Bloodlines (58 page)

We ran towards them, and two of the men saw us. They rose and rushed in the other direction and out the far door. We pulled the others off the figures on the ground and the police held them while we looked at the victims, a young man with a split lip and a bleeding head, and a young woman, crying, trying to cover her exposed breasts. Her skirt was torn and her underpants around her ankles.

“Are you all right?” asked one of the policemen. “What happened here?”

“They dragged her in here,” said the young man, his voice ragged, “to rape her. I followed and tried to make them stop.”

“They said they would teach me,” she said, “that it doesn’t pay to go against them.”

Andrew stayed on the floor to tend them; I rose to face the two men the police were holding. One was a young man, looking scared; the other was older, in his forties—way too old to be a student demonstrator. The only possible reason for his presence on the campus was to make trouble. As I looked at him I thought he was familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place him. He was a man of medium height, with a fleshy face and a wide mouth.

“Mandla Mkhize,” he said, and his voice was full of hatred. “I hoped to see you here tonight, Khabazela. I hear that you’ve done well these last eighteen years.” He smiled, an unpleasant, mocking smile. “Did you find your son yet?”

“What do you know of my son?”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he said. “No wonder. It’s been a long time, but I haven’t forgotten that you sent a wounded man back to his home in Eshowe, in disgrace. Do you remember what my crime was?”

“What do you know of my son?” I repeated, but he ignored me.

“My sister sheltered me in her room, and when the farmer she worked for found me, he was going to beat her. I had a bullet in my shoulder, but I killed him, and then went where you told me to go—to the farm of the woman who would help me.”

“Yes, I remember you. Jonathan. Now, tell me what you know of my son.”

A policeman stood behind him, holding on to his upper arms. I stepped closer to him and repeated my question, but still he ignored me.

“This man knows something about my son,” I said, turning to the officer. “I need to question him.”

“You need to question him?” said the policeman. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Mandla Mkhize is his name,” said Andrew quietly, rising from the floor to stand at my side. “Be very careful what you say to him, because what you say to him you say to me also.” He turned around to the young couple on the floor. “You’ll both be all right,” he said. “I think you should leave now.”

They rose, and, holding onto each other, they made their way out of the hall.

“This man has information about the boys we’re looking for,” continued Andrew, “and we’ll get it from him faster if you’re not here. I suggest you see where the other two men have gone. Take the younger one with you—perhaps he knows something useful.”

The two policemen looked at each other uncertainly, and one of them turned to Andrew.

“I know you,” he said. “Don’t I?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “I’m a doctor—and I probably helped bring your children into the world. Now go—I promise that Kurtz will authorize this.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go. Come on, you.”

He released his grip on Jonathan; together, the two policemen ran towards the back door, shepherding Jonathan’s young companion between them. Jonathan stepped quickly to the side and turned around to face the front door, but Andrew was already standing behind him, a hand firmly planted on each arm. Andrew tightened his hold and forced Jonathan’s elbows behind his back.

“Remember the password you gave me?” Jonathan spoke through a painful grimace. “To give to the woman on that farm, so she would know I came from you? ‘On a hilltop in Zululand, not far from the homestead of your mother, Lungile.’ What was that all about?”

“That was long ago—and we don’t have time now. Have you seen Thulani or Simon?”

I placed a hand firmly at his throat and squeezed once, quickly. He lowered his head to protect himself, but I kept my hand at his throat and I felt the blood pulsing through the vein in his neck. I wanted him to know that I would exert whatever pressure I needed to.

“I don’t know any Simon,” he said into his chest.

“Come on, man,” said Andrew. “Khabazela doesn’t want to hurt you, but we know he will if he has to. Where is Thulani?”

“You had me carried back to Eshowe in shame.” He looked at me as he spoke, his voice hoarse, wheezing as he breathed through the pressure of my fingers. “I did nothing but defend my sister, and you sent me back, wounded and disgraced. My son was a good boy, but he lost his way when I came back; he was embarrassed by me, and he ran off. You took my life from me, Khabazela. Now I work for whoever pays. My wife left me after our son was killed in a robbery—he was nineteen, just a little older than Thulani.” He grinned through his discomfort. “A nice boy, your son. Interested in learning about the other side of our conflict—the side his father is not on. When I found he was your son I saw to it that he learned everything you failed to tell him, and I arranged for him to be here today.” He paused. “He is a stubborn boy.”

“Where is he?”

“They took him and a few other boys out to the trees to see if they could educate them. You know, talk some sense into them.”

“Who are ‘they’? How many of them? And what do you mean, talk? What did you want Thulani to do?”

I squeezed, and he coughed.

“I wanted him to tell them what he knows about your work,” he said.

“He knows nothing about my work,” I said. “You wanted my son to betray me?”

“Wait,” said Andrew. “We need to know where they took him. Jonathan, which direction?”

“They went out the back,” he wheezed.

“Let him go,” I said.

“Khabazela, my brother,” said Andrew quietly. “Don’t do this thing. Let’s go find the boys.”

I thought then that I should have taken care of him eighteen years earlier—either gotten rid of him completely, or forgiven him and let him come back once he recovered from his wound. But I didn’t know enough then to realize that one has to either kill one’s enemies or make them into friends, and now Thulani was paying the price.

“I showed him compassion once, Andrew. Not again,” I said. “Release him.”

Andrew did as I asked and Jonathan immediately raised his arms to pull my hands from his throat, but I knew how to use the pressure of his fingers on my wrists against him. It was not the first time I had tightened my grip on another man’s larynx; not the first time I twisted my arm, jerked down and pulled to the side. Within his neck I felt something tear, and as the air bubbled and seethed from his lungs as if he were a punctured balloon, he slumped to the floor.

“If they harm a hair on either of my sons’ heads,” I said to Andrew, “he’ll be lucky that he died quickly.”

“And if they don’t?” he asked as we turned and ran down the aisle to the back door.

“Then perhaps I’ll regret it. But either way, he was a mercenary and a rapist,” I said. “Look what he was ready to do to the girl.”

The campus was not large, and the main buildings sat in a huge oval of light shed by floodlights surrounding the perimeter. As we headed down the path towards the darkness we intercepted the policemen who had just left the hall, and Andrew motioned them to follow us. I was in the lead—I knew that once out of the light, the instincts I had developed over the years would kick in.

We moved slowly, careful to avoid snapping twigs or the sudden movement of vines and branches. Light was visible through the trees, and as the distance closed it became recognizable as the flickering of firelight. Then the sounds started—raucous laughter, shouts, a cry of pain—and we ran towards the light. I don’t know how long it took. It could have been seconds, or minutes. If there was a path, I couldn’t find it, and even after I turned on my flashlight our progress was maddeningly slow. As I clawed my way through the brush I heard over and over the urgency and alarm in the shouted voices, and awful images of what we might find flashed through my mind.

When we arrived at the clearing we stopped just out of sight, hiding beyond the trees. At each side of the clearing was a flaming torch, and the shadows cast by the flames danced on the faces and bodies in the center. It took a moment to figure out what we had come upon.

There were bodies on the ground; one or two were moving, but it was too dark to see what condition they were in. Several men stood in a circle, two of them holding onto Simon. He struggled to get free, but they restrained him without effort. Beside him stood another boy, also being restrained. The mercenaries were all too old to be students. These were Jonathan’s friends, paid killers who called themselves warriors when it suited their purpose.

In the center stood Thulani. Blood ran down his forehead; his nose was bleeding. He was unsteady on his feet, and the fifth man stood before him, taunting him.

I took a second to be thankful that both boys were still alive, but even as I did so the man taunting Thulani drew back his panga as if to hit my son on the side of his head with the flat of the blade. Before I could move Andrew stepped into the clearing with his pistol drawn and shot the man through the head. The policemen followed him, and one of them shot a second man as he reached behind him to withdraw a weapon from his belt.

Andrew, the policemen and I were clumped on one side of the clearing; before us at the center of the clearing were Simon, Thulani and the third boy, and with them, the three remaining men. In the moment it had taken to fire two shots, each of the three men grabbed hold of the closest boy and stood behind him. Using the boys as human shields, they backed away from us in unison, towards the far edge of the clearing. It was obvious that they were planning to take off into the forest.

We exploded across the clearing and reached them just in time to see the last man disappear into the darkness with his captive. We instinctively spread out to cover all three men and dove into the forest after them. They didn’t get far; neither did we.

I passed the third boy—the one I didn’t know—sitting on a fallen tree; the man holding him must have released him and taken off. I rushed past him and in the flickering light of the torch behind us and my flashlight shining ahead, I saw Simon struggling. His captor was trying to release him and run, but Simon held onto his arm, which the man managed to raise above his head. In his hand he held a hunting knife. I moved toward them through some thick substance that slowed my motion and before I could prevent it the man used the force of Simon’s hold on him to create downward momentum, and I saw the knife begin its trajectory.

I burst free of the thickness that held me, intent upon destroying the man who was about to harm my son. With all my strength I thrust the tire iron at him, and I felt the point bury itself in his temple. He dropped like a stone—but not before his blade connected with the side of my brave boy’s neck. The man fell. Simon kept moving and I felt a brief surge of relief, but as he turned to his left his blood sprayed in hot bursts from his neck onto my face. As I wiped his lifeblood from my eyes, I knew that in such volume, he would soon bleed out. I followed him to where Thulani struggled with his captor, and again that night I was outside time, held immobile while action took place that I was powerless to stop.

Thulani was weakened by his beating but he managed to twist himself around as the man tried to escape, and to grip him around the neck with both arms, but the man still held onto his panga and he knew—and I knew—that his one best chance to escape Thulani was to use his panga as a flail.

“Thulani, let go of him!”

My mouth opened to scream the words, but no sound emerged. Every molecule in my body was intent on getting to my son before the panga began to rotate. But I was too late. Thulani’s captor reached around himself, slashing his panga viciously against the softness of my boy’s belly, flailing left and right, and then again left and right, from side to side. Thulani released his hold on the man’s neck, and I watched in horror as my son’s body opened up and spilled itself on the forest floor, and the rest of him followed. As Thulani released his captor the man stumbled and Simon threw himself forward, blood arcing from the wound in his neck. He fell on his brother’s murderer, grabbed the panga from him, and using his own weight he forced the blade down through its owner’s throat. They lay there together, blood mingling, the man holding his throat together as his heart pumped itself out.

I pulled Simon away so that I could see what blood was his. Beside me Andrew reached Thulani, and I heard him drop to his knees.

“Ahhh,” he said, “no, Thulani, no.” His voice broke, tears running down his throat. “Not like this.”

Simon held on to my hand as I cradled him on the ground, holding pressure over the artery in his neck, but it bubbled up hot under my fingers and I watched my life flowing into the earth. I leaned down and kissed his forehead.

“My sons.”

I said the words for the first time in my life, unaware that I was talking out loud. The tears fell from my eyes onto Simon’s forehead and rinsed a clear channel through the blood on his cheeks.

Simon opened his eyes and looked up at me. There was already blood gurgling in his throat and his eyes were glazed with his dying, but he smiled at me, and when he spoke, it was in a whisper. Through my grief, I leaned down to hear him.

“My father,” he said. “Thulani and I talked about this, often. We knew we were brothers. Tell him, now he has to share you with me…”

My tears fell into his open, unseeing eyes, and I nodded, knowing even as I agreed that there was no one left to tell.

“Both my sons?” I said, addressing no one in particular; there was no one left to address. “You take them together? All at once?”

I had never felt so alone. At that moment, whatever gods or shades or spirits I might once have spoken to evaporated from my life like mist under the cruel scrutiny of the sun.