Last Train to Retreat (24 page)

He heard plopping sounds, felt a rush of air next to his helmet then a tug on his back as he rode headlong into the narrow mouth of the street.

S
omewhere in the labyrinth of small streets between Wellington and Main, Zane stopped. Had he been hit? He couldn’t see blood and he felt no pain. He took off his rucksack and saw the hole – a bullet had gone straight through it at an angle. It must have missed his right side by millimetres. With shaking hands he made his first call.

‘Lena it’s Zane. I can’t talk long. Just do as I say …’

‘Hey, what’s wrong? Supper’s ready.’

‘I nearly got killed … a man’s after me, someone I know. Lock the door, don’t answer the bell, tomorrow go to work late then stay away from the flat …’

‘Is it about Gatiep,
tell
me Zane!’

‘No, it’s about my sister Chantal … it’s a long story going back years.’

‘But … where will you go?’

‘I’ll call you, can’t talk now …’

‘Zane …’

‘He’s not after you, okay, but please do as I ask, and … and look after yourself. Gotta go, Lena, sorry …’

He rung off and made his second call.

‘Chantal, Zane here … listen carefully, it’s serious …’

He told Chantal what had happened. There was a long silence. ‘Chantal, you okay?’

Then she blurted out, ‘He’s crazy, Zane, I knew he’d do something, but this! … God used to be with him, gave him a chance, and he lost it. Oh, it was me, Zane! I said no and he lost it. It’s too late now, for him and maybe for me …’

‘I don’t think you should stay at the flat, he might know where I live. Stay home but walk a different route, watch out …’

‘I’m more worried about you. He can’t have me so you must pay for it … he always thought it was you who turned me against him. He needs
you
to blame, Zane … he’d rather die than believe it’s me who saw the evil in him.’

‘Chantal, can’t talk now … don’t tell Ma and Pa, I don’t want heart attacks, okay?’

‘He’ll try again …’

‘Don’t worry about me, you take care. I love you,
Sus
…’

‘Zane, wait … is today the first time you’ve seen him in all these years?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Dunno, can’t explain, just a feeling … love you too,
Boetie
.’

Finally, Zane called Appleby.

‘Zane, what’s up?’ Appleby had seen Zane’s name on his mobile screen. The sound of raucous laughter threatened to drown out his voice. After-work time was generally bad for Appleby. It was when memories preyed on him. Each glass he held was a grenade he could lob at his demons.

‘Appleby, something’s cropped up that needs sorting out.’ Then hastily, ‘Relax, it’s not work, everything’s fine with my clients.’

‘Must be woman problems then … take it from me, no woman’s worth it, in spite of what the L’Oreal girls say in the advertising.’

‘
Women
, Appleby, two of them, I used to have
three
– nothing to be happy about, I tell you. Remember I put in for some leave? Is it okay to go a few days earlier? It’s quiet at the office …’

‘Oh, like when?’

‘Like tomorrow, Appleby, please.’

Appleby thought about it. ‘I suppose there’s no reason why not. There’s life after women, you know.’

The lingering dusk finally gave way to the night as Zane set off on his journey. He knew exactly where he was going yet it felt as if he was riding into the unknown.

•

He avoided Main Road, sticking to the smaller streets of Plumstead and Bergvliet that were so haphazard they could have been planned by madmen. They slowed him down and a few times he got lost or had to backtrack. Only at Ladies Mile did he meet up with Main Road. He rode past Concert Boulevard giving Lavender Hill barely a glance on his left. What would come his way once he was back in Wynberg he didn’t want to think about.

Forty minutes later he could smell the ocean having ridden south along Prince George Drive via Military Road. As he turned into the south-easterly at Baden-Powell he could feel the sea on his skin. Then he saw it – the long lazy breakers of Muizenberg rolling white in the night towards him. He stopped, took off his helmet, and breathed in the salty air. It felt good. He looked up at the sky. How insignificant he must be from out there – not even the size of a grain of sand or a speck of dust, yet people were out to destroy him for something that had happened long ago.

He left his helmet off for a while to cool his head. On this desolate, windswept stretch of road there were few cars at night. Along the great curve that formed False Bay, Strand and Gordon’s Bay appeared as distant light clusters like stars along the Milky Way. He felt as if he could ride forever. For a moment a freedom that knew no bounds swept through him until he remembered that the Flats were just on the other side of the dunes with their scruffy vegetation, and he knew that for the rest of his journey he wouldn’t be alone – his shadow rider would be there to remind him of his past.

•

Zane passed Strandfontein, a bustling beach spot in summer. Tonight white lines crisscrossed the empty parking lot making it look like a massive gaming board, or a place for giants to hopscotch. Lights perched high on poles appeared ghostly in the ozone.

A few hundred metres further, on the R310 road, Zane stopped and scanned the dark bush on his left. It did not rise very high but he knew from daytime visits that it was dense and thick. His intense staring picked up nothing. Only when he diverted his focus did he become aware of a faint glow in the black blob of the bush. He pushed his bike towards it, probing small passage ways as he went along, sometimes having to lift his bike when he found none. The terrain consisted of vegetation-covered dunes becoming higher as he moved further inland. The higher dunes created bigger hollows and it was in one of these that he found the source of the light – a lamp dangling from a branch, and a log fire next to which sat Malaki Makonnen.

‘My friend, sorry to barge in like this,’ Zane said wearily as he put his bike down and took off his rucksack.

Malaki bounced up and embraced Zane. ‘Jesus be black! What brings you here so late?’

‘Long story … but first, can I stay with you for a few days?’

‘No problem
cotching
here, you know that.’ Malaki had a surfer’s build – V-shaped lateral muscles, a deep chest, and legs that looked underdeveloped by comparison. It gave him the suppleness to kneel on his longboard as he paddled. Calluses below his kneecaps bore witness to it. But what set him apart were his dreads – at least twenty major locks and many more small ones that would have made Bob Marley proud. They hung on him like a mane adding to his look of strength. Yet he was gentle, and calm. Zane breathed easier.

‘How are you, Malaki?’

‘Cool runnings,’ Malaki said throwing another log on the fire, ‘I and I are worried, though.’ He shook his dreads, ‘Riding in like this in the night.’ Malaki was a Rasta whose language was sometimes confusing but Zane knew his friend was expressing concern for him. They had met by chance soon after Malaki started teaching surfing at Strandfontein, when Zane was still a member of the Evangelicals. Malaki showed Zane there was another, cleaner, more natural way, the way of the sea. The rest, as they say, was history – Zane and Chantal had cut ties with Hannibal and Zane applied for the job at BAT.

‘Malaki, I’m sorry I couldn’t pack properly … brought no food, I’ll get some tomorrow but right now I could eat a horse!’

Malaki got up and fetched a bag of groundnuts, a packet of raisins, bread, rolled oats, milk, and Cape summer fruit. ‘The raisins are good on bread … honey too pricey. I and I could eat some more anyway.’ Malaki tried to eat only unprocessed, natural food –
Ital
in Rastafari. He avoided alcohol, canned food, coffee, fizzy drinks, salt, and condiments. Pig, crab, and shrimp were also out because they were scavengers of the dead. Zane would have given up his bike at that moment for a big Mac and a plate of chips. Malaki’s real name was Jan Arendse, formerly a member of a notorious gang in Hanover Park. What saved him, he claimed, was surfing, not the ‘trickery’ of shortboards but true soul-surfing that only a longboard could give. That break had been provided by members of the Strandfontein lifesaving club when they gave Malaki an old board full of dings. Malaki learnt not only to fix dings but also to ride a board. Through soul-surfing he found God – Jah to the Rasta – and finally himself. Jah spoke to Blacks in a way European religions didn’t and couldn’t, like Jesus was Black and Africa was Zion or heaven. Not that Malaki regarded himself as Black. His parents were Coloured but his grandfather was a Shona from Rhodesia who married a Coloured woman in Cape Town. It gave Malaki his dark brown shoe polish colouring. To create dreads he had twisted the juice of an aloe into his hair, slept with a wool garment under his head, and refrained from washing his hair for a month. He re-named himself Malaki, adding Emperor Hailè Selassiè’s original name, Makonnen, to it. Cutting loose from the Flats had been the final act in the redemption of Jan Arendse. His no-sham way of life in the bush at Strandfontein had made Malaki the ultimate natural man.

They talked until the fire died down. Once or twice Malaki made a hissing sound by sucking his teeth. Zane wasn’t sure if it was to express surprise or disapproval but he held nothing back, he had to get it all out, just as Lena’s wound had to be cleansed of puss. When Zane got to his misgivings about his new liquor account, and why he felt the way he did, Malaki nodded vigorously, and said, ‘Those who sell alcohol work for Babylon, Zane. One day, be free too of the polytricksters of Babylon.’

‘You know what really got me?’ Zane paused because he’d kept it to himself all this time. ‘It was when the client told the agency he wanted the rainbow nation, all the colours, to be seen drinking these new coolers – Coloureds and Blacks and Indians and Whites happily together. I mean, how phoney is that, Malaki, because that’s not the way it is, and how immoral, as if we don’t have a drinking problem already!’

‘I dunno who believes that stuff, man, it’s not real life.
That
love isn’t real, Zane, it’s just love of money.’

Zane thought of Sarai’s world. What was the difference really between sex workers selling their bodies, and advertisers selling alcohol? Both were prostituting themselves.

Malaki pointed at Zane’s ‘bed’ – a sleeping bag on a thick reed mat under canvas stretched between branches – and said, ‘One love, Zane, sleep well. I and I will talk more tomorrow, and surf.’

Zane opened his rucksack and spread the contents on the mat – his karate
gi
folded up would serve as a pillow, he had his toiletry bag and a towel that he used for showering at the dojo, a spare T-shirt, and, tucked away in the rucksack, his bank card and fifty rand. He felt strangely excited that he had come on his journey with so little. He rolled up his new black belt carefully and put it away. It felt as satiny as the day he had bought it but now, in the bush and on the run, Zane was struggling to recapture the thrill he had felt when he first tied it around his waist.

Malaki blew out the lamp and threw sand over the coals. Zane zipped himself up in his sleeping bag. On his back with his eyes shut he relived Hannibal’s vicious attack. It was as if Hannibal had gone mad, as if he needed to kill Zane
tonight
, and all because Zane had turned Chantal against him years ago? It didn’t quite make sense. Zane opened his eyes to help him shut out the images of Hannibal, and thought of the special meaning that ‘I and I’ had for Malaki and all Rastafarians, and how for him it meant only one thing – Zane Hendricks and his shadow rider.

•

In the morning he phoned Lena and Chantal to make sure they were alright. Both expressed concern for him. Then he walked inland through the bush for about two kilometres until he reached town where he drew money from an ATM. He bought what he thought he and Malaki would need for a week. On the way back he bought a snoek for R35 and two Hotnots for R40 from a
bakkie
that had positioned itself on the side of the road with the morning’s catch. The open back of the vehicle was filled with fish. Next to it on a rack, splayed snoek hung brown-dry. On impulse, Zane bought two. Hungry gulls screeched as they mock-dived the
bakkie
.

Malaki and Zane went down to the beach. The car park was beginning to fill up. Malaki took his longboard from the club and gave Zane one belonging to a friend. The boards had been patched up in many places and had no leashes which meant long swims to the beach if their riders fell off. Malaki and Zane waxed the tops and the rails thoroughly for grip, and paddled out skirting the rock pool and the kelp – to the backline two hundred metres away.

For the next three hours Zane could put the world and its threats aside. In the water away from the land he felt safer even though he knew that False Bay was home to Great Whites. He shouted back gleefully at a gull as he positioned himself for the next take-off having watched Malaki ride a wave with bubbling wake, standing with easy grace as if he had not a care in the world. And Malaki truly had nothing.

K
eeping himself composed Hannibal met Philander’s gaze. Philander had unexpectedly arrived at Hannibal’s house in the early evening and was now sitting stiffly on the couch. In his civvies and with his greying temples he could have been an ageing salesman were it not for his clipped questions and the hardness in his eyes. Any inclination Hannibal might have had of offering Philander something to drink evaporated in spite of the day’s accumulated heat pushing through the roof and the open windows.

Hannibal disliked Coloured cops with blue eyes and wavy hair. For a start they didn’t fit in with the Flats and secondly, they had the kind of hair he could only dream of, like Danny’s. If they were detectives it was another black mark. If they carried the name Philander it was like a stalking hunter to a Cape buffalo.

‘You still haven’t answered the question, Hannibal – are Cupido, Gatiep, and Curly members of the Evangelicals?’