The World Beneath (8 page)

It was strange to be in this big room. The walls were the green of a Granny Smith apple in the half-light. The ceiling was high and all around the edge it had a pattern, like the complicated curls on the sides of a cake. In the middle there was a circle, with little creamy scallops, where the light hung. The curtains moved a little at the bay window. The streetlight shone onto the ceiling.

Joshua’s eyes began to close, though he fought sleep. His mother was still downstairs, cleaning up, and he wanted to stay awake until she came upstairs. He wished Betsy was up here too, snoring comfortably in her basket. The upstairs was so quiet, with its big dark rooms off the wide corridor. He could hear Mrs. Malherbe in her room. A drawer banged shut.

He clenched all his muscles and grasped the blanket’s nubbled edge in his fists. He would not fall asleep. He would not. He would not.

A sound woke him. Car lights ran across the ceiling, and the rattle of the engine told him it was a diesel.

Then another noise. He slid out of bed and hopped from the cold floorboards to the rug. He stood at the window and looked down at the garden.

At its far end, the floodlights flicked on, and it was washed in a lurid green light. The pool swam, blue as an extra sky, behind its hedges. A movement caught his eye beyond the filtration tank. The lights were doused, and suddenly he understood.

This time it was different. The silence was heavy. When they saw him, a little sigh ran around them like a breeze.

Then: “They were children,” said one. “Kids like him.”

“
Amabhulu zizinja
. The Boers are dogs, to kill children.” Another voice came out of the darkness.

Joshua felt Tsumalo’s hand on his shoulder. “This boy,” said Tsumalo. “His brother was killed. They shot him like a wild beast.”

“Sipho,” he added the name softly. “His name was Sipho.”

“Amabhulu zizinja.”

“Amabhulu zizinja.”

“Amabhulu zizinja.”

“Go to bed now,” said Tsumalo. “This is no place for you.”

“
Hamba kahle, boetie.
Go well.”

“Go well.”

“Go well.”

In the morning, his mother was not in the bed beside him.

She was in the kitchen, making the tea. The radio was on, playing soft music, and tears were running straight down her plump cheeks.

“Hayi,”
she said. “
Hayi
. It is not right. All those children!” And she hugged him hard. He felt her body quaking. He was frightened. She wouldn’t let him go. She was hurting him. He squirmed.

Mrs. Malherbe came in, and they broke apart. Normally, she would have glared and said: “Beauty, where is my tea? You know I like it at seven sharp.”

But she didn’t say anything; she just crossed to the radio and turned it up as the pips came on. She stirred the teapot, poured two cups, and put one on the table in front of Beauty. She poured a glass of milk, handed it to Joshua, and sat down heavily.

They listened in silence.

The doorbell rang. Beauty began to get up.

“No — I’ll go,” said Mrs. Malherbe.

They heard her say, “Who is it?” They heard the bolts slide and the heavy door shift over the thick hall carpet.

Then she was back. Robert was with her. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, there was a bloody gash on his arm, and his face was bruised. He leaned heavily on the table and sat down carefully.

“What happened?” Mrs. Malherbe whispered. Her face was suffused with color; it ran in a mottled rash down her neck.

“There were riots in Guguletu,” he said brusquely. “Haven’t you heard?”

Mrs. Malherbe shook her head. She hugged herself with one arm, and pressed her fist to her mouth.

Beauty filled an enamel basin with water and brought it to the table. Joshua fetched the first-aid kit. Then he stood by the door while Mrs. Malherbe cut away Robert’s sleeve and swabbed at the blood. It floated in the water.

“It was a massacre,” said Robert, and waved at his arm. “Whites spend their lives worrying about Armageddon. Well, it’s here. It’s bloody well here. Only not for us.” He slammed his good hand on the table.

“Hold still,” Mrs. Malherbe said. “Or I’ll never get this finished.” Her tone was brisk; her color had returned. She wrapped a bandage over the cotton and gauze, pulling it tight and securing it with tape.

Robert drew in his breath sharply. “I need to file,” he said. “I need a table, a typewriter, and a phone. I can’t get back to the office. Ma?” Mrs. Malherbe nodded.

Robert’s blue eyes found Joshua’s, and he scrabbled in his pockets and tossed a jingling bundle at him along with a smile. “The car’s in the drive. Clean it up for me? It’s caught a couple of rocks. Luckily the windshield’s survived.”

“Thanks,” he added over his shoulder as he left the room.

T
he typing stopped and started; stopped and started. Then the clattering halted and they could hear Robert talking on the phone. Finally, he was finished.

He appeared at the kitchen door. “I’m famished,” he said. “And I’ve missed your food, Beauty. Any chance of something to eat?”

“The lunch, it will be ready soon, Master Robert.” Beauty looked up from the carrots she was chopping into coins and smiled at him. Joshua watched from the red stool by the stove. She never smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Malherbe.

“How is the Master’s arm?”

“Oh, Beauty. Please don’t call me ‘Master.’” And he smiled back at her. “How’s Tsumalo? Still here?” Robert helped himself to a beer from the pot-bellied Frigidaire, flipped off the cap against the counter’s metal edge, and took a swallow.

“Yes, Master. He is still here. It has been a good hiding place.”

“What a joke. Do you know how long they have been looking for him? He is a famous man, your Tsumalo. There is graffiti on De Waal Drive. It says, ‘
Viva Ngenge
, Tsumalo is King.’ They think he is in Maputo.” Robert laughed, delighted.

Joshua went to look through the porthole in the green baize door.

“
Sssst!
The Madam, she is coming!” Panic caught at his voice.

Robert picked up Mrs. Malherbe’s gin and tonic from the table and went through the swing door without a pause.

“Let’s sit on the
stoep
,” they heard him say. “Hard to believe it’s winter; it’s so warm outside.”

It was after supper. Robert leaned against the red Formica counter with a mug of coffee while Beauty washed up. “So where’s Tsumalo — out holding a meeting?” It was a joke, Joshua thought. Tsumalo could not go anywhere far, although the leg was less swollen and his limp less pronounced. Joshua had begun to smuggle books from Mr. Malherbe’s study out to the shed.

Tsumalo had begun by laughing. The first book Joshua found for him was by George Adamson. “Look.
Born Free
,” he had said, holding up the book with the bearded man and the lioness on the cover. “That’s me. Born to be free.”

But when Joshua brought him books by Marx and Orwell and Huxley, he stopped laughing and went silent as he looked at them, though he threw the Kipling against the wall —“Racist pig!” he said — and laughed at the school history book. “Look,” he said. “Simon van der Stel. He was the first Dutch governor of the Cape. And do you know what? He was Colored. But does it say that here? No, it doesn’t.”

“You must be careful,” Joshua said. “I must put them back.” He picked up the Kipling and the dark gray
History of South Africa, Standard 9–10
, with its paper covers. He smoothed them down and crept back into the house with them. He waited until Mrs. Malherbe had gone to bed and then slipped them back onto the study shelves, exactly where they had come from. Always in alphabetical order. He knew his ABCs. He was OK.

But no one ever noticed. If Mr. Malherbe had once read the books, he certainly didn’t anymore. When he was home, he sat in the study with his whiskey after dinner, falling asleep over the newspaper. He never glanced at the shelves. There were rows and rows of orange-backed books with black penguins on the spines. Joshua tried to read them sometimes, struggling over the words; he smuggled them out to the room so his mother could read with him.

“I was lucky,” she told him. “I went to a mission school. They were good teachers. Now I am glad because I can read with you.”

Joshua liked to borrow the old Enid Blytons on the bottom shelf. They were easy to read, though the world she wrote about was strange. There was a girl called George. And a boy called Julian. There was danger but it was only pretend danger, angry men who did not ever do anything really bad, and picnics by the sea, and parents at the end, and safety, and cocoa, and a dog called Timmy.

There were never policemen who beat you for no reason. There were never adults who behaved inexplicably. There was never, ever murder, blood, or death.

Oh, the stories he could tell! He had learned most of them from his grandmother, but he liked to embellish them with extra bits. He told them to Tsumalo sometimes, sitting in the shed at night, talking with a little candle stuck on the packing case at the end of the bed.

“. . . And then they ran away to the mountains and lived on
suurvygies
and eucalyptus leaves and baked tortoise forever and ever and ever.”

How Tsumalo laughed! He took Joshua’s head in his hands and gazed at him and said: “If I ever have a son, I want him to be just like you!”

But sometimes Tsumalo would want to lie and read quietly, and he would shake his head and say, “Yes, yes!” to himself, and Joshua would be forced to read the comics that he had already read:
Superman
and
Batman and Robin, Richie Rich
and
Archie and Veronica.
He liked Veronica. He thought she was like Anna. She was so mean. He thought he would like to be like that — then no one would ever dare to be mean to him.

Other times, Tsumalo would make him read aloud. It was supposed to be good for him. “If you are going to be a free man, you must know how to read well,” said Tsumalo. “It is the most important thing in the world. If you can read, you can teach yourself anything. Anything!”

And he would stop and gaze out the window of the shed with its tacked-on flowered curtain that Beauty had made, and narrow his eyes and say dreamily, “Yes, you must learn how to read like a white boy.”

M
ummy says you’re going to kill us all.”

Joshua turned around. He had the polish and cloth in his hand. He couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but he knew it was Anna’s. He put the tin down carefully by Robert’s car. Was she in the tree?

“Over here, you
moegoe
!” But he still couldn’t see her.

“Pssst!”

He looked at the fence. He could see the knothole. Nothing.

He shrugged, picked up the tin, and dolloped some of the pink gunk onto the red hood of the Alfa. There was a jagged hole in its smooth surface. He would have to be careful.

He could feel the outrage coming from behind him, and he smiled to himself as he spread the polish.

There was a hot breath at his elbow. He looked down at Anna. He hadn’t realized how small she was. She was wearing a striped T-shirt that failed to quite meet the waistband of her shorts, exposing a creamy roll of flesh.

“Hey,” he said. “Where’s your pretty dress?”

“I hate dresses! I’m a tomboy!”

He handed her the cloth without comment and went to get another. As he rounded the corner of the house, she called after him: “Hey, boy!”

He turned.

“Are you? Going to kill us all?”

“Not if you polish that car properly!” he said. He was impressed at his own daring.

Robert was coming down the back stairs from the
stoep.
“Hey, how’re you doing? How’s that car coming?” The blue eyes were blurry, Joshua could see. There was a beer in his hand. “Where’s Tsumalo?”

“I don’t know, Master,” said Joshua, giving the little bob of respect he’d been taught.

“Don’t call me Master!” Robert laughed. “Let no man call me Master . . .” He weaved off down the path. Joshua watched him negotiate the gate into the garden unsteadily, bottle dangling from his fingertips.

“Why are they smashing up the schools?” asked Anna. “It’s silly.” She was folding and refolding her cloth, watching Joshua as he finished the intricacies of the wheel spokes with his cloth-wrapped finger.