Last Train to Retreat (2 page)

But the moment had passed. Sarai no longer had her passport and she had little money. And always, always there was Cupido, swearing he’d kill her if she ever ran away. Even if she dared, she was afraid she’d be sent to jail for being in the country illegally and for being a sex worker which was also illegal. And how could she trust Lena or anyone else in this country after what had happened? It seemed to Sarai that here, people killed for a mobile phone or a few Rand. In Chaweng, her home town, people hardly ever raised their voices or arms in anger. Sure, some
farangs
could get rowdy and rough but most would leave their emotional baggage behind because Koh Samui was all about being happy.

•

An hour later the snaking line towards the city between Western Boulevard and Main Road had thinned out and Sarai was still waiting. Cupido had instructed her and the other girls to stand in the side streets, not on the fan walk where they’d be obvious. On the hill behind them Cupido had rented three houses for the World Cup, each with a lounge for transacting, and three bedrooms for sex. From the outside no one would know what went on inside. It was clear to Sarai that Cupido couldn’t lose – on match days they’d work around the stadium bringing customers to the houses, and on non-match days they’d be in the city parlour where clients would come to them. The parlour was where Sarai lived, mostly locked up in a room upstairs when she didn’t have customers.

Sarai shivered. She’d not experienced winters before because Koh Samui had none. Couples walked by holding hands or with arms around each other. Even with women at their side the men looked at Sarai. They were no different from the
Johns
who visited her – married, usually with kids, wanting things they couldn’t get at home.

Cupido had been down twice, in a rage that she had not found customers. ‘The
klonkies
all got
Johns
, what’s wrong, hey? I haven’t got all night!’ Cupido often scolded her when in fact she brought in more money than the others. The Chinese girls had attacked her because she wasn’t like them with their small tits and boyish hips, and they had fought like animals in the lounge while everyone laughed.

Tiredness was overwhelming Sarai. She sat down on the kerb wishing she could sleep – undisturbed, for days, in her home set amongst the coconut palms near the Green Mango strip. No longer aware of her shivering body Sarai’s mind flew like a bird from its cage to her island home, to powdery white sands and warm waters, swaying palms, mountains and waterfalls, and friends.

A hard voice startled her, ‘You are available, yes?’ She got up, smelling beer and cigarettes. A frightening face looked down at her – huge yellow glasses with no lenses, owl-like eyes, a helmet painted green, yellow, and blue with some stars, a plastic soccer ball on top with horns sticking from it, and the words BRAZIL on the front. The man towered above her. He said again, ‘Well, are you or aren’t you?’

•

Lena found a table outside a restaurant and asked for a glass of water wishing it was hot chocolate. The waiter gave her a straw as if it would magically change the taste of water. She chewed on it, painfully aware of her solitariness on this night of crowds and thinking of the girl’s plight following her like a forlorn puppy.

Lena looked at her watch. She’d never make the 11.10 pm train and she couldn’t afford a taxi to Retreat. She’d have to take the last of the late trains put on for the World Cup, the 11.50. Her heart started thudding again. Would Sarai still be there? Unlikely, the girl was too beautiful. It was only the first night of the World Cup, Lena told herself, she’d come back, find another girl.
Make it work this time
.

Lena strode out into the road. Three inebriated men on the fan walk sounded like an entire stand of rowdy fans. Ahead of her she could see someone sitting on the kerb and another figure wearing a weird head contraption. Then both were upright – one big, the other small. A terrible realisation swept through Lena. She turned around and ran, salty tears burning her skin. She’d left it too late, she’d come so far only to fail the girl, and herself. It had all been a silly dream. Lena stopped, and thought –
the Makarapa man taking Sarai up Boundary Road is everything I loathe in the world.
He stands for all men, doesn’t he? And what do I, Lena Valentine, stand for if I don’t fight it?

She ran into Wessels Road, dim and narrow, her hate propelling her up the hill, now dense with flats and houses. Five minutes later she reached High Level Road. There was no one in sight. She leaned against a wall to catch her breath, ten, fifteen seconds. She had to get back to Boundary Road, approach it from the top this time – where there were stairs, Sarai had said.

•

Lena could hear an impatient voice, ‘I want it, man! But nine hundred … no way, man, no way!’

Halfway down the staircase was a small, grassy platform with a solitary tree and a railing. From there Boundary Road descended sharply, and beyond it in the moonless night Lena could see the glittering lights of the V&A Waterfront. She heard Sarai’s reply, ‘I tol’ you, mister, no anal … straight only, nine hundred one hour.’

Lena’s sneakers made no sound as she came down the stairs. The Makarapa man was holding the railings with Sarai pinned between his arms.

‘Excuse me sir, this is one of my girls. Can I help?’ Lena tried to stop her voice from trembling.

Sarai looked shocked, the man irritated. He appeared more ridiculous than fearsome in his head gear but he was big and he was drunk. His accent wasn’t Xhosa, more like Ibo or Lingala. More and more Nigerians and Congolese had come into Cape Town in the past few years. Lena saw them at the station deck market. This one had the money to buy a ticket to the game, a black leather jacket, and shiny shoes to match.

‘Oh, I see,’ he mumbled, his huge green glasses at an angle, ‘Well, I was just asking …’

‘Sir, our girls aren’t into that but I suppose we could make an exception for you as a valued customer.’ The man produced a sickly smile. Sarai looked at Lena in horror. ‘But it’ll be one thousand five hundred, special request you see …’

‘No way, I get it in Congo for fifty! Whaddya think I am – a millionaire?’ The smile had gone. His eyes glinted in the pale light.

‘See that house over there?’ Lena pointed to a roof sticking out above High Level Road, ‘I just have to enter a code and a bouncer will be here chop-chop.’ She took out her mobile and flicked it open. The man looked at Lena not sure if she was bluffing, raised his arm threateningly then stumbled up the stairs.

Shaking, Lena sat down on the grass. Sarai’s voice seemed to come from afar, barely disturbing the still air, ‘Why, why you are doing this? What you want?’ Her eyes appeared unnaturally green in the light, her cheeks fever pink.

Lena held out her hand to the cowering figure. ‘Sarai, come with me, there’ll be no more of this, you’ll be free. There’s no time, please …’ One of Sarai’s stockings was laddered, her mascara was streaky, her long hair dishevelled. And still she was beautiful.

‘Well, well,’ a high-pitched voice came from the top of the stairs, ‘
Slaat my dood met ‘n pap snoek
, a dyke putting in a trot!’ Rapid-fire words in
Kapie-taal
, the sing-song language of the Cape Coloureds – Afrikaans with English and some Xhosa mixed in.

Even before she turned around Lena knew who it was. She had prayed it wouldn’t come to this. ‘
Nuh,
and what’s wrong with that?’ she said, ‘money is money. I need two hours – girls take longer, you know.’ She flashed a grin at the pimp. ‘And I want it at
my
place – just up the road.’

Cupido swaggered down the steps and brought his face close to hers. ‘Aha, is that so?’

Not a big man, she noticed, but he freaked her out with his bad breath, twisted features and dead eyes. He dressed fancily – white shoes with black toe caps, pink trousers that were too tight, light blue polar-necked top and a navy coat unbuttoned.

Cupido jerked a chin in Sarai’s direction and winked at Lena. ‘
Die kind is ‘n poenspoes, wiet djy?’
The girl was shaven and Lena would like it, he said. Sarai, not understanding a word, backed up against the railing looking for an escape.

His tone changed, ‘You take me for a fool? You talk
nwata
, you got no money and you’re no
gatta
because we pay them to stay away. So who are you, hey? This is
my
patch!’ He was blocking their way to the staircase. Sickly blue lamps, the bang of an exuberant exhaust, and Cupido’s high voice, ‘
Ek gaat djou witbiene maak.
I’m gonna fuck you up seven hundred different ways so they’ll pick up only the pieces!’

He went for Lena. Her hand slid down to her jeans, unclipped the knife and opened it with her thumb in one movement. Cupido’s hands were already around her throat. Blindly she thrust the knife into him the blade scraping bone as it went in below the ribcage. Cupido looked down, mesmerised at the sight of his blue top turning red beneath his clutching fingers. ‘You bitch,’ he said.

Lena jerked out the blade shouting, ‘
Run, Sarai!
To the station, you hear me, the station! Go Sarai!’

The girl did not hesitate this time, bounced from the railing as if it was suddenly alive with current. She ran up the stairs, sobbing, Lena on her heels.

A
fter two years in his flat Zane Hendricks still loved getting mail, even those with windows that he knew contained bills. He was able to pay what he owed and more importantly, the address was a constant reminder that he had crossed the line from the Flats to Wynberg. Sure, it wasn’t Upper Wynberg, it was a one-bedroom apartment near the station, but it was a first step. One day, he promised himself, it would be a two-storey house with a big garden on the slopes of Constantia Berg.

From where he sat he could see the kitchen clock. It was 9.45 am, Saturday. He looked out of the window, the north-westerly and the rain had stopped – good for his trip but he’d take his rainproof top anyway. He put a spare shirt, a small towel, and two protein bars into his rucksack and brought his mountain bike in from the bedroom – repair kit under the saddle, pump and water bottle in place, enough pressure in the tyres. He put on his sneakers and tucked the bottom of his jeans into his socks. His white Billabong sweat top, dark glasses and helmet were next. The last thing he did before wheeling the bike from the flat was to take the uncooked Shoprite chicken from the fridge and squeeze it into the rucksack.

From his block he freewheeled down Court Road past the cemetery and the law courts, turning left into Church Street. When he reached Main Road he stuck to the pavement because riding in this narrow, busy arterial was risky. Besides, he loved to ramp the kerbs, it made his trip less boring through the many suburbs – Plumstead, Steurhof, Dieprivier, Heathfield, and Lavender Hill. He often dreamt of riding through forests when all he could hear was the wind, pine cones crunching beneath his wheels, and butterfly wings fluttering, and where getting lost didn’t matter. One day he’d make it but he’d keep his old Gary Fisher with its dated V-brakes and hard ride because it was the first thing in his life that had given him a taste of freedom. He treasured his bike. Previous owners had made only two concessions: a wider, softer saddle and bar ends to vary the grip. The odometer and speedometer had long since stopped working. What mattered to Zane was that he had
wheels
, albeit only two, and twenty-seven gears.

He took a left into Concert Boulevard, passed Retreat station crossing the track soon after. How many times had he crossed the line? And every time it jarred because he didn’t want to go back. It was a world he was trying to cut off but couldn’t because his flesh and blood was still there, an umbilical cord stretching ten kilometres from his flat to his parents’ place. One day he’d take the train to Retreat – to fetch his father and mother and sister and their few belongings and bring them to the other side. It would be his last train to Retreat.

•

Even within Lavender Hill, lines divided people based on what they could afford. Zane rode through the best part consisting of tiny plots with dinky, lookalike houses packed like
snoek
in a crate. He passed a dilapidated square posing as a shopping centre, the police station, his old school – all held bad memories.

Zane’s parents lived in the next best part of Lavender Hill which was on the east side of Prince George Drive. As always the metre-high message on a wall beside the road irked him: ‘
Welcome to Lavender Hill, where people are moved by love, happiness, and diversity’.
Only people with stars in their eyes could dream up such a line, he thought. Love and happiness existed only in movies. As for diversity, there was virtually none in a population made up mostly of
hotnots
or brown people like him who had been forcibly removed from District Six fifty years earlier and dumped on this flat, sandy expanse. Here, where the wind howled and all that grew were the population and the poverty, blocks of flats had been built for them by the apartheid government – rectangular, bare brick buildings, three or four storeys high, external staircases, no grass, flowers, or trees between buildings, only sagging washing lines and rows of rubbish bins, and engorged flies. These were the ‘courts’ – Daisy Court, Aster Court, Robin Court, and Darwin Court where his parents still lived, also known as the
skurwe
flats which made Zane cringe because in Afrikaans
skurf
meant ‘rough’, ‘ugly’, ‘dirty’. The only thing worse than the courts were the shacks in Lavender Hill made of discarded corrugated iron, wood, and plastic sheeting. Stones on the roofs helped a little when the South-Easterly blew but nothing could keep out the cold and rain in winter.

As he neared Darwin Court he thought of the saying, if you were born in Lavender Hill chances were good you’d die there. Alcohol, Mandrax,
tik, dagga
, a blade or a bullet from a gang – any of these could get you. There were other, less dramatic ways of dying, like the homeless not waking up after a freezing night outside, HIV-aids taking you away quietly, or plain despair. And if you were lucky enough to escape these, circumstances would trap you until you died of old age.