Zulu (24 page)

Sanogo and his men had fallen back in confusion—seven uniformed officers, including the one who'd had his chin torn off and was being supported by a terrified young recruit. The bullets were coming thick and fast over the counter, behind which Dina was hiding, her hands over her head. There were more shots out on the streets, like an echo to the groans of the wounded.

Fully alert now, the Americans had launched a lightning counterattack, bombarding the pickup outside their HQ, until the rain of fire stopped.

Brian and Neuman ran out into the yard of the
shebeen
, a dead end heaped with crates and bowls of crushed corn. They looked up at the corrugated iron roofs, and climbed onto the gutter. The passersby had run away in panic. Cries could be heard from the neighboring alleys. The three blacks in the back of the Toyota had turned and were now responding to the Americans' fire. After a brief exchange, one of the blacks collapsed against the tarp, and the pickup set off at high speed. A fourth shooter covered their escape from the door of the truck. Brian and Neuman fired from the roofs, emptying their barrels at the
tsotsis
in the back.

They jumped off the roof in a cloud of dust.

The machine-gunned Toyota zigzagged on the street before crashing into a small brick house with a dull thud. The passenger who had been shooting from the door jumped out and ran off, screaming. Brian and Neuman ran to the truck, reloading their guns as they did so. The men in the back of the pick-up had stopped moving, their bodies riddled with holes. Neuman covered Brian, who aimed his revolver at the smoking engine. The driver's face was resting on the wheel, his eyes open—the bullet had come out through his mouth. Brian looked up and saw people running in all directions. Neuman was already a hundred yards away, at the end of the alley.

The fugitive was holding an AK-47. He fired a burst blindly before turning the corner. He reappeared immediately, retreating, firing all over the place. The Americans had cut off the area, blocking off his retreat. A bullet-riddled car came charging at him in a cloud of dust, and stopped dead.

Cornered, the killer turned toward Neuman and, with his eyes bulging, aimed the AK-47. A black with a hideous face, who seemed to be defying him in his madness. Gulethu.

As he pressed the trigger, Neuman fired.

Mzala's men sprang out of the car, guns at the ready. Gulethu was lying on the beaten earth, a bullet in his hip. He blinked in the sun, saw the Americans at the end of the street, and tried to pick up the AK-47, but it was out of his reach. He smiled dementedly, squeezing the amulet around his neck. The
tsotsis
finished him off with a burst of fire at close range.

Neuman wanted to cry out, but he felt a sharp pain. Instinctively, he lifted his hand to his stomach. Removing it, he saw it was red. Hot blood was running down his shirt.

 

 

 

 

Z
ina had been born without brothers. As the eldest child, she had learned the Zulu martial art of
izinduku
, usually reserved for boys, and had shown a skill and a determination uncommon in such a pretty girl. Her father had gone to the forest to cut her a stick that was the right size for her. She had fought with the boys, blow for blow, ignoring the sniggers.

Her father had been stripped of his position for refusing to kowtow to the Bantu authorities who had granted the tribal chiefs a relative autonomy in return for obeying the apartheid laws. He didn't want to be one of those little despots who'd sold out to the whites and would soon be imposing their power by force inside the homelands with the help of the militias. Their house had been bulldozed, their animals killed, and the clan driven out, its members scattered through the neighboring slums.

Zina had decided to fight back. The ANC was banned, and its leaders had been in prison for twenty years, so she had joined Chief Buthelezi's Inkatha movement.

There were few women fighters in Inkatha. From time to time, using a knitting club as a cover, they would help to organize political meetings or hide white sympathizers who were in danger of being arrested by the army or lynched by the comrades. Zina had demonstrated with the Zulu fighting sticks they were allowed to carry, she had challenged white power by parading with imaginary weapons, she had printed leaflets, and attacked and fled the militants of the ANC-UDF, which up until then had represented the opposition. Because she performed all these masculine activities and kept her femininity to herself, when her hidden side did eventually emerge it had been like an eruption: futile outbursts, cataclysmic love affairs and disappointments. It was as if Zina had thrown her heart off of a bridge a long time ago and was waiting for a little girl—herself—to appear and pick it up.

The years of apartheid had passed, her adult years, and the political struggle had made her as hard as the wood of the sticks her father had carved for her. By embracing his political enemies, President Mandela had put an end to the slaughter but the world, when you came down to it, had merely shifted. These days, apartheid wasn't political but social—and she was still up there on that bridge, looking down at her fallen heart.

But Zina didn't despair—not completely. She was an intelligent woman. She decided to work on her body.

 

Ali Neuman lay in his hospital bed, and smiled weakly in welcome.

She raised an ironic eyebrow. “I thought a Zulu king was indestructible.”

“I'm not dead,” he said. “Not yet.”

Gulethu's bullet had entered his left side and passed along a rib, narrowly missing his heart. The cracked bone made him sigh from time to time. The hospital doctor had recommended complete rest—one or two weeks, until the cartilage had reset.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I read about your exploits in the newspaper,” she said, mockingly. “Congratulations.”

“Twelve people dead, I don't call that an exploit.”

Birds were singing beyond the window. Zina wore a midnight-blue dress and a cobalt-blue stone hanging from a braid around her neck. She looked at the bouquet of irises standing imposingly on the night table.

“From an admirer?”

“Worse—my mother.”

She picked up the book lying next to the flowers. “And this?”

“A present from Brian.”

“A friend?”

“The only one I have left.”

Zina read the title out loud. “
John Paul II: Essential Writings
.”

She gave him a questioning—and quite charming—look.

“I'm a bit of an insomniac,” he said, euphemistically. “Brian hoped it would help me sleep.”

“Does it work?”

“I usually drop right off as soon as I've read the cover.”

Zina smiled, and a bead of sweat ran down into the hollow between her breasts. As if in a dream, the dew of her skin had disappeared beneath her dress.

“When are you getting out?” she asked.

“Right now. I have to attend a press conference.”

“The doctor will be happy.”

“I can walk.”

“How far? The door?”

The tone was playful, but Neuman did not notice her smile. He was aware only of her bare feet on the plastic-coated floor, her legs shimmering in the daylight, and the desire that had grabbed him by the throat.

“I'm performing at Rhodes House on Saturday,” she said. “It's the last date on the tour.”

“Is that so?”

Neuman was playing his role badly, even though it was one he had at his fingertips. They hadn't said anything else the other night in the dressing room. He had escaped her lips to answer Janet Helms's call and then had left without a word. Zina did not know what he was thinking, if he still suspected her of killing people like in the old Inkatha days, or if she was still up there on the bridge, waiting for a day that would never come.

She leaned over the river flowing down there, a movement she couldn't resist. Part of her soul drowned when she placed her mouth on his lips. Too bad for the little girl hanging in the rain. Neuman was raising a hand toward her—even before she did—when there was a knock at the door.

The weight of the world immediately pushed them apart.

A big black woman entered the room, laden with food, groping at the air with her stick. Josephina sensed a female presence beside her son, and laughed. “Oh! I'm disturbing you! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!”

“I was just leaving,” Zina lied.

“Ah-ha!”

Josephina put down her energy-giving food at the foot of the bed and shifted her attention to Zina. Neuman introduced her but she was already exploring her with her fingertips.

“Ah-ha!”

“Yes, all right, that's enough.”

But Josephina was in seventh heaven. The woman had a noble face, generous curves—a poplar tree gently leaning over her son's bed. “You're a Zulu, aren't you?” she asked.

“Yes. A bit too much for your son's taste, apparently.”

Zina winked at Neuman, and hurried out.

Neuman turned a little paler.

Leaning on her cane, his mother was looking at him as if he was chasing clouds on Venus. “You seem on good form, son!”

He had the taste of her lips on his mouth and a black hole in his heart.

 

 

 

Brian had bought a yellow and red lion from a street vendor, and a zebra for Eve, wire figurines made in the townships. He rang the entry phone, his throat a little dry.

“Yes?” a woman's voice said.

“Claire? It's Brian.”

“Who?”

Everything calm and white in the crushing sun.

The sidewalk felt like quicksand.

They'd spent enough alcohol-fueled evenings together to become firm friends. Dan wouldn't have liked his wife to be abandoned just because he wasn't around anymore.

“Let me in, Claire,” he insisted. “Just for a few minutes.”

First there was a heavy silence, then a barely audible sigh through the entry phone, and finally an electronic click that opened the gate.

The little garden was flooded with sunlight. Eve and Tom were splashing each other in a plastic swimming pool, watched over by their aunt Margo, who greeted him with a preoccupied smile.

“Uncle Brian! Uncle Brian!”

The kids threw their arms around him as if he was a pony, and enthused over his gifts.

“Where's Ali?” Tom asked.

“Polishing his nails. He'll come and see you when they're dry.”

“Really?” Eve asked in surprise.

Claire was on the terrace, smoothing out the modeling dough the kids had been playing with. Margo suggested a new game to draw the children back to the pool. Brian went up to the table where Claire was silently applying herself.

“I told you I'd rather be alone,” she said, without looking up.

He put his hands in his pockets, to stop himself smoking. “I just wanted to see how you were.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How are the kids?”

“Have you ever seen orphans on top of the world?”

“You're alive, Claire,” he said, in a friendly tone.

“I'm not dead. There's a difference.”

She looked up at him. It was as if grief had eaten her up from inside. Even the blue of her eyes had faded.

“The situation is already difficult enough, don't you think?”

“Oh, sure, it could be worse,” she retorted, with a harsh smile. “I could also lose my breast to cancer. But I'm lucky, my hair's growing back! Great, isn't it?” Her hands shook as they kneaded the dough.

“Did you get my package?” he asked.

“Dan's things? Yes. You should have put his hands in with them, as a souvenir.”

Her own spitefulness was about to make her cry. Big tears were already welling in her swollen eyes. She had become unrecognizable to him. To herself, too, probably.

“Go away, Brian,” she said. “Please.”

The children's cries came from the pool. He kissed her fake hair, helplessly, while she massacred the figurines.

 

 *

 

The buffer zones of Nyanga, Crossroads, and Philippi were where most of the squatter camps were situated. These buffer zones had their own laws, their own
shebeens
, brothels, music venues, and horse races. A few shack lords had short careers there. Sam Gulethu was one of them.

In the end, they'd found the shed, a former spaza shop, that they'd used as a hideout, on the edge of Khayelitsha. The fingerprints and the traces of DNA left on the cigarette butts confirmed that the gang had stayed there. The shed was divided into a dormitory and a kitchen, the windows covered with steel sheets. As an HQ, it was easy to defend in case of attack, with a lock-up garage and an alley that led to the dunes on the nearby open space. A four-by-four could get to the highway in a few minutes, Muizenberg in less than half an hour. The police hadn't located the stock of powder, but they had discovered unused syringes and traces of marijuana all over the rooms. Two of the
tsotsis
killed during the attack on the Marabi were known to the police: Etho Mumgembe, a former
witdoeke
, one of those militiamen tolerated during apartheid who clashed with the young progressives in the Bantustans, and Patrice “Tyson” Sango, a former recruiting sergeant for a rebel militia in the Congo, wanted for war crimes. No one knew what had led the
tsotsis
to kill each other in the cellars, or if Gulethu had eliminated them because the police were after them. They had found sixty-five thousand rand in Gulethu's pockets. The money from the drug dealing, presumably. That didn't tell them where the stock of dope was, if it still existed, or if the gang was being supplied by one of the Mafias, but toxicological tests had provided an explanation for the suicide attack on the Americans' HQ. Gulethu and his killers had been high during the shootout, on that same
tik
-based drug, with the same level of toxicity as the mutilated
tsotsis
in the cellar. Had they become hooked, too? Had Gulethu manipulated them in order to carry out his criminal rituals? The shed was packed with weapons: police revolvers with their numbers erased, offensive grenades, two assault rifles, and Zulu fighting sticks, including a shorter one, an
umsila
, still stained with Kate Montgomery's blood and covered in Gulethu's prints. The young woman's hair and nail clippings were hidden in an iron box under a makeshift mattress, along with
grigris
and amulets.

Gulethu hadn't had time to put together his
muti
, and his “battle” with the Americans had come to an abrupt end. War, genocide, suicide—whatever crazy ancestral idea he'd had in his head, his secrets had died with him.

Anyway, now wasn't the time for psychological speculations. The auditorium of the courthouse in Cape Town was packed for the chief of police's press conference, and the atmosphere was electric. Photographers and journalists squeezed up against the platform where Superintendent Krüge, in his dress uniform, was delivering the preliminary conclusions of the investigation.

Twelve dead, including two policemen, six people in hospital in a critical condition—the operation in the township of Khayelitsha had ended in carnage. What with the FNB's anti-crime campaign, the presidential elections looming, and all the things the damned World Cup meant to the economy and the media, Karl Krüge was facing early retirement if he didn't pull this off.

The first part of his speech was a paean of praise for the Crime Unit, which had gotten rid of the Mafia-related gang and the killer of the two young women, but the rest of it evaded the issue. There was no resurgence of Zulu identity, no disappointed Inkatha members ready to take on the rest of the country, demanding secession or independence. There were no extremist political factions, no resentful ethnic groups, just a gang of mercenaries with Mafia links selling a new drug on the peninsula, and their leader, Sam Gulethu, a
tsotsi
stupefied by years of extreme violence, who saw himself as some kind of exterminating angel, led by some kind of indigenous vision, a jumble of vague beliefs, homemade witchcraft, revenge, and chronic degeneration, a coward who had taken advantage of the innocence of white youth to settle scores with his old demons.

The Wiese/Montgomery case was closed. The country wasn't facing social breakdown, just a lot of economic problems.

Ignored by the flashlights, Ali Neuman watched the scene with a vague sense of embarrassment.

He had just been speaking to Maia on the telephone. They had arranged to meet in Manenberg, where Gulethu had lived. Every step he took was like a knife to the heart, but he could still move. The journalists were jostling one another in front of the platform, where Krüge was sweating in his impeccable uniform. Neuman left the courthouse before the press conference was over.