Treasonous

by David Hickson

  “I should have chosen a different dish,” he said. “I would have, if you’d called.”

  “My fault,” I said, and we both drank some wine and sat in silence for a moment. Sometimes I forgot how Sandy’s disappearance had affected her friends, I was so blinded by my own sense of betrayal.

  Bill’s slides were a collection of photographs and news clippings that he had compiled years before for a lecture about the many ways in which South Africans had killed each other during the apartheid years. He’d prepared the lecture in the days when things were done the old-fashioned way with light projected through plastic.

  “I’ve got a lot of pictures here that have nothing to do with Mbuyo and the Khayelitsha Massacre, but we’ll skip ahead to the important stuff,” said Bill. “It’s all a bit nasty,” he added, and it certainly was. Khayelitsha is a township about thirty kilometres from Cape Town which developed from the humble beginnings of squatter camps in the area. These camps sprang up in the apartheid years wherever migrant workers found empty spaces on which they could build shacks out of iron roofing sheets, old shopping carts and cardboard boxes. The government etched dusty roads between the tin shacks, and built simple brick buildings to make them official. Mangy dogs roamed the streets which turned into mud streams whenever it rained, which was often. Or whenever the open sewers overflowed, which was even more often. At the height of the violence in South Africa, before the country changed its face, Khayelitsha was a place of death, poverty, and near civil war. Troops patrolled the streets when they dared in huge armoured vehicles called Casspirs, and everywhere shacks burned, and people died. The Khayelitsha Massacre was one such fire, in which five people had been killed when a small shack in Khayelitsha burned to the ground, early one morning. The sole survivor of the fire was the man who would be taking the helm of the country a few weeks from now.

  “One wonders how it could possibly have been five of them, in such a small shack,” said Bill, “but when you see the photographs, you’ll understand. There were two rooms to the shack, and people were sleeping everywhere.”

  Bill had found his old slide projector, so we cleared some pictures of Audrey Hepburn off one wall, and turned down the lights.

  “There was a small media stir about it. At first everyone thought it was just an accidental fire. There were so many of them in those days. But when the names of the dead came in, it was obvious that it had not been an accident. Five members of an ANC resistance cell seemed like too much of a coincidence. But remember this was in a time of military rule. There was a national state of emergency. The newspapers couldn’t publish anything political, particularly not violence like this, so effectively the whole thing was kept quiet. It’s hard to imagine nowadays with the proliferation of news and media, but in those days if the papers didn’t print it, it didn’t happen. How else would you know something had occurred? The papers used to print blank columns, sometimes whole pages were empty in protest of the censorship. This massacre featured overseas for as long as it made big news, but it soon got replaced by bigger and better things.”

  “Let’s see what we have here ...” A black and white blur jumped onto the wall. ”Oh damn.” Bill fiddled with a knob and the blur did aerobics against the wall. “Now what’s happened to that ...?” Suddenly the blur disappeared, to be replaced by another brighter, bigger blur which had a bit of colour in it.

  “How’s that?” Bill asked hopefully.

  “Not quite there yet,” I said.

  Something clicked loudly, and a dead body appeared in place of the blur. It was face down with one arm underneath it, the other flung back and around as if it was giving itself a last embrace. Several large, uneven wounds had attracted flies. The body lay on a surface of compacted dirt, and in the top corner of the picture a shoe was visible, and beyond it a lifeless foot.

  “Oh dear,” said Bill, “looks like they’re out of order. That’s the brother, Wandile. Let me see.” The slide machine swallowed Wandile and presented us with the image of a corrugated iron shack hanging suspended from a thin sliver of ground. Some people stood around on their heads.

  “That’s upside down,” said Bill. There were more slide machine noises.

  “Ah!” The shack, or what was left of it, was the right way up now. It was one of a row of shacks and all that was left were some charred wooden poles and warped corrugated iron sheeting. A group of people stood around the shack, all looking at the desolation, their backs to camera. “Newspaper photograph,” said Bill, “This is where it happened, and now here …” Wandile appeared on the wall, but now he too was upside down.

  “Oh dear ... Well, never mind. This is Wandile Mbuyo. Brother of Thulani. Did you know his brother was killed in the fire?”

  “I didn’t even know he had a brother,” I said.

  “Few people do. He never mentions him. Bad blood in the family.”

  The next slide appeared – the same shack, but this was obviously later in the day. A group of soldiers in army browns stood around the shack clutching their Denel R4s nervously to their chests. The crowd had grown larger.

  “Things got volatile. There was some stone throwing, that sort of thing. Nobody else was killed, but then news leaked out that someone had survived.”

  The next picture was from further away. An even larger crowd, and towering over them a bright yellow Casspir.

  “That’s from the Swedish,” said Bill. “None of this was reported in the local papers because of the censorship. But you can see the names clearly enough. There’s Thulani … Wandile … No Lindiwe though.”

  Bill moved on to the next slide, a photograph of a necklace killing, popular around that time according to Bill. “They would force a car tyre over the victim’s head, pinning their arms to their side. Douse them with petrol and set them alight.” Bill changed the slide.

  We looked at several more slides, some of which Bill managed to get the right way up and in focus. Some were rather attractive blurs of colour that pulsated as Bill cursed and fiddled with the knobs, and they were really the best ones. The others were too graphic for my tastes. A few of them included written articles which discussed the massacre. But not one of those had the name Lindiwe Dlomo.

  Bill made coffee after the slide show and we sat on the terrace trying to rid ourselves of the haunting images.

  “That cold front’s going to hit tomorrow,” said Bill and swirled his coffee about, looking into it as if he could read the future there. Bill liked milky coffee, even at this time of day. Mine was short and black. Below us the masts of the yacht club swayed back and forth like a field of wheat being disturbed by giant moles.

  “The quiet before the storm,” I said and Bill looked at me as if he had many things to say, but was struggling to get past the inanities. He probably did have many things to say. Certainly, he and Sandy would have talked deep into the night in the relaxed way that old friends don’t notice the passing of time. My friendship with Bill had never graduated to that level, perhaps because Sandy was a constant presence between us, like a spectre that rose up whenever the conversation hit a lull. I wanted to tell Bill about Johansson’s photograph, but I knew that it would only upset him. I wondered about it now as we gazed into the dark night. I didn’t suppose that I would ever discover where it had come from, with Johansson lying in a fridge, and the police crawling over his meagre possessions. I thought of saying something to Bill about the fact that I had written his address on Johansson’s folder, but he was watching the masts performing their silent jig, and had sunk into a trance as if their swinging motion had hypnotised him.

  Bill had been a good friend to Sandy, and I had inherited some of the good will, but if I started discussing my reasons for providing his address to Johansson, I guessed that it would only stir up his suspicions about my history, and the narrow crack through which I tried to engender our friendship would close. It was bad enough that I’d had a career in the military, an institution of which he was highly suspicious. Then to have worked – albeit b
riefly – for state security rendered me even less desirable as a friend. If I was to start picking at the scab of the wound caused by Sandy’s disappearance that might have been the last straw. So I drank my coffee and gazed out to sea, in companionable silence.

  Bill slurped at his coffee noisily and regarded me over the brim of the cup.

  “There’s a man I interviewed for that book I worked on,” he said suddenly. “He was on Robben Island at the same time as Mbuyo. I could ask him if the name rings any bells.”

  “Don’t stick your neck out,” I said. “It could be that Lindiwe Dlomo isn’t a very popular name in those circles.”

  “Leave it to me,” said Bill, and he slurped his coffee.

  Four

  At ten minutes after nine the next morning, I found myself sitting at one of Giuseppe’s dingy back tables. A heart attack special was popping its full cream foam in front of me, and I was fiddling with the first of a fresh pack of those filthy French things, telling myself that I wouldn’t light it until I was outside. Members of the leisure class of Cape Town, from indolent artists to the toy boys of the rich, surrounded me and chatted while looking over each other’s shoulders to see who else was featuring today. Beyond them Greenmarket Square was warming up to its day’s activity, with stall owners laying out their wares, and the pickpockets exploring the escape routes they’d be using. Greenmarket Square is an old, cobbled space in the heart of Cape Town enclosed by a stern Methodist Church, a five-star hotel, some Parisian pavement cafes, and the most expensive African curio shops to be found on the continent. For forty years the square has played host to a flea market, a constantly swelling collection of stalls which occupy it like an arrogant hippie camp during the day, and then disappear by nightfall to allow the tourist limos some space to manoeuvre. Giuseppe’s presented a narrow doorway onto the cobbled square which provided me with a good enough view to be sure I wasn’t being watched. I also had the chance to admire from afar the old Warehouse where Fehrson and Khanyi were waiting for me with the little information they had been able to find about Lindiwe.

  I noticed Khanyi when she was about halfway across the square, bearing down on me like an Olympic walker nearing the home straight. She was disguised as a leopard – an extraordinary suit of imitation leopard skin which comprised a jacket that looked like it had lost its bottom half, and a skirt which the tailor hadn’t been able to finish because he’d run out of leopard. It pretty much made it below the crotch line, but one didn’t want to look too carefully. Black stockings were Khanyi’s only compromise with the impending winter, and I’ve got to say I can understand why she left it at that. With legs like hers, it would have been a shame to wear anything over those stockings.

  Giuseppe greeted her like she was a long-lost sister, kissed her very thoroughly, and only with great reluctance let her go so she could make her way into the shadows at the back to find me.

  “I smelt the smoke from across the square,” she said, standing silhouetted in the light, with a hand on her hip, and one leg bent so a shaft could paint her shadow on the floor. “Father is furious.”

  “Father doesn’t even know I’m trying to give up.”

  Khanyi pulled an I’m-not-in-the-mood face.

  “We’re waiting in the attic for you. Father says when you’ve had enough coffee, you should feel free to join us. We said nine o’clock.”

  I said I’d be right along and blew into the froth of my cappuccino to show how keen I was. Khanyi sighed. “He means now,” she said.

  “I’m certainly not crossing that square with you, Khanyi. Any self-respecting game ranger would gun me down on the spot.”

  Khanyi looked up to the ceiling for spiritual guidance. “We’ll wait until you sound the all-clear,” she said. “Just don’t make it all day.” She turned sharply on her heels like a ballet dancer and made it out the front door before Giuseppe could show any more of his Mediterranean appreciation.

  Khanyi was a desk person. For all her brilliance at office politics, she handled people like she handled numbers on a computer. For her the old-fashioned practices of exercising caution, making sure one wasn’t being followed and all that boy scout stuff, were just bad habits us old fogeys were clinging onto purely to irritate her. I watched the leopard skin sway elegantly back across the square. I shouldn’t have said that about the game ranger. It was bound to make trouble for me later.

  I finished my cappuccino at a pace that would have made any Capetonian proud. One doesn’t rush the good things in this place. It was all very well for Khanyi to mock my caution. She had nothing to worry about. Desk people seldom woke up with nightmares. I allowed myself a satisfying moment of gratitude for being one of the few who had managed to change the course of my life and avoided thinking too deeply about why I’d been sitting in a back corner of Giuseppe’s for an hour.

  “Giuseppe hasn’t lost his touch, has he?” asked Fehrson with genuine concern when I arrived in the Attic. He looked at me with the envy of someone who didn’t have time for luxuries. “In fact,” he reached out to the neat plastic box sunk into the oak table, and pressed its red button, “I think we’ll organise some coffee for ourselves.”

  The black box on the table squawked back at Fehrson.

  “Belinda,” he said, ladling all the charm he could onto that one word. He released the button, and after a brief pause the box squawked again with an extra note of impatience.

  “Belinda, we were thinking about coffee,” he said. The box said something, and Fehrson said, “Not that bilge Belinda, my dear. We were thinking of some real coffee.” He looked up at me with a conspiratorial smile. It looked like he would win this one. He released the button, and the box launched into an angry retort. Fehrson sighed.

  “Alright, dear, just an idea,” he said in a placatory tone. He released the button with a snap and coughed as he shuffled some papers around on the table in front of him.

  The Attic spanned the entire top floor of the warehouse. Its ceiling was lost in the shadows of the exposed rafters, from which hung the lights with their flying saucer shades, like the ones spilling pools of light over gangsters in the movies. An oak table provided enough space for twenty barbarians to feast, but the only ones there today were Fehrson, Khanyi and myself.

  “We’ll proceed without coffee,” said Fehrson as if he’d reached that decision of his own volition. He forced a grim smile. “It's for the best as we are running a little late.” His penetrating gaze lingered on me, as he wondered whether a reprimand was in order.

  "There’s been a problem with the journalist I spoke about," I said, tiring of his games. "The whole thing is beginning to smell bad, and on the slight chance that the stench is not emanating from this office, I felt that caution was advisable."

  "What kind of problem?" asked Father.

  "The worst kind. He’s lying in a fridge in the Pinelands morgue.”

  “Your doing?” asked Khanyi in a gentle tone to indicate that she wouldn’t hold it against me.

  “Of course it’s not my doing.”

  “There’s no need to shout about it, Ben.” Fehrson stood suddenly and moved over to the large arched windows. He was a man who liked to think on his feet, or liked people to think he was that kind of man. “We understand you’re upset, but let’s take this one step at a time shall we? This man’s death explains your late arrival?”

  “I chose tardiness over foolishness. I wanted to be sure that whatever happened to the journalist didn’t happen to me.”

  “You wanted to establish whether you were being followed?”

  “I was being cautious. It would have been hard to miss the leopard, though.”

  “Don’t blame Khanyi,” said Fehrson, “it was my idea to send her out to fetch you. Are you being followed?”

  “No.”

  “But you are suspicious about the circumstances of your friend’s death.” He turned to look out of the arched windows. “You could have indicated those suspicions to us. We would have been more careful abo
ut letting the wildlife out.” I couldn’t see his face, but from the way Khanyi gave me both barrels over her notepad, I suspected that she had shared my earlier ill-considered comments.

  “My suspicions have formed since we last spoke,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” said Fehrson. “What makes you think this man’s death has anything to do with you? Or with us?”

  “He was asking some pretty hefty questions. Perhaps I’m a cynic. I’m not a big believer in coincidence.”

  Fehrson gazed out of the window like a hunchback trapped in a bell tower.

  “We have a clean conscience, Ben,” he said. “In all of this. No dark secrets, no dirty business involving slanderous journalists.”

  “Not that it was any concern of his,” said Khanyi applying her golden voice which made her sound like a late-night radio disc jockey. “We were happy to discuss what we know about this woman in order to refute the malicious suggestions of that journalist. But if he is dead, why are we here? Gabriel no longer works here. This is none of your business.”

  “Your objection is duly noted,” I said.

  “Alright you two,” said Fehrson coming back to the table and holding up his hands as if trying to quieten a rowdy crowd. “We know the context, Khanyisile. It’s a valid question. Is it worth spending any time going through this?”

  “You mean now that the journalist is dead?”

  “I do,” said Fehrson. “Would it be churlish to point out that there is no longer a need for you to convince him that there are no nasty secrets?” He ran his hand through his fractious white hair and then clamped it over his mouth as if to stop himself from saying any more.

  “It might,” I said.

  Fehrson’s eyes were pale blue pools of intensity. They gazed at me as his mouth produced a polite smile. “But it has piqued your interest,” he said. “And we have nothing to hide. So we will continue. I think we’re done with the opening comments. Let’s get some coffee,” he said, brightening at the idea, although it took only a moment for him to remember the failure of his earlier attempt along those lines. “Khanyi, how about you be a dear and get over to Giuseppe’s for some takeaways?”