Out of Shadows

by Jason Wallace

  “You must be very proud.”

  “For sure. And tired! Always tired. Tuesday sleeps in here with me, the other children sleep next door with their mothers.”

  For a moment I thought he was joking.

  “You should ask the school to fix you up with a bigger place.”

  “There is no need, my friend,” he told me, coming forward to share a happy secret. “Soon I will be moving. I will leave the school and we will have all the space we need.”

  “Have you bought somewhere?”

  “No.” He laughed loudly and slapped his knee. “I have no money!”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I do not know.”

  “When are you going?”

  He shrugged again.

  “But you’re definitely moving?”

  “For sure.”

  “Then . . . how?”

  “He has promised it,” came the simple response. I knew who he meant: the prime minister, of course. “He told us. I was there when Mr. Mugabe came to the stadium. He said one day we would all have land, that this country now belonged to Africa and the Africans who have struggled for so long without it. I do not hate the White Man—I do not hate any man—but when they first came they did steal what was ours. They must share, it is only fair. And when it is my turn I am going to have a farm, and I am going to grow maize, sterek! So much maize. I am going to be a rich man, and my children will be happy and so will I because my wives will stop shouting at me.”

  I thought of the man who’d taken Ivan’s farm, the government minister with his big Mercedes and his big cigar.

  “What if you don’t get any land? I mean, what if Mugabe gives it to someone else?”

  “Everybody will have it. Black and white. You and me. We will all be rich with land of our own. He has promised.” Then his voice became serious. “I, for one, cannot wait to leave, for the sake of my children. This is not a good place to be living any longer. Bad things happen.”

  “Demons?” I patronized.

  He shook his head. “Only the demons inside of the men that do those bad things.”

  He gestured to his son. Reluctantly, the little boy obeyed, and Weekend sat him on his knee. At first I thought it was just the poor light, then I saw what it was about him I’d found strange: one eye flicked nervously at me while the other was in permanent shade, missing, his scarred and wrinkled lid sealed over a hollow of sightlessness.

  “You see?” Weekend spoke with calm emotion. “He does not speak about when this bad thing did happen, but other children say it was white boys throwing stones.”

  My heart raced again. This time it had nothing to do with the home-stewed medicine I’d been given.

  “Does he know who it was?”

  My mouth had gone dry.

  “He does hardly speak at all, not since that day. More than two years now.”

  Tuesday stared at me. I felt ill and wanted to leave.

  More than at any other time in my life, past or future, I hated myself. I loathed every little thing I’d done, for allowing it to happen.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And then, quickly: “For Tuesday, I mean.”

  Tuesday squirmed on his father’s knee until Weekend put him down and he went running out. I gazed at the space where he’d been long after he’d gone.

  “I am sorry, too,” Weekend said. “But I thank God that is in the sky that I have him still.”

  “He almost died?” I practically wailed.

  “No,” came the somber response. “But others . . .” His hands wrestled. “Come, Mastah Rhrob-ett,” he said. “I will show you.”

  He was right, his medicine had worked quickly; all I felt was tiredness in my limbs as I moved. It was still light outside, if only just. In the west the sun had started to set in a screaming sky; I can’t have been there much more than a couple of hours.

  Weekend took me through the middle of the compound, where everyone stopped to look. It was hard not to feel like a prisoner on parade—I deserved to be, and a lot more besides, but Weekend was constantly by my side like a best friend.

  About halfway down he pointed to another shack, and to a group of children younger than Tuesday playing. One was clearly different from the rest, the skin of her cheek and neck pink and raw.

  “Fire water,” Weekend explained, “like that in your laboratories. They threw it at her as she walked home one day.”

  On the other side, a teenage boy battled for a football. He ran holding his left arm because whenever he let it go it flapped, and much of the hair on the back of his head was missing. The other boys seemed to let him score a goal easily.

  “They whipped Philip and beat him with sticks until he could no longer stand.”

  And there were more. Drifting through the compound he pointed to another five children: burns, scars, a permanent limp . . .

  I couldn’t look.

  This wasn’t me, I wanted to tell him. I had no idea. If I’d known . . .

  But hadn’t I known? Deep down, hadn’t I always realized how sour the milk had turned? What Ivan and Klompie and Pittman had been doing? The long walks, the jokes, the innuendos, the whispers of shared secrets . . . Why else had I chosen to stop going with them?

  “And then there are the children who do not return.” Weekend finally halted near the point where the bees had attacked me. “One day they went and never came back. I still cry for their mothers and fathers.”

  In the dying of the light, I saw tears welling in his eyes.

  I looked to the path that would take me back to school. Across the distance I heard the house bells ringing, calling for showers, calling for roll call, calling for life to continue. But now I saw how life—my life—had been detached from reality with its own sick laws and cruel order, and how I had willingly been a part of it.

  “This is not a good place,” Weekend told me again. “Bad things happen here. But soon . . . soon I will have my land. He promised us. And I will farm. And I will be happy again.”

  THIRTY

  I stared at Ivan all through supper, watching him fill his face up on Top Table and laugh with the other prefects.

  What have you done? I kept thinking.

  I broke my gaze to find Klompie and Pittman smirking and sniggering at me.

  “Hey, Jacko”—Pitters threw a balled lump of bread—“what’you get up to this arvo, you poof?”

  “Looking a little off color, Jacko.” Klompie chewed meat with his mouth wide open. “Anything the matter?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you dropped a grade and got a C instead of a B for your essay. I know how much you like bees.”

  I pushed my plate and walked out.

  I didn’t go back to Selous at first. Instead, I found myself in Burnett House, staring at the photograph of the young Mr. van Hout as he sat in his Haven uniform. His smile cut his face at a cruel slant, his eyes buried deep into me.

  “Why couldn’t you have just stayed away?” I heard myself say.

  His smile remained, unfaltering, mocking.

  Above all else, I needed to get rid of that picture. Then maybe everything would be all right with Ivan, like it had been in the beginning. I didn’t care how I did it, I’d break the glass if I had to, but right then a group of younger boys returned from supper and checked me with my hands about to punch forward.

  “Evening, Jacklin,” some of them greeted subserviently, confused and probably slightly afraid.

  “Howz,” I said.

  I was sweating. I wiped my forehead and left.

  Perhaps I should say something, I wondered. I should confront him, hear him deny it.

  But I didn’t see Ivan in the house at all the whole evening. I didn’t know where he was, just that it couldn’t have been good because his two sidekicks had gone with him.

  By the following morning I’d managed to convince myself I was making something out of nothing, merely an overactive imagination going crazy. It was Weekend. It was hi
s fault. He hadn’t done me any favors.

  Then, during history, I noticed Miss Marimbo straightaway. She was ten minutes late, for a start, and she spent the whole lesson locked in an invisible cage: nervous and timid, scarcely looking up to the class and completely unable to meet Ivan in the eye. When she spoke, her voice wavered and cracked. Her hands trembled so much she couldn’t write on the board.

  Ivan seemed to be relishing her discomfort, splaying his legs wide, occasionally giving his crotch a meaningful grab.

  When he got up at the end of the lesson, Miss Marimbo practically jumped into the corner.

  And I just knew. For the first time I understood who Ivan really was.

  But I still needed to prove it.

  Ivan spotted I was taking my twice-a-term privilege earlier than usual.

  “What’s so important you can’t take your weekend with the rest of us?” he wanted to know. “You avoiding us?”

  I shook my head perhaps a little too vehemently.

  “I need to get some heavy revision in,” I replied. “Plus there’s a shooting club I want to check out near home. You know, for after we’ve left school.”

  He sucked on this. “Sure. Whatever you want. But when you get back I want to have a serious talk.”

  A serious talk.

  I’d never been so pleased to get beyond the school gates.

  Home weekends never lasted long so I didn’t waste time.

  “Hi, Adele.”

  “Bobby?” A long pause. The phone felt hot and slippery against my ear. Then: “Hi, how are you? What are you doing?”

  Being out of school or taking this risk?

  “I was hoping to talk to you. It’s important.”

  She hesitated. “O-kay.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Please. Ivan doesn’t need to know. Today?”

  “Well . . . A bunch of us are heading out to Mermaid’s Pool this arvo.”

  I mouthed a curse.

  “You can come if you want.”

  “Sure,” I said. Anything. “I’ll meet you there.”

  I went straight into my old man’s and Matilda’s room to hunt for the keys to the car. I was planning to be long gone before they realized.

  Everyone knew Mermaid’s Pool. About forty kilometers out of town on the Shamva Road, it was an oasis in the bush where nature had crafted one of the best playgrounds in the country. The pool itself was a huge gouge in the rock, black with depth so you could easily dive in without touching the bottom. There was a rope swing and a zip line, but the best part was the twenty meters of steep granite you could slide down in fast water because the place was on a hillside.

  I saw Adele straightaway sitting toward the top of the slope. She was alone. I sat beside her and she reacted as though I’d been away for minutes, and for the next quarter of an hour we chatted about nothing. I was happy to delay what I’d really come to say.

  “Do you . . . That is, has he . . . Does he ever . . .” I took a breath. “Does Ivan ever hurt you?”

  I sensed Adele retract. She finished her smoke and grabbed another.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, does he hurt you? Physically. Does he grab you, or play too roughly?” I remembered seeing bruises on her legs. “Or hit you?”

  “Of course not. You’re not being very nice. I don’t think I like you at the moment.”

  “I’m not trying to make you uneasy.” I moved to put my hand on her shoulder but she wouldn’t let me. I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  “Why are you being like this, Bobby?”

  “Because. Because . . . he’s been acting strange recently.”

  “Ivan’s always acting strangely.” She bit her lip. “Isn’t that what everyone likes about him? Why did you come here?”

  “You’re the closest one to him.”

  “Am I?” she turned, looking hurt. “You could have fooled me. He thinks far more about his gang than me.”

  “Yes, but you’re closer. You know what I’m trying to say.”

  “Ja, I know. And I’ve a good mind to tell you to voetsek and mind your own bloody business.”

  “I’m not trying to pry.”

  “Yes, you are, that’s exactly what you’re doing. Why don’t you tell me something, Bobby?”

  “What?”

  “Does Ivan know you’re here today? With me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Any reason I shouldn’t let it slip when he phones tonight? I didn’t invite you, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Now I was nervous.

  I watched a couple of kids slide by and smack the water at the bottom. Suddenly I saw how bad an idea this had been.

  “I should go,” I said. “My old man will be shitting mangoes about the car.”

  At last I got a smile.

  “You know you shouldn’t have come.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’m glad you did.” Her warm fingers briefly touched my hand. “I was so bored. And it’s nice having someone I can talk to.”

  “Where are your friends?”

  “Not here.” She began playing with her hair. “Sharon wanted to bring her brother, and if Ivan found out . . . It’s less complicated to come on my own. And then you phoned anyway. I told them I wasn’t feeling good.”

  “Oh,” I said stupidly and stood up.

  “You’re not really going, are you? Stay a bit longer.”

  “I wasn’t joking about my old man.”

  “I’m quite thirsty. Can you get us a Coke? Stay and drink with me, and we can talk properly.” She shaded her eyes from the sun. I thought: Marry me. “Please? I’ll answer anything you like—apart from that—and I promise I won’t be such a bitch.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’ll be good.”

  I walked down to the store and didn’t even wait for the change from five bucks. But as I got back up the slope I saw Adele wasn’t on her own anymore. Some guy had taken my space, and an icy shiver gripped the skin around my neck when I recognized the back of Ivan’s head.

  My feet rooted to the spot.

  They were about thirty feet away. I was coming from the side, and fortunately he had his back turned. Adele was smiling and looking at him with surprise-wide eyes, and even though she must have seen me coming she did that thing of looking by not looking.

  They stood. I shrank into the bushes. Now they were walking away. Adele had picked up her towel and her bag, and they were moving down the edge of the rock toward the parking lot, Ivan making her hold his hand.

  Had he seen me? Had she told him? Was she telling him now?

  No, I decided.

  But what was he doing here?

  I watched their cars reverse out and move off into the distance, sunlight glinting. I could taste blood and felt a hole I’d chewed in my lip.

  I gave the Cokes to a couple of piccanins playing by the side of the road, and when I tried to unlock the Peugeot I dropped the keys three times because my hands wouldn’t keep still.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I lay on my bed and smoked all night. I didn’t feel I’d slept but I guess I must have done because suddenly the unwanted day was pushing against the curtain. As the sun broke the horizon, I was already out of the house, walking the road to the cemetery for the first time in a long time.

  I found my mother’s grave and sat beside it.

  “Mum,” I said eventually. The word sounded weird yet strangely comforting. I’d missed it. “Sorry I haven’t been to see you for a while.”

  For once I went back to school as late as possible, moving silently through the house while everybody was showering and getting ready for supper. I went to my study and closed the door behind me until, all too quickly, the shout for roll call came.

  Ivan was already at the head of the line preparing to read off names. I stood close by. It was going to be another hot evening, although that probably had little to do with
the damp hair matted against my brow.

  “Howzit.” He flicked his eyebrows.

  He looked serious. Or did he always look like that?

  “Howz,” I said back.

  “Good weekend?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Club any good?”

  For a moment I fumbled. Then I remembered. “Place was wanked, reckon I could find better.”

  He seemed happy with that.

  I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night, not until after ten, when most of the house was asleep.

  I was sitting at my desk when he came, in the dim pool of light that my lamp made. Books lay strewn and open, though I was finding it hard to soak up a single word. I’d spent hours gazing out through the window. The cicadas screeched and my head pulsed noisily, sometimes I couldn’t tell which was which.

  I hadn’t heard my door open or Ivan coming in. He was just there, sitting on my bed, removing his tie and playing with it in his hands like a hangman might play with a noose.

  I didn’t speak. On a normal occasion surely he would have found that strange? I thought. But this wasn’t a normal occasion, and he just sat and toyed with the fabric serpent between his fingers.

  “So,” he spoke at long last. “Town was good, was it?”

  He knew. He knew very well.

  I swallowed. My throat clicked.

  “You mustn’t blame Adele. I was the one who asked to see her. I insisted.”

  He didn’t respond.

  I couldn’t take the silence. I couldn’t take the gloom, either, and I moved across the room to turn on the main light, but Ivan must have thought I was leaving because suddenly I was being propelled the last few feet. My head hit the door and bounced off. Stars flashed in my eyes. The next thing I knew I was back at my desk, smashing against it, pain flaring up my legs as Ivan leaned me further and further until I was sure something would snap.