Bloodlines (45 page)

“The child will come,” she said into my silence, “when it is his time. You need do nothing but prepare.”

“Prepare?” I asked. “Where do I prepare, mother? That is my confusion. Should I prepare for him on my farm, or here, in your
kraal
? And after he is born, where will he grow? Where is the right place—where is it safe—for the child of a Zulu father and a white mother?”

She thought for a moment, swaying back and forth in the firelight as she quietly sipped her tea, both dark hands cupped around the white enamel mug. With her eyes closed, she turned her head to face the far side of the hut, to the area reserved for the Shades, as if she were listening. I waited. When she had her answer she opened her eyes and turned back to me.

“You ask questions about things that do not concern you.” She raised a hand to silence my objection. “Before we plant the seeds of the sweet potato,” she said, “we prepare the ground. Then, we plant. When the ground is dry, we give water, but the seed grows underneath the earth. We do not decide whether it will shrivel or grow, or how big, or when it will be ready to be dug. It is so with a child. He grows within you. Each day will lead to the next. It is enough to know that a child is coming. Make ready for him slowly. At each step, the Shades will help you to know what to do next.”

Two days I stayed with Lungile. I watched the sun rise and set. We ate
mielie
-meal together and drank tea at her fire, and I talked and laughed with her daughters-in-law as they prepared food and cared for the
kraal
, one eye always on the older children looking after their younger siblings. I left in darkness before dawn on the third day, and Lungile walked part of the way with me. She placed her hands on either side of my face and then stood back, arms folded across her breasts. When I turned for a last look at her, the sun’s first rays beamed skywards from beyond the distant mountain tops, and she stood unmoving on the crest of a hill watching me leave, a small, dark shape cut out against the bright, cold light of a winter day.

When I was at university in Johannesburg, the newspapers were full of the horrific events taking place to the north of us, in other parts of colonial Africa—places like Kenya, Tanganyika and Nigeria. For most people, stories of political upheaval and the liberation struggle generated a lot of talk and much anxiety, but it all came down to wondering how we in South Africa would be affected.

The newspapers, eager to be relevant and pandering to racist paranoia, centered their front page stories around trusted domestic servants who suddenly turned feral and murdered the families who employed them, adults and children, in their beds. Some people began to arm their homes, or to carry weapons in their cars, but most of our neighbors stopped short of such extreme measures. Instead, following the fashion, they installed massive wrought iron gates in the passageways leading to their family’s bedrooms. Intruders might break into the house and take the silver, but, went the logic, the bedrooms would be inaccessible, and in the event of a break-in, the lives of the family would be saved.

The gates were often elaborately made with detailed floral motifs, and they were sometimes painted in light colors to match the décor of the passageway. But no matter how intricate, nothing could camouflage the gauge of the metal or the security of the lock, or the intent, the fear it was meant to assuage.

Prior to the installation of these security gates, each morning, before the master and mistress of the house were up, at least one of the servants would have risen, put on a pink or blue pinafore and white apron, and with the house key she had, would have unlocked the back door, collected and polished the shoes from outside each bedroom, made tea or coffee and perhaps delivered it to the master bedroom. But now the servants were locked out of their white employers’ bedrooms until someone rose and unlocked the gate. So who, really, were they protecting themselves against if not their own employees, the men and women who cooked and fed them, cared for their children, cleaned up before and after them, had access to everything in their homes? These were the people they were afraid would tip-toe up the passageway in the darkness and murder them all in their beds.

When I moved into the farmhouse, the only security was the locks on the front and rear doors. Wrought iron gates were not yet fashionable, but none of my neighbors would have thought it strange for a white woman living alone to install a security gate in the short passageway leading to her bedroom and bath. I could have justified it on other, more private grounds, too—it would have provided additional protection against discovery when I was not alone. But I thought such a gate would be an insult to my Zulu employees, and that it would give the wrong message; that if I wanted to be respected, to be seen as independent and self-reliant, I needed to show that I was not afraid. It turned out that I was overly concerned with the appearance of valor, and not conscious enough of the need for discretion.

Khabazela returned to the farm late on the night before I arrived home from my visit with Lungile. I had no idea when he would be back, and because we had not anticipated that I might be gone when he returned, we had not established a system that would allow me to easily leave him a message. For the first time, I was simply absent, and he was distraught to find me gone.

When he came to me after midnight, I was already in bed. I heard the key turn in the lock, and his footsteps in the kitchen, and then he was in my bedroom, freshly showered and wearing the silk robe I had bought him. I jumped out of bed and we embraced, and there was something desperate in the way he held me hard against him.

“I came back to find you gone,” he said. “I’ve been worried sick, Michaela. Selina knew only that you were away, and there was no word for me anywhere. Where were you for three days?”

“I went to visit Lungile,” I said.

“Lungile?” he asked. “Why? Did she call for you? Is she not well?”

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I answered. “She’s fine. And she didn’t call for me.”

“So what was your sudden need to visit her?”

“You were away,” I said, “and I didn’t know when you’d be back. I was alone. I felt lonely. I went to see her. It was that simple.” I paused. “But I also had some questions to ask her.”

He could have asked me what questions I had for Lungile, and that would have given me an opening to tell him our news. But he was exhausted from his trip, and oblivious to my needs. I noticed that the sleeves of his robe were rolled up, and on his left forearm was a thick bandage.

“What happened to your arm?” I asked.

He ignored my concern. “You didn’t tell me that you were going,” he said in the subdued voice we had become accustomed to using at night. “Not a word. No message. Nothing,” he said accusingly. “You could have left word with Solomon, or given him a note for me. It was very thoughtless of you.”

His words hit me like a blow—the last thing in the world I was towards him was thoughtless. It was the first time I had heard petulance from him, and I put it down to weariness and whatever he had gone through while he was away. I decided to ignore it.

“Solomon knew where I was,” I said. “He helped me get word to Lungile. Why didn’t you ask him?”

“Solomon told me nothing about where you had gone. If this happens again, you should remember that he may be my uncle, but you’re his employer, and besides, he feels great affection for you. Without clear instructions from you to share information, even with me, he will remain silent.”

He lowered himself slowly to sit on the side of the bed, and I could see how weary he was. He looked up at me.

“Of course I asked Solomon where you were. He told me that you were safe—he’s very protective of you. But he said it was up to me to ask you myself where you had been.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting down beside him. “I didn’t mean to worry you—I just needed a woman’s company.” I took his hand.

“What about your friends?” he asked. “Jane and Letty? Couldn’t you have gone to visit them for the afternoon instead of leaving the farm for three days and traveling all the way up to Zululand?”

It was a reasonable question, but I was in no mood to have my decisions questioned or my actions judged. I didn’t want to be scolded.

I had been alone for two weeks, I was pregnant with his child, and I wanted loving attention from him. I wanted to share the news with him quietly and tenderly, but I saw that he was exhausted, and he was holding onto his arm as if in pain. I thought that if I tended to him first and made him comfortable, he would be more receptive.

“Can I get you something to drink or eat?” I said, rising to my feet. He shook his head. “OK,” I said, “Tell me what happened to your arm. I need to know so that I can help you take care of it.”

He sat straight and offered me his forearm. I stepped toward him and looked at the bandage. It was grubby and unsanitary, and it was wet, as if he had showered without covering it. Gently I unclipped the two metal clasps and began to unwrap it. Khabazela seemed to be watching me, but when I glanced at him it was to see that he sat with glazed eyes, focused on something not in the room with us. When he eventually spoke, I jumped at the sudden sound of his voice, hoarse and low.

“It wasn’t a military mission,” he said. “It was a closed conference, out of the country. No one but the participants knew where we were meeting. If we had succeeded, we would have moved the struggle forward a decade, with greater outside funding and support than we could have imagined a few years ago.”

I rerolled the bandage as I removed it, wetting and separating the layers slowly to avoid pulling at whatever was underneath.

“So what happened?”

“Have you heard of the Civilian Cooperation Bureau?”

I shook my head.

“It’s our government’s latest tactic in sponsored terror,” he said. “It’s not enough for them to stifle free speech—now they’re infiltrating all the major opposition organizations and spreading lies about us to each other. And what’s worse,” he said bitterly, “is that we’re all buying into their lies.”

“They’re scared,” I said, “we’re all scared. But we could have anticipated this—they’ll do anything to discredit us. What happened?”

“They got to one of our delegates. He went home one night to find his family gone. They rounded up his wife and children, his mother and unmarried sister; took them to an isolated camp somewhere in the bush. He was told that unless he gave them what they wanted, they’d execute his family one by one, starting with the children.”

“What did they want?”

“To know who we were meeting with.”

“And he told them?”

“Everything. Where we were meeting, and when, and how many guards, and what we were negotiating.”

“Did he have a choice?”

“How do you make a choice like that? I don’t know. But what he revealed was costly. Several good men have been exposed, and at least six of ours were killed. They, too, had families. I can only hope the Special Branch kept their word and released his family.”

“So, are you all discovered now?”

“No, we’re still secure. We were meeting on foreign soil, so they had to use a proxy force. They paid off the local police to come in and do their dirty work. Two dozen local policemen, afraid and untrained, many of them too old to be effective. They had no idea what they were up against.” He shook his head slowly. “There were only fourteen of us, all well trained. And we couldn’t be taken alive. So I escaped, with eight others. But one way or the other, Africa loses. Black policemen from one African country, fighting black freedom fighters from another, on behalf of an apartheid government. They must be laughing in their beer,” he said bitterly.

“And the man who betrayed you? Was he there?”

“He was. But he will never have to decide again between his family and his brothers in arms.”

“You executed him.”

His eyes glazed over again, and in silence I continued to unroll the bandage.

“No, Michaela,” he said quietly. “He was one of the men we lost.”

I reached the end of the bandage and took it into the bathroom, where I dropped the wet roll into the rubbish bin, reminding myself to dispose of it before morning so that Selina would not see it. Then I returned and forced myself to examine Khabazela’s wound. On his forearm, just below the vein in his inner elbow, were several thick gauze pads, all hardened with dried blood. And on the back of his forearm, just below the elbow, was a similar mass of bloody gauze.