Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

14

The house was full of books. And often filled with writers and poets and readers, arguments and animated conversations – late one Saturday night two women almost came to blows over Etienne Leroux’s Seven Days at the Silbersteins. A reading and a discussion of the work of Van Wyk Louw lasted through the night until after lunch on the Sunday.

And into this circle of literary luminaries I brought Louis L’Amour.

I hadn’t been an early reader. There were, I thought, far more interesting things to do. As my mother allowed me more freedom, there were the usual school activities and the more informal boys’ play (how many gangs we formed!), fishing in the Vaal River (with Uncle Shorty de Jager, live crickets, without a weight), the investigation of the east shaft’s collapsed mine dumps, the eternal building and rebuilding of Schalk Wagenaar’s tree house.

Then, the discovery of photo-stories. Günther Krause read Mark Condor. Takuza. Captain Devil. With his parents’ permission. (His mother read Barbara Cartland and others of her sort, and his father wasn’t home very often.) On Saturday mornings we went to Don’s Book Exchange for a new supply for Günther and his mother and then we went to his house to read them avidly. Until tenth grade, when I almost uninterestedly picked up a L’Amour in Don’s, looked at the fiery green eyes of the hero on the cover, and lazily, unsuspectingly, read the first two paragraphs and met Logan Sackett.

My mother gave me a few rand for pocket money every month. The book cost forty cents. I bought it. And for the following three years I couldn’t get enough.

My mother made no objection. Perhaps she hoped it would lead to the reading of other, more substantial stuff. She didn’t know it would lead to my first confrontation with the law.

It wasn’t L’Amour’s fault.

One holiday morning my mother dropped me and Günther and another school friend in Klerksdorp early for the movies. The CNA on the main road was on two levels, toys and stationery downstairs, and upstairs, the books. I had been in the CNA before but that day I discovered a new world of Louis L’Amours, new, unread books with white paper – not the faded, faintly yellowed secondhand copies of the book exchange. Books that smelled fresh.

I can’t remember how much money I had in my pocket. But it wasn’t enough. Too little for a movie and a milk shake and a L’Amour. Certainly enough for a book but then I wouldn’t be able to accompany Günther to the movies. Enough for a movie and a milk shake but then I wouldn’t be able to make use of this newfound abundance. And in a moment of feverish desire I made my decision: taking a book wasn’t stealing.

That was the ease with which I crossed the borderline between innocence and guilt, as quickly as that, without thinking. One moment a reader filled with joy at the variety of new choices, the next a prospective thief with an awareness of the potential, casting furtive glances at others around him, looking for an opportunity.

I took two books and pushed them down my shirt. And then walked down the stairs slowly, nonchalantly, stomach sucked in to hide the bulge, bent forward slightly for further camouflage, a beating heart and sweaty hands, closer and closer to the front door, closer, closer, out, sigh of relief – until she grabbed my arm and used the words with which so many South Africans start a conversation with strangers, that cornerstone of our sense of inferiority: “Ag, sorry…”

She was fat and ugly and the CNA name tag on her mighty breasts merely read MONICA. She pulled me back, into the shop. “Take out those books,” she said.

Afterward I thought of a thousand things I might have done, what I could have said: jerked loose and run away, said, I was only joking or Which books? or Fuck you. Often, afterward, when I remembered her face and her attitude, I yearned to be able to say, Fuck you.

I took out the books. My knees were weak.

“Get Mr. Minnaar,” she told the girl at the cash register. And to me: “Today you’ll be taught a lesson.”

Ah, the fear and the humiliation, so slow to mature. The implications of my action didn’t present themselves as a group but as a long row of individual, unwelcome, purposeful messengers. I knew every one of them long before Mr. Minnaar, the bald man with the glasses, had appeared on the scene.

I stood there and heard Monica telling Minnaar how she had seen me on the upper floor, how she had waited until I had gone out of the door.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said, and looked at me with great disapproval. And when she had finished: “Phone the police.”

While she was busy, he looked nastily at me again and said, “You’ll steal us blind.”

You. With one word I was part of a group. As though I had done it before. As though I was constantly in the company of other criminals.

I think I was too frightened to cry. When the young constable in the blue uniform came in and we went to Minnaar’s small office and he took down their statement. When he took me by the arm to the yellow police wagon. When he took me out again at the police station downtown, next to the Indian shopping center, and took me to the charge office. Too blood-chillingly frightened.

He made me sit down and told the sergeant behind the desk to keep an eye on me. And came back minutes later with a detective.

He was a big man. Big hands, thick eyebrows, and a nose that had known adversity.

“What’s your name?” the big man asked.

“Zatopek, sir.”

“Come with me, Zatopek.”

I followed him to his office, a gray room filled with civil service furniture and piles of files and memorandums arranged in chaotic stacks.

“Sit down,” he said.

He sat on the edge of the desk with the constable’s statements in his hand.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen, sir.”

“Where do you live?”

“Stilfontein, sir.”

“Eleventh grade?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stilfontein High School?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You stole books.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Louis L’Amours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How often have you stolen books?”

“This was the first time, sir.”

“What have you stolen before?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing?”

“I…once I stole Günther Krause’s ruler in class, sir, but it was more of a joke, sir. I’ll give it back to him, sir.”

“Why did you steal the books?”

“It was wrong, sir.”

“I know it was wrong. I want to know why.”

“I…I wanted them so badly, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because I like them so much, sir.”

“Have you read Flint?”

“Yes, sir.” Somewhat surprised.

“Kilkenny?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lando?”

“No, sir.”

“Catlow?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Cherokee Trail?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Empty Land?”

“No, sir.”

He sighed and got up, walked round, and sat down at his big desk.

“Did any of the good guys in any L’Amour steal, Zatopek?”

“No, sir.”

“What will your father do – how will he feel if I phone him now to tell him his son’s a thief?”

Hope, a faint spark. If I…not when I phone him. “My father’s dead, sir.”

“And your mother?”

“She’ll be very unhappy, sir.”

“I have a suspicion you have a gift for euphemism, Zatopek. Your mother will be heartbroken. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re the only one she’s got?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re stealing.”

“It was wrong, sir.”

“Says he now. Now that it’s too late. Where’s your mother?”

I told him about the movie plans and that my mother would fetch us at five o’clock, after the movie.

He looked at me. For a long time and in silence. Then he got up. “Wait here, Zatopek. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

He walked out and closed the door. I was alone with my fear and my humiliation and my sprig of hope.

He came back after a lifetime and sat on the edge of the desk again.

“There’s an empty cell down here, Zatopek. I’m going to lock you into it. It’s a dirty place. It stinks. People have vomited and shat and pissed and bled and sweated in it. But it’s paradise in comparison with what happens to thieves if they go to jail…I’m going to put you in the cell, Zatopek. So that you can think about all these things. I want you to try and picture, while you’re sitting there, what it would be like to spend the rest of your life like that. Only much worse. Among other thieves and murderers and confidence men and rapists and all the other scum of the earth. Men who’ll cut your throat for fifty cents. Guys who’ll think a young man like you is just the thing to…to…kiss, if you get my drift.”

I didn’t really but I nodded enthusiastically.

“I’ve just spoken to the CNA on the phone. They say they have a great deal of theft taking place there. They want me to make an example of you. They want you to be in court, in front of the magistrate, with your poor mother weeping, so that everyone can see there’s no point in stealing from the CNA. They want the people of the Klerksdorp Record to write about you so that the nonthieving youth of South Africa will be deterred. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t speak, merely allowed my head to indicate agreement.

“I argued with them, Zatopek. I told them I was sure it was the first time, because I’m stupid enough to believe you. I begged them because someone who likes Louis L’Amour can’t be all bad. They told me I was wasting my time because someone who steals once will steal again. But I talked them round, Zatopek.”

“Sir?”

“We reached an agreement. I’ll lock you up until half past four because you’re a guilty little bugger. And then I’ll take you to the cinema and you’ll tell your mother it was a nice movie because breaking her heart isn’t a good idea. She didn’t steal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you ever steal again, Zatopek, I’ll fetch you and give you such a hell of a hiding, all use you’ll ever have for your backside is to hang a pair of pants on, and I’ll lock you up with guys who’ll suck out your eyeballs before cutting off your other balls with a blunt knife simply because they’re bored. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Everyone has the right to one chance in life, Zatopek. We don’t all get it, but we deserve it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Use yours.”

“Yes, sir.”

He got up. “Come along.”

“Sir…”

“What?”

“Thank you, sir.” And then I cried until my entire body shook and the big man tucked his arm around me and pulled me close to him and held me until I had stopped.

Then he went and locked me up.