The Boy Next Door Read online

  “So, did he kiss you?”

  “Who?”

  “The youth group chappie.”

  “No.”

  “I knew it. You tshayad him good, didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t interested.”

  “What, he was ugly?”

  “He was white.”

  “No shit. An expat?”

  “No. A Rho… A Zimbabwean.”

  “Now, that’s a first. You know, I reckon my old man killed mahobo gooks.”

  “What are you going to do down south?”

  “Who the fricking hell knows. The rands will tide me over for a bit, and then I reckon it’s mind over matter, got a couple of connections there. You still haven’t told me what you want to do in Gwanda. Fuck all there. Jeez, check how dry it is. That Swedish chick says that no drought relief is being allowed in dissident areas. She reckons people are dying like fricking flies. Bob, shit, he’s hard-core. Shit, now what? A fricking roadblock.”

  I look out of the window.

  “Jeez, did you see how that gondie looked at you. I thought he was going to drag you into the bush and do God knows what, what the Swedish chick hinted at—it’s like fricking World War Three; me, I’m sticking straight on the tarmac, no fricking adventures, you hear me.”

  “So, I’m your sister.”

  “Quick thinking, heh, half sister. Thought he was going to drag me into the bush when I came out with that, almost did a double take myself. Shit. You check those gondies in the cattle truck? Where the hell are they taking them? You see the look in their eyes and the smell, shit. Fear. That Swedish chick says that they’ve made camps. Balange, Balangwe, something like that; over at Matopos is where the main indaba is. Bob has it in real good for you Ndebeles. Shit man, gondies versus gondies, had to happen.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “What?”

  “Gondie.”

  “Gondie, now don’t you start that racialistic shit. Gondie, Aff, helluva lot better than kaffir, munt, muntu, toey in my book. You can call me honky, no worries.”

  “Boer. Bhunu.”

  “Now, that’s a bit far.”

  “Gondie. What does it mean?”

  “Shit, I don’t know, just another way of saying Aff. Anyway, in forms and shit what racial group do you tick?”

  “Colored.”

  “Colored. Yah, well, different strokes. Me, African. No two ways about it. Pure and Simple. Born and bred.”

  I think of Maphosa. What he would say to this African here.

  “Boy, did I hate that Clem Tholet song, ‘Rhodesians Never Die.’ Don’t even get me started on that one. The old man would tune that stuff, what was the other one, yah, ‘It’s a Long Way to Mukumbura,’ and the whole house would be like a fricking Rhodie sport’s club come Saturday evening…. You should check how all teary he’d get listening to Troopie’s Request on the radio. Come six o’clock, he was downing scotch. ‘My boy,’ he’d say. ‘Come, come here, my boy, just listen to her, Sally Donaldson, you have no idea how much comfort that voice gave us troops out there in the bush, no idea.’ I even found a picture of her from Look and Listen in his bedside drawer, would you believe.”

  “My father also liked her. He said that she even played requests from African soldiers.”

  “Give me ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica’ any day. Yebo mama, God bless Africa. One thing you can say for sure is gondies—what? okay, okay—Affs can sing. Now I think of it, I bet that chick’s been with a gondie; they’re all into gondies. Third World groupies. You check them walking in town, hand in hand. Not being racialistic or anything, but it just doesn’t look right. You can tell even the blacks want to tshaya the gondie. And then you get all the goffle kids.”

  I think of the white girls at school, how they pulled faces when they had to learn “Nkosi Sikelel” from Mrs. Moyo and how they copy her accent and wave their hands over their noses when she passes them. How they inch their bodies away from her when she walks around the class.

  “So, what’s she going to call the little bugger, heh?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “And no blimming sign of the father and so, what’s new. Are you sure your war vet hasn’t been… Anyway, better a mother; one thing for sure, no lightie needs a stepmother. Once she caught me with a Scope. You know that South African magazine with chicks? Boy, did she throw a major kadenze. Wasn’t she pretty enough, all this shit, and when the old man gets home, she gets him to give me a right good hiding, and afterwards she’s all ‘come luvvie, show me where it hurts.’ Jeez, man, it’s fricking hot. Best years of my life, I reckon, must have been zero to seven. Remember fuck all but she wasn’t around. Plain downhill after that.”

  I try and remember Mrs. McKenzie, what she looked like. She’s been dead for two years now, and she’s only someone in people’s heads, stories. She only comes alive then.

  “She got rid of Mavis, the girl who was looking after me, and she told me mahobo lies about my mother, how I’d been abandoned and all that shit. When I got down south and found her, boy, did the truth come out; how he used to beat her, showed me the scars from the knives, and anyway, he chased her out, made her leave without me. I shouldn’t have let her come back with me. Shit.”

  He suddenly claps his thigh.

  “Man, too much gloom and doom.”

  “What school did you go to?” I ask him.

  “Baines, primary, Gifford, secondary, one term only, though.”

  “Baines, Baines, have no brains.”

  “Yah, they’re still blasting that one? First year there was a real bust-up at the interschools’ sports day. The Baden Powell kids start blasting that from the stands, some senior boys donnared them good, and then all the fossils get involved. Shit, they had to call the police—two of the boys in hospital, broken noses, ribs, the works. They were tshayad, that’s for sure, no brains but hobo brawn! Every time I drive past that school now, its looking like a real dump, the grass is growing up to here. Funny to see black lighties running around there. Where did you go, primary?”

  “McKeurten.”

  “Shit, that’s some rough goffle school. So I guess you are a goffle. You see a McKeurten kid, you cross the road, whitey or not: ek sê that, ek sê this, I’ll tune you.… So, you like it?”

  “No, not really.”

  I don’t tell him how Mummy had to pretend to be the house girl when she would come to pick me up from school; otherwise, they would have kicked me out because Mummy was too black and the headmistress was always going on about standards.

  “Shit, not another one?”

  “It’s the Fifth Brigade, look at their…”

  “Yah, yah, I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? What the fuck do they want now? Check the look on this one now. Chill.”

  I sit quietly, not moving, wishing that I was at the back, like a good house girl. I do not look up at the soldier who has thrust his face in Ian’s window, filling the car with smoke.

  The cigarette dangles from his lips, and he speaks through it.

  I look down at my lap and concentrate on nothing but Ian’s voice. “Identity, sure, look. No, I’ve got my passport. She’s my sister, half sister. No, I’m dropping her off in Gwanda. Yes, yes, I have my passport. Me, South Africa. But I have to go today. How can the road be closed… okay. Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Nothing like rands to open up a road, heh? Good thing I hid the rest of it in my shoe. I thought that chick was laying it on thick, but shit, those guys look like they could do anything. And what’s with the red berets? Their heads must be frying under there.”

  He drives on for a bit, whistling.

  “How come you’ve got your passport?”

  He gives me a look, waiting.

  “Jeez, man, you’re not thinking of crossing the border? Are you penga? As soon as we get to Gwanda, you’re getting off.”

  He looks at me again, waiting.

  “Lindiwe, for your information, there is apartheid in South Africa. What the
heck do you think you’ll do there, if they’ll even let you through, man? God, you’re dwaas.”

  “I can go there; there’s no law.”

  “Lindiwe, be reasonable; there’s no ways you’re going, not a chance.”

  He shakes his head, looks at me again. “Open the compartment, yah, get a cassette out, the one with the black chick.

  “Sweet, yah? Ella Fitzgerald. American. No ways a white chick could sound like that… what the fricking heck was… shit… we’ve blown a tire… hold on…”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky I wasn’t belting it, otherwise we’d be roadkill.”

  We get out of the car.

  “The last thing I feel like doing is changing a fricking tire. Shit, I could use a Castle.”

  The slamming of the boot makes me jump.

  And then he is hitting the lid with his fists. “Shit. Shit. No spare tire. I’ve got no spare tire. Shit!”

  I watch him kick the ground with his feet until finally he sits down on a boulder, his head in his hands, tired out.

  I stand for a moment in the heat, and then I go to him.

  “I reckon it’s thirty, thirty-five K’s to Gwanda,” he says, shading his eyes. “We can walk it.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “Yah, it’s hot, any suggestions?”

  “We could wait for a lift.”

  “Do you see anything moving on this road? Remember, it’s closed and I don’t want to be picked up by no gondie, no red beret, Fifth Brigade Commie gondies. And no fricking water; where the hell did we think we were jolling to, shit. Come, let’s get a move on.”

  But he doesn’t move. He just sits there. The sun is right on him. He doesn’t care.

  “Ten thirty, and it’s already baking bricks.”

  He still doesn’t move.

  I go to the car. The metal burns my hand. I take out my bag, and after I think about it, his too. I think some more and push the cassette out; I open the compartment and take everything out; I find a Meikles plastic bag and I put everything in there. I walk past him.

  I walk on the side of the road. I look up all the way along the road and I think how long and glittery it is.

  I walk and I think of Mummy and Daddy.

  Rosanna and the baby.

  Maphosa and Mphiri.

  And Bridgette.

  I walk and I don’t hear him behind me, but I don’t turn around. The bags are heavy, but I don’t put them down. I just walk and think.

  I think of him.

  Ian.

  I say “Ian” softly.

  I think of him sitting on the boulder by the edge of the road.

  Him in the car, driving.

  Him chewing biltong.

  I think of him, his new blue shirt, the buttons all done up wrong.

  I think of his hair, his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth.

  I think of him, my brother.

  My half brother.

  And I just keep on walking.

  “You better slow down or you’ll be kwapulad by the heat in no time.”

  “Finished sulking?”

  “Don’t get smart-alecky with me girl.”

  I watch him take the bags off me.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “No worries,” I say.

  And he laughs.

  We’ve been walking for so long when I see Bridgette standing there, holding a calabash in her hands. She tilts the calabash forwards and water spills to the ground.

  Even though I know it’s not real, that it’s a mirage, I say, “Bridgette, don’t. Don’t waste it,” and I begin to walk faster towards her, towards the water before it all spills to the ground.

  “Hey, stop running!”

  Even though I know Bridgette is not real, the water is not real, I keep thinking, please, please, don’t waste it, and I can hear myself panting, running.

  “Hey, what’s up with you? Stop running.”

  I’m on the ground now, the hot burning ground.

  “We need to get out of the sun, look for cover.”

  And he heads off into the bush.

  “No, Ian, no. Ian! I’m not going in there. Please, stop.”

  “Just for a while, we’re not going in deep. There, there’s a tree, not much shade, better than nothing.”

  “They’re going to find us, in the bush, in here. I’m not going…”

  “Listen, we need to rest. Just sit down. Shit, it’s hot.”

  He clears a space with his foot, puts my bag on it. “Sit. Here, have some of this.”

  From his pocket he takes out a slab of chocolate, a naajitshe. I watch him break the chocolate, peel the naajitshe. I take one bit of naajitshe, suck out the juice. He gives me another one.

  “We’ll save the rest,” he says.

  “You should have something.”

  “I’m okay.”

  He sits down on his own bag, and he shakes his head.

  “Man, to think I was a fricking Boy Scout; survival guide in the bush went through one ear, came out the other.”

  He twists his head.

  “Do you smell that? Like burnt. The grass is so dry, must be mahobo fires.”

  “We can drink water from aloes.”

  “Yah, that’s right; plenty of that stuff over at Fort Victoria, sorry, Masvingo by the Zimbabwe Ruins.”

  “Great Zimbabwe.”

  “Don’t start again, it’s too fricking hot. They’re ruins, aren’t they? You can’t change history.”

  “Whites said they were the work of Europeans, Africans couldn’t build something like that; it’s only recently that archaeologists have—”

  “Jeez man, okay, okay, Great Zimbabwe Fricking Ruins, happy now? Shit, the smell. It’s coming from that end.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Just stay there. I want to check out this smell.”

  “People get lost in the bush. They start walking in circles. They lose their bearings.”

  “Yah, yah, now you’re a fricking scout. I’m not going far. There’s a track here.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “There must be a kraal round here; might be able to get some water. No fences here, not commercial farming area. TTLs, communal lands. Just gon… , Affs.”

  “We’re going too far. We can’t see the ro—”

  “Shit man, look at this.”

  They’re burnt.

  The huts, some of them still smoldering.

  And the smell is there, everywhere.

  It goes right inside me.

  The smell I did not wake up to a long time ago.

  The smell, he knows.

  I look over to Ian. He is so still. His legs wide apart, his hands on his side, his fists clenched. Then I see his teeth chewing inside his cheek.

  I look at the old man, bent, picking.

  I look at Ian who is watching the old man.

  “Mudala,” he says, “what has happened here?”

  The old man does not turn around. He continues picking through the ash, settling the bones to one side.

  Ian goes right up to him, gets down on his haunches.

  “Mudala,” he says, “what has happened?”

  The old man stops and looks at Ian.

  He does not seem surprised to see a white man suddenly there.

  Ian puts his hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  “I will help you, mudala,” he says.

  And I watch him pick through the ash.

  His hands move gently, quickly, sorting.

  And then he turns to me, and I wonder if he knows what I am thinking—if he thinks I believe he is like the men with the red berets, the men who have come here and done this.

  When they are finished, the old man looks around; Ian takes the Meikles bag, empties it, and gives it to the old man, who puts the bones, one by one, inside.

  I watch him get up.

  He says to Ian, to me, to the bush, the bones, his children, “We have suffered
this day,” and then he walks away into the bush, deep, deep into the bush.

  Ian turns to me.

  He wipes his face with his hands.

  He looks down at his hands, then up at me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  We stand there in the bush.

  The two of us, listening, waiting.

  “I woke up,” he says, “and she was burning.”

  He looks right at me, through me.

  “I let her burn.”

  That’s all he says.

  * * *

  “At least they won’t get any ideas that we’ve been sticking our noses where they’re not wanted.”

  We’ve walked back to the car. Thirst burns my throat.

  “Those goons are probably coming back to clean up. Best they find us here. Hopefully, it’s a lift that turns up first. Shit, I could use a drink and a shower.”

  The lift turns up. A white pickup with zebra markings. Zimba Wildlife Lodges. In the driver’s seat a white man and, by his side, a black Alsatian.

  “Hi, what’s up?” the man asks, opening the door. The dog starts barking and scrambling to get out. I move closer to Ian. The man says, “Quiet, boy,” and pushes the dog back on the passenger seat.

  “Burst tire, no spare,” says Ian.

  “Can give you a lift till the lodge. Finally got through the roadblock, a waste of a day and a half. I wish they would do whatever they’re doing and move on. We can tow your car, get it fixed up tomorrow by our boys. Who’s she?”

  “She’s with me.”

  “She’ll have to hop in the back.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Jeez man, I’m knackered. You’re still up? The man talked and talked. Acute verbal diarrhea, that’s for sure. Didn’t tell him about that shit in the bush, kept my answers short, to the point. Lindiwe? What, are you crying? Lindiwe, don’t… You’re shivering, what… Lindiwe, Lindiwe, don’t…”

  In the morning I wake up first.

  I pick up my clothes which are scattered on the floor.

  I stand still in the bathroom.

  I look in the mirror and it is me.

  I wash my face.

  I get dressed.

  When I come out, he is gone.