Snake

7

They made a startling sound in the dead of night. Within seconds the caretaker was out in the hall with a gun shaking in his hand.

Then, when he saw the empty milk bottles rolling about, and who had knocked them over, he quickly lowered the revolver before there could be an accident.

“Heaven’s sakes, laddie, but you gave me a terrible turn!” he said.

Kramer admired the old bugger’s courage and alertness, but wondered if he hadn’t been drinking-then saw his teeth were missing.

“ Ach, sorry, Mr. McKay. I was backing up and I didn’t notice them by the door.”

“Your boy should have warned you,” McKay said, just to show there were no hard feelings. “Still at it, then? Thought you’d finished before lunch.”

And he nodded at the burden Kramer and Zondi were carrying between them, peering short-sightedly in an effort to make out what was wrapped inside the car tarpaulin.

“Some bits of carpet from upstairs that didn’t suit the new place, so she thought the new tenants might like to at least see if they wanted them They can always chuck them out.”

“But they’re not moving in until the day after-”

“I realize,” said Kramer, “but you know what womenfolk are like in this mood-they can’t stop till it’s all done.”

McKay showed gum and sympathized. “I ken fine! I ruddy dread new arrivals-Mr. McKay this, Mr. McKay that. The worst are the ones who think your name’s Jock and that you’re responsible for the dirty books their bairns find left under the bath.”

Zondi gave Kramer a pleading look.

“We better be going, Mr. McKay. Mustn’t hold you up.”

“A wee moment-the keys?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Aye, fine, no hurry, no hurry. Then I’ll be wishing you a good night.”

He hobbled back into his flat and Zondi immediately pushed toward the lift, making Kramer nearly start the whole thing up again outside the door to number IB.

That had been their worst moment. The actual abduction of Chainpuller Mabatso had run like clockwork, while observing to the letter a strict condition Zondi had placed upon it. All they had done was to sneak down the ridge behind the hut, arrange themselves with the tarpaulin on one side of the door, toss up a cocoa tin with some change in it, and wait. Chain-puller had meandered out, buttoning up his fly, and had been engulfed as he stooped to recover his dues.

And the best moment had been when Chainpuller’s current rental, all straight-haired wig and white lipstick, had poked her head out to see the wizard of Peacevale being carried off by two demons without faces-a sleeve of cheesecloth, thoughtfully provided by Bokkie Howells for cleaning the car’s windows, had been easily divided into two masks that didn’t even need eyeholes. While the story she’d tell would be half the battle won already.

Kramer groaned and took a grip on the heavy end again as the lift opened at the fifth floor. As lightweight as Chainpuller might prove on a set of scales, having to lug him all the way up the ridge and then down the other side, to where their car was hidden, had been enervating as well as time-consuming.

“Last lap,” he said to Zondi, “and for Christ’s sake don’t step on that cat.”

Strydom sat up in bed panting. His wife’s plump arm encircled his waist and tried to pull him down again as she muttered endearments. But he stayed where he was, tense and in a muck sweat.

“What is it, Chris?” she finally asked, rousing herself to lie propped on one elbow.

“I don’t know.”

“You haven’t had a dream, hey? You never have dreams- since when did you have a dream? I’ve never known you to have dreams. Never.”

“Hmmm?”

“I mean, with your work you can’t afford to-at least, that’s what you’ve always said. Remember? That time on our honeymoon when I thought you were dreaming? Only it was me dreaming that you were dreaming and all the time you-”

“It was terrible!”

“Hey?”

“No, I meant… it must have been a dream. So lifelike and real, though. Right in front of me. With smells, too.”

“You get smells in dreams sometimes,” she replied reassuringly, taking his clenched hand and patting it. “And colors? Did you see colors as well?”

“Ja, I did. Isn’t it supposed to be black and white, like the newsreels?”

“Not always. Although last time mine was black and white and I was trying on new dresses and it nearly drove me mad. Maybe it was that book you were reading.”

“No.”

“ Ach, tell your little Anneline all about it, and then it’ll go away. Come on, Chrissy, lie down again beside me.”

He lay back, hearing the mattress sigh with him, and moved his head over until he could feel her white curls against his cheek.

“Man, it was terrible,” he said in a low whisper. “I was back in Pretoria Central on a morning of some hangings. Father William was there, and Koos and the commandant-all the usual crowd.”

“Go on, my pet.”

“Things were going just as normal, and I had this feeling I had been away but was pleased to see everyone again. Only I couldn’t see the hangman and I wanted to ask him how his racing pigeons were coming on. I kept looking for him although work had already piled up for me downstairs-”

“They’d started with the Bantu?”

“Ja, although that didn’t seem funny at the time. Six Bantu and a colored, two rapes and the rest murder-no, one house-breaking with aggravated circumstances. Anyway, I knew there were all those certificates to sign. So I thought maybe he is in the condemned cell in B2, the small one for Europeans. I went there and I could tell which one from the aromas of the steak and eggs the bloke had ordered. You remember? Nearly always steak and eggs and peaches for pudding-hell, I was the one who actually saw all that food go to waste. But here am I outside the cell, and I push the thing back and look in. You know what I see there? A big mirror on the wall and my eye looking back at me. That’s the first thing I see.”

“And that’s what gave you such a big fright?”

“ Ach, no-wait. When I take my head away, I’m not by the cell anymore, I’m back in the shed. Of course, I think, this is where he’ll be. But I’m just there by myself. Then they bring in the white prisoner and I see that it’s Tromp!”

“Who?”

“Tromp Kramer-and I know this even though he’s already got the black hood on. Everything’s quick so I can’t ask about the pigeons and they put him on the trap and Father William says the Amen and he’s hanging-hell, but the bugger kicked hard! And I see… you know how the chain comes over the beam to make different lengths for the rope? You know that chart I showed you, heights and weights and the slack in between? I look up to see if it’s holding because I don’t want him to suffer-that’s rubbish for you, the chain coming loose.”

“Ja-”

“And all of a sudden I see it’s a mamba, not a rope, and that it’s-”

Anneline Strydom laughed fondly, replacing her arm and hugging her husband to her.

“You’re so silly,” she said. “Anyone can see where this dream came from. You don’t need Joseph to tell you it would just break, do you? Trompie jumped, he was all right-and you know how that boy likes his big plates of steak and eggs. Remember that time? I’d made for four?”

He laughed and snuggled up.

Gardiner was doodling. Drawing cartoon faces on thumb-prints he had himself made on the back of an old calendar, and giving them legs. Then he gave them arms and different things to hold, and wrote funny captions beneath each one, like “I never laid a finger on her” and “My alibi is I was out hitchhiking.” He had always liked art, even the watercolors at junior school, which always ran into each other, and his considerable graphic skill had made his specialized branch of police work a wise and rewarding choice.

Gardiner was also waiting. Marais had rung him in high excitement to ask if anything dramatic had been found in the dressing room, and when told it hadn’t, the clown promised to be over in a tick. He apparently had something momentous to impart, once he’d finished writing it out neatly for the lieutenant.

But the wait was getting beyond a joke. Both Gardiner’s dinner and his pretty wife would be stone cold by the time he got home, and he’d been hoping to broach the matter of a fishing trip up the North Coast instead of the visit to the game reserve.

So he finally just locked up and went over to the CID building, noticing the time on the city hall clock and discovering that his watch had lost an hour. This very nearly made him pick up the car and go, but his curiosity, as always, got the better of him. His rank had been well earned.

Marais was asleep, his head resting on folded arms on top of his typewriter. The snoring would have done justice to a bullfrog.

Gardiner saw the sheet of paper in the machine had just been begun, so he picked up what looked like a first draft and found it was, in fact, a formal statement written in an almost illegible hand by one Benjamin “Bix” Harold Johnson. Marais would never learn.

Yet once it was understood that the r’s were really m’s and that a dot served for a the, the thing flowed quite reasonably. Skipping the address, race, and age bit, Gardiner hooked a leg over the desk corner to read the rest.

The gig ended at 12 A.M. sharp and the Club Manager, MONTY STEVENSON, was there to see the Customers didn’t dilly-dally. I observed Stevenson at a table with a person known to me as GILBERT, a Car Salesman. Us boys in the band had been bought drinks by one of the grateful, and so we were entitled to drink them as we had not had time before THEO HILL, who plays the tenor saxophone, and MAC TAYLOR, drums, share a pad and a Volksy.

These two colleagues said good night to me at 12:10 or thereabouts, and went straight out through the front because of some nurses on nights having supper at one. I had promised some of the Staff a lift to the bottom end of town and was waiting for them to finish in the Kitchen. One of them approached me and asked if he could see the cassette Player he heard I had for sale. This Person was an Indian Male by the name of RAMCHUNDER who I call RAM because his first name is too hard to pronounce. The Boss was busy so he did not notice Ramchunder and me sneak into the passage to the dressing rooms. As a nonwhite, Ramchunder was out of bounds in this area, but I wanted to save myself the bother of going back and forward and the others thinking I had gone.

We therefore proceeded quietly to the Second Dressing Room where the Trio keeps its gear like scores and novelty instruments. I observed the Door to the First Dressing Room, in use at the time by the Deceased, SONJA BERGSTROOM, was closed and bolted. It had to be, because it was our old dressing room and if it wasn’t bolted the Door hung open slightly even after you had pushed it hard. This did not strike me in any way as strange as I knew the Deceased must be changing and packing. She was not a friendly type so I didn’t greet her as we passed. In fact, because RAMCHUNDER was with me, we went by almost on tiptoe so there would be no fuss.

There was no light in the Second Dressing Room as the switch had been broken for weeks, so Ramchunder inspected the Player by the light from the Passage. As it still had its “silica gel” packet, he said he would take it straight away if he could have it on installments. At this stage we heard Raised Voices in the Dressing Room next door, one of which I recognized as being that of the Deceased. The other was a Male Voice I did not recognize although I was interested and tried to. RAMCHUNDER then pointed out it would be best if we struck a bargain in the Car because there was a danger of him being seen Out of Bounds by whoever this was.

We then left, taking the Player with us, and as we passed the Door to the First Dressing Room we heard a Laugh that seemed too Hoarse to have been made by the Deceased and she always pretended what a lady she was and prim. Upon reentering the dance and cabaret area, I observed that STEVENSON had still not got rid of GILBERT. The Others were waiting by this time and we all went out the Front Way. The back way is never used because it is blocked by a Freezer in Contravention of Fire Regulations as I have Informed the Manager. As we got to the street, I again heard a Laugh. I turned to see who was laughing and saw STEVENSON in the distance at the entrance to the Club with a Male Figure I did not recognize in a Coat. I cannot be certain the laugh was the same one as had been made in the Dressing Room (First) but I thought the Male Figure could be the same one. I think it was 12:20 or thereabouts because the persons with me wanted to reach their Destination at 12:30 and we made it easily on time. It does usually take Ten Minutes to get the car and go there. That is all I can think of.

Gardiner dropped the statement and picked up another signed by Gilbert Edward Littlemore. One by one the pennies began to drop, making an interesting sound.

The silence was almost more stifling than the foul air he breathed.

Chainpuller Mabatso had listened to it for more than half the night, by his reckoning. Once or twice he had thought he heard a baby bawling, and there had been strange sounds like a club hitting a metal pipe. That he could not understand.

Nor could he understand the flatness of the surface upon which he was lying. He had not been on anything so hard and smooth since the concrete bunk he had slept in at the penal colony. It was this sensation, above all, that had kept him motionless so long. Ever since he had awakened from a sleep with a headache and a pain in his stomach. He felt as though he had kneed himself because his knee hurt also.

He thought back. He had been in his hut with the new woman. The one who wanted to put her mouth on his mouth like a European. Then, while he was telling her of his disgust, there had been the clunk of one of his tins arriving. He had gone out and bent down and…

Surely he was not dead.

Mabatso tried to move and found the cord that bound him had been loosely tied. He worked his hands free and tried to get them to his mouth to take out a piece of rag he had first imagined the laying-out woman had put there. But the shroudlike wrapping was on too tight. He tried rolling on his side, and then the other way, and this worked. He sat up and looked around him.

The hut had flat, flat walls, narrow planks of wood nailed along near the top where the roof was even flat, and a window made of one big piece of glass. And a door.

He had never seen anything like it.

Yes, he had: the police station where he had been taken as a youth. Only that had been full of tables and chairs and other things that showed its purpose. This place had none.

A giddiness made him rock for a moment, then it passed.

Mabatso undid the bow tied in the cord around his ankles and then, stiffly and cautiously, moved onto his feet. He wobbled, holding his arms out at his sides, and then shuffled forward in a crouch.

He heard a car in the distance. And saw moonlight.

Moving like a river crab, he made his way toward the window, careful not to make a sound, and slid his fingertips up the wall to the window ledge. He had to know what kind of place lay outside.

Very, very warily, he moved his whole body up from the floor until his eyes cleared the sill tiles.

Then Chainpuller Mabatso sobbed and drew himself into a tight ball, rolling over and hiding his face in his hands, keeping his sobs silent.

There was nothing outside. The hut hung in the sky.

Kramer would not have continued up the drive if a light hadn’t come on in the living room. The curtains were wrong, so he saw quite clearly that the Widow Fourie had gone to read a book in the corner. He deliberately made a slightly noisy arrival, and waved to her when she hurried to the window.

“Oh, Trompie, Trompie,” she said, embracing him as he stepped onto the veranda-which was not like her.

“What’s the matter, hey? Is it Piet?”

“Man, I’ve been so worried. He was so happy today, you should have seen him, exploring and making the others play his games, and then just now he starts…”

Kramer led her back into the living room and made her settle back in her chair. Then he poured two brandies from the bottle she had waiting for him and clinked his glass against hers.

“Blue Haze,” he said.

“Trompie…”

“Piet’s not good tonight?”

“I thought at first it was having a room all to himself. And the move-that always upsets some kids, doesn’t it? Of course, the others settled down like lambs, except I had to go in and kiss them about four hundred times. And oh, the two smallest have stayed together. But Piet! He suddenly woke up and started screaming and he won’t tell me why. I’ve been trying to look it up.”

Kramer took the book from her and saw it was The Rib Cage: A Study in Child Development and Certain Problems. It was the same one he had quoted from most extensively, and yet she had been foolish enough to go out and buy her own copy.

“ Ach, but this is bullsugar!” he said, hoping for an easy laugh.

“What’s so wrong with it?”

“I can’t even understand the bloody title for a bloody start, so what chances do I stand with the rest of it?”

“You know-Adam’s rib, women, the cages that mothers make for their children, imprisoning them in their own whatsits.”

“Ja, exactly!” Kramer retorted. “Whatsits. Thingummies. All these big new words. And how’s old He’s-a-poof?”

“There’s nothing the matter with the Oedipus complex,” the Widow Fourie said crossly. “All it means is a boy gets jealous of his dad and this makes him feel afraid he’s having such thoughts. Piet isn’t the only kid who’s ever said to his mum that she’s the one girl he likes. And when he says that, he doesn’t say it the way you might do.”

“Have I ever?” he asked.

“True enough!” she replied, and could not help a twinkle “But the doctors didn’t say Piet had that anyway.”

“I should bloody hope not! You know what this book alleges? It alleges that is how psychopaths are made.”

The Widow Fourie set down her brandy. Her day had been a long one, too.

“Listen, before you start telling me everything, why don’t you take the trouble to read it up properly? Oedipus is only part of psychopathetics, and it’s to do with their consciences. They don’t feel guilty and they don’t feel sorry for others-why? Because they don’t have a mum’s care and attention when they are small-say, until so high. I’ve got the place right here-it’s in the beginning. Now listen. ‘If early rearing is unstable and transi-transient, then empathy fails to’- hey! ”

Kramer, who already had one leg in the corridor, and a lot else still to do that night, said, “Just hang on a sec while I go and chuck him some bananas.”

The book just missed.

Mabatso had drunk very nearly a gallon of maize beer before being spirited away. He was now acutely uncomfortable and knew something would have to be done about it.

So he made his second move, less afraid now because of various ideas he had slowly assembled. But he crawled all the way to the window, and didn’t open his eyes until he was standing before it.

Then he saw the houses down below and the streetlights and the milk trolley’s lantern, and swayed. It was the first time he had ever been higher off the ground than the roof of his hut when it needed mending, and this took some adjustment. After a time, he stopped swaying.

And turned to explore the room with the hope of finding somewhere he could do it. He had learned in the colony what happened to men who relieved themselves on a white man’s floor.

But the only thing in the room which resembled an outlet was a flat plate, with three small holes in it, screwed so low on the wall he could not get near it.

So finally he was forced to take hold of the door handle and, with a shuddering breath, turn it. Nothing happened as he opened the door a little way… He opened his eyes again and breathed out. It was another empty room, only there were four doors opening off it, two of which stood ajar.

Mabatso scurried across into the nearest of these, saw it was for cooking and that there were taps. The sink was reached just in time.

Now he felt able to think properly.

He looked in through the other open doorway, recognized the shower-the colony had had several-and felt confident enough to try the other doors. One wouldn’t open, and one led into a third room, as large as the first, with glass right down to the floor on the far side.

“Ee-flat,” he said to himself, remembering the word used by a fellow convict who had worked in one. It was all making sense now. What a fool he had been. Excellent sense.

Up to a point.

And when Mabatso’s thoughts reached that point, the giddiness returned twice as violently as before, dropping him to his knees with a jolt. To crumple once again and lie there, curled up like a wood louse, smelling his own smells among so many sharp alien smells, and feeling more afraid than he had ever done.

Because when those colony gates had swung open, he’d not only known what sort of place it was, but also how he had reached it, why he was there, and what to expect while he remained behind its walls.

Whereas now he knew the answer to only the first of those questions, and the rest of them had begun to tease his mind apart.

Chainpuller Mabatso could not even cry out. As isolated as his life had been on that hillside, he fully realized that a black man always had to have a very good reason for being in a white people’s dwelling at night.

Which came to the same terrifying thing.

Ramchunder had a rude awakening. His bedding was stripped off him and a flashlight shone in his eyes.

“CID. On your feet,” said Marais.

The waiter staggered up.

“Are you awake, man?”

“I-yes, I am, sir.”

“Have you in your possession a cassette player recently bought?”

“Have merciful pity, sir! The gent I bought it from said he had come by it quite aboveboard.”

“You’re making allegations?”

“Sir, you misinterpret!”

“ Ach, all right, Sammy-just as long as you’re the right Ramchunder,” said Marais, who had unearthed a good dozen of the buggers, all of them waiters.

Then he took a short statement which tallied in every particular with the one given to him by Bix Johnson, the crazy piano player. And had problems only when it came to Ramchunder’s reluctance to admit having been through the curtain.

“Do I go up for trespass?” Ramchunder asked gloomily as the ballpoint was put away.

“Not this time,” said Marais, and his good humor made him add, “That’s one of your boss’s laws, not mine!”

Kramer talked man-to-man with Piet until the little sod toppled sideways and fell fast asleep. Then he tucked a rug over the Widow Fourie, closed the padlock on the burglar guard at the front door, and drove back into Trekkersburg.

Dawn had just begun to snuffle its pink snout along the escarpment when he slipped past Mr. McKay’s flat and took the stairs. The lift at that hour sounded like Saturn 5.

By the fifth-floor landing, Kramer had decided there must be easier ways of making a wizard talk. But when he heard the rapid exchange in Zulu coming from behind the living room door of number 5C, he felt it may well have been worth all the extra trouble. And sat down where the coat stand had once been.

He tried to sleep a little. But there was something odd about Zondi’s tone that kept snagging on his veil of oblivion-something that made him sit upright and try to distinguish words.

Not long after that, the inner door opened and Kramer saw Zondi standing over him in shirtsleeves.

“Hope you slept well, you bugger,” Kramer said, getting up with a spring that sagged in the middle.

“Three, four hours, then this one started to knock for me.”

“Oh, ja? And?”

“The truth, I think.”

Kramer looked over Zondi’s shoulder. What he saw made him realize there was no need to dispute that-although he could also see Mabatso had not a mark on him, nor any reason to have one either.

“All right, but what did he say?”

“The man who asked Beebop for the ten rand was one Robert Zulu, who this prisoner knew in prison, and who work like an errand boy for him, buying him beer and all that. Finish of story.”

“Hey? Come on now!”

Zondi smiled in an ugly way and said, “Chainpuller doesn’t know any more about the robberies than we. He just got the idea of pretending he was behind them-he was riding the gangsters like a tick.”

“Him? This thing? Where did he get ideas like that from? And so quick?”

“Chainpuller does this all the time-for years, boss. You know that brother? He is an important man now, down in the Transkei, so he cuts himself free from this rubbish. But you know how it is when people think you have done a wrong, how they make sure this comes to your ears? Mabatso here was told many things about himself after the brother had gone, and so he-”

“You mean he never did anything to anyone? Just sat on his arse and let people throw their money at him?”

“That is the truth. It was the people’s own fears of darkness that made him so great-darkness only in their own minds.”

“What are you, Mickey Zondi?”

“I’m a superstitious kaffir,” said Zondi, breaking into a wide grin. “And you, boss, are wiser than the elephant.”

“ Ach, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, hey? But I can tell you one thing: I don’t suffer the same way from the blind spots of my people. Not in my work anyway.”

That, too, was meant as a joke, something flippant to lighten the disappointment now weighing down hard on both of them. But somehow it seemed to misfire.

Zondi said, “The charge against this prisoner, Lieutenant? Demanding with menaces?”

“Ja, what you like.”

It was a great pity the new day had to begin like that, almost as an omen.