Thubana barked a laugh. "Who"s going to decode it?"
This time, the policeman with the sjambok hit him, but Thubana deflected the blow by lifting a hand and hunching his shoulder. A second man made him pay by billying him in the groin. Thubana fell to his knees in front of the bakkie"s yawning doors.
I don"t have to watch this, Myburgh thought. I can walk home. Who"s going to stop me?
Suddenly, Wessels realized that Skosana was again wearing the volleyball cap that, on the road from KwaNdebele, Major Jeppe had hurled off into the night "What the h.e.l.l is this?" He s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap from Skosana"s head, dangled it from his fingers as if it were a scroll of sodden toilet tissue.
"... King, Tutu and Boesak"s reformism has been endorsed by the imperialists worldwide. Both King and Tutu received the n.o.bel Peace Prize for their efforts to restrict our liberation movements to nonviolent methods. However, their-"
"Shut up!" Wessels shouted.
"-timid political activity can only patch up a few of the more glaring injustices of their morally bankrupt societies. When the armed struggle is it low ebb, they condemn it outright, but when it intensifies and gathers -a.s.s support, they cry, "Negotiate with us, or face them!" This is how they sell-"
"Shut up! Shut up!" Wessels struck Skosana, slapping him with open palms on both sides of the face, like a man playing cymbals in an orchestra.
"Don"t!" Myburgh stepped forward. But, as he knew it would, this heartfelt caution went unheeded.
Skosana, stung, gave Wessels a two-handed shove in the chest, knocking him into Goosen and Dedekind. Meanwhile, his steel plate continued to receive and transmit: "... revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party and the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) in Detroit. It is this common history that unifies ma.s.s struggle in-"
Recovering, Wessels jumped back at Skosana with a sjambok taken from the agent named Schoeman. His face as red and bloated as a rising sun, he lifted the flail with all the kinetic fury of Christ going after the money changers.
From his knees, Thubana cried, "He can"t help it, you tsotsis! Give him back his cap!"
Goosen and Schoeman caught Wessels from behind.
"Not out here, Lieutenant," Goosen said, trembling excitedly. "Save it. You"ll have your chance. All of us will."
Hyperventilating, Wessels resembled an inflatable, horror-show van der Merwe, an editorial cartoon of the Bad Afrikaner. Myburgh was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated. When Wessels finally gained control of himself, though, he saw the cap in his left hand and slapped it punishingly into Skosana"s palm.
"Put it on!"
Glaring contempt, Skosana obeyed, rendering the broadcast from Zambia as thin and reedy as water trickling through the pipes in an adjoining hotel room.
Wessels appealed to Goosen: "Where did he get it? The major threw it away. I know he threw it away."
"He probably had the other half crimped up in a pocket," Goosen said. "That"s all."
Myburgh bent down beside Thubana, gripped his elbow, put an arm around his waist, helped him stand.
"It"s muddy just like the one Major Jeppe threw away," Wessels said. "He got it back somehow. The same way he got that coat."
"How was that?" said Dedekind, nervously cutting his eyes.
"That old black magic," Thubana whispered to Myburgh. "That I know so well."
Hearing Thubana quote from an old pop song, in a street next to security police headquarters, tickled Myburgh; against his will, he smiled.
"Go home," Thubana whispered. "It only gets worse now. Go on home, Mr. Myburgh."
"No!" Skosana said.
Wessels looked up as if Skosana had spit in his face. " "No" is just what we don"t want to hear, kaffir. We"re in the business of manufacturing yeses."
"Come inside with us," Skosana said, speaking around Wessels to Myburgh.
"Never fear," Wessels said. "Steenkamp!"
A policeman came to grasp Thubana"s arm. Myburgh tried to push him aside, to protect his own grip on Thubana, but his efforts only made Steenkamp stumble slightly. In fact, he glanced down at the street as if a stone or a bottle shard had tripped him, then went ahead and seized Thubana, incidentally brushing Myburgh"s arm away as if it were less than a spider"s thread.
"Come inside with us," Skosana said again. "And stay, please, with Mordecai. He"s never been in before."
Wessels said, "Neither of you kaffirs will be lonesome-don"t worry about that. And if your friend"s never been in before, it"s past time, isn"t it?"
"Please," Skosana said. "Come inside."
Myburgh looked at the man pleading with him with such dignity. He looked at Thubana, and at the security police-Wessels & Company- whose eagerness to escort his two comrades upstairs seemed akin to that of small boys on Christmas. Packages to unwrap. New toys to break in.
"All right," he said.
Getting in was easy. Myburgh squeezed through the street-level door beside Thubana and struggled up through the echoey stairwell behind Skosana.
Each prisoner was bookended by a pair of security agents, who had handcuffed Thubana and Skosana before bringing them in. Didn"t this mausoleum have elevators? If so, they weren"t for detainees, even in the off-limits parts reserved for suspected terrorists and other enemies of the state. So let the kaffirs climb the stairs to their inevitable comeuppance.
Myburgh could not clearly account for his lack of sympathy for Goosen, Steenkamp, Dedekind, and Schoeman. (Wessels had left them on the first landing, perhaps to check in with Jeppe.) After all, he"d grown up with such men. Men somewhat like them, anyway-the sons of farmers on the properties bordering Huilbloom. Freckled, sunburnt, sandy-haired toughs with callused hands and hard-edged laughs.
Several times, in fact, as a teenager, he had ventured out as a balaclava man with these fellows. Everyone wore a hood and rode in Anton Smoot"s tiny Renault, headlights off, to shoot out the streetlamps and robots- traffic lights-in the black areas near Nylstroom. They had carried real pistols (he and Kiewit juggled Papa Myburgh"s Ruger back and forth) and real bullets. And, to this day, Kiewit held that on one outing they had shot a pair of meths-drinking Ndebele drunks along with the streetlamps. Myburgh"s memory of these jaunts wasn"t as clear as his brother"s, nor could he see himself engaging in anything so wild and reckless today. But, once upon a time, he had definitely ridden balaclava...
Jeppe, Wessels, Goosen, Steenkamp, Dedekind, Schoeman, and the others were just doing their jobs. A hard job. A necessary job, albeit a dirty one. And they weren"t much applauded for the hard, dirty job they did. Folks didn"t want to think about them. Just as a man-a city man, at least-putting away a juicy steak doesn"t want to be told that the cow it came from died under the spattering thwack of a sledgehammer.
But Myburgh did know the reason for his animosity toward these men. Mordecai Thubana put roofs on houses and apartment buildings in the new white subdivisions in and around Pretoria; Skosana had paid for his crimes against the state long ago. They were kaffirs, sure, but neither of them belonged in this building. Myburgh knew that. A man who wanted to help the world"s finest physicists come up with a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, and another who made his living loading snack foods onto trucks.
Such reprobates. Such traitors.
Stop worrying, Gerrit. Despite Thubana"s fears (It only gets worse now), Jeppe and his men will see their error once they"ve asked a few questions.
Of course they will. They must.
At the third or fourth landing (during his reverie, Myburgh had lost track), the slightly overweight Schoeman, breathing raggedly, asked Dedekind, the ranking agent, if they could rest a while. His request was granted, and Thubana and Skosana positioned themselves at a rail fronting a narrow window looking down on a graveled roof; there, a peeling billboard glistened.
Skosana nudged Myburgh. Read the billboard, his nudge and his lifted eyebrows commanded.
Myburgh studied the sign. It was one he recognized from other venues -street bills, newspaper ads, magazine inserts. It showed a bottle of laundry bleach, with a slogan next to it that struck him this morning with a new, almost brutal, forcefulness: JIK, it said. (A brand-name.) And under that: WITH CONTROLLED STRENGTH, FOR THE WORLD"S WHITEST WASH.
"Oh, Lord, I"m feeling sick," Skosana said, in a self-mocking lilt: "Here in the land of Jik."
Thubana said nothing. The sight of the billboard, along with his friend"s doggerel, seemed to dispirit him. And Thubana"s funk clouded Myburgh"s efforts to regard the situation in an optimistic light. They were all in the land of Jik.
Must I keep on climbing these stairs? Myburgh wondered. Like Schoeman, he was winded. Trotting back down, after a short rest, seemed a more attractive option. At least, if he could get out again. Did the street-level door automatically lock? Did you have to have a key to go through it again?
Dedekind grabbed Skosana"s arm. "That"s it," he said. "Let"s get moving."
Myburgh, unsure of whether he was a man or a ghost, hurried along after the others. He feared that if they reached an upper floor before he could squeeze through too, he would be trapped in this claustrophobic stairwell for days...
On the fifth or sixth floor (again, Myburgh was unsure), Goosen and Steenkamp strong-armed Thubana in one direction, while Dedekind and Schoeman pulled Skosana the other. Skosana set himself against their tugging and told Myburgh, "Go with Mordecai, man."
"I said I would, didn"t I?"
"Shut up, kaffir," Goosen said over Myburgh"s unheard reply. "We know what we"re doing."
Steenkamp revolved his eyes to indicate that Skosana was off in the head and that Goosen should ignore him. Myburgh followed the two security agents with Mordecai Thubana. Dedekind and Schoeman took Skosana the other way, off into the well-lit but nightmarish warren of the upper floor.
What happened from that moment on, Myburgh received as if in a dream-a protracted hallucination that perfectly complemented his selective invisibility. Much of this experience did not seem real at all, while much of it was so hurtfully vivid that he almost ran from it. All of it caromed past at fast-forward speeds impossible to slow, or at crazy angles defying his efforts to find in them a coherent pattern.
In an interrogation room off a pair of nichelike halls giving onto the floor"s main corridor, Goosen, Steenkamp, and four more members of the security police-men Myburgh had not seen before-immediately began stripping Thubana.
They tore off his heavy, pilled sweater, revealing a light-gray T-shirt on which a complicated series of mathematical equations in red, blue, and yellow danced like thousands of printed footsteps on an impossible foxtrot diagram. A caption under all these symbols read, this explains everything.
As two men held Thubana"s arms and two others stood by in case he resisted, Steenkamp grabbed the T-shirt at the neck and started to rip it away.
"Pas op!" Goosen shouted. Then: "You nincomp.o.o.p, take it off carefully. Carefully."
"It stinks," Steenkamp said. "And it"s"-he nodded at the math-symbol ch.o.r.eography-"nonsense."
"You don"t know that, nor do I. Take it off carefully. Lay it over there."
Steenkamp obeyed, pushing Thubana"s head forward, unrolling the T-shirt up his back, and spreading the T-shirt out on a metal desk in the corner. The six agents then hurried to strip Thubana of his rubber-soled takkies, pants, and baggy, tan undershorts.
"Stop that!" he cried, swatting at them. "Stop!"
Goosen cuffed him viciously. Soon, embarra.s.sed and shivering, Thubana stood naked before them, his ribs touchingly prominent and his k.n.o.bby-kneed legs like those of a muddy stork. Myburgh could tell at once that he hated this exposure, hated and resented it, even though he"d known from the start that this was the way things would go, for no African entering state custody as a crime suspect or as a political detainee could hope to come out unscathed, either physically or emotionally.
Even Myburgh knew that, but this morning, unable to intervene, he felt like a voyeur, a window peeper. It pained him that Thubana had to undergo not only the impersonal brutality of the policemen"s attentions, but the added humiliation of having a third party (the agents were one obsessive ent.i.ty) see his helplessness. But each time Myburgh turned aside or drifted to a different corner of the room, a ghost forsaking its haunts, he felt that he had given in to a cowardly squeamishness.
At last he turned to Thubana and said, "What can I do?"
Thubana"s eyes fastened on him. "Don"t look at me. But don"t leave. That"s all."
"We"re not leaving," Goosen said, "but we"ll look at you all we d.a.m.ned well please." (Lord, the pretty fellow was young!) Myburgh started to speak, but stopped. He looked aside. Then he crossed to the desk upon which Steenkamp had spread Thubana"s this explains everything T-shirt, collapsed into a metal folding chair, and averted his face from Thubana"s interrogators.
Occasionally, of course, Myburgh had to look, for the s.a.d.i.s.tic imagination of the agents was a fertile one. In fact, to think of Goosen, Steenkamp, and their accomplices as state interrogators was to whitewash their activities. Call them, rather, torturers. They didn"t just ask questions. They did all they could to shame, hurt, and dehumanize their ward without quite knocking him unconscious-unconsciousness would have interfered with their efforts to crowbar the "truth" out of him.
"Praat, praat, praat!" (Talk, talk, talk!), the six men yelled at Thubana.
"Op die stene" (On the bricks.), Goosen said.
They made him balance on a pair of bricks placed at contrasting slants on the floor, one brick about a meter behind the other, so that Thubana resembled a circus performer walking a tightrope. In addition, they slipped a yellowish latex hood over his head so that when he let out a breath, the hood ballooned obscenely, and, when he inhaled, he sucked the suffocating rubber back into his mouth and nostrils.
The way he swung his elbows, his wrists tied behind him, showed his terror, as did his m.u.f.fled pleas to take off the hood. He made this plea whenever any opportunity to reply to the agents" stylized hara.s.sment arose-for, darting in and out, they were like hyenas worrying an injured springbok.
"Who prepared the car bomb at Armscor?"
"Who drove?"
"How did they get that bakkie past perimeter security?"
"Mpandhlani-your "friend"-says you were a contact for the ANC guerrillas who planned the attack."
"Would you like to sire your own little pikkenien one day?"
"A statement, Mordecai. A statement!"
"List your contacts."
"Everything you did these past six months."
"The hiding places of your fellow terrorists."
"What do you know about ANC plans to decommission the Pretoria Dam?
"When did you first hear of them?"
"This hood is nothing. Nothing. Wait until you"ve got a noose around your neck, kaffir."
Seeing that brick-balancing and dogged verbal hara.s.sment were not doing the job, Goosen commanded a change in tactics. Steenkamp approached the desk and yanked the chair that Myburgh was sitting on out from under him. Myburgh only narrowly kept from splintering his tail-bone. Steenkamp took the chair to Thubana (still trussed in that urine-hued cowl, a baby in a placental membrane), slammed it down, unbound Thubana"s hands, and thrust the folding chair into them even as he was trying to rub the soreness from his wrists.
"Over your head," Goosen said.
"What?" To counteract the possibility of smothering, Thubana kept puffing against the latex.
"I said, lift the chair over your head. Lift it and hold it. If you let it down, you"ll pay."
Major Henning Jeppe and Lieutenant Christiaan Wessels entered the little room. They grinned when they saw what was going on; two of the four men who had been a.s.sisting Goosen and Steenkamp clicked their heels, nodded deferentially, and left. Myburgh, rubbing his hip, backed into the corner behind the desk. He watched from this cubbyhole as if standing aloof from the agents" sins would absolve him of any complicity.
Thubana, when Steenkamp prodded him with a billy club, raised the open folding chair over his head. He held it by two legs, his elbows bent.
"All the way up, kaffir! All the way!"
Thubana strained, straightened his arms, and pushed the chair up as high as it would go. Its rounded back b.u.mped the ceiling, and Thubana almost toppled from the bricks to which his feet awkwardly clung. As a warning, Steenkamp thrust his billy into the cleft of Thubana"s b.u.t.tocks and jiggled it.
"Hold the chair sideways! Arms up! Up!"
Thubana stuck his chin out, as if to allow more air under the latex cowl, struggled for a fresh grip on the chair, and lifted it as high as it would go in this new position, missing the ceiling and so maintaining his balance. He looked like a monument to the patron saint of contortionists.
"Good," Steenkamp said. "Good."