A Dry White Season (31 page)

“What’s it about?” I asked, suspicious of her role in the matter.

“Well, you know, it’s that photograph in the paper the other day.”

I looked at him in silence.

“You see, well, how shall I put it?” Another gulp. “I supposeevery man has a right to his own opinion. But you know, a thing like that could become an embarrassment to someone in my position.”

“Seems you’ll always have the poor with you,” I said.

“It’s no joke, Ben. It is a grievous day when a man’s family comes between him and his duty to his fatherland.”

“Are you blaming me for trying to help those people?”

“No, no, of course not. I appreciate your concern for them. I’ve been doing the same thing all my life, sacrificing myself for my neighbours, be they black or white. But no member of our family has ever been seen in public with a kaffir woman before, Ben.”

He went to refill his glass. Recognising the symptoms I tried to cut him short before he could warm up for a full-fledged speech.

“I’m glad you mentioned it, Father. Because I’d like to discuss it with you.”

“Yes, that’s what Susan told me.”

“First, there’s the matter of Emily Ngubene’s house. Now that her husband has died she’s no longer entitled to a home of her own.”

He seemed relieved that the matter turned out to be so simple.

“Ben”-he made an expansive gesture, managing not to spill any whisky –"I promise you I’ll take it up.” Producing his little black notebook. “Just give me all the particulars. Soon as I’m back in the Cape next week—”

Short and sweet. I decided to press on, profiting from his magnanimous mood.

“Then there’s the matter of Gordon Ngubene himself.”

He stiffened. “What about him? I thought the case was closed?”

“I wish it was, Father. But the inquest didn’t clear up half of what happened.”

“Oh really?” He shifted uncomfortably.

I briefly brought him up to date, not only with the questions raised by the inquest but by the few facts I’d been able to uncover, insignificant as they were in themselves.

“There’s nothing there that would stand up in a court oflaw,” he said almost smugly. He pulled out his pocket watch, studying it as if to calculate for how much longer I would be keeping him from his nap.

“I know that only too well,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to discuss it with you. We have no final, irrefutable evidence. But we have enough to indicate that something serious is being covered up.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Ben.”

“I know what I’m talking about!” It came out more sharply than I’d intended. He started, and took another gulp of scotch.

“All right, I’m listening,” he said, sighing. “Perhaps I can use my influence. But you’ll have to convince me first.”

“If they really have nothing to hide,” I said, “why is the Special Branch going out of its way to intimidate me?”

The very word seemed to sober him up instantly, startling him from his complacency. “What’s this about the Special Branch?”

I told him about the raid on my house, the tapping of my telephone, Stolz’s straight warning.

“Ben,” he said, suddenly sounding very formal. “I’m sorry, but I’d rather not have anything to do with this sort of thing.” He rose from the settee and aimed for the door.

“So you’re also frightened of them?”

“Don’t be stupid! Why should I be frightened of anyone?” He glared at me. “But one thing I can tell you: if the Special Branch is mixed up with it they must have good reason. And then I prefer to stay out of it.”

I managed to intercept him at the door. “Does that mean you’re prepared to sit back and allow an injustice to be done?”

“Injustice?” His face grew purple. “Where’s the injustice? I don’t see it.”

“What happened to Jonathan Ngubene? And how did Gordon die? Why are they doing their best to hush it up?”

“Ben, Ben, how can you side with the enemies of your people? Those who find in everything that happens ammunition to attack a freely elected government? Good heavens, man, at your age I expected something better from you. You’ve never been a hothead in your life.”

“Isn’t that enough reason for you to listen to me now?”

“Now come on.” He had regained his composure. “Don’t you know your own people then? We’ve always kept the commandments of the Lord. We’re Christians, aren’t we? Look, I’m not saying there aren’t some exceptions among us. But it’s ridiculous to start generalising about ‘injustice’ and so on.”

“You’re not prepared to help me then?”

“Ben, I told you.” He was shuffling his feet uneasily. “If you’d come to me with something clear-cut and beyond all doubt, I would have been the first to take it up. But a bunch of vague suspicions and insinuations and bad feelings won’t get you anywhere.” He sniffed, annoyed. “Injustice! If you want to talk about injustice, then look at what our people have suffered. How many of us were thrown in jail in the Forties just because this land was more important to us than to be drawn into England’s war-the same English who used to oppress us?”

“We had a freely elected government then, too, didn’t we? Led by an Afrikaner.”

“You call Smuts an Afrikaner?!”

“Now you’re avoiding the issue,” I reminded him.

“It’s you who started talking about injustice. You, a man who teaches history at school. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, man. Now that we have at long last come to power in our own land.”

“Now we’re free to do to others what they used to do to us?”

“What are you talking about, Ben?”

“What would you do if you were a black man in this country today, Father?”

“You amaze me,” he said contemptuously. “Don’t you realise what the government is doing for the blacks? One of these days the whole bloody lot of them will be free and independent in their own countries. And then you have the nerve to talk about injustice!” He put a trembling, paternal hand on my shoulder, skilfully manoeuvring me out of the way so he could slip past into the passage on his way to the bedroom. “You give it another good think, Ben,” he called back. “We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of before the eyes of the world, my boy.”

Now I know it’s hopeless to expect any help from him. Not because he is malicious or obtuse; not even because he is afraid. Simply because he is unable to consider, even for a moment, themerest possibility that I may be right. His benevolence, his dour Christianity, his firm belief in the rectitude of his people: these, tonight, are a much greater obstacle to me than any enemy who squarely opposes me.

5

It was a winter of fits and starts.

Nothing came of Henry Maphuna’s complaint about the rape of his sister by her employer. Since the man had already been found innocent and discharged by the court there was no way of reopening the case. Dan Levinson suggested two alternatives: if the girl was prepared to testify that she had consented to intercourse a new charge could be laid under the Immorality Act; otherwise a civil action for damages could be brought. The family promptly dismissed the Immorality suggestion as it would bring disgrace upon Henry’s sister. And damages were irrelevant. What they required was to have her name cleared and the culprit brought to justice. The outcome was, perhaps, predictable; still, it came as a shock to Ben when the aged mother arrived at his home to ask for help. Two nights before, taking the law into his own hands, Henry had gone to the house of his sister’s ex-employer in Lower Houghton and bashed in the man’s skull. Now he was in custody on a murder charge.

Back to Dan Levinson, smoothly groomed behind his imposing desk, radiating the virility one might associate with an ad for a sportsman’s deodorant. Once again the parade of lissome blondes with files or messages or cups of coffee.

That was only one of the cases and causes Ben had to find time for. Melanie’s prediction had come true: during thosewinter months more and more strangers turned up on his doorstep to ask for help. People looking for jobs in the city and having trouble with reference books and official stamps. (Those magic words:
Permitted to be in the prescribed area of Johannesburg in terms of section 10 (I) (b) of Act No
25
of 1945
…) It was easy enough to refer them to Stanley; and those he couldn’t deal with personally were passed on to some fixer in the townships. There were others who had been evicted from their homes either because they’d fallen in arrears with the rent or because they had no permit to live in the area. Men prosecuted because they had brought their families from some distant homeland. An old widow whose sixteen year old son had been charged with “terrorism” when, sent to buy milk, he’d been arrested by police in search of youngsters who had set fire to a school elsewhere in Soweto an hour before. Countless others who reported that their fathers or brothers or sons had been “picked up” days or weeks or months before and were still being held incommunicado. Some, released without charge, returning with tales of assault and torture. A young couple, white man and coloured girl, who came to enquire whether Ben could arrange for them to get married. A venerable old father who complained that after he’d given his daughter away in marriage the man had refused to pay the
lobola
imposed by tribal custom. Some of the cases were shocking; others quite ludicrous. And in between the genuine supplicants there was a steady stream of chancers and common beggars.

In the beginning they came one by one, at intervals of a week or more. Later hardly a day went by without some appeal for help. They came in twos, in threes, in droves. More than once Ben felt reluctant to return home after school, dreading the new demands inevitably awaiting him. And Susan was threatening to acquire a dog to put an end to the throng in her backyard.

The very extent of the responsibilities imposed on him – and the impossibility of withdrawing once he’d offered to help the first few – was threatening to wear him down. There were symptoms of an ulcer developing. He was beginning to neglect his school duties. His manner with the pupils became more abrupt and there were fewer of them visiting him during the interval to chat or ask for his advice. If he had had enough time, ifthere hadn’t been so many other worries, he might have coped. But all the while, ever since the day Stolz had come back to him, there was the awareness of being watched, of acting against invisible obstacles opposing him every inch of the way.

Often it happened so imperceptibly that he found it impossible to determine a starting point or a turning point. But at some moment, however subtly it was introduced, there must have been such a series of “firsts”: the first time his phone was tapped; the first time his mail was tampered with; the first time an unknown car followed him to town; the first time a stranger was posted opposite his house to check on whoever arrived or left; the first time the phone rang in the middle of the night, with nothing on the other side but heavy breathing and a mirthless chuckle; the first time a friend informed Ben: “You know, I had a visitor last night who kept on asking questions about you—”

In between were brighter days. Stanley returned from Botswana with a new affidavit signed by Wellington Phetla: having left the country the boy was prepared to tell the full story of his arrest with Jonathan and the time they’d spent in detention together. Stanley had also traced a couple of Wellington’s comrades who’d been willing to corroborate his evidence in writing. The news he brought of Gordon’s second son, Robert, was less encouraging. When Stanley had found him he’d been on the point of leaving for a military camp in Mozambique; he’d been adamant that he wouldn’t return unless he could do so with a gun in his hand.

But the despondency about Robert was offset by something else Stanley reported soon after his return. For the first time, he announced, they seemed to be on the verge of a real breakthrough: he’d traced an old cleaner working in the police mortuary and this man had told him that on the morning of the autopsy Captain Stolz had handed him a bundle of clothes with instructions to burn it.

And in Soweto the black lawyer Julius Nqakula was quietly and persistently going his way, rounding up his old clients to take down statements on Jonathan and Gordon. Even the nurse who had lost her nerve after telling them about Jonathan’s spellin hospital was persuaded to sign a new affidavit. And all these bits and pieces Stanley brought to Ben for safekeeping in the hidden compartment of his tools cupboard.

There were setbacks too. Only two days after signing her new statement the nurse was detained by the Special Branch. Julius Nqakula himself was arrested late in August when, contravening the terms of his banning order, he visited his sister in Mamelodi. It meant a year’s imprisonment, which Stanley accepted with surprising resignation:

“Old Julius won’t give away a thing, don’t worry. And anyway he’s been hitting the bottle too hard lately. This year in the chooky will sober him up nicely.”

“A year in jail just for visiting his sister?”

“That’s the chance he took, lanie. Julius will be the last to complain.”