TIME PASSED. RACHEL made excuses not to go into the field. She said there had been an increase in police surveillance of some of the areas targeted for removals and that we should lie low. She retreated to the small desk in her bedroom where she worked on her ornithological research. Mzwai acquiesced with her decision for a week or two. Then he pressed Rachel again, saying that we were losing valuable reconnaissance time.
This time she secretly did something to the bakkie and insisted it needed to go in to the town garage for repairs, where it stayed – parts had to be ordered from Durban, she said. We could see Mzwai’s impatience building. He struck up a friendship with a local taxi driver and even though he sensed resistance from us, he began travelling out into the region on his own. Rachel and I used the time he was absent to make love. “Let him recruit his own fucking network,” she said as she lay with her head on my chest.
When Mzwai was asleep one afternoon after a lunch with too many beers, I made my way into the township and found Jacob there. I told him I was risking my life by taking him into my confidence, but there was no one else to whom I might turn so I had to trust him. I gave him bus money to travel to Ermelo and asked him to contact Reverend Scott. He was to tell him that we would no longer be making contact with our network, that we had been instructed to lie low. Contact would be resumed in due course. Jacob agreed to do what I asked. “I will not betray the movement, Comrade Mandla,” he said solemnly as we parted.
Mzwai had cabin fever. He said if he did not get away from the house he would surely go mad.
When we did go out in public I introduced him as an older cousin of mine from Johannesburg. We went to the tavern once or twice. At first things were fine. He conversed easily with the regulars, even became avuncular, much more so than he ever was with Rachel and me. It occurred to me that the peremptory manner he adopted with us might be borne of unease that Rachel was white. Or perhaps he felt uncomfortable in what he might have perceived as our relative sophistication, with our easy references to books, music and international politics. But really we knew nothing about him – we just thought of him as a simple “salt of the earth” type. Nevertheless we didn’t entirely trust him and Rachel had developed a strong personal aversion to him, which she tried her best to work on.
One afternoon when Mzwai and I were at the tavern a group of older men, their clothes dusty from the work of the day and all of them in various stages of inebriation, gathered around him. They began asking him about Johannesburg, about the availability of jobs there. I was amused by Mzwai’s initial discomfort – he had not actually been in Johannesburg since his departure into exile – but he soon warmed to the role, inventing an account of the queues of unemployed on Johannesburg’s streets and the general harshness of life there.
“And the women?” they asked. They had heard that Johannesburg women were easy. They had heard that they were “available”. Was that true?
“Only at a price – a hefty one,” Mzwai answered smoothly and they chuckled, like schoolboys enjoying a risqué joke. Some women, perhaps wives or girlfriends, hearing the lewd laughter, ambled over.
I was bored with the banality of the small-town conversation. I bought another beer and stepped out onto the stoep to get away from the heavy-sweat smell of the tavern and its patrons.
To our great relief since Mzwai’s arrival several weeks before information had arrived from Swaziland for Rachel and it served to release some of the tension and the strangling sense of claustrophobia that had taken hold of me since he’d been with us. Silver confirmed personally that what Mzwai had told us was indeed the case. He told Rachel that he heard our concerns and he would seek to address them. It was not possible for him to do this immediately, however. First he had to take them up with other cadres, who were based outside Swaziland. He assured Rachel that he would get back to us. Meanwhile we were to give Comrade Mzwai our assistance. He was a veteran comrade and worthy of our respect.
I had taken to sleeping in my servants’ quarters once more, and the ease that had characterised my relationship with Rachel during the months when we had had the house to ourselves had changed. Now we were formal with each other in Mzwai’s presence, and furtive in our intimacies when he was not there. No more jazz over single malt by the fire at night or out on the veranda with the paraffin lamp turned low. No more shared books and discussions about what we were reading, nor the asides about politics. Even our cooking together stopped. We were an uneasy trio.
I stood outside the tavern for a while, relishing the cool breeze. I watched a dense kamikaze cloud of moths swirling in the tungsten glare of one of the arc lights that lit up the township. They fell, hundreds at a time, it seemed to me, like a dirty dry rain as they were singed to death against the hot metal. Behind and above bats swooped and darted, taking the hapless moths as prey.
When I went back into the bar I instantly regretted that I had left. The group of women around Mzwai had grown. I soon discovered why. He was standing rounds, waving a thick wad of notes at the barman, betraying himself as a man of means. In this bar the impoverished patrons nursed a single quart of Carling Black Label over several hours, except on pay day, when the tavern closed in the dawn hours and scores of comatose customers collapsed in the dust by the side of the road.
Mzwai’s speech had become slurred. He was openly flirting with the women.
“I am told,” I heard him say, “that rural women are not as available as Johannesburg women. I am sure that’s not true. Look at you –” He went on to compliment one of the women on her child-bearing hips and her buxom breasts. She tittered. It got worse. He would take her away from here, he claimed, out of the sticks, marry her, find her a nice urban room with an Edblo mattress and headboard set where they would make love every afternoon …
I noticed that the mood of the men with whom Mzwai had originally engaged had changed. There was a surliness to them now. Mzwai himself had not noticed anything. He let his hand run over the breast of the women he was trying to seduce. She brushed his hand away and stepped back with a small cry of protest.
A male voice rang out from the back of the bar. “Haai, man! What do you think you are doing? Keep your hands to yourself. Or do you want me to cut your fingers off?”
I saw the flash of a knife being drawn from under the man’s jacket and the crowd fell silent. I positioned myself between Mzwai and the woman’s husband.
“My cousin does not know our ways,” I said. “He is being disrespectful. He is possessed by alcohol. I will take him to bed. Leave him be. You can beat him tomorrow if he is still insolent. Goodbye, madodas.”
Then I dragged Mzwai out of the tavern by his jacket sleeve. I was incandescent with anger. Once we were clear of the tavern I lifted him up by his lapels and pulled him against me. “You fool,” I hissed. “Are you deliberately trying to expose us?”
Mzwai shrank back from me as if I were about to strike him.
“I am sorry,” he offered. “I drank too much too fast.”
I tried to calm myself. “Have you no discipline? Are Rachel and I to regard you as a trusted cadre of the movement or not?”
He was stung but at the mention of Rachel’s name his face darkened. “You are fucking her, aren’t you – the white bitch? I have seen you looking at each other, don’t think I haven’t.”
I stood before him open-mouthed, dumbfounded. Then I simply turned on my heel and walked away.