Tandia (84 page)

If Juicey Fruit Mambo felt insulted by Johnny's poor manners he showed no sign. He'd lived in a township himself and knew the kids had no respect for the old ways. He released his grip on Johnny's hand and waited while the three other tsotsi youths moved up to the car. The handshake had broken the ice and the three others seemed more friendly.

'Remember me, Dog Poep Ismali?' a light-skinned youth asked cheekily and then grinned at Juicey Fruit Mambo, taking his hand and shaking it silently. Juicey Fruit Mambo also offered his hand to Flyspeck Mendoza, who was the smallest of the three by far and dragged one leg slightly as he walked. He wore spectacles and seemed a very serious type, not at all the kind to be a tsotsi, Too Many Fingers Bembi hung back a little, but when Juicey Fruit Mambo extended his hand his face broke into a huge white smile and he gripped it in the African manner, the only one of the three boys to do so.

Juicey Fruit Mambo scratched his head as though thinking, his fingers tapping down the length of the long jagged scar which crossed his shining pate. Then he suddenly patted his scalp, indicating hair. 'The white one. Where is the white one?'

'Kaas Kop? He crossed over.' Johnny spat.

Juicey Fruit clearly didn't understand the expression and looked querulous. 'He is in gaol?'

'No, man, his skin, it was white like his hair, so he crossed over. He went to Cape Town where nobody knows him. He's white shit now, dog shit dried in the sun!'

The other three laughed, it was clear that Johnny Tambourine was still their leader. Juicey Fruit considered this news for a moment. 'That is enough punishment, now he must live with that fear.'

'I hear you been asking all over the place for me?' Johnny said, kicking at the dirt. He seemed ready to talk and as he looked up he brushed a fly from his face. Juicey Fruit Mambo noticed that three fingers of his left hand seemed deformed, as though they'd been badly smashed and hadn't been properly set again.

'This is true, Johnny Tambourine, I have come to make you keep your promise.'

'Promise?' Johnny Tambourine laughed, drawing his head back arrogantly, 'We are tsotsi, we snatch bags, pick pockets, mug and rob. Sometimes we get in a bit of housebreaking and theft, but we never make promises,' he boasted. 'That is why we are tsotsi, you can never trust us!'

Juicey Fruit Mambo opened the door and stepped from the car. 'First you are a man, Johnny Tambourine. Then you are a tsotsi. Is it the man or the tsotsi who does not keep promises?' He towered nearly a foot above the already tall youth.

The movement from Johnny Tambourine was amazingly fast. The knife came from somewhere, he opened the blade with his teeth and the thrust of it came towards Juicey Fruit Mambo, seemingly in one smooth lightning movement. But it wasn't fast enough. Juicey Fruit Mambo grabbed him by the wrist and appeared simply to turn him upside down. One moment he was standing with a knife in his hand and the next the knife spun from it and Johnny Tambourine hit the dirt as though he'd suddenly, on a whim, decided to dive into the dust head first.

'Ho!' Juicey Fruit Mambo grinned. 'Now I have seen the tsotsi, can I please talk to the man?'

Dog Poep Ismali, Too Many Fingers Bembi and Flyspeck Mendoza took a step backwards, ready to run. Nobody had ever seen anything like Juicey Fruit Mambo before. He'd 'flipped' Johnny Tambourine without even appearing to move from the spot.

Johnny Tambourine rose -slowly, dusting his pants with both hands, his eyes downcast. He walked over and picked up the long open-bladed pocket knife and snapped it closed, dropping it into a pocket of his neatly pressed tsotsi pants. Finally he looked up, measuring Juicey Fruit with his eyes as though nothing had happened. The look showed he was still not afraid. Juicey Fruit Mambo liked what he saw a lot. Maybe he'd come to the right place.

'The
man
will keep his promise,' Johnny Tambourine said quietly.

Juicey Fruit asked for a meeting the following day, promising to bring beer.

'Carling Black Label, that's what we drink, Bra. Bring a case, tsotsi are big beer drinkers!' Flyspeck Mendoza chipped in.

The following day they met again under one of the few remaining large trees in Moroka township. Someone had built a crude bench all the way around the trunk of a large old leadwood tree. It was strange to find a leadwood at this altitude but the old tree looked well set, its dark grey bark rough looking with its characteristic longitudinal furrows and irregular transverse cracks. In fact the entire tree had a grey appearance which suited the bleak landscape of the township.

The five of them sat under the tree. There were a few other people about, all of them youths of roughly the same age. 'Don't worry, those guys are my operators, real cowboys; they'll watch for the police.' Johnny Tambourine looked at Juicey Fruit Mambo and nodded his head towards the Packard. 'The Black Label?'

Juicey Fruit Mambo's mouth fell open. 'Haya, Johnny Tambourine, here in the open? We will drink here under this tree?'

'I told you man, those are my men, we'll know long before a Black Jack can come near.'

They sat down under the tree drinking beer, Juicey Fruit opening the bottles in a flash with a gold incisor. Flyspeck Mendoza produced a large zol and they shared the joint between them, the marijuana making them feel cool and relaxed. When they'd each drunk a couple of bottles of beer and the zol was down to a finger nip, Juicey Fruit Mambo opened up the subject of why they were there.

'Johnny Tambourine, Flyspeck Mendoza, Dog Poep Ismali and Too Many Fingers Bembi,' Juicey Fruit Mambo spoke each name slowly and with great respect, as though they were men of substance and purpose, and the gesture was not lost on the four boys. 'You remember Tandy?' Each of them nodded, smiling at his own memory of the days in Sophiatown when they'd met what they thought must be a beautiful film star.

'She was a great
unine,
we talk about her still sometimes,' Johnny Tambourine confessed.

'She is a member of your gang. It is a long time now but she agreed, you agreed also. Time does not change these things, my brothers,' Juicey Fruit said rather ponderously.

Dog Poep Ismali laughed. 'She will be the prettiest tsotsi in tsotsidom!'

This. sent them all into gales of laughter. The dope was having its effect and the giggles had set in. 'Now she is a lawyer in Jo'burg.'

'Yes, we know, Bra. She is called "the red mouth who explains", and she is the world champion Gideon Mandoma's sweetheart,' Flyspeck Mendoza said; then he added, 'He is still our friend.'

'Haya! You have seen them together, you have spoken to her?' Juicey Fruit asked.

Too Many Fingers Bembi shook his head. 'No, he is big time now. We do not see him, only in the movies or when he rides in a big open Cadillac.'

'He has a Cadillac, a big open car?' Juicey Fruit said, impressed.

'No, Bra, it is a car that belongs to other people, big-time gangsters I think, but when he wins he drives in the back of this car and people come from all over to see him,' Dog Poep Ismali said.

'He is the best world champion of any weight any time in world history!' Flyspeck declared.

'I think maybe Peekay, the
Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,
he is better,' Juicey Fruit Mambo said mischievously.

'Never!' they all chorussed. 'He beat him hollow! He knocked him out!' Too Many Fingers Bembi protested, getting quite upset.

It was Johnny Tambourine who brought the meeting to order again. 'How must we help Tandy?' he asked, the whites of his eyes red from smoking the zol.

Juicey Fruit Mambo opened four more bottles of beer and handed one each to the boys before de-capping another for himself. Then he told them the story of Tandia and why she hated Geldenhuis. The treatment of Tandia at the hands of the police officer was a familiar enough story and each of them understood how such a thing could happen. They only really became deeply interested when Juicey Fruit spoke of the murder trial and how Peekay had nailed Geldenhuis and gotten a conviction for murder against the policeman which, naturally, had subsequently been quashed. But Geldenhuis was determined to get Peekay and with him Tandia.

'She is fighting for the rights of the people and she knows too much about him. He will try to kill her someday; she must be protected.'

'How can we protect her?' said Johnny Tambourine.

'She is living in Meadowlands. You can watch her house. If they are going to get her they will come to the house. They will not do anything in public, except maybe in a crowd. If she is in a crowd at a protest or maybe at an ANC meeting, you must-be near her, you must watch the people around her, that is when they will try to get her!' Juicey Fruit Mambo put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a wad of banknotes held together with a rubber band. 'Here is two hundred pounds, it is all the money I have.'

Two hundred pounds was nearly four years' salary for the average black working man and it represented a fortune. In fact it was everything in cash money Juicey Fruit Mambo owned, his entire retirement fund put together one note at a time.

Johnny Tambourine removed the rubber band and counted off sixty single one-pound notes. He handed ten to each of the boys and put ten into his own pocket. 'Expenses! Ten pounds each for expenses, Bra,' he said, being practical. 'You do not have to pay us, but there will be expenses.' He held up the remaining pound notes. 'We will need a gun and some ammo.' He returned the rubber band to the roll and handed what remained of the stash back to Juicey Fruit Mambo. 'We will do this job, we will keep this promise.' They all solemnly shook hands on the deal and arranged to meet at Tandia's house in Meadowlands the following Monday evening when Juicey Fruit Mambo would drive Tandia home and reveal his protection plan to her and reacquaint her with the four boys.

It was nearly one o'clock by the time Juicey Fruit Mambo had finished polishing the Packard. People had been passing all morning and his curiosity had grown. The township police station was no more than a fifteen-minute walk from Madam Flame Flo's house and Juicey Fruit Mambo enjoyed the stroll in the sun. It was one of those marvellous high veld late summer days when the air is polished clean and sits warm on your back and the sky is blue, the colour of a much-washed cotton shirt - though it was the time of year when a storm could build up in minutes. Seemingly from nowhere the big cumulus nimbus clouds would build in the late afternoon. If you went indoors for a moment you'd sense from the change of light that something had happened and then when, minutes later, you came out again, there were the towering castles of grey tinged with white, real estate for Gods and frightening giants to live in. Rain would come down in torrents. First a sharp 'ting!' like a pellet on the iron roof, then half a dozen more and the preliminaries were over; down it came, crashing, so you couldn't hear yourself speak, filling the gutters and flooding the dirt roads, each drop heavy with malice, washing away the red topsoil and generally behaving badly. Then, as suddenly, it would stop, leaving the whole place polished in the bright evening sun, the sky even bluer than before. That was a high veld rain storm for you, full of braggadocio but not very big in the long-term department.

Juicey Fruit Mambo was surprised at the size of the crowd as he moved down Seeiso Street towards the police station at the top end of the township. Everywhere people were singing and dancing and shouting
'Izwe Lethu!',
raising their arms in the thumbs-up salute and generally having an excellent demonstration. If you wanted a peaceful demonstration with a bit of class you couldn't have asked for a better one. People were carrying placards, neatly printed by schoolchildren. You could see everyone had been up late by lamplight the previous night, parents exclaiming in astonishment at the work of their kids, who had made placards not just protesting against the pass laws - when you had a good demonstration going there wasn't much point in reserving it for just one thing when there were so many inequalities available. Placards covered the whole gamut of protest:
Down with Bantu Education. We want BETTER homes, Free Education, Equal Work for Equal Pay, Down with Unjust Laws! We want Freedom of Speech, Down with Removal of People! Down with Bosses, Freedom for All, Let our leaders Speak of Freedom now! Down with Passes, Passes must go! Passes put people in gaol. Pass laws Break Family Life. Pass laws are Enemy No
I
of the People.
Juicey Fruit Mambo observed that the 'down with' posters were the most popular.

The demonstration was unusual for another reason; no police with leashed Alsatian dogs walked among the crowd. In fact, not a policeman, black or white, was to be seen anywhere on the African side of the high-security fence which surrounded the squat red police station building. It was not until Juicey Fruit Mambo broke through to the front that he saw the two Saracen armoured vehicles with machine guns mounted on their turrets. Here the police station was surrounded by policemen carrying sten guns and an occasional rifle; there looked to be about two-hundred-and-fifty or so white constables, although there may have been others inside. Some were dressed in ordinary everyday police uniform while others wore the not-yet familiar combat fatigues and soft cloth caps which gave them the look of German Panzer troops. These were obviously the police recruited overnight from outside the area in anticipation of trouble in the township; they looked young and inexperienced. Most of the police were chatting, smoking, and watching the crowd. They carried belts of ammunition around their shoulders and you could just see they thought they looked tough. It was obvious they'd decided the crowd was peaceful and that nothing unforeseen was about to occur.