept. Luckily I found it quite quickly. I removed the lid from the box and I became even more afraid when I gazed at the python’s coils shimmering in the moonlight. I started to have second thoughts about the crazy idea that had come into my head. I hesitated a moment and then thought to myself: You’re just being a coward, Rick Williams. If Inez can do it, so can you! – so, no matter how scared I was, I snatched a deep breath, bent over the side of the box and lifted the python out of it. The creature felt sort of soft and slithery in my hands but I managed to keep a grip on it while I lifted it over my head and onto my shoulders. The python squirmed as I came out from behind the caravan with arms outstretched like Inez’s when I had seen her walking around with it that time.
The thug with the petrol bomb had already succeeded in lighting the wick and was aiming to throw it into the caravan, when I came into the clearing with the python draped around me. He gave me one startled look through the holes in his balaclava, cursed loudly and dropped the flaming bottle onto the ground and fled into the shadows.
Not all of the thugs were scared of the python, though, and one came at me brandishing a big knobkerrie. As he was about to strike, I lost my grip on the python. The creature must have sensed the danger that was coming, because it suddenly coiled itself around my upper body and throat and started to squeeze the breath out of me. I tried to shout for help, but only a few agonised gargling sounds came through my tightly strung vocal chords. A bright galaxy of stars exploded in my head; I thought I my last moment on earth had come.
A deep voice suddenly called out from somewhere in the dark: “What’s going on here?”
“Police!” one of the thugs yelled, and they all disappeared like magic. Two men were running towards us.
But I soon realised that it wasn’t the police, when I heard Sipho shouting: “Come and help here quickly, Dad… The python’s got hold of Rick!”
Mr Khumalo and Mr Powell came running up to me where I was struggling to free myself from the python’s grip.
“Stand still, Rick,” Mr Powell commande
d. “Mr Khumalo, I’ll hold the head and you get hold of the tail – then start uncoiling it as fast as you can.”
I saw Sipho’s father bending over me and getting hold of the python’s tail, while I felt Mr Powell’s fingernails digging into the side of my throat as he tried to keep the creature’s fangs away from my face.
“That’s it. Just keep still, Rick – you’re doing fine,” I heard Inez breathlessly calling out while she and Antonio also came running up to us.
Once the python was uncoiled, I felt its weight being lifted from me. Feeling faint and in a daze, I saw Inez walking back to the caravan with the python hanging over her arms and shoulders. Antonio quickly grabbed a spade from the small vegetable patch nearby and extinguished the burning wick of the petrol bomb by shovelling a heap of sand over it.
As soon as the fire was out, Sipho’s father came up to Antonio and spoke in razor-sharp tones. “I’ve seen your campfires from the power station, and I know you’re on private ground. That’s why I haven’t interfered with your being here. But finding my son and his friend under these circumstances here tonight, I demand an explanation.”
Still panting from the attack, Inez’s brother replied: “I’m Antonio Gonzales from the University of Miami.”
“So?” said Sipho’s father.
“I have been conducting some special experiments here with algae,” Antonio quickly explained. “I’ve been wanting to go over to talk to you soon about what algae can do for your power station, Mr Khumalo, and I’m sure you will find what I have to show you very interesting.”
A few deep lines ploughed into Mr Khumalo’s perspiring forehead and he spoke gruffly. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Gonzales!”
Antonio swallowed a few times and continued. “Mr Bert Lawson from your power station has been helping me with my experiments, and just recently I’ve been getting some really surprising results.”
