Zebra Crossing

by Meg Vandermerwe

  ‘Pssst. Have you heard about what’s going on in President’s Heights?’

  ‘The white one?’

  ‘Yes. The ndundu.’

  ‘The—’

  ‘Magical.’

  ‘They say she can see in the dark.’

  ‘That she can make any charm.’

  ‘You know what they say.’

  ‘How back home they bring them out to find…’

  ‘… the bodies of drowned fishermen…’

  ‘The gold and diamonds hiding in the earth.’

  ‘Floor seven.’

  ‘Look for the sign that says DOCTOR ONGANI. He is her keeper.’

  I do not know what becomes of the woman who wants a job that requires a briefcase. But three immigrants in President’s Heights found jobs in one week, one at a backpackers, where previously the manager had said no, he refuses, she must be able to speak Xhosa. For someone else, a family’s residence documents came through. A young woman from Uganda lost her job, but two weeks later got some good news. A miracle had indeed occurred.

  ‘The woman has a daughter with a new baby. She lives in Joburg. Together they have agreed that I should go work for her and help look after the child. So you see, Doctor, I have been saved.’

  Now she will also be close to her brother and sister, who are living in that city. She cried tears of gratitude and brought a pot of delicious spicy chicken and yam stew to the flat to say thank you to Doctor Ongani and his albino.

  Another man comes. I remember that he too was waiting for an identity document. Had been waiting for almost three years.

  ‘I am telling you, I have been to Home Affairs, you know, what, every week for two months, but this time there were no delays. They did not say come back, come back, come back.’

  A miracle! The documents were waiting.

  ‘The man at the desk even smiled and called me brother. Thank you, Doctor!’

  The woman from Uganda and the man from Mozambique both swore they would spread the word. Maybe some of the others did too.

  ‘It is the one upstairs.’

  ‘That one of the white skin.’

  ‘She is the one who is responsible. Go to her.’

  ‘She can improve your bad luck.’

  ‘She can help.’

  ‘Look, this suit I am wearing. She touched it. Now I never take it off.’

  ‘My child was born healthy after the doctors said it could not.’

  ‘Now I have a job.’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘Go to her.’

  ‘You know how those namphweris are. You know their special powers.’

  ‘But you know,’ Doctor Ongani says three and a half weeks later, as he eats another mouthful of cassava and gravy stew, brought to the room by another grateful immigrant from our building, ‘poor immigrants and foreigners are one thing. But it is the soccer, this World Cup, that everyone is vuvuzela-ing about. That is where the real money is to be made…’

  ‘But who needs an albino for that?’ George interrupts, draining his mug of tea and lighting a cigarette.

  Over the past few weeks, he has begun to turn to Doctor Ongani more and more for advice. I could see by the way he looked at him that he was fast coming to respect the Doctor for his business sense. He had even agreed to allow the Doctor to take charge of the money.

  ‘Why should he be in charge of the money?’ Peter had his reservations. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘This business was his idea. You heard what he said. Each week we will receive our share of the profits, as promised. If one week he fails to give it to us, then we will make sure he is sorry.’

  No one addresses me directly. As usual, I am not a part of the negotiations. I sit in the corner knitting. Jean-Paul has recently taught me how to do it. I am cold in the room and think maybe I will make myself a scarf and, if I can manage it, some thicker socks. Day or night, my feet are as cold as ice in this forsaken building.

  ‘I don’t care how she was considered in Zimbabwe. But in many other African countries, including for some in this country, Chipo’s condition represents luck. And everyone needs luck, my friend. The soccer player, the club manager, the fans. But do you know who needs luck most of all…?’ Doctor Ongani pauses.

  ‘Well, don’t make us wait for you to shit it out, Ongani.’

  Doctor Ongani frowns. ‘The gambler, my dear George, the gambler. And the gambler is more desperate than even the poorest immigrant. The gambler is addicted to his gambling and to the quest to improve his luck.’

  Later that night, George, his appetite whetted by Doctor Ongani’s latest promises, arrives home dragging what looks like a school chalkboard. It is past two o’clock.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t ask me stupid questions unless you do not want an answer.’

  The top of the board says LOLA’S. So he has stolen it from outside one of the bars.

  With a wet cloth, he wipes away the specials of the day and cocktails at half price.

  ‘This is so we can keep track of what is going on. The odds, the bets. We need to keep one step ahead if we are going to pull this off.’

  ‘Pull what off?’

  ‘Our riches. South African rand! British pounds! American dollars!’

  ‘I do not want to take money from them. You know that I have no talent like they say. Doctor Ongani and I have been lucky up to now, that is all.’

  ‘This is the first good thing that has happened to us in our lives. Don’t ruin it.’

  The next evening, Doctor Ongani gives us a lesson in the art of betting. Betting for soccer matches is complicated, he explains. There are lots of different ways to do it. For example, there is what is called a simple bet on which team you think will win. But the men who run the betting shops are not stupid. That is not where the real fortunes rest. The real fortunes are to be made if you can predict the details. For example, which player on which team will score the first goal and at what time precisely. Or who will be the first to be swapped out on the pitch. There are other bets for the more adventurous. How many cans of Coca-Cola will be sold by such and such a vendor? How many boerewors rolls eaten from his stall? After how many minutes will the ladies’ toilets run completely out of toilet paper?

  ‘It is in the details, my friends, that the gamblers’ fortunes are made.’

  Winter arrives, and with it the World Cup tourists. I can see them down on Long Street, pale and rowdy, excited by their team’s prospects.

  ‘The eighth of June 2010. Three days until the start of the World Cup,’ George announces, looking at the calendar. ‘Twenty-eight days left to make our fortune.’ He puts down his pen and flops onto his mattress.

  David is sitting where he spends every day: looking out of the window while drinking beer from one-litre bottles. I know that look.

  Doctor Ongani comes in. He is carrying the chalkboard with a name written on it.

  ‘What is that?’ George asks.

  ‘Our new company name, my friends. Fortune for the Unfortunate. What do you think?’

  My brother shakes his head. ‘Sounds like shit, Doctor. No disrespect. What about Gangster Paradise?’

  ‘Too aggressive. We want to appeal to the ladies too, you know, George.’

  A moment of reflective silence.

  ‘Gamblers’ Paradise.’ It is David who says this. He is clearly drunk.

  My brother pulls a face like he feels sick, but Doctor Ongani ponders the suggestion.

  ‘No, no…’ He snaps his fingers, indicating that Peter is to wipe away the previous name and replace it with this one. ‘Gamblers’ Paradise… It is short. Direct. Perhaps a little sentimental, but sincere. A show of hands? Only George, Peter and Doctor Ongani raise theirs. David walks out and I do nothing.

  ‘Three yes, two abstentions. Democracy has spoken. Gamblers’ Paradise it is. Ah, I feel like a member of South Africa’s great Parliament.’

  ‘There is something else,’ George says. He unfolds a chart.
A soccer chart. It came free in the Cape Argus a couple of weeks ago, he explains.

  ‘If we are going to succeed we need to keep track of who is winning, who is losing, the scores, which players are delivering the goods.’

  ‘Good thinking, my friend! Excellent!’ Doctor Ongani runs his fingers over the paper poster as my brother pins it to the wall with some brass pins he has bought.

  ‘There, now we are ready! But first,’ Doctor Ongani says, ‘on this auspicious day, I think we can afford to order some Nando’s peri-peri chicken. Two family meals please, Peter.’

  Afterwards, wiping his greasy fingers, George reads to us from the match calendar.

  ‘OK, there are eight groups, four teams per group. Group A is South Africa, France, Mexico, Uruguay. Group B is Argentina, Greece, Nigeria, South Korea. Group D…’

  As George continues, I catch sight of Jean-Paul leaving his room to go to the toilet. He stops and listens. Then, catching my eye, he shakes his head slowly. I had told him that I would not be able to help him like before because my brother needed my help. I couldn’t tell him the truth, but I know that Jean-Paul senses that the constant presence of Doctor Ongani means mischief is afoot.

  Today, 9 June, the government has asked everyone to blow their vuvuzelas at precisely twelve noon to show their support for the World Cup and South Africa’s soccer team, Bafana Bafana. At noon I stand by the window to see if people will do it. And they do. As the clock hands reach twelve, cars slow down and the passengers blow through their open windows. Workers and customers come out of shops and restaurants to stand on the pavement and blow their red, green, blue and yellow vuvuzelas non-stop like they are trying to blow down the walls of Jericho. The locals are blowing hardest of all.

  All the blowing makes such a racket that Jean-Paul covers his ears.

  ‘Too much noise,’ he complains when I go to his room. I can see it sets his nerves on edge.

  Doctor Ongani is out. From Jean-Paul’s window, I can see George and David standing down in the street, too. But they aren’t blowing. George has his arms folded and David just stares ahead like one of those zombies whose brains have been eaten in George’s Nollywood films. No one blows a thing in our building except maybe their noses. We know this World Cup does not belong to us. No amount of government what-what can convince us otherwise. Afterwards, when everyone has gone back inside, there is a feeling on the street like it’s a festival day. But the mood in President’s Heights remains heavy. Inside, we foreigners are still racking our brains to think of how we can raise enough rand before the 11 July deadline. We’ve got four weeks, one month, thirty-one days. The opening of the World Cup will start the clock ticking. If I stand and close my eyes, I can feel all that worry and concern seeping in through the walls and up through the linoleum and the carpets, like the smell of boiling fish. Come 11 July, who knows where we will be? Is every passing day bringing us closer to our deaths, or will we escape with our goods?

  I go back to Jean-Paul. He is sewing at his machine for hours at a stretch. Maybe he too is worried, even though he doesn’t want to admit it. I pick up another pair of trousers and continue the ironing I had started. I still help him when I can. Making the pile of altered dresses and trousers smooth and perfect will help soothe my nerves, I tell myself. There is still time, Chipo. Still hope. But my heart feels like I have opened a bag of rice to find maggots feasting inside.

  Our first betting customer is a gambler and he is certainly desperate. A coloured man with tattoos like dark blue spider webs spun up his arms and across his hands. The tattoos, I am told after he leaves, that is normal. But the two fingers missing from his right hand… these are another matter. He owes money and he owes it to the sort of people who don’t extend their credit, he tells us. He is already two months late. And for every month they chop off a finger.

  ‘I’d drink hondepis,’ he explains, ‘if I thought it would work, and so far I have done everything, even eaten cooked vulture brains from one of those fokken sangomas in Khayelitsha because he said it’d help me to see the future so I could predict results, and fokkol. But if my luck doesn’t change soon, well, I won’t be seeing the finals, if you know what I mean. And if I do, I won’t be able to wipe my own gat.’

  This gambling man is looking at me and he is waiting.

  ‘So, which game would you like her to influence?’ George asks. He is doing his best to sound calm, confident, even wearing Peter’s green suit that is one size too big.

  ‘Bafana Bafana versus Uruguay.’

  ‘So you want Uruguay to lose…?’

  ‘What? No, fok… What has this country ever done for me? No way. I want Uruguay to win.’

  ‘To win?’ My brother can’t hold his tongue. ‘But they have been playing like blind goats. Uruguay, shit! They couldn’t even beat the French, and they at the moment have no power, no skill! They only qualified because Henry put the ball into the goal with his hand and then denied it…’

  The man shrugs. ‘That’s not my problem. That’s your problem. The bookies all have Bafana Bafana to win. The only way I can make enough money is if the other team does it.’

  He points his finger at me sitting in the back.

  ‘You make South Africa lose, wit kaffir, you hear me? I don’t care what voodoo you have to do. If you don’t, I’ll come back here and you’ll lose more than just your fingers, verstaan?’

  I open my mouth. No words come out. I want to say that I am sorry, that I do not possess the power to help him. I want to say many things. Instead I say nothing.

  ‘Be calm, sir,’ says Doctor Ongani. ‘We will take care of it. Or your money back.’ Doctor Ongani is calm. He is used to this. But I can tell by how my brother swallows and shuffles in Peter’s too-big suit that he is scared.

  I am scared too. Bafana Bafana lose? Everyone knows they are the favourites. Perhaps George, like me, is wondering whether we have all bitten off more than we can swallow. This coloured is not some immigrant like us. If things go wrong, what then? Will we be reported to the police and deported? It is a big risk. Do Doctor Ongani and my brother really know what they are doing?

  The man is not yet satisfied. He turns to me. My job is simply to be in the back. Supposedly I am doing something to the muti. But I am not allowed to speak. The customers seem satisfied just to see my outline there. Near the jars of dried herbs and bits of bone and fur.

  ‘Will she go in the night and bewitch all the other team, make it so their legs wobble like water and they cannot kick the ball and all that other voodoo kak that you darkies do?’

  Doctor Ongani puts his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘She will do it, my friend. She will fix it so that the South Africans play like fools. Now go home.’

  When the man has left, Doctor Ongani turns to face all of us. ‘Do not worry, keep your heads. Everything will be all right.’

  ‘Chipo?’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘Is the window open?’

  ‘No, Mama.’

  ‘I’m so cold. Can you find me another blanket?’

  Eight-thirty in the evening. Long Street. Cape Town. Wednesday, 16 June. First round. South Africa versus Uruguay. We are all crowded into our flat. George has knocked off work but is still in his restaurant uniform. For once, few eyes are on me. Instead, they are on the men entering the pitch at the Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria. Vuvuzelas blowing. An angry hornet’s nest. National anthems. First Uruguay. Then South Africa. The children who have accompanied the players onto the pitch leave the field. The players all shake hands. Like the hearts of the players themselves, with every passing minute my heart is beating faster and faster.

  I am on the pitch too. On the grass. Smelling the freshly mowed earth. I am in the players’ straining muscles and their pounding hearts. And I am in the ball. The new Jabulani ball. On the turf. Inside the referee’s silver whistle. I make him itch to pull out his yellow and red cards. Under my breath I speak to Mama’s spirit. Please, Mama. Help us.

  A lot
depends on this, Doctor Ongani has said. If the word spreads that we were somehow able to influence the coloured man’s luck, then we would have more customers than we would know what to do with. Then, sooner than we all know, we will have the money to return home, search for proper houses, open tuck shops in a more reputable market, or even cafés. Whatever we want. Money enough so that all four of us can go elsewhere. George and I back to Zimbabwe. The brothers to Paris, London, even New York. And Doctor Ongani? He says he hasn’t yet decided. All of this before 11 July and the deadline our hosts have imposed upon us. Isn’t that, after all, what they say they want? To get rid of us? I am exhausted. Tired of worrying. I look at the South African players. It is only a game, I tell myself. So what if the other team wins and South Africa loses? Who would it hurt? I take a deep breath, close my eyes and inside my head I scream, LOSE!

  After Uruguay defeats South Africa 3–0, word quickly spreads. From one dark and overcrowded flat in President’s Heights to the next and up and down Long Street and beyond, to the immigrant communities of Woodstock, Observatory and Wynberg. And some locals too. Soon there are many others all desperate to pay the albino to influence the soccer outcome and their bank balances. Doctor Ongani and George are so pleased that they do not even mind that our business attracts the interest of some more unsavoury Long Street characters.

  After George comes home one evening after a night on the town, Doctor Ongani tells him the news.

  ‘The Tanzanians from floor three have contacted me. They want a meeting.’

  I have heard about these Tanzanians before. They are known as local drug dealers and are said to enjoy impunity from the police, whom they bribe. What are Doctor Ongani and George doing getting involved with people like these? But George is hardly listening. He is patting his pockets.

  ‘My cellphone…’

  ‘Of course, I expected it…’

  ‘Shit, it’s gone. My cellphone has been stolen. Hello, my cellphone has been stolen. Does anyone care?’

  ‘Can’t be helped, I suppose,’ Doctor Ongani says with a sigh. ‘Price of success.’ He picks up his cellphone and dials a number. ‘Hello, Julius? Doctor Ongani here. Yes, yes. Time to arrange a meeting.’