Tandia (5 page)

Hope is a flame that kindles new expectations by grasping at passing straws. The food and the sleep allowed Tandia to hope just a little. She had a chance if she could stay out of prison.

The blue framed square of light above her head began to darken and the cell was in almost total darkness before the lone ceiling light came on. The weak bulb made the cell no brighter than it had been during the day, but the absence of the comforting square of sky at the window madE' Tandia's new-found optimism soon collapse. Her bruised little body was hurting all over and no matter how she sat or lay she was in pain.

There was a sudden rattle at the door followed by the sound of a woman swearing in a mixture of Zulu and English. Then followed a sharp expletive from a male voice. The cell door swung open and a black woman was pushed in and the door closed behind her. The woman appeared not to have seen Tandia, imagining herself alone in the cell. She leaned with her back against the heavy door, swaying slightly, obviously drunk, her chin resting on her large breast. She wore a half-smile and her nose was bleeding slightly. She sniffed and then wiped her nose by running the top of her index finger past both nostrils, across the back of her hand and back again pulling the blood and mucus back into her nose. Then she examined the blood on her hand, brought her hand to her mouth and slowly, like a cat licking its fur, she licked the blood clean, starting at the tip of her index finger and working back across her hand.

The woman was perhaps in her mid twenties, broad hipped and with a bottom that protruded enormously in the short, tight knitted skirt she wore. Tandia, who had grown accustomed to the dim light, could see her quite clearly. She had a broad, almost flat face and she wore bright red lipstick which gave her thick lips an added fleshiness so they looked like raw meat. The trickle of blood had reappeared at both nostrils and added to her carnivorous appearance. To Tandia, she looked as though she was getting ready to eat somebody.

The woman, bringing both her hands up to her mouth, suddenly retched. Half-stooped, she lurched over to the bucket in the corner and threw up. The sour smell of stomach-fermented kaffir beer filled the cell. The woman was sick three more times, the noise of her spitting and hawking filling the small cell. Finally she turned from the bucket and straightened up. She was panting from the effort of throwing up and her carnivorous lipstick was now smeared across her face. Steadying herself by placing her hand on the wall, she wiped her eyes with her free hand and looked about her. It was then that she saw a frightened Tandia hunched in the darkest corner of the cell.

'Shit! Who you?' She wasn't really asking a question and her flat gaze was not in the least curious. She withdrew her hand from the wall which caused her to lurch slightly forward. 'Don't fuck with me, you hear!' Her words seemed to upset her balance and she fell two steps backwards until her shoulders bumped into the wall, whereupon she gave a soft groan and slid slowly to the floor beside the bucket, one fat arm coming to rest inside it. In moments she began to snore. The tight skirt had ridden up her thighs and Tandia now saw that she wore nothing underneath.

Tandia didn't know what to do. She sat in the dark corner, one arm drawing her legs up against her chest, the fist of her free hand in her mouth in an attempt to hold back the panic she felt rising within her. After a while her breathing calmed a little. What should she do? If she took the woman's arm out of the shit bucket she was fearful that she might wake and beat her up. Her sense of survival told her to leave things as they were and her sensibilities, already deeply offended, told her that she could not do so, that the mess in the bucket was in part her doing.

Tandia waited until she was sure the woman was not likely to wake from her drunken sleep and crept over to the bucket. The woman's hand rested on the bottom, covered in shit and vomit. Gagging as she lifted the arm out of the mess, she rested it on the floor beside her and carefully removed the
doek
the woman wore tied around her head. Using the head cloth she wiped the foul-smelling hand and film dean. Tandia's heart leapt with fear as the woman gave il sudden groan, sighed deeply and, lifting her arm, dropped it back in the bucket. Tandia pulled back in horror, the stench was overpowering. She began to cry softly.

After a while she dried her tears. She was crying too much. Crying was an indulgence she would have to learn to do without. She now realised that the woman had passed out and was unlikely to be roused, so she moved over to her again. Once again she removed the woman's hand from the slop bucket and wiped it as clean as she was able, using the now soiled doek. Then she dragged the unconscious woman dear so that she lay on her side with her lipstick-smeared cheek against the cement floor. This seemed to stop her snoring.

Several hours seemed to pass in the stinking cell and Tandia, when she felt she could bear it no longer, would concentrate on the tiny window until she could make out the pinprick of stars in the tiny square of darkness. She imagined how fresh and dean it was out there with the stars, how some of the air from the space surrounding them was finding its way into her miserable cell. She was not sleepy and her body ached in even more places when she lay down. Besides, the idea that the woman might wake while she was asleep made her fearful of closing her eyes even as she sat. She conjugated the verb 'lacrimare', 'to cry', in imperfect, future, future perfect and past perfect. Patel had always stressed that she must be good at Latin; he dreamed that she would go on to become a lawyer. She went on to irregular verbs with funny endings and then recited her personal and relative pronouns. 'Qui, quae, quo, quod,' she whispered to herself. It was strangely comforting to be using her mind and she challenged herself to remember Book Four of Virgil's
Aeneid,
especially the part where Aeneas enters the underworld and finds himself in the Elysian Fields. That was her set text in the end-of-year Latin exam, which she would now never take.

It must have been quite late when Tandia heard the rattle of the key in the door of the cell. A black constable appeared md without even glancing at the sleeping woman beckoned Tandia to come out of the cell. He was a much older man than the policeman who had arrested her earlier in the day. 'Down there, but wait first.' He spoke quietly and locked the cell door as Tandia waited for him. The light in the corridor was much brighter than in the cell and she held her wrists out to him for the handcuffs. He looked at her swollen and cut wrists and then up at her face. The expression in his eyes was not unkind and he shook his head once and clicked his tongue in sympathy. Then he pointed down the corridor and nodded for her to start walking. 'Go to the end of the passage, the last door on the left.'

Tandia's rubber-soled school shoes made almost no sound on the cement, but when the policeman turned to follow her the metal tips on the heel and toe caps of his boots sent a. clicking metallic sound racing down ahead of her to the end of the passageway.

Tandia turned at the last door on the left and found herself back in the charge room. She hesitated at the door and waited for the black constable to catch up. Seated on the table, with his legs swinging over the side, was a white policeman she had not seen before. She felt enormous relief that it wasn't the same police officer who had so intimidated her when she had been brought in.

The man seated on the table didn't look up. But, aware that she stood at the door, he pointed to the larger of the two chairs, the one which had been previously used by the other policeman. The white officer sat on the end of the table and Tandia was brought to the chair by the black constable. 'Sit.' He indicated the chair beside her.

'Ja, sit, please,' the white officer added quietly. Tandia, as though afraid to make the slightest sound, lowered herself slowly into the same chair used by her white tormentor of the morning. She noted that the seated police officer held the charge sheet in his right hand and that the typewriter still stood at the opposite end of the table from where he sat.' Apart from the three words, the white police officer remained silent, swinging his legs and blowing a tuneless whistle. Not as much a whistle as the controlled breathiness a person affects when they appear lost in their own thoughts. Tandia grew more and more apprehensive as she waited. The black constable had taken up a position at the door with his legs apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed relaxed and uninterested, his eyes turned downwards.

After a while Tandia, who had kept her eyes downcast, ventured a glance at the white man seated on the table. He was small for a policeman. She was used to thinking of size in the boxing parlance used by Natkin Patel, and she judged him to be a welterweight. Tandia was used to the policemen around Cato Manor where white police sergeants were generally much older men. This one wore a crew cut with a clipped, blond moustache and seemed to be in his early twenties. His nose had been broken more than once which gave his boyish face a slightly romantic appearance. He looked clean and tough sitting there looking down at the floor. He turned suddenly and looked at her and before she dropped her gaze she saw his eyes. They were very pale blue, like a favourite blue cotton shirt that has been washed a thousand times. His eyes didn't look tough at all and Tandia's heart skipped a beat. Perhaps it wasn't going to be like the other one.

'You see this?' he said, lifting what looked like the charge sheet Tandia had refused to sign earlier. Tandia nodded, afraid to speak. Then he brought his free hand up and tore the sheet of paper in two. At the sound of the paper tearing, Tandia looked up in surprise. He placed the two pieces together and tore them down the centre once again. Then he dropped the pieces on the floor under his feet. 'You Patel's daughter, aren't you?' He didn't wait for her confirmation before continuing. 'He was a good guy. A bladdy good ref, even a good coach.' He paused, thinking for a moment, 'Ja, I can say it for sure, when it came to boxing, he really knew his onions.' He glanced up at Tandia, the beginnings of a smile on his face, 'You his daughter, hey. Maybe he was a Indian, but sometimes you've got to make exceptions, Patel was a good guy.' He paused, 'Ja, he was definitely a good guy.' Unlike the previous police officer he spoke in English, though it was at once obvious he was an Afrikaner. He glanced up at Tandia quickly and then back at the floor. 'Ag jong, I suppose you people also got feelings, I'm sorry about his death, you hear?' Then he added again, 'He was a okay guy.'

Tandia sat looking down at her hands. 'Please, sir, I will pay back the money for the gym frock, I have enough money!' She was surprised at her own audacity.

The policeman's pale blue eyes seemed to stare at something beyond her, as though he saw things in the air behind her back. 'Ag, that!' He pointed to the scraps of paper on the floor. 'That's all finish and
klaar.'

Tandia's green eyes were questioning and she was very close to tears. Before she could speak he shrugged and then added, 'It's the least we can do. Boxing's like that, sometimes there's no colour bar. In boxing Patel was a real white man.'

'Thank you, sir,' Tandia said quietly, and then added, 'Am I free to go now?'

The policeman seemed not to hear and turned his torso slightly to face her. He wore a boyish grin as he spoke. 'Lucky you didn't sign the charge sheet this morning hey? Once you sign, there's no turning back, proceedings have to happen, you got to go in front of the magistrate.' He glanced abruptly at his watch and then turned and looked towards the door and nodded. 'You go out there now, I'm telling you, jong, you'll be back here quick smart. It's nearly twelve o'clock in the night and you haven't got a pass.' He grinned. 'A police patrol would pick you up in no time flat. Better you stay here tonight hey?'

Tandia looked up at him fearfully, her heart beating wildly. 'Please, sir, do not take me back to that cell, there is a woman there!'

The white sergeant turned and looked enquiringly at the black constable at the door. 'A shebeen prostitute, she is drunk, sir,' the black man answered.

The sergeant turned back to Tandia. 'Ja, I know what you mean.' He looked up at Tandia suddenly. 'This gym frock, the one you burned. What school was that?'

'Durban Indian Girls' High School, sir,' Tandia replied. She looked up at the policeman, 'I will pay for it, for everything.'

The white policeman gave a low whistle as though he was impressed. 'Ja, I already heard of that school. That's the one down at Brighton le Sands.' He paused. 'I'm not from Durban myself you understand.' He said this as though to indicate that he was superior to the local police product. 'I come from Jo'burg, they don't have such a thing as a Indian private school in Johannesburg. There are not so many rich Indians there, because, you see, we got the Jews.' He gave a short, bitter snort. 'The Jews are even better at rooking the public than the coolies.'

'Yes, sir,' Tandia said softly.

'An' now you not going there no more, hey?'

'No, sir.'

'At this school, do the girls talk about…you know, sex?'

Tandia looked up, shocked. 'No, sir! Never, sir! On my word of honour!' She was aware of her sudden outburst and lowered her voice. 'It is forbidden, sir.'

The police officer's eyes resumed their faraway look, but his voice was suddenly hard. 'Has a man ever done it to you?'

The shock of the question caused Tandia to gasp. She could feel the panic beginning to suffocate her and she was breathing hard, her face deeply flushed.

The black policeman's voice speaking in Zulu came suddenly from the direction of the door. 'You do not have to answer that, umFazi. Do not answer him, it is better you start to cry.'