Those Who Love Night (33 page)

He remembered the police truck and the long drive there. He also remembered the place in the reed-fringed hollow where he had stopped. The other officer, twenty years older than he was, but his junior in rank, had refused to enter the village. It had not helped to assure him that Five Brigade had left hours before and that they were already in Solusi. Word had come from the people there. “They will not be the ones to die if that information is wrong,” the other man had said. “In any event, I know what we will find and I can't go into the village. I've seen it before and I can't see it again.”

Making the decision to go had not been difficult. “I must go,” Jonas told the other officer. “They are my people. I have friends and relatives there. I must go.”

“Are you sure there is no danger now?” the other man had said. “Maybe there's still danger.”

“No,” he had said, “there's no danger. They've left. I've heard it from people in the area.”

“I'll come with you.” That had been his intention and his will had only failed at the sight of the first body. They were still a few hundred meters from the village. The body was that of a teenage girl. It was clear that she had been fleeing whatever had happened in the village. She was lying face downward and her body was cold. There was blood, and there must have been wounds, but he did not look for them.

Why he had stopped there to continue on foot was never easy for him to explain afterward. He felt somehow that by driving into the village he would be desecrating it, like walking over a grave.

From the place where he had left the truck, he could see the roofs of the huts. They were partly obscured by the scrub and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was true that there was no sign of cooking fires, but the morning was well advanced and the time for cooking was over. If they had torched the huts, the thatch grass would still be smoking, but there was only the silent scrub, the blue sky and the girl's body.

Everything was so silent that perhaps the girl's death was an isolated incident. Perhaps the reports had it wrong. Perhaps the people who had phoned in had confused one village with another. Perhaps when he reached it he would find that all was normal. Perhaps people were going about their leisurely business today, as on any other day, and perhaps the girl who had died was part of an altogether separate matter.

Let it be so, he prayed. Let it be that the report was a mistake. I will do anything, if it never happened. I will devote myself to the service of humanity. I will give my life. Just let it be so.

And yet he knew that this was unlikely. The night before, they had already heard that Five Brigade was on the move. When they traveled at night it usually had only one meaning.

The people here know every village and every person in them, he told himself. There can be no mistake. Such a mistake is not possible.

It was only when he reached the flat, straight section of the track immediately below the village that he got his first clear view of the huts. He had been walking, but now he broke into a trot. The other man had already fallen behind. If it had not been for two bodies toward the far end of the village in the center of the track, the place would have looked innocent. But the bodies, even from a distance, were clearly lifeless. Before that time of his life, he had little experience of death, but the untidy spread of the limbs set them apart from any living creature. There was no creature, human or animal, that slept with so little concern for how its limbs were spread.

He slowed again. The trotting became a walk, then even the walk slowed. Over to his left, at the edge of the huts, a burned-out car was leaning at an angle the manufacturers could never have intended. Behind it, another body lay facedown, much like the girl he had passed on the track.

To his right was the house where the woman had lived with her husband and the children. The front door stood open, but there was no sign of movement. The pickup truck, too, was gone. That's what had happened, he thought. They had fled in the truck, and she was still alive.

He climbed the steps of the house slowly and stopped in the front door. Then he made his way slowly from room to room. As far as he could see, there was no sign of disturbance. The beds had been slept in, but otherwise nothing had been disturbed. Certainly no one had died there.

They're alive, he thought. They got clear away. It's obvious they're alive.

Going back to the veranda, he looked into the house one last time. Somewhere he could hear the buzzing that he recognized as being made by the big bluebottle flies.

That the truck was gone was a sure sign. If they had a start of just thirty seconds and had headed into the bush, no one would have found them, certainly not a bunch of soldiers. If they were out of sight by the time Five Brigade entered the village, then there would be no stopping them. And her husband knew the bush and he knew how to handle the truck on bush tracks. When they ran out of track they would continue on foot, and be safe. He was not much of a man, Jonas thought, but he could drive and he knew the country for many kilometers around.

Jonas had not wanted to see it. At the first glimpse, he had turned his head away, but it was there, protruding from the door of one of the huts ahead. The hand was perhaps half the size of one of his. Its owner must have been no more than five or six when he died. Was it a boy? He would have to go closer to look. He would have to know sooner or later who the child was. But not now. For now it could wait. She and her family had gotten clear away. He was sure of it.

Ahead the track dipped and he came to a stop at the edge of a slight rise. The dip in the track had hidden the bodies. Bluebottle flies rose from them, but only for a moment.

It was then he saw the truck. It had ridden high against the sloping trunk of a thorn tree. There was no one on the back. The people who may have occupied the back as they tried to escape were spread around it on the ground. Their limbs were trapped in the ungainly contortions of death. Hanging partly out of the driver's cab he could see the body of a young man. His shirt was stained by his own blood. Without going closer he knew that it was her husband.

He made his way slowly round the tangle of bodies, staying clear of them. He saw no children, and only two women. Both looked older than she was. But there was the truck, and there was her husband. Now he could see stab wounds. Each wound looked like a small mouth, the tissue puckering up like lips where it burst through the slit made by a bayonet. Hands too were damaged, as the people had tried to defend themselves.

In the distance, beyond the last line of huts, a man was approaching. He was wearing a shirt that was torn and shorts that came down below his knees. He was walking very slowly and wandering from side to side as he made his way in the general direction of the village.

“Hello,” Jonas called. “Hello.” Then he recognized the man as old Makaleka who lived with his daughter. “Father,” he called. “It's me, Jonas.”

The old man showed no sign of having heard him, turning away, then sitting down heavily in the grass. To reach him, Jonas would have to pass next to the bodies around the truck.

How many bodies were there? He tried to count them, but they were close together, some of them partly covering others. He was not seeing clearly. Something about his eyes made the bodies all merge into one another.

Old Makaleka was stirring. From his position next to the truck and close enough to her husband's body to touch it, Jonas could see the old man's head just protruding above the tall thatching grass. His head moved first one way, then the other.

He would have gone closer, but it was then that he heard the crying. It was clearly the sound of small children, but weak and plaintive. They may have been crying for most of the night. The sound was coming from the direction of the old pigsty, but there were huts in the way.

He ran, stumbling on the uneven pathways, once colliding heavily with a clay wall and almost falling. Unexpectedly, he broke clear of the last hut. He saw the form on the ground between himself and the pigsty, and knew it for what it was. Approaching it was impossible, but avoiding it was also impossible. From ten paces away he could see where the bayonet that had killed her and the child inside her had entered her abdomen.

Remembering that day in later years, he never knew whether he would have gone closer or simply fled the scene. But it was then that he heard the children cry. They were on their feet and peering at him through the light scrub skirting the pigsty. The boy was wearing underpants, but the girl was naked. They had not moved from the place where their mother had hidden them.

*   *   *

No more, Chunga thought. He was pouring from the whiskey bottle again. With a great effort he drove the images away. He could bear no more of it. The part after that was beyond recollection. It was beyond his ability to approach it.

And now, after all this time, there was this face. Of all the faces there could be and all the women there had been, he was again confronted by this one unforgettable face.

He drank from the glass without emptying it and left the bottle and glass on the tray. His wristwatch told him that it was almost three o'clock. The time hardly mattered.

43

The body shop was located just south of the city center, among other small industries and buildings that had once housed storerooms or workshops, but which now stood empty. Yudel followed the instructions on Mpofu's note, driving slowly to avoid the seemingly aimless crowds that filled the streets. He parked as Mpofu had instructed, next to the gate of what seemed to be a disused warehouse. “We go in by the back door, down there,” Yudel told Abigail.

The door at which he was pointing was made of steel and set into a corrugated-iron extension of an old brick building, clearly the back entrance. They had brought Helena as back-up “in case of unpleasant surprises,” as Yudel had put it. “She may be a pain in the ass,” he had said to Abigail, “but she's a tough guy.” Now he turned to her where she was sitting in the backseat. “You move in behind the steering wheel. If we have to leave in a hurry, be ready. On the other hand, if we don't come out, you'll know where we went missing and who we came to see.”

“I should also come in,” she said.

“No,” Yudel said. “This is why you're here.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Boss,” Helena said.

They walked the half-block to the door unhurriedly. Nothing in the narrow back street, fringed with service businesses, looked unusual. Yudel had the thousand U.S. dollars in ten-dollar bills that Robert had sent. He was carrying it in the money belt inside his shirt. Larger denominations had not been available. Abigail raised the question that was occupying both their minds. “Do you suppose this is real?”

“It looked like it, when he made the offer,” Yudel said.

The door was slightly ajar. It yielded to the gentlest push. Yudel led the way through the door. Inside, the body shop smelled of fresh spray paint. Two workmen in overalls were rubbing down a car that had just received a new undercoat. On the far side, the double-garage door of the shop's main entrance was standing open. A bicycle passed outside. One of the men pointed to a small, glass-enclosed office without saying anything.

Mpofu was seated behind the desk on an office chair. He sat forward without rising. “I thought you'd be coming alone,” he told Yudel.

“I am Ms. Bukula's assistant in this matter,” Yudel said. “The money is hers, not mine.” As an extra thought, he added, “We also have people waiting for us outside in the car.” Just so that you don't get the wrong idea, he thought.

Yes, you little prick, Abigail thought. Why don't you talk to me? She and Yudel sat down on the two chairs that were intended for visitors.

“I thought you were going to be alone,” he said again. “I made the deal with you.”

“If you're unhappy, we can leave now.” Although he had only met him once before, Yudel knew his man. Mpofu wanted the money too badly to let it slip away now.

“Have you got the money?” Mpofu's eyes had narrowed with the abiding suspicion all dishonest people carry with them as part of their character makeup.

“Yes,” Yudel said.

“I'd like to see it.”

“Not yet.” Abigail took over the negotiation. “Where are my clients being held?”

“How do I know the money is here?”

“It's very simple,” Abigail said. “Mr. Gordon and I are well-known as honest people. You are everywhere suspected of being dishonest. We are the only people in this meeting who can be trusted.”

Clearly put, Yudel thought. Perhaps not the most diplomatic way, though.

Mpofu bridled under the insult. “I'm not used to being spoken to like that.” He moved in his seat, so that his right shoulder was facing them, his jacket hanging open enough to give them a view of the holstered firearm in his left armpit. Neither Yudel nor Abigail could avoid seeing it.

“You're not a
CIO
agent at this meeting,” Abigail told him. “At this meeting, you're a traitor, selling your organization's secrets.”

It seemed that the thought of the money had caused some confusion in Mpofu's thinking. This may have been the first time that the idea of his being a traitor had entered his mind. He made as if to rise, glancing in the direction of the body shop's front entrance, but sat down again. His position in the
CIO
may have been under threat, but the gun, resting against his chest, had always been an effective way of settling disputes. “I want to see the money.”

“While two of your thugs are just over there, pretending to be mechanics?”

“That's my brother and his helper. This is his business. I wouldn't be such a fool as to bring other
CIO
people.”

Unless you're all in it together, Abigail thought. “How do I know you've even got our people?”

“I know everything about it. I know where they're being kept. I know that they get better food than the others.”