The World Beneath (3 page)

“Only it was wrong. It was all wrong.” And his grandmother shivered. “The day came when the sun was supposed to rise up red like blood in the east and go down again in the east, and the white people were meant to run into the sea.” She paused. “Only the sun came up as normal and went down as normal. No one was driven into the sea. And the people starved. Because no new cattle sprang up out of the furrows of the fields, as the prophecy had promised.

“Our people have never recovered from this. We are still under the foot of the foreigner. That is why we struggle, my child. And one day”— and she turned his face to hers and gave him a long, long look that made him shiver —“one day, perhaps you will be one of those who can help us to escape our prison. But that is a story for tomorrow. Now you are tired.”

And it was true. Joshua felt so tired, he could hardly keep his eyes open.

When he went back inside, he fell straight into a deep sleep, and he saw piles of dead cattle and rows and rows of starving people, all on their knees, with their hands outstretched.

“Feed us, feed us!” they were crying. “Help us, or we will die.” Some of them were little children.

He woke sobbing in the night, and then his mother was there.

He heard her speaking to his grandmother the next morning. “Why did you tell him that terrible story? He had a nightmare.”

Then his grandmother’s voice. It was harsh. “Sooner or later, he must know the truth. Living here, he is protected. But when he grows up, he will have to face it.”

The next day, Sipho came. He hardly ever saw Sipho, but he came on the bus from Jo’burg because Joshua was ill. He looked gray with exhaustion.

They sat on the bench outside the house, talking in the late afternoon sun, Sipho’s head tilted back against the wall, his eyes closed, his arm around Joshua.

“You look tired, my brother,” said the boy. “Do they not treat you well?”

Sipho sighed. “It is not the work,” he replied. “The work is hard, but I do not mind it.” He paused. “You know that the government is unfair to us?” he asked, but it was not really a question. “You know how we are only allowed to work in certain jobs? And that our mother is not allowed to take you and the twins to live with her in Cape Town?”

“But I’m going!” said Joshua.

“Yes, you’re going. But you are a special case. And besides,”— Sipho was talking more quickly now, almost as if he were talking to himself —“besides, these are only some of the things that are wrong with this country. We do not have any say”— he thumped the arm of his chair with every syllable as he spoke —“any say, any say at all.” His big palm, rough with working, thumped the wooden arm of the big chair. “Any say in what happens to us: where we live, what work we do, how much we can earn.”

He whipped around and took Joshua’s chin in his hand, gazing into his eyes with a fervor Joshua had never seen before. “Joshua, you are too young, but when you grow up, you will see this country for what it is: a country in which we work like dogs but where we do not have any power!”

He leaned back and looked far into the distance. “Some of us are fighting the government. It is dangerous work. It is secret. And if they find out —” He broke off, as if he had only just remembered that he was speaking to his little brother.

Joshua lay very still and remembered that moment: Sipho’s sideways glance and the way he had suddenly fallen silent. He remembered how he had felt shaky inside, like a great big dark cave had opened up in front of him and something was pushing him into it.

They hadn’t spoken further, because his mother had come and said it was time for Sipho to go back to Jo’burg. He and his mother walked with Sipho to the bus stop and waited. He felt suddenly afraid and squeezed Sipho’s hand. Sipho laughed at him as he usually did, swung him around, teased him, and put his strong arms around their mother and hugged her hard as tears ran down her cheeks; they always did when Sipho went. But there was something in his eyes, something behind the big smile and the jokes, that made Joshua shiver. Soon after that, the dreams began.

B
oy . . .” said Mrs. Malherbe, pink-eyed at the side of the pool, her wet hair crimped close to her head. “Boy, tell your mother to get me some tea. And tell her to cut the lemon thin.”

He ducked his head and ran. His job during the day was to keep out of the way but to be within earshot. Then Mrs. Malherbe didn’t have to shout for Beauty.

She had been quieter in the last few days. Mr. Malherbe came and went as before, but after supper he went straight into his study and shut the door. Mrs. Malherbe put records on the big walnut stereo in the front lounge. From the speakers, a man’s voice sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

Joshua took to creeping into the house again after supper. The Cape autumn was crisping the oak leaves at their edges, and it was colder in the evenings. But the house was always warm, the kitchen especially.

He was pulling Betsy’s long ears and talking quietly to her when he heard the noises from the dining room. A thump and then a gasp. He held his breath and expelled it slowly. Silence. Then another thump. But no talking, no shouting.

Then another gasp, a silence, and the beginning of a thin wail, like a young baby’s cry, weak and powerless: “Oh, Gordon . . .” Then nothing.

Terrified, he scrambled out of the cupboard and made for the back door, but he wasn’t fast enough. The dining-room door was flung open so violently it crashed against the wall. Mr. Malherbe brushed past his crouched form, unseeing. He grabbed his keys from the rack and was gone.

Trembling, Joshua hesitated on the threshold of the dark yard. His mother’s light was out. He turned back into the house. Mrs. Malherbe was not in the study or the lounge or the dining room. He listened at the foot of the stairs. He could hear the bath running.

In the morning, Mrs. Malherbe lay as if dead by the swimming pool, her hips jutting at the edges of her yellow swimsuit. There was a purple stain on her arm. Her mouth looked odd; it was turned down at one side. A little closer, he could see that the whole side of her face was puffy and yellow. Sunglasses hid her eyes.

“Boy!”

She glared at him, her iron-colored hair twisted into waves close to her head. “I want you to get me some cigarettes. Can you do that? Twenty Viceroys. There’s money on the hall table.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“And, boy?”

“Yes, Madam?”

“Don’t stare — it’s rude.”

Joshua opened the gate and looked up and down the street. It was quiet in the midday sun, pools of shade under the big oaks spilling out into a desert of melting tarmac. The one-rand note was damp in his hand. He pushed it down into his pocket and set off.

It was only a quarter of a mile to the shop, but Joshua hated the journey. He hesitated at the edge of the shade and made a dash, gasping at the heat beneath his bare feet. He hopped from foot to foot, then continued, skirting the big iron gates where the Dobermans lurked.

They always flew at him with such ferocity that he was sure the latch would give and they would burst through. He would be sure they were locked away in the back courtyard, and then just as he passed they would rush out after him, mouths wide with longing.

Today they didn’t, though, and he was just making his usual hop, skip, and jump down one side of the street, thinking he was in the clear — there were no more gates, the shop was only around the corner now — when a police van turned onto the street.

His mind went blank. This was the very worst thing that could happen. Here he was, on a white street, with money in his pocket. His mother had told him, “My boy, you must never let the police see you. You are not supposed to be here. You must be invisible. Our people are not allowed in white areas unless we have a pass to work here.”

But to his astonishment, the big Black Maria eased on by, then picked up speed as the siren gave voice and the orange light began to spin.

He ran straight across the intersection, along the burning pavement, around the corner, and into the half-light of Mr. Koegel’s shop.

“TwentyViceroyplease,” he said quickly, before seeing that Mrs. Ellis was standing by the counter. Mrs. Ellis lived across the road from the Malherbes and because of her age, her mountainous size, and her heart condition was rarely seen this far from home.

“Tsssk,”
she tutted at him. Then she winked without smiling. “Serve him first,” she said briskly to Mr. Koegel. “I want a good gossip. And we don’t want to keep Mrs. Malherbe waiting for her cigarettes, do we, boy?”

On the way back, Joshua took the short route, running under the tunnel of trees on Elsie’s Road. As he passed under the last one, there was a loud crack and he looked up. A face, ashen with fright, gazed out halfway up the tree; a pair of legs pedaled the air.

“Help me, man!” a voice said. It happened so fast. Almost without thinking, Joshua reached up and quickly gave the man a leg up, higher into the branches. The man gave an “oof!” of pain. Joshua’s heart began a
rat-tat-tat
he could almost hear.

He was still gazing up when a voice barked in his ear. “
Wat doen jy?
What are you doing?” It was the policeman again, in the van with the cage on the back. Dumbly, shaking, he held up Mrs. Malherbe’s cigarettes and gestured down the road.

“Weg is jy!”
said the driver. “Go! Away with you!” He rolled his eyes and made an upward shrug of exasperation. The van rolled on down the road, but slowly, the two men inside glancing through the gateways and into the hedges.

There was a faint rustle. “Hey, thanks, man,” said the voice. Joshua dropped to one knee and made as if to tie a shoelace on his bare foot. He looked covertly up the road. The Black Maria was gone.

He looked up into the tree. “That’s OK. Just don’t do that too many times. Next time I’ll have a heart attack.”

The dark face looking out at him was laughing, the teeth even and white, eyes brown and merry. But the left eye was half closed and the lip was cut.

“Hey, where you staying, then? I’ll come see you.”

“Number twenty-three.”

And Joshua, released from the thrall of that smile, ran.

Mrs. Malherbe had retired to rest. His mother shook her head and raised her eyes to heaven. The Madam was not happy. He was in trouble. He had taken too long.

He went down to the pool, still thinking about the man. Who was he? Why were the police looking for him? There were frogs in the filter basket. He went to fish them out, hoping they would still be alive. But they were floating, pale bellies up, turning slowly, legs trailing, little hands in the gesture of surrender.

Then, as he reached among the cold bodies for the handle, he saw it, clinging to a broken tile, its little emerald body quaking, breaths pulsing its sides in and out.

He lifted the young frog out on his fingers, cupping it in both hands. He decided to keep it. Turning this problem over in his mind, he went down the garden toward the compost heap.

He would need to stop it from getting back to the pool. But how? And what could he feed it? He didn’t even know what it ate. And what if he made a little home for it and then Goodman the gardener came, and —

A hand closed over his wrist. He dropped the frog.
“Aaai-eee!”
He looked up.

“Hello.”

The man smiled at him. Joshua could see that his lip had begun to bleed. “Hey, you saved my life, man. I owe you.” He dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

Joshua found his voice. “So what did you do? Why were the police looking for you?”

The smile shut off like a switch. “One day I’ll tell you.”

“Hey, come!” Joshua pulled at him. “They mustn’t see you. Go to the old shed. Down the path behind the plane trees and through the hedge. I’ll get you some tea.”

The man resisted for a moment. Then he switched on the smile again and went. He was dragging his left leg, Joshua could see, and wincing with each step.

J
oshua ran up to the house, down the winding path, through the gap in the hedge, and concealed himself behind the high wall that bordered the yard. He peeked through the gate. The coast was clear; the cars were gone from the garage. It was safe to go in.