Tandia (81 page)

The spectre of the grotesquely naked black whore was buried deep in his subconscious. It was a major part of his hate for the blacks and his fanatical response to the traditional Afrikaner call of
bloed gevaar,
blood danger. It would surface when he fantasized about the gold bullet and the demise of Peekay. He was careful not to dwell on the manner of Peekay's death, allowing himself the fantasy only in extreme frustration, for the memory which seemed to live in tandem with the fantasy, so that the one always conjured up the other, was too painful for him to bear.

He was six years old, in the back of his father's butcher shop in Doornfontein. He'd sneaked into the cold-storage room where the hindquarters and dressed sides of beef were hung from great hooks attached to wheels on three separate rails which ran along the ceiling. It was forbidden territory but he found the temptation irresistible. He'd walk out of the blazing sun and suddenly find himself in a cool, dark world. On Tuesdays in particular, when the beef and the dressed mutton and the creamy pink porkers arrived from the abattoir, the cool room would be full to bursting with the smaller carcasses of lamb and pig and calf. The huge sides of beef would be stacked, one on top of the other, on the floor against the wall on the furthermost side from the door, where they would remain until there was sufficient room to hoist them onto hooks. Jannie used to love to climb to the top of these stacked sides of beef and lie across the top, his cheek placed against the cool, soft flesh.

The insulated door was too heavy for him to open on his own and he'd wait for one of the butcher's lads to open it and, when they were busy hoisting or slicing from a carcass, he'd slip in and hide, waiting for the moment when they'd depart, switching off the light as they left and leaving him in the cool, dark, secret place. Later, when someone returned, he'd quietly slip out again. Occasionally he'd be caught and receive a severe thrashing from his angry father.

Jannie's father was a large, irascible and impatient man who was disappointed at his small-boned eldest son, blaming his tiny, long-suffering, slightly dark-skinned wife for his undersized offspring. When he'd had a few drinks, which was often enough, he'd refer to her in the family as 'the bush man'. Indeed, to race-obsessed eves in constant search for tainted blood, she appeared to have a touch of the tar brush which had become more pronounced as she bore him four children, each of them sapping her vitality and leaving the prettiness of youth behind her while etching the distinctive features of her ancestors more sharply on her careworn face. Jannie's blond hair and pale blue eyes, inherited from his father, was all that saved him from his father's ultimate wrath. 'At least the dwarf looks like a proper Boer,' his father would say when he was drunk.

One hot Monday afternoon when he'd slipped unnoticed into the cold room and was lying on the long, cool slabs of beef the door slid open and the light went on. He only just had sufficient time to scramble down from the stack of beef and hide elsewhere when he heard his father's gruff voice and the higher-pitched giggle of a woman. From where he hid Jannie could just see what was going on. To his surprise the woman with his father was black, a young black woman with large buttocks which wobbled as she walked. Without undue ceremony the woman walked over to the stack of beef and straddled the carcasses, her huge bottom facing towards his father. Jannie watched as his father removed his butcher's belt and apron 'and then unbuckled his real belt and let his trousers fall to his ankles. He was amazed at the enormity of his father's engine as it stiffened. He'd had his own tiny version do the same thing often enough, but he'd never imagined it could possibly grow so huge or look so dangerous and ugly. His father pulled the skirt of the woman's dress up over her back and unceremoniously mounted her, pushing and grunting. The black woman made no noise of her own, her huge bottom moving only to accommodate the thrusts of the white man who grunted and farted once, calling her filthy names, his thick fingers kneading into the flesh of her huge black bottom. Finally, urgently, with a loud groan he became suddenly possessed and then as quickly came down to panting silence as though he was suddenly exhausted; his hands were still, no longer kneading the woman's purple flesh.

Jannie watched as his father dismounted and used his apron to wipe himself before he pulled up his trousers and buckled on his heavy leather butcher's belt and knife sporran which contained a slicing and boning knife.

To Jannie's dismay his father turned and walked directly towards where he hid, crouched between two dressed sheep carcasses and directly behind a large pig, the pig's pink snout only inches from his own nose. Jannie's father stopped and, removing the larger of the two knives from his belt, he cut quickly around the neck of the pig until its head was attacked to its pink body only by the spinal cord. With a grunt the huge man snapped the spine where the neck met the skull and neatly severed it with the boning knife, removing it from the carcass. The head came away in his hands to reveal Jannie's frightened face staring up at him.

The butcher gave no sign of recognizing his son. Indeed, for a few moments, as he walked away with the pig's head held by its purple-pink ears, Jannie believed his father hadn't seen him, that the unexpected image of his son crouched behind the pig's carcass somehow hadn't registered. He remained crouched where he was, too frightened to move. 'Here, take this, kaffir!' he heard his father say, then add, 'Go out the back, come back next week same time!'

Then the woman's timid voice.
'Dankie, baas.'

The small boy's terror rose as he heard his father's footsteps which finally came to a halt directly in front -of him. The butcher wore black workman's boots and their caps were dirty with grease, to which bits of sawdust clung. Jannie saw a small piece of meat, a piece of white and pink spotted mince, caught in between the shoelaces of the left boot. Then the headless pig's carcass was pushed aside and his father's hand shot out, grabbing him by his hair, yanking him to his feet.

Jannie was too terrified even to scream, though the pain was horrific. His father released his grip on his hair and grabbing him by his shirt front he hoisted him into the air. Holding him with one hand aloft he hooked the back of his shirt into the hook from which the headless pig already hung. Then he eased Jannie down so that his small body was completely encased by the carcass of the pig.

His father had yet to say a word and Jannie was too frightened to scream. The big man drew the boning knife from its leather apron holster and sliced into the pig's thighs on either side of the boy's throat. 'Just like a Jew can't eat pork, so a Boer can't have a kaffir woman, that's why a kaffir is so
lekker.
Your papa likes to be nice to kaffir women. When you grow up you will see, you will too! You saw nothing, boy, you hear?' He ran the back of the blade across the small boy's throat.

The butcher returned two hours later, when Jannie was blue. His teeth were chattering and he was beginning to pass out from the cold. He removed his six-year-old son from the hook and left him in the sun in the yard at the back of the butcher shop. to thaw out.

It was the visual metaphor conjured up in his head immediately after he'd pulled the imaginary trigger to blow Peekay apart that sometimes compensated Geldenhuis for his own nightmare. In his sick mind he would savour the scene that followed in his imagination. He could see the homicide squad arriving. After surveying the scene they might even suspect it was him, but as he'd killed the black whore as well, there would be no clues. He'd ordered the gold-plated, .45-calibre bullet from an American mail-order company in Jacksonville Alabama nearly three years ago and he'd never shown the bullet with its filed nose to anyone, preferring it to lie warm to the touch and secret in his pocket where he could reach down and finger it. The boys in the murder squad would look down at the blown-away white man's head between the black whore's thighs and smile, and one of them would be sure to smirk and make the obvious crack. Forever afterwards people would talk about Peekay the rooinek lawyer…
whose brains were wasted on useless black cunts.

Jannie Geldenhuis found himself head of the Vereeniging Special Branch in charge of nothing in particular. Although there was a great amount of unrest in other parts of South Africa over the government's infamous 'endorsing out' laws, Vereeniging's model African township was quiet as always.

As a member of the Special Branch Geldenhuis wasn't involved in regular police duties, his brief being essentially political, concerned with demonstrations, sabotage and antigovernment activity.

The murder trial had knocked him about severely and he would have been almost happy to be away from the spotlight had, for instance, someone else rather than Peekay been involved in his prosecution. What ate at him was not the original conviction for murder, but the fact that his trial and the publicity it had caused had allowed Peekay to rise to prominence as a brilliant young barrister while, at the same time, leading to his own ignominious demise. Added to this, the new posting had removed him from daily contact with the Red File and the long-planned revenge the meticulously researched details within it represented for him.

From the inception of the law partnership Geldenhuis had been keeping tabs on the daily movements of Levy & Peekay. The two young barristers were under constant surveillance and for the past year this had also involved Gideon Mandoma who'd joined as an articled clerk. Mandoma and also the 'coloured whore', Tandia Patel, who'd graduated from law school in Durban to join Red as a junior, already had secret police files of their own which were as carefully annotated and updated as those of Peekay and Hymie. Hymie was proving the most difficult to keep tabs on; he was involved more in the world of business and finance which was by its very nature secretive; also, he seemed to exercise a natural caution which often made his movements hard to follow.

Peekay was different. His work was in the courts and he seemed to attract publicity without necessarily seeking it. The cases he took on were often considered hopeless and his clients unlikely to be able to pay, although Hymie would see to it that the firm always had one big corporate litigation case going. 'Peekay, you've got to help finance our legal charity work with a bit of corporate robbery,' Hymie would tell him. Peekay proved to be as astute and tough in this area as he 'was in the other and, more and more, large companies involved in litigation were seeking his services. It infuriated Geldenhuis when large corporations, some even run by Afrikaners, such as the Volkskas Bank, would retain Red. On more than one occasion; accompanied by Colonel Klaasens, he would pay a discreet visit to such a company and sometimes with good results, though often enough it was the two men's connection with the
Broederbond
which made more of an impression on the company directors than their official status as police officers.

Despite these efforts Peekay and Hymie seemed to have more legal work in the corporate sector than they could conveniently handle. Sometimes, to their enormous chagrin, the board of directors of a large company would find themselves unexpectedly facing a coloured woman who chain-smoked as she asked them rapid-fire questions and who showed a grasp of the problems involving their brief which confounded her beguiling looks, leaving most of them in open-mouthed disbelief after she'd departed.

Peekay and Hymie would wait for the inevitable phone call to come through on the day after Tandia had visited a company to report on the initial brief given to Levy & Peekay. The reaction was almost always the same. The chairman was disappointed, the company had expected a principal of Levy & Peekay to represent them.

The dialogue which followed became a familiar litany. Typical of such incidents was a phone call intended for Peekay but received instead by Hymie. The caller's name was Jordaan and he was chairman of a medium-sized mining exploration group. Jordaan, after the usual pleasantries, spoke of his disappointment at not receiving the services of a principal of Levy & Peekay.

'But Miss Patel is a principal, Mr Jordaan,' Hymie replied. There was a pause as Jordaan absorbed this first shock. A coloured woman was a principal of a Johannesburg law practice? What the hell was he getting his company mixed up in? 'Ja, okay, but you know what we mean, Mr Levy,' he said, recovering quickly.

'You see, we have only men on the board. A woman lawyer would be awkward.' Jordaan paused then added, 'Especially with a mining company!'

'Your case, Mr Jordaan? I understand it involves a dispute with a group of cotton farmers over damming a river in a small catchment area to supply water for a bauxite mine you intend to open?'

Hymie could almost hear the sigh of relief on the other end, 'Ja, that's right, I'm glad you know the details, Mr Levy.'

'We all read the notes from the initial brief, Mr Jordaan. Your case will be heard in the Lands Court. As far as I understand, women are perfectly at liberty to represent a disputation in this court?'

'Well, ja, I suppose, but these matters are not of concern for a woman, we'd feel safer with a male lawyer, you know, well it's just that mining…it's a man's business,' Jordaan repeated.

'Are you suggesting that a woman's mind isn't capable of understanding how a sluice system works or how many gallons of water you require to process a ton of bauxite ore?' Hymie waited expectantly; it was around this time that the threat would come.

It came from Jordaan, right on cue. 'Mr Levy, I'm a plain man, a miner. We thought Mr Peekay was going to take the case, that's all! If this is not so and you personally also refuse to represent us, then we will make other arrangements!'