37 | MANDLA

AFTER THE INCIDENT in the tavern, Mzwai was contrite. He apologised to me the next day for his outburst and I accepted his apology. When we were alone Rachel and I debated whether the damage that had already been done was so great that we should roll up the operation. Mzwai’s antics – not to mention his having had to be dragged unceremoniously out of the tavern by his “cousin” – these were by now the stuff of township gossip. It was entirely possible that some impimpi would pick up on it and want to find out more, and Mzwai’s connection to us and our cover in the town would be over.

Taking advantage of Mzwai’s contrition, Rachel suggested drinks in the pear orchard. She brought a bottle of whisky and glasses outside, allowing a few minutes to pass so that Mzwai could knock his back in his usual fashion. She refilled his glass and then spoke.

“Mzwai,” she said, “this is my operation and I have decided we can no longer work with you. We cannot trust you. You are operating independently of us. We do not know what you are doing. The instructions I got for this mission are different to those you brought with you. I do not understand what has happened and I’m unsure to whom I am accounting. I feel I am putting my network at risk by working further with you. And I am very sorry to have to do this, especially to a comrade of the movement, but I am asking you to leave until I get further clarification from Swaziland.”

A look of unadulterated hatred for Rachel passed over Mzwai’s face. “You cannot do that,” said. “That is indiscipline. You will have to account for it.”

“That I will do,” Rachel replied, holding his gaze steadily. “And perhaps I will even be expelled.” Then she added bitterly, “That is how your lot deal with dissent, isn’t it?”

“I have nowhere to go,” said Mzwai.

“Comrade,” Rachel said, a degree of confidence returning to her voice, “it has not escaped me that you are making your own contacts out there, perhaps even using people we introduced to you. Someone will take you in.”

“Do you agree with her?” Mzwai said, turning to me.

“I am afraid I do,” I said. I stared down at my feet.

“Then shame on you, comrade, taking instructions from an umlungu.”

Mzwai spat into the soil and stumbled away from us, dropping his glass in the sand as he made his way back up to the house. Rachel and I stayed where we were. Neither of us spoke. I poured us each a half glass of single malt. Rachel knocked hers back. Then she began to cry.

I slept with Rachel that night, holding her close, sleepless, a layer of dread under my heart.

When we woke up Mzwai was gone.

Now that Mzwai was out there, it was imperative that one of us go to Swaziland before we could decide what to do next. I told Rachel that it made most sense for me to go, having crossed more recently than she had. The terrain was still imprinted in my mind. She agreed. It took a few days to prepare. We had to get maps, a torch, provisions and warm clothes for the crossing. We also needed to agree on a position. I felt we should continue; Rachel felt that we were too compromised, and that we should ask to be relieved of the mission and be redeployed. New trusted cadres could take up where we had left off. Our networks were still intact and primed for action.

I drove the bakkie nervously, anxiety clutching at my throat, disconcerted by the unfamiliarity of the gear shifts. I had not driven since my flight into exile because of the possibility of being stopped in a road block. I retraced the route we had come, reassured by the familiarity of the landscape on the journey from Swaziland to Helderstroom. I had difficulty finding the culvert, though, and was confused by several lines of pine trees when I hadn’t remembered so many. I doubled back a number of times, finally realising that the bakkie’s speedometer was malfunctioning and that I had misjudged the distance. By then the sun was setting. I had hoped that I would get to the culvert in the late afternoon and make the crossing while it was still light. I could not imagine repeating the lurching negotiating of the path in the dark without Themba and his acute knowledge of the terrain.

I pressed the accelerator to the floor, trying to make up time. Eventually, the line of pine trees appeared on the horizon and I felt confident that I knew where I was. I parked the bakkie some metres off the road in a dense copse of scrub and locked the doors.

The light was fading fast – it was literally ebbing from the landscape as I stood looking around me. There was nothing for it. I would have to cross the border in the first morning light. I cursed myself and fate. I sat in the soft river sand in the culvert and drank the hot coffee that Rachel had made before I set out and sealed in our thermos flask. Night fell and with it rose a cacophony of noises: the shrilling of cicadas in the umbrella thorns, the deep-throated croak of bull-frogs in the vlei some way off, the eerie laughter of jackals.

The tension of the drive abated but, although I felt calmer, I could not sleep. I sat upright against the concrete pillar of the culvert, assailed by a series of images. Mzwai’s dark expression as Rachel asked him to leave; sweating in my fatigues as I climbed logs despite the snow and my breath fogged against the cold at the military obstacle course outside Moscow; coupling with Rachel, and the moment of orgasm the first time we had sex; the dusky people of the Helderstroom tavern.

Towards morning the countryside around me fell silent as if it was holding its breath in anticipation of first light. In the distance I heard a loud thud, like that of a door blown shut by a sudden gust, followed by a hollow silence. A hot breeze moved over the surrounding thicket. A rumbling deep underground passed beneath the culvert. Birds took startled flight from the surrounding trees. I heard their wings flapping in the darkness and their shrill cries of alarm. Feathers swirled in the air as they panicked, trying to find purchase in the dark. Some finches fell to the ground at the entrance to the culvert. A cold sweat gripped me in the flanks as I tried to interpret the noise I had heard. It was an explosion, of that I was sure, but where and what it could indicate I had no way of knowing.

I stood up and stretched my legs and arms. Looking up towards the road and away into the distance, on the far horizon I saw a glow against the still dark sky. I retreated into the culvert once more, pulling my jacket around me, willing the dawn to arrive, impatient to get through the fence to Swaziland. I cursed under my breath and felt a thrill of fear.