Short story : Number 45-- WHITE CAT BOOKS - inspirational reflective fiction, semi-fiction, non-fiction, about humanity and relationship

- WHITE CAT BOOKS -
inspirational reflective fiction, semi-fiction, non-fiction, about humanity and relationship

Short story : Number 45

“The number 45 you see in this position now is not the original building that appeared here. Fitzpatrick Road had been steadily creeping inland from the Ocean shore towards – towards where? It headed inland from what passed originally for an esplanade, as visitors – Whites of course – started to come to take the sea air sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. It leads vaguely townwards, except that the town centre, while inland certainly, is more towards the river with its quays and commercial activity. The river, after all, was the only reason there was anything here at all. That is, if you are talking since their arrival, because it is difficult to look on things from the same perspective if you are thinking of the time before the Whites. This river, the Buffalo River, with the proud boast of being the only navigable river in the country, claimed that its port could be properly protected from the lash of the Ocean, whereas all the others up and down the coast had to construct elaborate defences, or take their chances. That said, the town was repeatedly dredging channels and extending breakwaters, as ships got larger, but, in the end, that itself meant the shelter of the river became less of a necessity. But the ‘Buffalo’ image has stuck and we think it will remain a symbol for this flourishing town for many years to come.”

That’s the tone of introductions to our town, that you could read in different pamphlets you might come across if you visited East London. They are likely to carry on…

“Buffalo River – though this was not its original name, of course, there being much older native names – the river itself, for the Whites, was first of all a boundary, a marker for a while, of the limit of Cape Province, the point that the Colonial Forces had reached. Rivers often define borders, they are better than just a line on the ground, they create indisputable separation. No argument is possible. The army built a fort on the other bank over there to make it clear that on their side was order – the might of the British Empire.”

– Doesn’t that mean that this side, the Blacks’ side, our side, which had a small Xhosa village between the river and where number 45 now stands, our side, was untamed? –

“But rivers aren’t walls. You can see the other side, and they open up the world. You can cross them, and in the end the Empire landed on the other bank, our bank, and the town grew more on our side, where you are now, than where it started. The river, having twisted its way from the mountain, through the forests and over the veldt, meets the ocean here. White people came and Black people came, and made streets and built houses, and grew the town with many layers and different parts, each part distinct but joining others, each house a history-book of the lives it had sheltered, which made the chapters of its own story.”

I’ve always looked at houses like that, though now I’m wondering whether I actually mean the houses themselves, or the spirit of their place, which, in the beginning is just the spirit of the ground, but then becomes the spirit of the ground and all that it supports. Their history as a kind of thread. And even if a house is abandoned and stands empty, gradually becoming derelict, one day someone will come along and something new will happen, and so the thread will still go on spinning into a blanket, even if the pattern has changed along the way.

The thread of number 45 has many textures, like its history with its many twists. The locality had always had many layers. Fitzpatrick Road itself led away from the shoreline and the Esplanade, but at the slightly seedier end, being closer to the river mouth and the more worldly activity of the port. The Xhosa village once occupying the middle portion of its route on the river side, had given way to the German quarter: then the beginnings of segregation started to push Black families away from the burgeoning dockland precincts, even though that is where they mainly worked. But remember, distances in the early times were not large, maybe two hundred yards, no more, and so the road retained its status of meeting place and crossing point, social melting pot, match-maker even. In truth, if you had sauntered down, and saunter is what most people did, around 1900, you would probably have wondered – what a patchwork of humanity this is!

There’s a bar just down there, about 20 yards or so towards the Ocean from number 45. ‘Bar’ is what it would be called now, but back in 1900, without any sign or name over the door, it was known as a ‘drinking place’ to its locals. One up from a shebeen, so only raided by police if they were looking for someone, and not simply because it existed. The clientèle, who spilled out onto the road, or sat on the kerbside, or lounged in the doorway, there being very few outside chairs, were all black, all men, mostly young. It was not that there would have been any jostling or even rude manners from staff or drinkers, but few Whites would even wonder whether they dare venture in. Though there had been one. They knew him, the regulars, as Mister Harry, and there was neither mockery nor deference in the ‘Mister’.

There are some people who seem to be able to disarm another’s cautiousness, so any animosity they might have never turns into hostility, it just dissolves. Mister Harry could do that, without it ever seeming to be something he turned on. It was just him. Perhaps it was his age that meant they made allowances. He was barely 18 the first time they saw him. Perhaps it was his casual dress, definitely not colonial. More likely it was something in his manner. He was friendly, but not in a way that drew attention, he was polite, but not in a pointed way, he was always interested in you, but not in an effusive way. He was open. Yea, I think that was it. He accepted people, and was in turn himself accepted. And very soon he was part of the scene, a regular on Friday evenings, sometimes Saturdays. In due course we learnt that he lived in number 45, which was itself a cause of some gentle (though noisy) ribaldry, it being well-known that the block sheltered a very varied assortment of tenants and disreputable lifestyles. But no-one thought that Mister Harry involved himself in any such activity. Perhaps that’s why he caused such a stir when he walked in one Friday evening with a lovely Xhosa girl on his arm. I say caused a stir, but it was the opposite really – you could have heard a pin drop. If there was ever a time when Mister Harry was going to come in for hard feelings from the others, it would have been then. None of us had known this girl before and here he was, a white lad walking in with one of our prettiest. But somehow we weren’t jealous, we were proud! From that time on, she was always with him. After a while I came to thinking how we knew very little about her, not even her name. No-one had really talked to her because she only talked to him. It was like he was the voice for both of them. But he was just the same as ever. Like things do, it just became the way things were and we stopped noticing. Until one Friday night and it was like the coin had flipped over. Mister Harry was a changed man, and it wasn’t good. No-one heard him say anything all evening and his girl ordered their drinks and looked after him. It was like they had swapped places. Before, he was the strong one supporting her. Sometimes she’d even seemed afraid of us, and we were her own kind. Leastways, she never spoke to us. But that night, she was the one doing the talking, not much, just the necessary, and we didn’t hear him say anything the whole evening. Not to us anyway. To her for certain. They were very close that night.

It was the last time we saw either of them. And just like the first night when he walked in with her on his arm and there was the sudden hush, now again, as they got up to leave, the whole room went silent, outside on the kerb too, and we all watched them, as they walked back up Fitzpatrick Road, and disappeared into the mirky black as they reached number 45.

We heard nothing for over a week. But then the news broke. A body had been washed up one morning before dawn in front of the Beach Hotel, just along from where Fitzpatrick Road comes out onto the Esplanade. It was Mister Harry.

It was very quiet that night in our drinking place. People were even leaving early. We did not see his girl again. I wanted to go and call, but others talked me out of it – could look bad, they thought, when I didn’t even know her name. A little after that someone thought they had seen another white man and an English nurse up on the corridor of their block, so, then, best not to look too interested. But I always felt bad. Not because I wanted to try and get the girl, nothing like that. Perhaps I had just picked up a little of Mr Harry’s character.

But like it does, life took over again, things drifted back to how they’d been before, and that became normal once more. It was just a drinking place, after all.

~~~

That wasn’t the last time number 45 came up in my life. But when it came back, things were very different.

Not long after it had all happened – Mister Harry drowning and the girl never coming to the bar no more – I moved up to Pretoria for work. Well, work was part of it. But before that, I’d made enquiries around to find out about her, because, like I said, I didn’t dare go marching up to number 45 once I’d seen those Whites around. No sir. But I was getting a bit exercised about knowing her name, and, being Xhosa myself, I could walk into other bars and tag on to street groups and the like, listen to folks, and pick up on things.

Well, I did find out her name. But I also found out something I would rather not have known. Her name, that was Nobomi. She was from way up the country, a little place almost in the mountains, called Matatiele. Story was she had walked from there to our town on the coast. I can’t say how far that will be, but someone said it took her over a year. Yes, someone. That’s the part I wished I did not know. ‘Someone’ was my older brother. He was 10 years older, so we had never been close. He had left, gone off the rails a bit, you’d say, and was living in a shebeen near the port. I did not know where he was, but this place, a local told me, was somewhere to find information, so I went there in my search. Of course I did not expect to see him, my brother. I had not seen him for years. But there he was, drinking, and he was very friendly to me. I wondered whether he knew who I was, but he did, and he wanted to get me alcohol and food. So I let him. Well, after an hour or more, and he was getting drunk, and his mates were around, and they were all talking about the place and who lived there, they talked about a girl called Nobomi from up the country who was trying to find work, and the owner of this drinking place was letting her stay for free because she had no money. Someone had seen her with a White. They said how the owner thought she should pay something back. One night he came to them with a key to her room and they’d all gone in when she was asleep and they raped her. The owner as well, my brother said, so that meant it was ok, because she’d not paid him anything. It lasted about an hour, he said, but they’d all had a lot of alcohol and in the end she had managed to escape. They tried to follow her, but they were drunk and when they couldn’t find her, they decided it was her fault for not paying and they were just helping the owner out.

You are probably thinking I should have boxed him right then, when he told me all that, but remember, his friends were there and the owner had given her to them. You just can’t make enemies like that in this town. There’s no police would sort it out for us Blacks.

So after that I went to Pretoria, like I had been thinking about anyway. I tell you, I was ashamed. They were the same tribe as her. We shouldn’t do it to one of our own. I couldn’t go back to our drinking place after I knew all that, not with her being just up the road in number 45.

~~~

“Wha, look who’s rolled in from the big city!”

It had been a long time, a few years, and I wouldn’t have come back, no, not ever, if it hadn’t been for what happened at the mine. Years change a man, specially when those years have been somewhere else, not just somewhere else living, somewhere else doing different stuff. I’d gone chasing better work in the mines. You think it’s a strange thing? To go all that way to go down a mine. But it was the money, not loads if you were black, because you got the lowest jobs, but living was cheap so long as you didn’t drink lots and didn’t use the isifebe, and anyway, coming from nothing, anything was better. It was hard, no joke. When I went, I was with the lowest and I had to live in a compound like the men that came from outside the Transvaal. The compounds were outside of the towns and they had fences, and you were marched in columns to the mine every morning, and back at night, and then they locked the gates. You were exhausted, not fit for any playing around, but some men still got alcohol in and there were always women from the township over the hill that had ways to get in. But not me. I kept quiet. I wanted to stay safe. And there was always violent stuff going on. A lot of the men were from the north, over the border, Rhodesia and the like, and they were the lowest and worst picked on. They kept themselves separate when they could, and always went around in gangs for safety.

I started on the trucks on the surface. They were pushed up the inclines from below and we took them over as they came out. They were loaded with waste soil and rock which got piled up in hills and mounds away from the mine, but you had to get the trucks to the top before you could swing the bucket over to empty the slag, and the tops of the hills got further and further. When they got too high so the new loads started to set the base off subsiding, you started another one. Looking round, as far as you could see, the land was covered with these unnatural pointed hills like it had some ugly disease.

All the jobs were graded, with the best-paid being reserved for Whites. But over the months I moved up. Pushing the trucks up the incline underground was the next, which meant being in a team. Each team had a Black Boy in charge to keep them working any way they chose. The Boy was responsible to his White Man, who sometimes went underground as well. I got to be the Black Boy after about a year. Then I was out of the compound and it felt more like the life I left in East London.

My White Man was as big as me and it seemed like everybody was very careful how they were with him. You could see nobody took the risk of disagreeing with him. If they’d said something and it seemed he had another opinion, they quickly changed around what they’d said, so as not to be caught on his wrong side. I’m talking about the other White Men, of course, because the Blacks, they wouldn’t have even been talking to him, unless they were looking down at their feet and muttering “Yes baas”, “No baas”, and all that. But I could talk to him. Not like a White, but more equal than any of my kind. I suppose I got a kind of respect from him. Must have, because some evenings after we’d finished he would take me back to his place and we’d spend a few hours with some beers and his wife would even make us some chow. When we’d finished he’d drive me to the edge of the kasie where I was living. I got to wondering why he was doing this and whether he wanted something from me. But the other Black Boys they all knew how my White Man was favouring me, and they started looking at me with more respect too, and that felt good to me, so I suppose I just accepted whatever he offered. And I passed on whatever instructions he gave. Not just passed on, I had to make make sure the things that he said were done. But I didn’t see what was happening. To me.

Late one shift I heard a commotion further up the incline, a lot of shouting and cursing, sounded like some punching as well, I couldn’t really see because I was at the back where some of my gang weren’t keeping up. I was running up to the commotion, and as I got there I heard a screech and a crash as one of the truck buckets swung over and emptied beside the track, then immediately the screaming of the man whose legs were crushed under the load. That was it, they all started brawling and punching and I had to use my knopkerrie to get them back to order. After that they loaded the waste back on the truck and I made two of them carry the injured man between them. He was screaming all the way ‘cos both his legs were mashed up right down from his knees.

My White Man was waiting when we got back to the surface and he wanted to know what happened. They told him a fight had started between the injured man and another mine boy who accused him of raping his sister with some friends at a drinking place. Probably that was what happened, but it didn’t matter to my White Man, because he wasn’t assed about the sister, he just saw the crime of injuring a mine boy so bad he’d probably never work again – that was the only crime and the only criminal was the boy who broke him like that. My White Man told me to punish the criminal and he brought out a shambok from the office and held it out to me. His lips curled in a sort of smile as he fixed me, and he just said, “Twenty, make them hard.”

I saw the drinking place back in East London where I found my brother, and I saw his drunk friends gloating as he told me about the night they had raped Mr Harry’s girl. I thought of Mr Harry and I wanted to tell him it was his fault, I wanted to curse him, because he should be doing this and it should be his conscience and he would be ok, because he was a White Man and he could have whipped a Black Man, but I was a Black Man and I had to… I was going to… one of my own… and he’d done it for his sister. I felt the thick plaited handle of the whip. I could hold it with both hands. She was in my mind, Mr Harry’s girl, Nobomi. It was like she was looking right into me, as I raised my arms…

It took a quarter-hour. He didn’t get up.

It was the end of the shift, and those standing round walked away. I walked away too. A long way.

~~~

Looking down at her hands, she was saying, “This used to be number 45, but they put more places in, and it’s 56 now.”

I could hear the woman talking to the policeman, but I didn’t want to. I’m not in the police – yes of course there are black policemen, but not me, I’m the Boy they bring when they know there’s a mess to clear up, bodies, that is. It was the best I could get after the mines, when I could walk no more. And I had no papers.

Then the white policeman, “Do you know who the man is?”

I just walked out after my White Man made me whip the mine boy. I walked away from Pretoria. Back to my homeland. I thought I would feel ok there. But then I just kept walking. I was in East London and some people recognised me, but I couldn’t stay, I wanted no-one to know me, so I kept walking. Until I was exhausted.

“I do not know him.”

This is Port Elizabeth. No, it is Korsten. It’s a location just outside the White town. Number 56, used to be 45, she said. It’s just a shack. When I saw inside, my mind went back to the mine, the mine boy lying in the dirt. The blood all over. The blood on my hands from the whip. I thought, I’ve walked all that way for this. This Black was certainly dead. There was a miner’s axe on the floor… but it shouldn’t be red… the body lay flat out where the door had been shattered… but its head…

“Tell me who killed this man, because I do not believe it was you.”

I could hear the white policeman talking to her, the woman, and I thought – he is trying to make her save herself. He went on,

“There have been other people here, we can see that, so who were they and why were they here?”

Still looking into her hands, she said nothing.

The white policeman held out a blood-covered piece of jewellery.

“Whose is this amulet? It is not yours. I can see that. It is covered in blood.”

She looked at what he was showing her and I saw her eyes fill with tears.

“I killed him because he was going to rape me.”

“If you had killed him you would have blood on you, a lot of blood. You haven’t. Where did a woman like you get a miner’s pick?”

“I found it here. I don’t know who lived here before me.”

“Who else saw what happened?”

She shook her head. “I killed him.”

“You do not have the strength.”

“I have the strength. A desperate woman has strength.”

He sighed.

“Is there someone who knows you and who can tell us about you, because I do not believe you killed this man.”

“I have no-one.”

He tried a bit longer, the white policeman, but she would say no more. Then he told the black sergeant they would have to take her, and to call his men. They led her out and put her in the lock-up van. As it drove off, the white policeman came back in to make sure I was arranging everything right. I did not know whether I should, but it felt like… after all, she was one of my tribe, I thought…

“What is her name, baas?”

It seemed like he had not heard me, but he got out his pocketbook and flicked through some pages…

“Nobomi.”

He stood, looking down, shaking his head slowly, “More than one person died here.”

Then, as he turned to leave, “But I don’t think we shall ever know what happened.”

He was looking into my eyes, as he said this. It was the only time I remember a white man see me as just another man. He could have been Mr Harry.

(“Number 45” is a back-story linked to scenes in the author’s novel “River – freedom comes slowly”)