Smokescreen

Chapter Ten

Blackness.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes. Couldn’t see. Put my hand to my face to feel if my eyelids were open.

They were.

Thought was entirely disconnected. I didn’t know where I was, or why I was there, or why I couldn’t see. Time seemed suspended. I couldn’t decide whether I was asleep or not, and for a while I couldn’t remember my own name.

Drifted away again. Came back. Snapped suddenly into consciousness. Knew I was awake. Knew I was me.

Still couldn’t see.

I moved; tried to sit up. Discovered I was lying on my side. When I moved, I heard the crunching noise and felt the sharp rock chips shifting against my pressure.

In the stope.

Cautiously I put up a hand. The rock ceiling was a couple of feet above my head.

No helmet on my head. A tender lump on the back of it and a thumping pain inside it.

Bloody hell, I thought. I must have bashed my head. I’m in the stope. I can’t see because there isn’t any light. Everyone has left the mine. And the blasting charges will go off at any minute.

For a paralysing age I couldn’t think beyond the fact that I was going to be blown to bits before I had even finished realising it. After that I thought it might have been better if I’d been blown to bits before I woke up. At least I wouldn’t now be awake worrying. After that, and not before time, I began wondering what to do.

Light, first.

I felt around to my back, found the lead from the power pack, and gently pulled it. The other end scraped towards me over the choppy shingle, but when I picked up the torch I knew I wasn’t going to get any light. The glass and the bulb were both smashed.

The light unit had come off the bracket on the helmet. I felt around with an outstretched hand, but couldn’t find the helmet.

Must get out, I thought urgently, and in the same split second wondered... which way was out.

I made myself stay still. The last thing I remembered was agreeing with Yates that I could find my own way back. I must have been stupid enough to try to raise my head too high. Must literally have hit the roof. I couldn’t remember doing it. The only thing that seemed clear was that I had smashed my helmet light when I fell, and that no one had seen me lying there in the dark.

Bloody fool, I cursed myself. Clumsy bloody fool, getting into this mess.

Gingerly, with one arm outstretched, I shifted myself a foot forward. My fingers found nothing to touch except stone chips.

I had to know which way I was going. Otherwise, I thought, I may be crawling away from safety, not towards it. I had to find the hole into the tunnel.

I picked up a handful of the flinty pebbles and began throwing them methodically round in a circle, starting on my right. It was an erratic process, as some hit the roof and some the ground, but enough went far enough before they fell to assure me that there was a space all around me in front.

I rolled over on to my back and the power pack dug into me. I unfastened the webbing and pulled it off. Then I threw another lot of stones in an arc round my legs.

The wall of the tunnel was there. A lot of the stones hit it.

My heart by then was thudding so much it was deafening me. Shut up, shut up, I said to myself. Don’t be so bloody scared, it isn’t of any practical use.

I threw more stones, this time not to find the wall, but the hole in it. I found it almost at once. Threw more stones to make sure: but there it had to be, just to the left of where my feet were pointing, because all the stones that went over there were falling further away, and clattering after they landed. They weren’t round enough to roll, but heavy enough to continue downhill when they fell. Downhill... on the steep little slope from the stope into the tunnel.

More stones. I moved my feet, then my whole body, until the hole was straight in front over my toes. Then on my elbows and my bottom, keeping my head well back, I shuffled forwards.

More stones. Hole still there.

More shuffling. Another check.

It couldn’t have been more than ten feet. Felt like ten miles.

I tentatively swept my arms around in the air. Could feel the roof, nothing else.

Went forward another two or three feet. Felt around with my arms. Touched solid rock. Ahead, to the tight.

Another foot forward. Felt my feet turn abruptly downwards, bending my knees. Put both my hands out sideways and forwards and felt rock on both sides. Halfway out of the hole... and gingerly, lying flat, I inched forward until my feet scrunched on the tunnel floor. Even then I bent my knees and continued slithering without raising my head, all too aware of the hard sharpness of the rock above and the vulnerability of my unhelmeted skull.

I ended on my knees in the tunnel, gasping and feeling as frightened as ever.

Think.

The holes had been in the left-hand wall, as we came down. Once in the tunnel, Yates had said, I couldn’t get lost.

O.K. Turn right. Straight forward. Dead simple.

I stood up carefully, and with the hole at my back, turned left. Put my hand on the rough rock wall. Took a step forward.

The scrunch of my boot on the rock floor made me realise for the first time how quiet it was. Before, I had had both the stones and my own heart to fill my ears. Now, there was nothing. The silence was as absolute as the darkness.

I didn’t waste time brooding about it. Scrunched ahead as fast as I dared, step by careful step. No sound... that meant that the air-conditioning had been switched off... which hardly mattered, there was a mineful still to breathe... even if it were hot.

My hand lost the wall suddenly, and my heart set up a fresh chorus. Taking a grip on my breath I took a step backwards. Right hand back on wall. O.K. Breathe out. Now, kneel down, grope along floor, keep in contact with wall on right... navigate past another of the holes which led through to the stope.

Holes which would let the blast out of the stope, when the charges exploded.

Blast travelled far when confined in a long narrow space. Blast was a killing force, as deadly as flying rocks.

Oh God, I thought. Oh hell’s bloody bells. What did one think about if one were probably going to die at any minute.

I thought about getting as far back up the mine as quickly as I could. I thought about not losing contact with the right-hand wall when I passed the holes in it, because if I did I might turn round in the darkness and find the other wall instead, and go straight back towards the explosion. I didn’t think about anything else at all. Not even about Charlie.

I went on. The air became hotter and hotter. The stretch that had been hot coming down was now an assault on the nerve endings.

Struggling on, I couldn’t tell how fast I was going. Very slowly, I imagined. Like in a nightmare, trying to flee from a terror at one’s heels, and not being able to run.

I got back in the end to the wider space, and the explosion still hadn’t happened. Another explosion was due to take place down the branch tunnel also... but the bend in the tunnel should disperse some of the blast.

Beginning at last to let hope creep in, and keeping my hand on the right-hand wall literally for dear life, I trudged slowly on. Two miles to go, maybe, to the bottom of the shaft... but every step taking me nearer to safety.

Those lethal pockets of dynagel never did explode; or not while I was down the mine.

One minute I was taking another step into darkness. The next, I was blinded by light.

I shut my eyes, wincing against the brightness, and I stopped walking and leaned against the wall instead. When I opened my eyes again, the electric lights were blazing in all their glory, and the tunnel looked as solid, safe, and reassuringly painted, as it had done on the way in.

Weakened by relief, I shifted off the wall and went on again, with knees that were suddenly trembling, and a head that was back to aching like a hang-over.

There was a background hum now again in the mine, and from far away up the tunnel a separate noise detached itself and grew louder: the rattle of the wire cage trucks making the outward journey. Eventually it stopped and then there was the sound of several boots, and then finally, round a shallow curve, came four men in white overalls.

Hurrying.

They spotted me. and began to run. Slowed and stopped just before they reached me, with relief that I was mobile showing on their faces. Losenwoldt was one of them: I didn’t know the others.

‘Mr Lincoln... are you all right?’ one of them asked anxiously.

‘Sure,’ I said. It didn’t sound right. I said it again. ‘Sure.’ Much better.

‘How did you get left behind?’ Losenwoldt said reprovingly, shifting all possible blame from himself. Not that I would have allotted him any: he was just forestalling it.

I said, ‘I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance... I think I must have hit my head and knocked myself out, but I can’t actually remember how...’ I wrinkled my forehead. ‘So damned stupid of me.’

One of them said, ‘Where were you, exactly?’

‘In the stope,’ I said.

‘Good grief... You probably lifted your head too sharply... or maybe a piece of rock fell from the roof and caught you.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Another of them said, ‘If you were unconscious in the stope, however did you get back here?’

I told them about the stones. They didn’t say anything. Just looked at each other.

One of them walked round my back and after a moment said, ‘There’s some blood on your hair and down your neck, but it looks dry... I don’t think you’re still bleeding.’ He came round to my side. ‘Do you feel all right to walk to the trucks? We brought a stretcher... just in case.’

I smiled. ‘Guess I can walk.’

We walked. I asked, ‘How did you discover I was down here?’

One of them said ruefully, ‘Our system of checking everyone is out of the mine before blasting is supposed to be infallible. And so it is, as far as the miners are concerned. But visitors... you see, we don’t often have small groups of unofficial visitors, like today. Mr van Huren seldom invites anyone, and no one else is allowed to. Nearly all the visitors we have here are official tourist groups, of about twenty people, and the mine more or less stops while we show them round, but we only do that every six weeks or so. We don’t usually blast at all, on those days. Today, though, one of your party felt ill and went back before the others, and I think everyone took it for granted that you had gone with him. Tim Yates said when he last saw you, you were just about to return up the tunnel.’

‘Yes...’ I agreed. ‘I remember that.’

‘The other three visitors went up together, and the checkers accounted for every miner, so we assumed everyone was out, and were all set to detonate...’

A tall thin man took up the story. ‘Then one of the men who counts the numbers going up and down in the lift said that one more had gone down than had come up. The shift checkers said it was impossible, each group had been checked out by name. The lift man said he was sure. Well... that only left the visitors. So we checked them. The three in the changing room said you hadn’t changed yet, your clothes were still there, so you must be in the first-aid room with one called Conrad, who had not felt well.’

‘Conrad,’ I exclaimed. I had though they meant Evan. ‘What was wrong with him?’

‘I think they said he had an attack of asthma. Anyway, we went and asked him, and he said you hadn’t come up with him.’

‘Oh,’ I said blankly. Certainly, if I had been with him I would have gone up, but I hadn’t seen him at all after we had separated at the beginning of the reef.

We came to the trucks and climbed in. A lot of space with only five people instead of twelve.

‘The one who was ill,’ Losenwoldt stated virtuously, ‘the stout one with the droopy moustache, he was not with me. If he had been, of course I would have escorted him back to the trucks, and of course I would have known you were not with him.’

‘Of course,’ I said dryly.

We clattered back along the tunnel to the bottom of the shaft, and from there, after the exchange of signal buzzes, rose in the cage through three-quarters of a mile of rock up to the sunlight. Its brilliance was momentarily painful, and it was also cold enough to start me shivering.

‘Jacket,’ exclaimed one of my escorts. ‘We took down a blanket... should have put it round you.’ He hurried off into a small building by the shaft and came back with a much used tweed sports coat, which he held for me to put on.

There was an anxious looking reception committee hovering around: Evan, Roderick, Danilo, and van Huren himself.

‘My dear fellow,’ he said, peering at me as if to reassure himself that I was real. ‘What can I say?’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said, ‘it was my own fault and I’m terribly sorry to have caused all this fuss...’ Van Huren looked relieved and smiled, and so did Evan, Roderick and Danilo. I turned back to the three strangers who had come down for me: Losenwoldt had already gone. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’

They all grinned. ‘We want payment,’ one said.

I must have looked bewildered. I was wondering what was right. How much.

‘Your autograph,’ one of them explained.

‘Oh...’ I laughed. ‘O.K.’

One of them produced a notebook, and I wrote a thank-you to each of them, on three separate pages. And cheap at the price, I thought.

The mine’s doctor swabbed stone dust from the cut on my head, said it wasn’t deep, nothing serious, didn’t need stitching, didn’t need a plaster, even, unless I wanted one...

‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Good, good. Swallow these, then. In case you develop a headache.’

I swallowed obediently. Collected Conrad, now breathing normally again, from a rest room next door, and followed directions to the bar and dining-room for lunch. On the way, we swopped operations, so to speak. Neither of us felt much pleased with himself.

The five of us sat at a table with Quentin van Huren, plus two other senior executives whose names I never learned. My narrow escape was chewed over by everyone all over again, and I said with feeling to Roderick that I would be much obliged if he would keep my embarrassment out of his inky columns.

He grinned. ‘Yeah... Much better copy if you’d been blown up. Not much news value in a checker doing his job properly.’

‘Thank God for that,’ I said.

Conrad looked at me sideways. ‘There must be a jinx on you in South Africa, dear boy. That’s the second time you’ve been close to extinction within a week.’

I shook my head. ‘No jinx. Just the opposite. I’ve survived twice. Look at it that way.’

‘Only seven lives left,’ Conrad said.

The talk worked back to gold. I suspected that in Welkom it always did, like Newmarket and horses.

‘Say, how do you get it out of the rock?’ Danilo demanded. ‘You can’t even see it.’

Van Huren smiled indulgently. ‘Danilo, it is simple. You crush the rock in mills until it is powdered. You add cyanide of potassium, which holds the gold particles in solution. You add zinc, to which the gold particles stick. You then wash out the acid. You then separate the zinc from the gold again, using aqua regia, and finally you retrieve the gold.’

‘Oh simple,’ Conrad agreed. ‘Dear boy.’

Van Huren warmed to him, and smiled with pleasure. ‘That is not exactly all. One still has to refine the gold... to remove impurities by melting it to white heat in giant crucibles, and pouring it out into bricks. The residue flows away, and you are left with the pure gold.’

Danilo did a rapid calculation. ‘You’ll have gotten around three thousand five hundred tons of reef out of the mine, for one little old brick.’

‘That’s so,’ agreed van Huren, smiling. ‘Give or take a ton or two.’

‘How much do you bring out in a week?’ Danilo asked.

‘Just over forty thousand metric tons.’

Danilo’s eyes flickered as he did the mental arithmetic. ‘That means... er... about eleven and a half gold bricks every week.’

‘Do you want a job in the accounting department, Danilo? asked van Huren, much amused.

But Danilo hadn’t finished. ‘Each brick weighs 72 lbs, right? So that makes... let’s see... around 800 lbs of gold a week. Say, what’s the price of gold per ounce? Gee, this is sure the right business to be in. What a gas!’ He was deeply stimulated, as he had been by the whole trip, with a strong inner excitement shining out of his eyes. An attraction towards money-making, and the calculations needed to work out estate-duty dodging, seemed to me to be all of a piece.

Van Huren, still smiling, said, ‘You’re forgetting the wages, the maintenance, and the shareholders. There are only a few grains of dust left after they’ve all taken their cut.’

Danilo’s curving mouth showed he didn’t believe it. Roderick shot an orange cuff out of the brown suède sleeve to reveal half a ton of tiger’s eye doing duty as a cufflink.

‘Don’t you own the mine altogether, then, Quentin?’ he asked.

The executives and van Huren himself both smiled indulgently at Roderick for his naïvety.

‘No,’ van Huren said. ‘My family own the land and the mineral rights. Technically, I suppose, we do own the gold. But it takes an enormous amount of capital, many millions of rands, to sink a shaft and build all the surface plant needed. About twenty-five years ago my brother and I floated a company to raise capital to start drilling, so the company has hundreds of private shareholders.’

‘That mine doesn’t look twenty-five years old,’ I objected amiably.

Van Huren shifted his smiling eyes in my direction and went on explaining.

‘The part you saw this morning is the newest tunnel, and the deepest. There are other tunnels at higher levels... in past years we have taken out all the up-slope areas of the reef.’

‘And there’s still a lot left?’

Van Huren’s smile had the ease of one who would never be short of a thousand. ‘It will see Jonathan out,’ he said.

Evan chose to find the mechanics and economics less interesting than the purpose, and waved his arms about as he pinned every gaze down in turn with the fierce eyes and declaimed with his usual intensity.

‘What is gold for, though? This is what we should be asking. What everyone should be asking. What is the point? Everyone goes to so much trouble to get it, and pays so much for it, and it has no real use.’

‘Gold plated lunar bugs,’ I murmured.

Evan glared at me. ‘Everyone digs it out of the ground here and puts it back underground at Fort Knox, where it never sees daylight again... Don’t you see... the whole thing is artificial? Why should the whole world’s wealth be based on a yellow metal which has no use?’

‘Good for filling teeth,’ I said conversationally.

‘And for pure radio contacts in transistor units,’ Roderick added, joining the game.

Van Huren listened and watched as if he found the entertainment a nice change for a Monday. I stopped baiting Evan, though, because after seeing the mine I half held his views.

I travelled back to Johannesburg in the Dakota that evening sitting next to Roderick and feeling a trifle worn. A hot afternoon spent walking round the surface buildings of the mine, watching gold being poured from a crucible, seeing (and hearing) the ore being crushed, and visiting one of the miners’ hostels, had done no good at all to a throbbing head. Half a dozen times I had almost dropped out, but, especially with Roderick’s ready typewriter in the background, I hadn’t wanted to make a fuss.

The visit to the hostel had been best: lunch was being cooked for the next surface shift off work, and we tasted it in the kitchen. Vast vats of thick broth with a splendid flavour, vegetables I couldn’t identify and hadn’t the energy to ask about, and thick wads of cream-coloured mealie bread, a sort of fat-less version of pastry.

From there we went next door into the hostel’s bar, where the first of the returning shift were settling down to the serious business of drinking what looked like half-gallon plastic tubs of milky cocoa.

‘That’s Bantu beer,’ said our afternoon guide, who had proved as sweet as Losenwoldt was sour.

We drank some. It had a pleasant dry flavour but tasted nothing like beer.

‘Is it alcoholic, dear boy?’ Conrad asked.

The dear boy said it was, but weak. Considering that we saw one man dispatch his whole tubful in two great draughts, the weakness was just as well.

Our guide beckoned to one of the men sitting at a table with his colleagues, and he got to his feet and came over. He was tall and not young, and he had a wide white grin which I found infectious.

The guide said, ‘This is Piano Nyembezi. He is the checker who insisted we had left someone down the mine,’

‘Was it you?’ I asked with interest.

‘Yebo,’ he said, which I later learnt meant yes in Zulu. (‘No’ turned out to consist of a click, a glottal stop, and an ‘aa’ sound. As far as a European was concerned, it was impossible to say no in a hurry.)

‘Well, Piano,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’ I put out my hand and he shook it, an event which drew large smiles from his friends, an indrawn breath from our guide, a shake of the head from Roderick and no reaction whatsoever from Evan, Conrad or Danilo.

There was a certain amount of scuffling in the background, and then one of the others brought forward a well thumbed copy of a film magazine.

‘It is Piano’s paper,’ the newcomer said, and thrust it into his hands. Nyembezi looked embarrassed, but showed me what it was. Full page, and as boring-looking as usual.

Wrinkling my nose I took the magazine from him and wrote across the bottom of my picture, ‘I owe my life to Piano Nyembezi,’ and signed my name.

‘He’ll keep that for ever,’ the guide said.

Until tomorrow, perhaps, I thought.

The Dakota droned on. The evening sun fell heavily across my eyelids as we banked round on to a new course, and I gingerly lifted my head off the seat-back to put it down the other way. The cut on my head, though not deep, was sore.

For some reason the small movement triggered off a few sleepy nerve cells, and in a quiet fashion I remembered that there had been someone with me in the stope.

I remembered I had been turning round to leave feet first, and had stopped to let someone else in. I remembered that I hadn’t seen his face: didn’t know who he was.

If he had been there when I bashed my head, why on earth hadn’t he helped me?

Such was my fuzzy state of mind that it took me a whole minute more to move on to the conclusion that he hadn’t helped me because he’d applied the rock himself.

I opened my eyes with a jolt. Roderick’s face was turned towards mine. I opened my mouth to tell him. Then I shut it again, firmly. I did not in the least want to tell the Rand Daily Star.