Those Who Love Night (34 page)

“They do?” Abigail was interested.

“That's Jonas Chunga. You never know what to expect from him.”

It was not the main issue, though. “I want to know what you've got. Tell me what you've got.” He had not changed position. The handle of the gun pointed forward, perfectly positioned for his right hand.

Another glance at the front entrance confirmed to Mpofu that none of his
CIO
colleagues were coming in to arrest him. “They were taken away in a prison truck that came back fourteen hours later. I heard one of the drivers complain about the long drive.”

“Are you serious?” Abigail demanded. “You think it's worth a thousand dollars to know that they may be six or seven hours' drive from here? And even that's not certain. They could be anywhere.”

“I've got more.”

“Let's have it.” The contempt Abigail felt for this man was now mingled with the humiliation she felt. He thought they would be easy to handle, that he could flash his gun and they would be cowed into doing his bidding.

“I got the telephone number of the place they're being held. I overheard Director Chunga giving the number to someone else, the
DG
, I think.”

“What did he say to the director general?”

“The
DG
asked for the contact number, and they were definitely talking about those prisoners.”

Abigail knew that, at the very least, the telephone number would reveal which town they were being held in. “Why didn't you just ask where they are?”

“In the
CIO
you don't ask those sorts of questions.”

That was understandable, she thought. “Where's the number?”

“I've got it. It's hidden. Give me half the money now, then I'll take you to it.” And still the gun was on display.

Yudel was trying not to look at it. He stifled an artificial yawn. “Time for us to go.” He glanced at Abigail, moving in his seat as if to rise. “This fellow doesn't know anything.”

“You want a lot of money for very little information,” Abigail said.

“I hid the number at my mother's house. You know you don't have any other choice. This is your only chance.”

Abigail was not sure whether he was pleading with them or threatening them, but, despite herself, she knew that he may be right. His weakness was how badly he wanted their thousand dollars, but his strength was this information that could be their last best chance of finding the missing seven. “We'll go to your mother's house now. You'll give us the number and I will call it. The answer I get will determine whether you get paid.”

“You think they'll tell you?”

“I know how to get the answer I want. It's that or nothing.” Abigail looked at Yudel who was already on his feet, glancing at his watch and stretching extravagantly. “Goodbye, Agent Mpofu,” Abigail said.

Mpofu rose more quickly than they had. His jacket was hanging in the normal way. Advertising the gun had not worked. “All right,” he said. “Let me write out my mother's address. Meet me there in two hours.”

44

The township where Mpofu's mother had her home lay on the northern side of the city. Its inner core had been started in colonial days as a neat network of tiny identical four-room brick cottages. But over the years, the resources of succeeding governments, first that of white settlers, then of black liberators, had shrunk. Idealism had also dissipated, with very few brick cottages being added. Shacks of every possible shape, size and building material had spread beyond the original township. The dwellings followed no town-planning regulation, along tracks that appeared to have more to do with accident than intent.

“Down here,” Helena said. “I think it's down here, past that tavern, the one on the right. Do you see it? There's an opening in the shacks there, an alley. Stop there and we'll see if we can get through.”

Yudel did as she instructed, but the gap between the two shacks was blocked by another, bigger one set farther back. “Wait here for me. I'll go into the tavern and ask.”

He and Abigail watched her go. Through the open door they could see her engage in conversation with a man, perhaps the proprietor. Abigail and Yudel got out and waited next to the car. It was a miracle to Yudel that anyone could be traced in this place. There were no street names, no house numbers, no formal way of finding anything. There was probably no postman for the township either.

The signs of commercial activity were equally miraculous to Yudel. Every second or third shack carried a homemade sign advertising some kind of enterprise. Barbers who operated in front of doorways, tiny convenience stores that carried only five or six of the most basic foods, wedding-gown-hire agents, ladies' hair salons, tire repairmen, exhaust-system repairers who displayed their stock of five or six used exhaust pipes in conical piles alongside the track, woodworkers, a baker who claimed to make cream cakes and wedding cakes, a prepaid phone service under a hessian awning, a pickup truck that could be hired either as a taxi or to transport goods, taverns like the one in which Helena was looking for directions—all of them advertised their wares in this impoverished place.

To Abigail, it was a wonderful advertisement for the resilience of the African spirit. The country's economy had been destroyed beyond the worst of nightmares, but the residents of this ramshackle place had not given up.

While the signs on the buildings gave notice of a surprisingly active community, there were few people in the streets. At the bottom of the alley, two children were playing a game that involved using one stick to flick another into the air and then strike it before it landed. Two old women, dressed entirely in black, were sitting on armchairs that had lost much of their stuffing. They were talking in undertones and looking in the direction of the strangers and their seemingly new car. In the direction the car was pointing, a teenage couple were strolling in the purposeless way of people in the grip of sexual attraction who have no place to exercise it. He had an arm wrapped around her neck and she had both of hers around his waist.

From a distance they could hear what sounded like crowd sounds, the rising and falling of many voices. “Do you hear that?” Abigail asked Yudel.

“What is it?”

“They're certainly excited. I can't make out if they're happy or angry.”

“I hope we don't have to find out,” Yudel said. “Things could get uncomfortable for us.”

Abigail grinned at him. “This is the point where I'm supposed to say, what do you mean—us—white man?”

“You'll forgive me, if I don't laugh,” Yudel said. Abigail chuckled briefly, though.

Helena and the tavern's proprietor stepped out of the hut, squinting into the brightness of the sun. “I think I understand,” she was saying. “Right at the school, then past the football field, then it's left and when we reach the tavern in a green, corrugated-iron house we are close and we must ask again.” She was speaking Shona, but Abigail understood enough of the language to follow it.

The tavern owner, a short, broad-shouldered man who walked with a stoop, was nodding. Abigail went closer. She spoke to the tavern owner in English, her Shona not being good enough for the purpose. “There's hardly anyone in the streets. Is there an occasion?”

“Political meeting, opposition to the government.”

“You didn't go?” Abigail asked.

“I'm too old. Politics is for young people.”

“Aren't they scared of reprisals?”

He shrugged. “Last night they chased the police. You see the smoke.” He pointed across the ragged line of rooftops. In the distance, a few thin wisps of smoke were blending into the distant hills. “They burned houses. Maybe policemen stayed in those houses.”

“They aren't holding this rally at the football field, are they?”

“Yes, they always hold meetings at the football field.”

“The one we've got to drive past to get to the green tavern?”

“Of course. You want to go there, you've got to pass the football field.”

Ever since they had entered the township, Yudel had driven slowly along the uneven potholed surfaces of the township roads. Now he drove even more slowly. In the distance they could see the crowd. In the rearview mirror he saw only the puffs of dust churned up by the car's wheels.

“Stop, Yudel,” Abigail said. She turned to Helena who was in the backseat. “We have to find another way. We can't go past that football field. I'm not sure we should be here today at all.”

“That's a movement of the people.” Helena's voice held the angry tone Abigail had heard too often before. “You have nothing to fear from the people.”

“Helena, we need a different way. We need at least a few rows of shacks between ourselves and the political meeting, no matter whose side they're on.”

“Turn here, if you must.” She seemed to be gritting her teeth as she spoke.

“That's barely a track,” Yudel said.

“Tell her,” Helena said. “This is what she wants.”

Yudel looked at the way Helena had indicated. He brought the car to a stop. The rough, grassless track they had followed so far was a highway by comparison. Ahead, although still a distance away, the crowd seemed to be a loose gathering with people moving back and forth aimlessly. He opened the window on his side and the sound from the football field grew in intensity. He heard the ill-defined chorus of many voices, united only in their excitement.

“There's something wrong about this,” Yudel said. “That's not a crowd at a political meeting.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” the voice from the backseat muttered in disgust.

At that moment, two teenage boys, dressed in unwashed T-shirts and jeans, burst out of a side street, running fast. Both faces held expressions of hard-eyed excitement. Yudel saw a breathlessness about them that had nothing to do with how hard they were running. Neither seemed to notice the car. They fled across the track and into one of the alleys between the shacks.

Now there were others, coming from the front, younger people running and older people scampering as quickly as they could. A red-eyed man in rags, who used a stick to walk with, was coughing and laughing as he hurried past the car. Helena yelled something at him in Shona, but he only shook his head and kept moving.

Not all were running, though. Some of the crowd in the middle distance was still gathered across the track, possibly opposite the football field. “The police must be there, maybe shooting at people,” Helena said.

“If the police were there and shooting at people, they'd all be running and we'd have heard the shots.” Abigail glanced at Helena. To Yudel, she said, “Let's go on.”

“Do you think it's safe?”

“Nothing we've done here so far has been safe. Let's go on.”

Yudel let out the clutch. His right foot barely touched the accelerator pedal. The car eased forward at little more than walking pace. Another group of teenagers, this time both boys and girls, were running toward them from the front. One of them turned to look back, then another, then they were running again. Yudel saw in their eyes the same excitement he had seen earlier. One of the boys stopped next to his window. Yudel brought the car to a stop. The boy shouted something to one of the others in Shona. Seeing Yudel looking at him, he shouted in English, “Now we are all together. Now we are all one. We are united.”

Abigail leaned past Yudel and called to the boy. “What's happening down there?”

He brought his face close to the open window. Yudel could see the whites of his eyes all the way round the irises. “We are united. No more will we have dictatorship, no more, not in my country.” Then he was gone, still fleeing in the direction away from the football field. From where they had stopped, Yudel could see only a corner of the space that passed as a football field. Unlike the well-kept one in town, the field seemed to be almost entirely without grass. The absence of a watering system and the relentless sun had destroyed whatever greenery may once have existed.

Down at the field the crowd seemed thinner, as people either drifted away or fled headlong. A man and a smaller figure, perhaps a boy, were kicking something on the ground.

“I think we can go, Yudel,” Abigail said. “Whatever the threat is, I don't think it's aimed at us.”

He agreed with her, but he allowed only gentle acceleration. In the rearview mirror he caught a glimpse of Helena's face and thought he saw the same hard-eyed excitement there that he had seen in the eyes of the kids fleeing the football field. “I don't think this is good,” Abigail was saying. “This is not good at all.”

The smoke pointed out by the tavern owner had not come from a burning house, as he had thought. Its source was a smoldering bundle on the edge of the grassless football field. Others had joined the man and boy to kick the bundle on the ground. There were five of them now, one of whom was a woman.

The people still on the field could not now be described as a crowd. They were a scattering of individuals, edging away from the scene in which they had participated. “Not in my country,” the boy's voice shouted. “Not anymore in my country will they do what they like.”

Yudel had stopped the car again and was getting out. He started toward the bundle on the ground. Abigail was running ahead of him. “Stop, brothers and sisters, please stop. This will bring reprisals on us all. Please stop.” It was only now that Yudel could see the shape of the thing on the ground. He saw a single hand with fingers spread-eagled that for the first time identified it for what it was. Smoke was rising from the blackened corpse. The clothing, or was it the flesh, was still glowing in places. There was not enough smoke to be visible from far.

Most of those who had been kicking the body had stepped back with Abigail's approach. Only one man and a boy who Yudel thought had not yet reached his teens were still attacking the figure on the ground. Abigail was shouting. “No, please stop. This will not help.” She pushed hard against the man. He stumbled and went down on hands and knees.