Bloodlines (23 page)

Dennis rose warily and stood before Viljoen, who proceeded to ask questions about how long he had been in your grandfather’s employ, and what work he did.

“Do you ever go into the dental studio? Help the Doctor to fix up your friends at night after they run from the police?”

“No, never. Not in the studio. And
baas
, the Doctor never fixes up my friends.”

“You lie through your bloody teeth, boy,” said Viljoen, and boxed him in the face.

“Stop that!” your grandfather said, rising and stepping between them.

Viljoen elbowed him roughly out of the way just as one of his men came in from the garage.

“Lieutenant, you better take a look at this.”

“I’m coming,” said Viljoen, pointing to your grandfather and Dennis. “Bring them both with us. Whatever we’re going to see they already know about.”

Your grandfather stumbled out the back door, holding his chest; they pushed Dennis after him. The garage was empty, but along the side wall were the two boxes Dennis had removed from the back of the Volvo so that he could open the hidden compartment for me. An officer was standing beside one of the opened boxes, holding in his hand a mimeographed sheet of paper. Within the box thousands of sheets were visible. Viljoen took the paper from his officer and read an announcement of a demonstration against the increase in bus fare to be held two days hence. Your grandfather realized what happened, and he must have been suddenly fearful that the discovery of the pamphlets placed Michaela in jeopardy. It was too much for him.

“Oh, God,” he whispered to Dennis. “What have we done?”

He was weaving back and forth, falling even as Dennis turned and caught him.

“What is it, Doctor?” he said, lowering your grandfather to the ground. But he was unwilling to let his employer’s head rest on the cement floor and so he lay down with him, one arm spread out under his neck as a pillow. Your grandfather was grimacing in pain, holding on to his chest with one hand. With the other he gripped Dennis’s forearm.

“If there’s a next world, perhaps it will be better for us both, old friend,” he said, one side of his mouth already dying as he tried to smile.

“Dr. Davidson, what is it?” Dennis cried. “What can I do?”

“All done now,” your grandfather said hoarsely. “Nothing more.”

He was a very fine man, Steven, and when his heart gave out you were not yet born. One of your mother’s greatest regrets was that you never got to know him.

They buried your grandfather in the big Jewish cemetery outside Johannesburg. It was a strange ceremony, and very sad. Although there was nothing in the news of what had happened, people came from everywhere to honor him. They were Jew and non-Jew, speakers of English and Afrikaans, Indian and black and white. Mourners couldn’t stand together—blacks stood in a section behind the whites—but everyone was united in their love for your grandfather. His patients were there—he treated everyone, and when people were unable to pay, he didn’t charge them, or he charged them what they could afford, which left everyone feeling a sense of dignity. Dennis was there, too, weeping; he loved the Doctor like a brother.

Your father was there, of course, and many of your parents’ friends—but Michaela had been arrested driving back from the Rhodesian border after dropping me off, and the authorities denied her permission to attend the funeral. It was a little bizarre, because many senior police officers had been your grandfather’s patients. Your father said a number of high ranking officers apologized when they offered their condolences. They were not so much concerned about your mother, but felt that refusing to allow his only child to say the mourner’s prayer at his graveside was a sign of dishonor and disrespect to Dr. Davidson.

They were right—and it was also a sign of arrogance and contempt. But in those days, there was more than enough of that to go around.

They did not keep Michaela for the full ninety days, and she never spoke to anyone about the experience. Even your father said that she refused to talk about it. I think they let her go after six weeks because she was pregnant and they were not yet sure how to use the Ninety Day Detention. That would come later.

I was in Rhodesia for several months, recovering and training, and when I returned, the ANC gave me false papers and a new name. No-one knew that I had been mimeographing pamphlets that night, or that I had been wounded, or involved in the death of the policeman. But by then I was well known by the police, and the ANC felt that a new identity provided one more level of protection against discovery.

I found work as a driver for a law firm, and was frequently called to drive one of the senior lawyers, Mr. Griswold, home in the late afternoon. Mr. Griswold knew who I was, and he knew my history. We often talked in the car. He was highly respected, and when I drove him, he sat beside me in the front seat, which was very unusual.

One day after I had been working for him for about six months, I was waiting for him outside the building, and when he came out of the front door he was with a young woman. I got out of the car in my black chauffeur’s uniform with a black cap, and came around to open the door for him.

“This is Mrs. Green,” he said. “You’ll be taking her home after you drop me off.” I looked at the young woman, to see your mother smiling at me with such happiness in her face that I couldn’t speak. I just nodded. I was shaking as I closed the back door and went around to the driver’s side, and I had to take a moment to steady myself before I turned on the engine.

I don’t know what Mr. Griswold knew about us—at that point there was little enough to know, other than that we had worked together in Sophiatown, and afterwards. Mr. Griswold had known Father Huddleston, and I knew that he and Dr. Davidson had been friends. But I said nothing, and neither did Michaela. From their conversation, I gathered that they had been meeting about settling your grandfather’s will. She was an only child, and there were no other blood relatives except you—there was some talk of a trust, and Mr. Griswold was the trustee—but I knew nothing of such things, and I was not very interested. I did look at Michaela in the rear view mirror, and she looked back into my eyes and smiled at me. She was pale, but beautiful; her eyes were lively and bright, and no one would have guessed that within the previous year she had spent six weeks in prison, or that she was the mother of a four month old infant.

When I think today how tightly we were bound by fear back then, and by taboos, it is difficult to believe, and hard to explain. Michaela and I were so relieved to see each other safe, and there was so much we wanted to say to each other, so many questions, even putting aside the fact that we might have desired each other. But even alone in a car together we felt as if we were in a glass cage, visible to everyone.

After I dropped Mr. Griswold off at his house, there was nothing I could do, no way to physically express my affection for her. All she could comfortably do was lean forward and put her hand on the shoulder of my jacket, and when the car was going, I felt her thumb on the skin of my neck. It may seem today like very little—but when everything is forbidden, even a small taste is like a feast.

We talked briefly—but there was too much to say, and not enough time. It was a short distance to her house, she was already late, and it was enough for us to touch each other and to be together.

“I’m so relieved to see you,” she said, and I began telling her how sorry I was about her father, and to explain how much I regretted that she had taken us in the car to his house, but she stopped me.

“Not here,” she said. “I don’t want to get home crying. But I want to know what happened. Where can we meet?”

Many people don’t know it, and others wouldn’t believe it, but at that time we had safe houses scattered throughout the country. Some of these safe houses have become infamous as a result of being in the press after a police raid, but many have never been identified. No one knew them all, but because of what I did, I knew of several—and over the next few years, your mother would come to know them, too.

One was a working farm with several buildings on the property—the farm was run by a young couple, but jointly owned by several men with connections to the underground.

On my next day off I would be staying at the farm, with a meeting planned for the early morning, and before she left the car that evening we arranged to meet there. The farm was just outside Johannesburg, about a half hour from Michaela’s house, and we agreed that unless I called to warn her off, she would come there at midday.

I waited all morning, fearful that she would decide not to come—but she did come, and I watched through the window as her car appeared in the distance and drove down the unpaved road toward the farm buildings. She passed the main farmhouse and continued on the dusty path that ran through a field of
mielies
—corn.

I remember that it was summer, and the corn was high, and as she drove through I lost sight of her car. When she reappeared she pulled into the empty barn to conceal the car, as we had discussed, and walked out into the hot sunshine. She was dressed as if she had been playing tennis, in her whites, with tennis shoes, and she headed toward the shaded wood frame house where I waited for her. It was a small house, built years earlier for a farm foreman, and it was set in a clearing among old jacaranda and blue gum trees. More recently, smaller, faster growing wild trees and shrubs had sprung up, and she stopped as she approached the house to look up into the branches of wild pear and acacia trees. When she reached the door she knocked, opened it and came in, and closed it carefully behind her.

I came from the window where I had been watching her and took her hand in mine, but she put her arms around my neck and slowly, as if she would break, I took her in my arms, and I could feel the heat of her through her white blouse. We stood a long time, breathing together, and we were both shaking. It was too much for me—too much relief, too much desire, too much danger. I released her and stepped back, and offered her some tea. She nodded, and we went into the kitchen, and she sat at the old yellowwood table while I put the kettle on to boil. I had expected it to be awkward between us, but it was as natural as breathing.

“I am so sorry about your father,” I said.

I poured the milk, added tea and sugar, placed the cups on the table and sat down across from her.

“I am responsible for bringing much pain to you, Michaela.”

She sipped her tea, and I watched her purse her lips on the side of the cup. She drank carefully, not wanting to stain it with her lipstick.

“You were wounded,” she said, “and your life was in danger. Where else could we have gone? And the police didn’t come to my father’s house searching for you—they had no idea you were even involved. They went to my father’s house in order to intimidate me. Also,” she said, “my father was ill. He had very high blood pressure, and he was in pain when he came into the garage. His heart attack was already happening; nothing could have stopped it. So I don’t blame you for any of that. I’m just happy that he was there to prevent you from bleeding to death.” She paused, turned her tea cup around, and looked down at the table. “You were his last patient,” she said.

“Yes.”

She drew the fingers of both hands like a comb through her hair, and I remember watching her body as she raised her arms. She was still breastfeeding you, and I could see that her breasts were full. She leaned back in her chair and looked into my eyes.

“I can’t stay for long,” she said. “I have to get back to feed Steven.”

It was the first time I heard your name.

We said nothing for some time, and then she reached for the leather handbag on the seat beside her and fiddled with the silver clasp. I recall thinking that if I had a wife it would be impossible for me to buy her such a handbag, because what I earned in two weeks would not be enough to pay for it. But at that moment, it didn’t matter.

I watched her take out a pack of cigarettes and shake two from the opening. Her hands were delicate, but her fingers were long and suntanned; the fingernails rounded and well-cared for, like all the other white women I had ever seen, but they were unpainted, which was unusual back then, and they looked natural, like a young girl’s. She had a lighter in her bag—I saw it—but instead she found a pack of matches and removed a match, put both cigarettes in her mouth and lit them.