Read Zulu Online

Authors: Caryl Ferey

Zulu (34 page)

BOOK: Zulu
9.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Neuman attached one handcuff to Terreblanche's wrist, the other to his own, and started pulling him across the sand.

Every step bent his broken rib, every step cost him two lives, but he held fast to his prey—his prey was all that mattered.

A hundred yards, two hundred, five hundred. He talked to him to encourage him, he talked to this lifeless piece of shit in order not to think, of his mother or anyone. He had dragged him like that for two whole hours, as far as his legs could carry him, without wondering if Terreblanche was still breathing. He was walking on an imaginary line. But his strength was going. His shirt, previously soaked, was now as dry as his skin. He couldn't stay on his feet. Or bend. The effort had completely devoured him. His thighs were like brittle wood. Worst of all, his throat was burning horribly. He staggered, still holding on to his prey, tumbled down the slopes, pulled it back up to the top, fell down the other side, raving. His prey was dead. Done for. He dragged it a few more yards, but his strength had finally gone: He was seeing double, triple, he couldn't see anything. The farm was too far. His mind was shot to pieces. No more saliva in his thoughts. No more oil in his fine body.

He collapsed against the side of a dune.

A deafening silence hovered over the desert. Neuman could barely make out the little chrome eyes observing him from the celestial vault. A black night.

“Are you afraid, little Zulu? Are you afraid?”

Nobody knew. Not even his mother. There was his father's body to take down, strips of flesh falling off in the clear water, Andy reduced to something twisted and black, the funeral, the dead to be mourned, the ignorant
sangoma
who had sounded his chest, their escape to be organized. No one knew what the vigilantes had done to him behind the house. His father's torn body, Andy's black tears, his shorts full of piss, the smell of burned rubber, it had all happened too quickly. The vigilantes tearing him apart behind the house, his terrified screams, the three masked men slaughtering his testicles with their kicks, the dogs of war determined to make him impotent—the film replayed one last time on the black screen of the cosmos.

Neuman opened his eyes. His lids were heavy, but a strange feeling of lightness was slowly taking over his mind. The end of his insomnia? He thought of the mother he had loved, and had an image of her happily laughing her big, blind woman's laugh, but another face soon took up all the space. Zina,
Zaziwe
, that dream he had had a thousand times when, at night, her countryside smell enveloped him and drew him far from the world, with her. A warm wind smoothed the sand in the hollow of the dune.

Neuman closed his eyes, the better to caress her. It was done.

11.

 

 

 

H
ave you seen my baby? Tell me, sir. Have you seen my baby?”An old woman in rags had approached the gas pumps. Brian Epkeen, frying inside the car, barely paid her any attention. This Khoikhoi woman was from the village next to the service station—no more than about twenty wretched huts without water or electricity. She spoke with the clicks characteristic of her language, a woman of no clear age, her face covered in sand.

“Have you seen my baby?” she repeated.

Brian emerged from his lethargy. The woman was holding a dirty old cloth against her chest and was looking at him, imploring him. The Namibian attendant tried to shoo her away, but she returned to the attack, as if she hadn't heard. She wandered like this all day. She had been cradling her piece of cloth, repeating the same sentence, always the same one, for years, to every motorist who came to fill up here.

“Sir
. . .
please
. . .
Have you seen my baby?”

She had gone crazy.

It was said that she had left him sleeping in the hut while she went to fetch water from the well, and when she came back she saw baboons carrying him away. The men of the village had immediately set off in pursuit, they had searched everywhere in the desert but the child had never been found, only a torn piece of cloth from his baby clothes among the rocks. It was this piece of cloth she had been carrying with her ever since, cradling it to assuage her sadness.

All just gossip.

“Have you seen my baby?”

Brian shivered in spite of the heat. The old Khoikhoi was begging him, with those crazy eyes of hers.

That was when he received a call from the post at Sesriem. A ranger had found the burned-out remains of two vehicles, and an unidentified human body.

 

 *

 

Four-by-fours.

Two heaps of metal embedded in the burning sand of Namib Naukluft Park. The bodywork had turned black in the flames, but Brian counted several bullet holes—large-caliber bullets, one of which had pierced the Toyota's gas tank. The body lay a few yards away, burned to cinders. A man, to judge by his size. The material of his clothes had melted to his swollen skin, which, in cracking with the heat, had revived wounds that vultures and ants were fighting over. A bullet had pierced his chest. A man of medium height. You had to take off his boots to see that he was black. Mzala?

Brian peered down at the AK-47 on the ground, near the sheets of metal, checked the cartridge case. Empty. A whistle made him look up. The ranger who was with him—Roy, a talkative Namibian with an enigmatic smile—was signaling to him from the top of the dune. He had found something.

The noon sun crushed everything. Brian adjusted his water-soaked cap and climbed the dune with small methodical steps. He stopped halfway up, his legs shaking. Roy was waiting for him at the top, crouching, impassive beneath his visor. Brian reached him at last, his eyes full of stars after the ascent. A weapon lay there, half covered by the sand, a Steyr rifle with a precision sight.

The Namibian said nothing, his eyes creased by the bright light of the desert. From up here, the burned-out vehicles seemed tiny. Brian looked at the empty expanse. A valley of red sand, white-hot. Caught in the trap, with no means of communication or transportation, Neuman and Terreblanche must have set off on foot, cutting across the dunes to get back to the road. The wind had wiped out their tracks, but they had kept walking due east, toward the farm.

 

They drove for nearly an hour through the furnace without seeing a single animal. Roy navigated with a sure hand, in silence. Brian didn't feel like talking either. Through his binoculars, he looked at the ridges and the few trees lost in the ocean of sand. Royal-blue sky, scarlet earth, and still not a soul to be seen in this desolate land. 117 degrees, according to the dial in the car. The heat blurred the outlines, danced in misty waves in the sight of the binoculars. Hovering mirages.

“The road isn't far,” Roy announced in a neutral voice.

The Jeep jolted over the soft sand. Brian saw a black patch, on his right, about two hundred yards away, against the side of a dune. He informed Roy, who immediately veered right. The tires skidded on the slope. Rather than risk getting stuck in the sand, Roy stopped at the foot of the dune.

A cloud of acrid dust blew past the windshield. Brian slammed the car door shut, his eyes riveted on his target—a shape, a little higher up, half covered by sand. He climbed the ridge, protecting himself from the dry, burning wind that stung his face, and soon slowed down, out of breath. There wasn't one man lying against the dune, but two, side by side, facing the sky. Brian climbed the last few yards like an automaton. Ali and Terreblanche were lying on the sand, clothes partly torn, unrecognizable. The sun had reduced their bodies to two shriveled stumps, two scrawny skeletons eaten by the desert. The sun had drunk them dry. Emptied them. Brian swallowed the saliva he didn't have. They had already been dead for several days. The bones stuck out on their dried-up faces—Terreblanche's face had turned black, skin like dead leaves that crumble when you touch them—with a hideous smile on his wrinkled lips. They had baked. Even their bones seemed to have shrunk.

Brian bent over his friend, and swayed a moment in the sauna. Ali was handcuffed to his prey. They were barely a mile from the road.

12.

 

 

 

N
ot many people would be there to meet what remained of Ali. Brian didn't have Maia's number—he didn't even know her surname—Zina had left the city without leaving an address, and Ali didn't have any remaining family. His body was arriving from Windhoek, by special plane. Brian would see that it was transferred to Zulu country, to be with his parents and ancestors who were, perhaps, waiting for him somewhere.

The Namibian manhunt had been a fiasco. Neuman had left nothing but corpses in his wake, and no evidence that the pharmaceutical industry and the country's Mafias were in league. Krüge had avoided a diplomatic incident, and nobody wanted any publicity about the case. The bodies of Terreblanche and his men were still in the hands of the Namibian authorities. It wasn't in their interest, either, to start an investigation. Out of guilt and disgust, Brian had handed in his badge and everything that went with it. He had spent the whole of his adult life chasing corpses. Ali's was one too many.

He'd had enough. He was making way for others. He'd concentrate on the living now. Beginning with David—returning from his trip, the prodigal son had opened his mail, and subsequently phoned.

Corruption, complicity—Terreblanche and his sponsors had enjoyed protection at all levels, including their own unsecured lines. Brian had posted one of the two memory sticks before going to Rick's that other night, with his name on the back of the envelope by way of explanation. He hadn't talked under torture. No one knew the existence of those files. David would have time to go back over the trail, supplement his investigation and, above all, choose his allies. A baptism of fire, which might reconcile them.

Claire came out of the house before Brian had had time to cross the garden. She ran to him and threw herself in his arms.

“I'm sorry
. . .
I'm sorry
. . .

Claire clung to him as if he might escape her. She wanted to tell him that she had been unfair to them, she had been thinking about it for days, she ought to have talked to them, but Dan's death had left her without a voice, her heart sewn up. Now it was too late. Too late. Brian stroked the back of her neck as she sobbed. He felt the blonde down growing back under her wig, and now he also held her tight. He was shaking—they were the only two left now
. . .

He lifted her face and dried her tears with his finger. “There, now.”

 

The sun was falling gently over the Veld bordering the runway of the little airfield. Like him, Claire wasn't saying anything. Like him, she was waiting on the tarmac for a sign from the sky. The grass, bent by the wind, was turning emerald, a few pink clouds swelled on the horizon, but still nothing came. Brian was thinking about their friendship, Ali's shyness with women, the sadness in his eyes when he didn't know anyone was looking. Whatever might have happened, Ali's secrets had died with him.

Brian pricked up his ears. The slender wings of a light aircraft appeared, a quicksilver dot in the twilight. Claire pushed back the lock of hair that was blowing about on her cheek.

“There he is,” she said in a low voice.

The noise of the propellers came closer, muffled now. They were waiting near the runway when a voice rang out.

“Brian!”

He turned and saw Ruby on the tarmac. She was wearing tight-fitting black jeans, her hair was cut short, and there was a long gash on her forearm. They hadn't seen each other since the hospital. She nodded to Claire and walked toward Brian, shyly.

“David told me. About Ali.”

Her eyes were the color of the Veld, but something had broken inside her. Brian didn't ask what. They looked up at the sky, which, like Ali, kept disappearing. The twin-engine plane had begun its descent, its nose aimed for landing. Ruby slid her hand into Brian's and kept it there. Her short hair suited her. So did her black jeans. An intense burst of tenderness gripped him, and soon overwhelmed him. Ruby was shaking as he held her, but the nightmare was over. She wasn't going to die. Not now. He would protect her from the virus, from other people, from time. He would tell her about Maria. He would explain. Everything. He
. . .

“Help me, Brian.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

 

 

The author would like to thank his scouts, Alice, Aurel, and Zouf, as well as Corinne, for the scientific elements of the book.

Thanks also to Christiane, for the gymnastics in southern Africa.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

 

Caryl Férey's novel
Utu
won the Sang d'Encre, Michael Lebrun, and SNCF Crime Fiction Prizes.
Zulu
, his first novel to be published in English, was the winner of the Nouvel Obs Crime Fiction Prize, the Critics' Prize for Mystery, the
Elle
Readers Grand Prix, and the Quais du Polar Readers Prize. In 2008, it was awarded the French Grand Prix for Best Crime Novel.

Férey lives in France.

[1]
Whip.

[2]
Blacks-only enclave during the apartheid period.

[3]
Migrant workers.

[4]
Boss.

[5]
Small, solid built houses intended to be enlarged.

[6]
Township gangsters.

[7]
A black.

[8]
In 1983, President Botha extended the civil rights of coloreds (persons of mixed race) and Indians, but not those of blacks, who saw this as an insult.

[9]
Armoured vehicles used during the apartheid period.

[10]
South African Police.

[11]
The Natives' Land Act, granting 7.5 percent of the land to the native population, was the beginning of apartheid.

[12]
Entrenched camp, a key concept in the Afrikaner mentality.

[13]
During apartheid, the ruling National Party had passed a number of laws favoring coloreds over blacks, and most coloreds had continued to vote for them rather than the ANC, for fear of becoming the subject of discrimination.

[14]
A cloak made of animal hide.

[15]
“We Zulus are like that.”

[16]
The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement).

[17]
In order to achieve a smooth transition, white officials who had worked under the apartheid system were kept in their posts for a period of five years.

[18]
Bitter-tasting homemade beer.

[19]
Barbecue.

[20]
Machete.

[21]
Militiamen operating in the townships on behalf of local chiefs in the pay of the authorities.

[22]
In the 1980s, three times as many people were victims of interethnic violence as of police bullets.

[23]
Chief minister of a tribe, the guardian and interpreter of the Mthetwa, the tribal laws.

[24]
South Africa spent five times as much money on a white student as on a colored, and ten times as much as on a black.

[25]
Name given to the purple dye used in water cannons in Africa, in contrast with the green dye used in the West.

[26]
A thrashing for blacks, in Afrikaans.

[27]
Self-defense units in the Bantustans.

[28]
The word denotes both a musical style and a lifestyle. It is also an insult.

[29]
Voters had to put their hands in an ink detector, to make sure that they had not already voted.

[30]
Affectionate name for Nelson Mandela.

[31]
The British army had the reputation of being the best in the world.

[32]
Criminals serving long sentences were released with the promise that their sentence would be quashed if they killed members of Desmond Tutu's UDF in raids on the townships assisted by the police.

[33]
Thanks.

[34]
Traditional Boer music.

BOOK: Zulu
9.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Cenizas by Mike Mullin
Divine by Mistake by P.C. Cast
The Wet and the Dry by Lawrence Osborne
The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee T. Frazier
No Mercy by Shannon Dermott
Watching Eagles Soar by Margaret Coel
I'm Your Man by Sylvie Simmons