Note No. 2

June 2020

If you ever read this, Vladimir, you will know what I am doing, sitting here in a dark corner of this London pub, shielding my eyes with one hand from the neon glare of the lights over the bar counter. My other hand pens into this notebook that I now call ‘The Red Book’. I am deconstructing, comrade. Taking all apart. Reverse-engineering history.

And, in the old movie reel I run over and over in my head, Comrade Vladimir, you are, as usual, seated on the edge of the sofa long discoloured and thread-loosened by similar evening assignations that always end close to dawn. I say ‘old’, but it is just a year ago – June last year, 2019. It seems all my memories now are seared with age, covered in a grey dust that coagulates between synapses.

Yes, there is perhaps a reason this memory unwinds before me now. I see it all. Your fingers are curled around your whiskey glass on the low table before us, the glass that I seem never to see you lift to your lips, as I scoop up in my hand more ice and drop it tinkling into my glass, now misty from the drink that has been. I look into your eyes that do not leave mine as you recount your tales. It is all so clear, suddenly, your round-cheeked face, with the long jutting chin – the whole shaped like a pear; a pear with drill-bit eyes, ever-sardonic mouth.

I hear Bongi in the open-plan kitchen, around the corner, clinking the instruments of her expertise, the crunch of the pepper grinder, the swish of spice shakers, the smell of fresh-cut garlic, the squeak of the oven knob. My nose anticipates already the grilled chops, lending an edge to our drinking and our conversation.

Bongi always does this when you visit. She knows that I will tire long before you have finished your tales of the corridors of power we both trod. We both know you will out-drink me. And she knows that, for us old revolutionaries, trained by the Russians in the proper art – among other arts – of serious drinking, alcohol must be accompanied by food. Soon she will join us and will argue passionately with you, while I lean back and listen, sipping at my drink far more often than either of you.

But this night is different. Your war stories are not idle. They are the setting of mood, a precursor to something specific. I am not sure how I know this. Perhaps it is your glances towards the wall behind which Bongi prepares our food. Perhaps the thoughtful pauses that do not follow the logic of your storytelling, or the sighs that indicate an anxiety or excitement that is unusual for you. Maybe your even slower-than-usual drinking, or the more intense looking into my eyes as if trying to fathom there whether I am ready for you to get to the point.

I think it is particularly in your choice of stories on this evening. They are not the usual, casual stories, flitting from one to another as the logic of one leads to the next, or the further memory spurred by an interjection. Tonight your tales are not simply the shared memories of the Angolan bush, or the drinking sessions in Kabwata in Lusaka. Nor are they the back-home stories, at the after-tears for a comrade buried, or our usual fare of narrations of the frustrations and obfuscations of governing our partially liberated country and the idiosyncrasies of the ministers and presidents we served. Tonight I can think of only one word for the common thread of your stories: signs. You are talking The Signs, although you don’t, and you never have, liked that term. Too mystical, you said, for your taste.

Now you are telling once more how the current head of the Service, the oddly named Brixton Mthembu, your successor, was suspected during the struggle days of being a sell-out. Interesting. ‘Suspected’? In your previous, more idle iterations of this story he was a ‘confirmed’ impimpi. And tonight your recounting of this tale has less of the emotion, less of the frustration and sardonicism of previous tellings. It is more ‘scientific’, more academic, a reminder, perhaps, of the mountains we climbed.

Now the aroma and the sizzling of the chops snake around the corner of the dividing wall, I hear Bongi retrieving plates from the cupboard with the broken hinge and the rattle of cutlery from the stainless steel holder. You, again a little unusually, drain the remains of your drink and reach for the bottle and the jug of water. I am intrigued by your pressed beige chino slacks, which seem never to crease, in spite of your back-and-forth movement on the sofa as you reach for your drink or lean back to continue the conversation, or occasionally cross your legs.

Bongi comes in with a platter in one hand, the meat still whispering off the heat of the oven, and three side plates with precariously balanced crockery in the other. She bends to lower her burden onto the low table in front of us, her skirt of browns, beiges and yellows catching on the side of the sofa where you sit. Her hands released, she quickly smooths down her skirt, acknowledges the smile from you, looks without expression at me, and disappears again.

We both lean forward, help ourselves to chops with our fingers, ignoring, as always, the cutlery. Bongi comes back with paper napkins and a board with thick slices of white bread, which she doesn’t allow me. She always makes exceptions for you, Comrade Vladimir; breaks the rules of the house, reverts to the traditional African woman. I confess I like it sometimes, but not as an alternative to the fiercely gender-conscious Bongi, the young, lithe, hot-headed woman I fell despairingly in love with in London – or was it Lusaka? – all those memories ago. Now, in her early sixties, the years kind to her face and eyes, though now spread comfortably around her hips and thighs, she remains in my mind’s eye as she’s always been – an abstraction and a particularity.

She returns with a chair retrieved from the dining table and we both half-stand to offer help, which she dismisses with a shake of the head and a contrived pout. She helps herself to meat and bread, takes up cutlery, looks at us, and reverts to her hands. You beat me to pouring her a whiskey, which, like you, she dashes with water.

The perceived path of your conversation disappears, interrupted by the demands of meat and perhaps the presence of Bongi, although this has never silenced you before. You speak. To her. ‘How’s our Service?’

‘It’s okay, DG. Still the same. Same problems. Same shenanigans. But okay. We move along. Everyone’s waiting for Sandile to make his moves. God knows we need some change.’

Your smile stretches a few millimetres beyond sardonicism. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I see Nadine has joined. Like mother like daughter?’

‘And father,’ I object.

‘Hey, Jerry, you and I are long gone from the Service. Old furniture.’

‘How do you know?’ Bongi wipes a hand on a napkin.

‘I saw her. A few days ago. At the academy. I was giving “my talk”.’ You gesture the quotations marks on either side of your head with a half-eaten chop still in your right hand and the whiskey glass in the other.

I take a chop out of my mouth. ‘Oh ... The Talk. Did anyone learn anything?’

‘Actually, she did. Nadine. She gave the only sensible answer to a question I asked.’

Bongi giggles, the other thing about her that has not aged. I lift my glass to the air in front of us and you and she clink with me. ‘Okay, like father like daughter too.’ We clink again.

And now we talk again, more idly, as before, between the chewing and the sipping and the stretching for another chop and another slice of bread. We talk about the new president and the new cabinet – the new party leadership. We wonder whether it will make any difference to the fortunes of the country with which all three of our lives are so complexly interwoven. Bongi is optimistic. You are not quite there yet, but hopeful. I am quiet as usual, reserving my opinion until, perhaps, the whiskey gives cause.

We push our plates away. You thank Bongi in the language you share. She leans back in the dining chair, glass in both hands held by still dainty fingers. You fall back into the sofa, wiping your mouth and hands with a napkin that you then scrunch up and toss (accurately) back to your abandoned plate. I offer more whiskey. You decline with your hand out like a traffic cop.

‘Sisi, I’m sorry. I need to speak to Jerry.’

Bongi’s brow furrows. She looks at me. I shrug, looking back at you and then back to her. This has never happened before. Bongi has never been excluded from our drinking and gossiping sessions, at least not since we worked together, when you sometimes dropped in on your way home from the office to conclude a discussion we had not been able to finish at work.

‘No problem, DG. I’ve got some admin to do. I’ll go sit in the study.’ She rises, leaves her unfinished glass on the table before us, perhaps as a reminder that her place remains here with us, or as an act of protest.

‘What’s up, Vladimir? It’s a long time since we’ve had secrets from Bongi.’

‘Hey, Jerry, it’s a long time since we’ve had secrets full stop, except for the ones we carry to the grave.’

You lean forward, push your also unemptied glass away to rest close to Bongi’s. I light a cigarette and stand up to slide open the French doors behind me. You smile and take a cigar from the breast pocket of your long-sleeved guayabera, a cigar clipper and reach for my lighter. The silence as I wait for you to finally get the end of your cigar glowing allows the sound of Bongi’s fingers clicking on the keyboard to drift into the room.

‘You remember The List, Comrade Jerry?’

‘The list? What list?’

‘The List. The one the boers are said to have given Madiba when he became president.’

‘That list. The List. The one with the supposed names of boer agents in the ANC?’

‘Yes, Jerry. That list.’

‘Does it really exist? Why’s it coming up now? Twenty-five years later?’

‘Wait, Jerry. Let me go back.’

Your cigar has gone out. You flick at the lighter, which always ignites first time for you, and suck in your cheeks heavily as you goad the cigar back to a glowing end. ‘I was called this week by the Minister.’

‘Which minister?’

‘Sandile. He called me in the middle of my lecture. I had to leave the lecture and make my way from Mpumalanga to Cape Town.’

‘Don’t tell me he wants you back, to take over the Service again – from the sell-out.’

‘Ha! Actually, that’s what I thought when he called.’

And why are you telling me this, I ask myself. Please don’t tell me he wants me back, I think. I’m too old for this shit.

‘He wants me to set up a task team. You were the first name I gave him.’

‘A task team? For what?’

‘Wait, Jerry, let me finish. You’re getting like Bongi now.’

‘You don’t mind when she interrupts you.’

‘Well, she’s prettier than you.’

‘Hah! Okay, chief. Carry on.’

And so you do, Comrade Vladimir – carry on. For three hours we talk, or you do, mostly. The light from the waning Highveld dusk long gone and the sounds of the traffic in the distant street slowly dying. Bongi comes back once to offer coffee. You ask for a glass of ice water. I pour myself another whiskey. Finally she comes back again to wish us goodnight, kissing me on the bald patch at the top of my head, which she knows I hate, and takes your hand with her left hand touched to her right forearm and does the little bending of the knees that she does only for you now, as she had used to do for her late father (and occasionally as a sarcastic gesture to me when we made up after an argument).

You know, Vladimir, that my memory is not good – certainly not as good as yours. I retain gist. I lose detail. Not a good trait for an intelligence officer, I suppose. But now, in this June of 2020, moved from the pub back to this dank Kilburn flat, feeding coins into the old-fashioned electricity meter, passion and panic inject sparks into dormant neurons. I remember our conversation on that June evening almost word for word.

‘The Minister said the president is concerned, Jerry.’

‘About?’

‘About old apartheid networks persisting in the party and government.’

‘Indeed? He’s concerned now? We raised those concerns in the late nineties and beyond.’

‘I know.’

‘And we were told then that we were being too conspiratorial, blaming our own weaknesses on an imagined enemy.’

‘Yes, Jerry, I know. And there was truth in that. We had some serious weaknesses. But we also need to think about who was telling us that?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that perhaps it was largely the purveyors of our weaknesses who were telling us that; diverting our attention, maybe.’

You relight the stub of your Cohiba with hardly any space left for your fingers to hold it. You were never one to waste a good Cuban.

‘We said that too at the time.’

‘I know, Jerry. I know. Stop being triumphalist. Let me finish.’

I pour another whiskey and take the empty bottle to the kitchen and return with another. But I am not feeling drunk, just argumentative. I return to my armchair, fall back into it and gesture to you to continue.

‘The president is determined, with the support of a good number of comrades in the NEC and the new cabinet, to lead a decisive turnaround. He wants to deal with corruption, state capture and the excessive materialism that goes with it, service delivery failures and a much more radical transformation of the economy.’

‘As was decided at every ANC conference for the last quarter-century.’

‘Yes, Jerry, but it seems serious this time.’

‘Why this time? What makes this time any different?’

‘Sandile says there’ll be announcements soon.’

‘Well, that’s good to know. But will he succeed?’

‘Exactly, Jerry. That’s the point. The chief is concerned about the effect of the old networks on our ability to implement our programmes. He wants to know which of the people we rely on in the party and government have other masters.’

‘The Signs.’

You look at me with that look of generosity that I shall always remember you by. Your hand goes out to the whiskey bottle, but changes its mind, and you fall back onto the sofa, leaning forward quickly again to scrunch the tiny stub of your cigar into the saucer Bongi has provided as an ashtray. ‘Whatever, Comrade Jerry. Whatever. And we have been tasked to investigate, as a special task team, small and very secretive.’ You sigh.

‘And the list?’

‘Huh?’

‘The List. You started off by talking about Madiba’s list.’

‘Yes, we start there. But you know very well we can’t rely on it. It’s probable that some if not all of the names on it were put there by the boers to sow division and distrust. But that in itself might give us an idea, a starting point. It is likely that we are looking for people who are not on the list.’

And so, Comrade Vladimir, I accept the task. Because it comes from you. Because I trust Sandile. Because I give the president the benefit of the doubt. And because it is a vindication of my suspicions since 1994, perhaps even further back, when we discussed the future in Green House as the negotiations with the regime progressed and our minds lurched towards the future.

We – the two of us – discuss the task team, the methods we will use, our future communications and precautions, and I accompany you to the front door, out to the driveway and open the gate for you as you slip into the small-hour streets. I go back inside and slip into bed beside Bongi, who stirs, and moulds herself to my back, while I wonder how I am going to deal with the fact that I once more have a secret to keep from her.