Nowhere

by Roger Smith

  But for how much longer would the man submit?

  It was tough managing all the actors in his little play.

  Bungu’d had Disaster Zondi—known to be burned-out and demotivated—brought in for window dressing, to make the Kruger thing as convincing as possible, but now the mannequin had come to life.

  Wasn’t there a movie like that?

  He vaguely recalled watching something on VHS with Nandi a very long time ago, back when cinemas were for the pleasure of the white-skinned only.

  Bungu pushed the thought of his wife away and drove even faster.

  - - -

  Assegaai was coming back from the Wimpy bathroom in a hurry, his phone still in his hand.

  “I’ve been called over to Rosetown.”

  “Where’s that?” Zondi said.

  “Couple of klicks along the Kimberley road.”

  Zondi threw a note on the table and followed Assegaai out into the street. The cop’s white truck was parked outside the Wimpy, the neon washing it red.

  “Wanna ride along?” Assegaai asked.

  “Sure,” Zondi said and took the shotgun seat.

  Assegaai appeared child-sized behind the wheel, but he could drive. He got the blue light and siren going and threw the pickup into a U-turn, flying down the main road.

  “What is it?” Zondi asked.

  “Murder and rape.” Assegaai swung out past a slow moving car. “You believe in hell, Zondi?”

  “No.”

  “You might change your mind when you get to see Rosetown.”

  SEVEN

  “They’re circling me like wolves,” the president said. “Like hyenas, like vultures.”

  Before the idiot trotted through the entire lexicon of scavengers Bungu leaned forward and filled his drunken leader’s glass with brandy, saying, “I understand you’re upset, Mr. President, but things are under control.”

  “Are they, bra Steve? Are they?”

  “Yes. Sewn up tight.”

  “Tight you say?”

  “Yes, tight as a button.”

  The absurdity of the dialogue—Bungu had read Beckett way back at university (before the struggle had claimed him he’d had ambitions to be a playwright) and he felt he’d wandered into a conversation between Vladimir and Estragon—had the squat man stand from his chair in the living room at Genadendal and walk across to the window, the view out across the floodlit garden distorted by the ancient leaded panes.

  Bungu understood the president's anxiety.

  He was in no danger of being voted out of office (the electorate forgave the ruling party all its sins and shambled dutifully off to the polls every five years and returned it to power with an overwhelming majority) but he was legitimately anxious about the party leadership who could remove him and replace him—the deputy president was a Machiavellian and very ambitious little shit—given sufficient reason.

  “Now they’re saying my wife was fucking her bodyguard,” the president said.

  “I know, sir. I spread that rumor.”

  The president coughed brandy, dribbling it down his treble chin onto his Hardy Amies puppytooth cotton shirt.

  “You fuckin bastard! You’ve made me a laughing stock!” he said, jumping to his feet, toppling a side table, his glass shattering on the wooden floor.

  Bungu saw a bodyguard lurking in the doorway and waved him away.

  “Easy, sir,” he said.

  “I am a Zulu man! I will never leave a woman unsatisfied, and it looks like my old bitch wife was forced to pay that young monkey to service her!”

  “You have seven other wives. Four of them under thirty. The newest is only fifteen—”

  “Eighteen. Officially.”

  “As you say. But there can be no doubting your virility or prowess, Mr. President. And who is to blame a man for losing his appetite for an old and, well, less attractive wife when he has younger and more beautiful ones?”

  “When you put it that way . . .” The president wiped his face and chins on a silk wall hanging depicting an elephant carrying an ornate howdah on its back, a gift from the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

  “That is the way it is perceived, believe me,” Bungu said, removing a fresh crystal glass from a stinkwood sideboard and charging it with brandy. “And the notion of her adultery with the bodyguard provides a motive for what he did.”

  Bungu handed the glass to the president who folded into his seat, glugging at the liquor.

  “You’re a conniving bastard, bra Steve.”

  “I try, sir. I try.”

  “So, when is all this to be brought to a head?”

  “Very soon. I’ll get Louw to hold a press conference and declare everything transparent and above board. I think you can expect a bump in confidence at the next party conference, sir, for the strategic way you handled all this.”

  “Good, good.” The president waved a hand around the room. “Anything you want, bra Steve? Food? Drink? Women?”

  “No thank you, sir.”

  “There are these Ukrainians I have discovered. Blonde. Very active.”

  “Not tonight, but thank you.”

  “Okay then.”

  Bungu walked out into a lobby where a trio of bodyguards watched the South African national soccer team being humiliated live on TV. The men stood when he appeared.

  Bungu jabbed a stubby thumb at the room he’d just vacated.

  “Get him to bed before he does something stupid again,” he said and walked out toward his car.

  EIGHT

  The red and blue dance of a light bar led Zondi and Assegaai to a gap in the shacks. A cop car and an ambulance were parked by a row of shanties built so close to the railroad track that people carelessly exiting their homes would surely get sliced into lunch meat by the passing trains.

  Zondi had seen his share of rural poverty up close and all too personal, but the makeshift hovels flung onto the sand of this godforsaken desert spoke of a life so abject that he shuddered at the thought of having Assegaai’s job: the little man was the cop equivalent of a sewer worker, trawling through the toxic waste of society’s leavings.

  Zondi followed Assegaai over to the small group beside the tracks. Two EMTs and the uniformed sergeant with the kennel nose stood over a black girl of maybe sixteen hunkered on the ground, wrapped in a blanket.

  The uniform turned his flashlight on Assegaai who shielded his eyes with his arm.

  “Get that fuckin light off me,” he said.

  The beam stayed on him just long enough to be insolent, then dribbled over the sand and found the undernourished girl, as small as a child. Her face was swollen and streaked with dried blood. She shivered, hugging the blanket to her naked body, staring off into her own private hell.

  Assegaai snatched the flashlight from the sergeant’s hand and shone it right in his face, getting him to flinch, that unfinished nose twitching.

  “What we got here, Sergeant?”

  “This one,” the cop pointed to the girl, “she got herself gangbanged. She was over there,” his arm lifted and he gestured across the tracks, to the open sand, “having a nice date with her boyfriend. Four guys come on them. What she fuckin expect, putting her ass around like that?”

  Assegaai said, “Where’s the boy?”

  “Gimme the light, I show you.”

  Assegaai surrendered the flashlight and the sergeant sent the beam into the darkness and found the body of a young man sprawled on the dirt out beyond the tracks.

  Assegaai turned to the medics. “How badly injured is she?”

  “She’s been beaten, but not stabbed,” one of them said. “She’s not in danger.”

  “What’s your name?” Assegaai said to the girl.

  “Dolly.”

  “Tell me what happened, Dolly.”

  The girl told her how she and her boyfriend, Kagiso, had got away from the shacks for some privacy when the four men had found them. Kagiso had tried to protect her, but they’d knifed him and had taken turns with her.
She’d known they were going to knife her too, and she’d run just as a train was coming—long train, freight train—and she’d got it between them and her and by the time the train was gone so were the men.

  “These men, you recognize any of them?” Assegaai said. The kid shook her head. “You not just saying that ’cause you’re scared?”

  “No.”

  But the girl looked down at the tracks, not meeting his eyes, shivering, fingers clutching at the blanket.

  Assegaai said, “Okay, Dolly, the ambulance gonna take you to the clinic. I’ll be along to get your statement.”

  Assegaai and the sergeant went across to the body of the boy and the medics hovered near their ambulance, in no hurry, laughing as they lit cigarettes. Zondi was left alone with the girl.

  He was about to shout for the EMTs to get their asses over when the girl said, “You also a detective?”

  Zondi nodded and said, “Yes,” even though it wasn’t quite true.

  “But you not from here?”

  “No, Jo’burg.”

  Zondi sensed something and he hunkered down beside the girl, his shoes crunching on the stone bed of the railroad track.

  When she spoke her voice dropped to a whisper. “I tell you something, I’m not gonna get in no trouble?”

  “No Dolly, anything you say is between you and me.”

  The girl stared toward Assegaai and the sergeant who were squatting by the body, then looked back at Zondi.

  “When that cop comes on, I’m hiding here and I’m bare naked.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “And he put his light on me,” the girl stopped and for the first time Zondi saw tears in her eyes. He reached out and laid a hand on the kid’s shoulder. Dolly flinched and drew away and Zondi let his hand fall. “Then he . . . he touch me.”

  “Where did he touch you, Dolly?”

  “On my tits and between my legs. For a long time.” Enough light washed the girls face for Zondi to see the truth in her eyes. “Then he hear the ambulance coming on and he stop.”

  Zondi sat a moment. “Dolly, I’ll make sure you’re taken care of, okay?”

  He stood and went over to Assegaai and the sergeant. He spoke to the small cop.

  “Tell this guy to take a walk,” he said, jerking his head at the uniform.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Wait at the ambulance, Sergeant,” Assegaai said and the big man looked at Zondi then he shrugged and walked over to the medics and there was more laughter.

  “What’s up?” Assegaai said.

  Zondi repeated what the girl had told him.

  Assegaai said nothing, just headed toward the ambulance.

  “Hey,” he said to the EMTs, “this isn’t a fuckin barbecue. Get that girl to the clinic. Now.”

  The medics grumbled but walked back toward Dolly.

  “Sergeant,” Assegaai said.

  “Ja?” the man said, leaning against the vehicle, smoking.

  “Come here.” Waving for the filthy bastard to follow him to where Zondi stood near the tracks.

  The sergeant took his time, puffed on the smoke and flicked it out onto the sand. Then he strolled across to Assegaai and Zondi.

  “What’s up, Detective?”

  “Give me your weapon,” Assegaai said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m arresting you for indecently assaulting the victim. Now give me your fuckin weapon.”

  The uniformed cop laughed. “She tell you this? You gonna believe that little whore?”

  “Sergeant, I’m not talking again.” Assegaai lifted his shirt, unclipped the flap of his holster, hand on the butt of his Z88.

  “You want my weapon?”

  “Yes, I want your weapon.”

  The sergeant grabbed his balls and shoved his pelvis toward Assegaai.

  “Then come and get it, Dee-tective.”

  The 9mm was in Assegaai’s hand, and he tripped up the big man and sent him sprawling onto the sand, flat on his back, and crouched over him, gun to his temple, and Zondi heard him cock the pistol.

  Zondi said, “Easy, Assegaai, this scum isn’t worth it, man.”

  Assegaai loosened his finger from the trigger and sighed out a long breath and lifted the automatic away from the sergeant’s head.

  The ugly cop sucked air, staring at the small detective.

  Assegaai swung the barrel of the 9mm in a wide arc and smashed it across the sergeant’s face. Zondi heard nose cartilage snap like pork crackling as the man’s blood geysered.

  Zondi let the Bushman do a bit more damage before he reached down and stayed his arm and said, “Okay, that’ll do it.”

  Assegaai stood and lit a cigarette and the medics loaded the unconscious sergeant and the girl into the ambulance and they bumped off across the tracks, taillights like red eyes in the dust.

  The dead boy was left to lie on the sand.

  “If they ask me what happened I’ll say that bastard drew on you,” Zondi said.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Zondi felt the ground shake and suddenly a train was thundering out of the night, its light sending their shadows flying across the dirt, their voices drowned by the bellow of its horn.

  NINE

  Sue Kruger shivered uncontrollably, the silver crescent moon blurring as her head shook and her teeth chattered. She guessed that the temperature out here in the desert hadn’t dropped much lower than fifty-five degrees, but the hours of exposure earlier—her skin was burned and already starting to blister—had left her chilled as her body cooled to heal the torched dermis.

  The darkness out here was absolute, not even a hint of light pollution from Nêrens. The sky was vast and wide, the rash of stars almost painfully bright to her eyes.

  She had been fighting panic since she had drifted into consciousness again, for a few seconds her mind refusing to believe that this was happening to her, that she was the victim of that mad little creep, Leon—was that even his name?

  Her mind telling her it was just a dream, Sue.

  Just wake the fuck up, Sue.

  But she was awake and she felt terror seize her again, her heart pounding, the shivering ramping up until her teeth sounded like castanets and her body was doing a spasming dance.

  She forced herself to calm down by taking stock of her injuries.

  Her nose was broken and she couldn’t breathe through her nostrils.

  Painful and unpleasant, but not life-threatening.

  She maybe had a slight concussion, but it was difficult to be sure, she felt so spaced out.

  Spaced out from fear and exposure.

  From dehydration.

  And from not taking her meds.

  That would become an issue. When she missed her twice-daily dose of lithium her already tenuous grasp on reality tended to slip, like the fingers of a trapeze catcher who’d neglected to chalk his hands.

  Yes, her skin was badly burned and when the sun rose the toll it would take would be extreme—she knew that the daytime temperatures hit one-hundred degrees plus, and this was the driest year on record, no signs of the rains that cooled the desert in summer and caused flowers to bloom in profusion—but what scared her most was the thirst.

  Her tongue was thick and dry, her throat parched.

  She turned her head and extended her tongue, hoping to find a little moisture on the sand. Nothing.

  She knew she could go without food for days, but the water thing was a worry.

  Would he come back? Leon?

  She guessed he would. He was getting too much of a kick out of torturing her. She had to believe that she would be able to talk him into letting him go. That she could appeal to his humanity.

  Sure, Sue, a cynical voice said, that little fucker has nothing but the milk of human kindness flowing through his veins.

  Raw panic overwhelmed her again and she thrashed and tried to pull herself free and felt her burned skin tearing, blood running from her wrists
and she screamed until she heard a voice: “Stop! Stop, nonna!”

  A voice from so long ago that it shocked her out of her panic.

  The voice of a woman she hadn’t thought of in thirty years.

  A voice from so deep in Sue’s past she couldn’t even recall the woman’s name, or put a face to her.

  Could just remember her as a warm comforting presence.

  A presence that had smelled of Sunlight soap.

  The black woman who had worked in her parents’ house when she was a child. The woman who had tended to her as an infant and a toddler, her father out doing what he did and her mother busy with her pills and her crying jags and her nervous breakdowns.

  Then an image came to Sue of when she was maybe a year old—was it even possible to remember that far back, or was her broken mind playing tricks on her?—tied to the woman’s back in a blanket, in the way of rural Africans, as she went about her chores in the house.

  Anna.

  That was her name Sue suddenly remembered. Very common, in those days, for black men and women then to take Afrikaans first names.

  Anna crooning something in Tswana and Sue dozing, lulled into the happiest, most peaceful sleep, so different from the nights of anxiety when she heard her father raging and her mother crying and glass breaking and doors slamming.

  Cocooned in the blanket, the scent of that soap and another smell, the Cobra polish that Anna—on her hands and knees—was smearing onto the stonework of the porch, all the while little Sue jiggling and snoozing on her back.

  And then she’d heard a roar, the voice of her father yelling, dragging the woman to her feet, tearing the screaming Sue from her back, her father calling Anna a kaffir, and saying his child, his daughter, would never be tied to a filthy kaffir’s body.

  He’d shoved Sue shoved away, the child falling, screaming and crying, her father punching Anna and kicking her down the stairs and out of their lives forever.

  The balm of peace gone, Sue lay under the cold light of the moon and knew that what had befallen her was a judgment against the bad blood that flowed through her veins.

  When she closed her eyes and cried her body was too dehydrated to produce tears.