The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories

by Diane Awerbuck

  We continued through Auschwitzland, pushing through the throngs of tourists. The buildings were clean and neat, the displays carefully considered. Groups of different nationalities wandered the streets between administrative buildings and the houses of Nazi officials. On the way to the exit, outside the final gas chambers, their doors scratched by fingernails of desperation, we passed a friendly kiosk where we could buy sweets, chips and hamburgers. I wondered if I’d see a life-size rendition of one of the familiar pictures of a group of skeletal prisoners huddled behind a barbed-wire fence, with holes cut out so visitors could stick their heads through for a photo opp.

  In Krakow we stopped for lunch in a big green park. All the food had been brought with us from Israel. This is a common practice among holocaust tourists, who want to come and witness the sites for themselves while pumping as little money as possible into the Polish economy. The city of Krakow was cosmopolitan and charming. The streets were lined with little bistros and charismatic pubs filled with young people laughing and having a beer with their friends. This appealing city was the site of such death and pain that I cannot comprehend it; I find it impossible to understand. Parts of the ghetto wall remain intact, and tourists can go to see a plaque memorialising the people who lived and suffered and died here, or who were transported from the ghetto to their deaths. In a nearby square big steel chairs are placed: an installation? A memorial? The square was almost empty; people seemed to skirt it. The chairs looked small until you were right next to them. I read later that the chairs were designed by two architects, and are meant to be reminiscent of the furniture and belongings left behind by the people who gathered here before deportations. The architects won 25 000 euros for their design.

  Back on the bus, we watched Schindler’s List. In the seat behind me, someone said, ‘Do you think we’ll be much longer? I really want to get to Lublin. They say it has amazing nightlife.’

  The guys from the South African group got on famously with the American girls. There was lots of flirting and giggling. I remained silent unless addressed. I had never defined my Jewishness only in terms of the holocaust, even though it was a common theme throughout my education. But I also couldn’t identify with my fellow tourists. Hitler would have found us all equally Jewish. Would I proudly stand alongside this group of people and be shot into a mass grave?

  Our next stop was a beautiful forest. The trees were green and there were flowers and mosses; the birds sang ceaselessly in the trees. I could imagine fairytales being written about this place, fanciful and magical. Then we arrived at an open copse which was fenced off. Further along were more fences. Some were painted white, some blue. These were the mass graves of thousands of nameless people shot down over pits. The same thing had happened all over the country, in similar forests.

  We went onto the town of Tarnow. Some of the buildings lining the main square dated back to pre-war times. People rode by on bicycles; children kicked a soccer ball. Two old men sat on a bench in the sunshine. In this square, Jews had been forced to sit on their knees without moving for two days. Anyone who had looked up off the ground was shot instantly. I expected to see blood come seeping up between the paving stones.

  I remained silent as I saw the spacious-looking ghettoes, once so overcrowded, the forests fertilised by bodies shot down in their prime, the town and village squares filled with the laughter of people oblivious to the silenced voices and the cemeteries neglected because no one is left to look after them. And I finally understood what my grandmother meant when she said I would be walking on the blood of her family.

  Garden of Agony

  Christopher Voice Kudyahakudadirwe

  I’m lying on an old hessian sack that smells of goat urine and manure. The smell of goats has always been unwelcome to my nostrils, but who cares tonight? The luxury of cosy blankets and soft pillows is not for me tonight as it was many nights ago. The starry sky is my blanket and the hard earth my bed. My bedroom is a garden, which has a thick banana plantation on one side and a small patch of vegetables – some rape, a few cabbage heads and legumes of doubtful hybridity – on the other. A slow-flowing perennial stream snakes its way through the garden, dividing it into two. The bananas and vegetables are growing on its banks.

  The dark September sky is punctured by sparkling stars. The stars remind me of a story I heard when I was still very young, telling that those stars are small holes in the floor of heaven and reveal its brilliance. The Milky Way is running askew across this sky. It would be such a beautiful night if all things were equal, but the desire to admire such a scene is far from my instincts now. Not tonight, when far-distant mortar explosions and the crack of gunfire is floating to me through the dense night air reminding me that a war is raging all around the country. No, not tonight when I know lurking somewhere is a posse of soldiers hunting for me.

  From the dug-up and watered patch of the garden the damp smell of riverine soil mixes with the smell of the goat urine and manure and causes me to suppress a great urge to sneeze. Sneezing is the last thing that I would like to enjoy at this moment. This smell has been in my nose ever since I jumped into this garden seeking cover for the night. The soldiers followed my tracks throughout the afternoon until I managed to cheat their vigilance by jumping into a pool and concealing myself under the water. I spent the better part of the afternoon underwater with only my nose protruding to catch some air. The pool was on the lower part of the same stream that runs through the garden where I lay but here there were many trees on the banks.

  Mosquitoes whine as they fly past my ears in their ecstatic search for my exposed arms, face and ankles. I’m sure most of them haven’t tasted human blood during their short life. They fall over each other, scrambling for space to land and dip their needles to suck me up. The temptation to squash them with my open palms is so great, but I can’t. I’m afraid of making that clapping noise that might reveal my hiding place to the soldiers. I have to squeeze their tiny bodies against mine to kill them. They have already perforated my exposed skin, creating bumps that are so sore and require frequent scratching.

  At this point my mind slips into the past, bringing the events of the previous day into focus. We were seated under the shed of my father’s bedroom hut, playing cards to kill the long hours of the chimurenga war days. The three of us: my friend who liked to call himself A1, my older brother and I, liked to sit here where we could see far and wide. Our homestead’s position on a knoll enabled us to see the soldiers when they were still far away, affording us time to run into the thick bushes to the west of the village to hide.

  Most often we would be listening to a two-band short-wave radio that my father had bought for us when he returned from a two-year political detention at Gonakudzingwa. Our favourite radio station was LM Radio which broadcasted from Lourenço Marques in Mozambique. We liked this radio station because it played pop music – the kind that we enjoyed at boarding school during those days. The small radio sometimes alerted us when soldiers were approaching. When the soldiers were in the area and using their walkie-talkies, it whizzed and shrilled, the frequencies colliding. Sometimes we even picked up their voices clearly and we would listen to snatches of their messages. But on this day, the battery was flat and we relied on our eyes and ears.

  It was the sound of motorbikes that alerted A1 to the approach of the soldiers and he pointed in their direction. They were rushing across the brown fields towards us with dust billowing behind them like those airplanes that spew smoke in flight. We had recently heard that they were now using bikes to chase and shoot village boys and girls whom they thought were helping the freedom fighters. The village boys were called mujibhas and the girls were chimbwidos. We were the mujibhas. So we took flight towards the bush with G3 and FN bullets whizzing in the air around us. I could see small branches of trees falling from trees where they had been nipped by the whizzing bullets. As soon as we reached the edge of the bushes, we split up, each one in his direction. The freedom fighters, also known as The Boys
, had taught us some basic survival tactics. I ran towards this small river and jumped into a deep pool which was overgrown by trees such that the tree branches overhung right to the middle of the pool. When the sun sank and darkness enveloped the countryside, I came out of the water, drenched, my body whitish all over from being too long under the water. I plodded upstream, looking for a place to spend the night.

  The night goes by slowly. The Milky Way shifts like the hand of a giant clock whose dial is the star-spangled night sky. From previous observations, I know that when the starry band is running east to west, the day will be breaking soon, but I cannot tell the exact time. The cocks in our village are good at keeping time for us, but there are no cocks or hens left. They have been slaughtered for the freedom fighters who always like to eat sadza with chicken and nothing else. If dogs could take over their duty, it would be very welcome tonight because they are abundant and their barking carries far, but dogs have never been good at keeping time.

  Eventually the eastern horizon begins to redden. Twilight heralds the rising of the big star and the beginning of another day of cat-and-mouse brushes with the Rhodesian soldiers. The strengthening light chases the mosquitoes to the darker corners of the plantation, to my great relief. Their feeding is over for the day.

  One of the poles from the garden gate squeaks and tells me that there is someone coming into my hiding place. Instinctively, I quickly roll behind a bed of cabbage heads as my heart jumps into my mouth. Have the Rhodesian forces woken up so early to flush me out? Perhaps they saw me from afar with their binoculars and have come to fetch me. To my relief, it is the owner of the garden coming to work. I stand up, my knees weak with fright, and we greet each other. He asks why I’m in his garden that early. I know him. He knows me, too. But I can see that he is suspicious of my presence there. Perhaps he thinks I’m there to steal his vegetables. I tell him that I had to spend the night in his garden hiding from government soldiers. He understands. He sympathises with me. The soldiers are after the mujibhas and the chimbwidos who are the messengers of The Boys and not elderly people like him. He knows this, too. Capturing a mujibha or a chimbwido and torturing him or her provided them with valuable information about the whereabouts of the terrorists and the kind of arms that they would be carrying. This man knows what is happening around the country.

  By now the rays of the September sun are becoming needles. They are already attacking our bare skin demanding that we seek the relief of some shade. The green vegetables are already bowing down to them. While the gardener and I are busy talking an authoritative voice challenges us. I dive into the leafy green of the banana trees and crawl deep into the mulch of the cast-off brown leaves.

  ‘Don’t waste your time hiding! We’ve already seen you, terrorist! Just come out before we shoot you!’

  This is the beginning of my agony.

  Oban Road

  Donald Powers

  1

  He stood at the window of his room looking out at the rain falling in sheets. The corrugated iron roof of his garden flat was loud with the noise of it. No view of the mountain, just a white, wet diffuseness outside. Puddles in the garden forming from the overflow of water gushing from the gutter pipe into the drain. June in Cape Town.

  He turned his back on the window and looked about the room. The fridge hummed. Clothes lay draped over furniture for drying. He smelled the room’s dankness and sensed the things it contained enlarged with moisture. With nothing demanded of him that day and good weather for sleeping off his faint hangover he considered climbing back into bed and letting the rest of the morning slip by.

  He studied the telephone on the side table. It did not ring; why should it?

  He stepped across to the bookshelf and retrieved a blue folder from between a dictionary and a world atlas and carried it to an armchair and sat down. The folder contained an assortment of postcards and newspaper cuttings and handwritten notes and letters sent him over the years that he had kept for future interest. Birthday cards with handwritten messages, the gist of each the same every year. A note from an ex-girlfriend written in blue ink (I can’t say why it must be this way but it must. I can’t help how I feel. X). A printed email from a friend in London who had promised to write once a month but never had. A postcard with images of Barcelona sent him by his sister during her travels in Europe. An eight-page letter from a man he had sat next to and listened to talk for four hours about politics and Shakespeare and medicine on a bus trip from Durban to Cape Town. Newspaper articles that, browsing now, he wondered why he had kept at all.

  A pale blue aerogram scrawled with news from his uncle during one of his annual three-month stints of work in England. He looked up from the folder of keepsakes in his lap towards the window. The downpour had weakened to a drizzle and from the gutters and the eaves came the rapid drip of water. Images came to him of his uncle’s gravesite. The granite slab, the man’s full name and his dates and the saving line of script engraved there, not for the one below ground but for those who had known him and remained behind. Alongside the grave a rutted dirt track pitted with stones and lined with fir trees leading away between the graves to join a tar road broken and crumbling at the edges. The gnarled bark of the fir trees either side of the grave. The cold air of the day he had visited his buried uncle. The conical height of the firs reaching upward like pillars of smoke. The pale pale blue of the sky.

  2

  From the car park outside the bar where he had spent the afternoon drinking with his friend he needed to turn left if he wanted to drive home. It was just past six o’clock and the sky held perhaps another two hours of daylight, one of the pleasures of Cape Town Decembers. The car idled, his mind open to whim. He felt adrift of every responsibility and expectation, uninspired by his freedom to choose what to do with another weekday evening. He turned right and drove down onto Rosmead Avenue, southwards. Navigating the back roads adjacent to the railway line, it took him a while to locate Plumstead Cemetery. He had been there once before, a fortnight after his uncle’s death, to lay a bunch of red roses on the gravel of the gravebed as a favour for his grandmother who did not have the courage to visit the grave herself. This evening the high wrought-iron entrance gates to the cemetery were padlocked but the pedestrian gate was ajar. Cars passed on the road running the length of the north side of the cemetery and he sensed the incongruity of this fenced plot of land laid and tumbled with gravestones standing opposite modest houses and the kempt lives they contained. The avenues lined by fir trees looked all much alike and their numbering was inconsistent so it was a while before he found the avenue he was looking for and the gravestone below which the body of his uncle had been laid.

  He had not joined his mother and father and grandmother when they had made the trip to the mortuary to identify the body. His mother had warned him not to come, a man of twenty-one years, telling him that he would be better off retaining in his mind the image of his uncle as he had always known him, brisk with health and fitness and provocativeness, than supplant it with the image of his body stretched cold, pale, and uncharacteristic on a metal tabletop. He had not agreed with her but neither had he accompanied them. At the time he had thought how a person anyhow daily absorbs images and stories from newspaper and television and internet that just as soon one wishes one had not taken in, an information-silt to nourish fears and fantasies and nightmares.

  Now he sat on the edge of a concrete gravestone. He thought of his uncle’s body below ground and the idea of a life discontinued. He thought of the discontinuity between a body consigned to earth and the contents of his estate distributed among family or sold or donated. He thought of the compilation of images of the man and his life each person who knew him would carry till these images attenuated to nothing or died with those who carried them.

  The wind was up and had strengthened to a cool breeze. Bright white cloud was curling over the Constantiaberg and the sun was just about to drop from view. Looking out over the cemetery he saw a grey-haired, suited
man bending stiffly to arrange something at a grave. Further off, a couple stood together with the man’s arm around the woman’s shoulder. Along the access road through the cemetery a family group was walking at the pace of the old woman of their party. In the next avenue he noticed a bergie woman wander by with a shopping packet clinking with empty bottles which further down the avenue she laid by and there began a harsh off-hand speech to another settled in the lee of a broad headstone where they had made a rough encampment. It seemed to him a cemetery was a choice place for the homeless to shelter. A plot of land invested with material tributes of love and appreciation for vanished others, fenced off, undervisited, a place apart. He thought not of his uncle but the train of events that his death had put in motion.

  3

  It was September, a hot Saturday afternoon in the early stages of a friend’s twenty-first birthday party in Somerset West when he received the phone call that brought him the news. He took his phone out of his pocket and stood up from his friends’ scurrilous conversation and took his glass of beer with him out into the dry heat of the dirt car park and in the sun answered the call with a flippant greeting. He was in a loose mood but this abruptly tightened when his brother told him that their uncle had died a few hours earlier in a motorbike accident outside Oudtshoorn. He hung up and stood in the hot shade of a tree and felt weak and wordless. He had no desire to finish his beer. Laughter and music reached him from the restaurant but all that celebration seemed a vain and impossible distraction compared to this new reality.