One sling of the braces would not keep up on the shoulder, just like one worm of pale-green mucus kept crawling down the chestnut lip and would suddenly dart back like a timid creature. But Macala wore his long pants (surely someone's—someone older's—castaway three-quarter jeans) with a defiant pride just ready to assault the rest of the known world. Other boys his ten-year age only had short pants.
He looked up and down from Mafuta's Chinaman store along Victoria Road, Sophiatown, and he thought of how his day ought to begin. Mafuta's was no good: he kept two too-ferocious dogs in his shop, and fairly authenticated rumour had it that he also kept a gun that made a terrible noise. But the vistas up and down Victoria Road offered infinite possibilities for a man. To the left, there were queues on queues of half-frightened, half-foolish people who simply asked to be teased. Then Moosa's store with all those fruity, sweety things in the window; but they said Moosa trained at night with irons. Opposite, across Millar Street, there was a Chink butcher, but his counter was fenced off with wire, and Ooh! those cruel knives and hatchets. There must be a lot of money there for it to be protected so formidably. And, next to the butcher, the Bicycle Shop with its blaring juke-box: Too roo roo roo tu! Too roo roo roo tu-tu!, where a passer-by girl would suddenly break into a dance step, seductive beyond her years.
All like that, up to Chang's, and from there just the denuded places the demolition squad had left in Sophiatown.
To the right, Macala stared at Benghali House. The only double-storey building in the whole of Sophiatown. In front of it all sorts of pedlars met: sweet-potato sellers, maize sellers, and sweet-reed sellers, African pimpled squash sellers, shoe-lace sellers—all bedamned whether or not the shopkeeper alone held a licence to sell anything.
Macala's eyes glittered as he saw the Ma-Ndebele women squatting in their timeless patience behind their huge dishes of maize-cobs, dried morogo peanut cubes, wild fruits like marula, mahlatswa—things the urban African never sees on trees these days.
To Macala, these women with their quaint and beaded necks, and legs made to look like colourful pythons, were the fairest game.
He stepped off the veranda of Mafuta's shop, off the pavement, and sauntered swaggeringly towards those placid women in front of Benghali House. He was well aware that the street-corner loungers, enormous liars all of them, were watching him, thinking that the slightest move Macala made promised excitement and trouble.
He stopped in front of a Ndebele woman transfixed to her white dish, as if one with it, as if trade meant just being there at the strategic place and time: no bawling, no bartering, no bargaining.
‘Dis—how much?’ and that to Macala was English with a vengeance. She looked up at him with large baffled eyes, but before she spoke, Macala lifted his foot and trod on the edge of the dish, sending its contents churning out of it into the dust of Victoria Road's pavement. He shrieked with delight as he ran off.
What she hurled at him in virulent Ndebele may have been curses, prayers, lamentations, but to Macala it was reward enough; the kind of thing that proves the superiority of the townsman to these odd creatures from the country. And the passing generation's men and women shook their heads and muttered gloomily, ‘the children of today, the children of today …’
His momentum took him to the vegetable vendor just opposite Mafuta's. In fluid career, he seized the handle of the cart and whirled it round and up for the devil of it. Potatoes, onions, pumpkins, cabbages went swirling into the air and plump tomatoes squashed on the macadam. The khaki-coated vendor stood aghast for a second before he broke into imprecations that shuddered even the sordid Sophiatown atmosphere. But Macala was off on his mischievous way.
He had passed the ‘Fish and Chips’ too fast for another tilt, and met his pals on the corner of Tucker and Victoria: Dipapang, Jungle and Boy-Boy. Together, they should have been ‘Our Gang’ but their organization was not tight enough for that.
Boy-Boy's was the brain that germinated most of the junior devilry of the team, but he did not quite have Macala's impetuous courage of execution. He looked like a social worker's explanation of ‘conditions in the slums’: thin to malnourished, delinquent, undisciplined, dedicated to a future gallows. Yet his father was an important man and his mother a teacher. Jungle qualified by the ease with which he could talk of using a knife, in real big-tsotsi fashion. Dipapang initiated nothing, thought nothing, was nothing, but was always so willing to join in, trying to finish anything the others cared to start.
‘Heit, Macacix!’ called Boy-Boy. ‘It's how there?’
Macala suddenly felt in the mood for the jargon of the townships. The near-animal, amorphous, quick-shifting lingo that alarms farm-boys and drives cops to all branches of suspicion. But it marks the city slicker who can cope with all its vagaries.
‘It's couvert under the corzet,’ Macala replied, bobbing his head this way and that to the rhythm.
‘Hai, man, bigshot, you must be the reely-reely outlaw in this town,’ Boy-Boy parried and lunged.
‘Naw,’ Macala feinted, ‘dis town, Softtown's too small for me. I'll take Western and Corrie and Maclera and London, and smash them into a mashed potato.’
Boy-Boy fell for it. ‘Whew!’ he whistled, ‘don't say you'll crowd me out!’
Macala took him by the throat and went in for the kill, ‘Didn't I tell you, buster, to keep out of my country, or else …’
He proceeded to carry out the menacing ‘or else’ by choking Boy-Boy and slowly tripping him over a leg he had slipped behind him until they rolled over as Boy-Boy fell, and tumbled into the gutter.
Boy-Boy gasped, ‘Ah give up, boss, da country's yours.’
The mock battle was over and everybody laughed … except Jungle. He was reputed to be ‘serious’ and that meant of the homicidal type. He sat there on the pavement drain with his mournful face, sharpening gratingly on the concrete his 3-Star jack-knife which from some hazy movie memory he called his ‘gurkha’. As the laughter trailed off, he suddenly drawled, ‘Have you guys heard that Mpedi was arrested yesterday?’
They stared at him in genuine stupefaction. Then Boy-Boy said, ‘Yerrrr! How'd it happen, Jungle?’
But Jungle was not one for elaborating a story. Very unsatisfactorily, he said, ‘Waal, he was drinking at de English Lady's joint … and … and dey got him.’
‘You mean he didn't shoot it out? You mean dey took him just like dat? But I bet ya dey couldn't put handcuffs on Mpedi!’ But Macala was very unhappy about the tame way the idol of the township was arrested.
It was Boy-Boy who made a story of it. ‘Yerrr! But there is an outee—a great outlaw!’ He rose from the pavement and stood before the fascinated gaze of his pals. He stuck his thumbs into his belt and swayed his hips as he strutted up and down before them. Then he mimicked the bull-brained fearlessness of Mpedi, the mirror and form of almost all young Sophiatown, the clattering terror of men, and the perennial exasperation of the police station across the road.
‘Ya! Da room was full—full to da door. Clevers, bigshots, boozers, bamboos, coat-hangers, hole-diggers, and bullets, blondes, figure 8's and capital I's, wash-planks and two-ton trucks. Da boys were in de stack and da dames were game …
‘Then Bura Mpedi stepped in, his eyes blood-red. The house went dead-still. Ag, man, Bura Mpedi, man. He stood there and looked left … and looked right … His man was not there. He stepped in some more. The house was dead. He grabbed a beer from the nearest table and slugged it from the bottle. Who would talk?’ Boy-Boy's upper lip curled up on one side in utter contempt, ‘Heh, who would talk!’
Macala and his pals were caught in Boy-Boy's electric pause. Even Jungle was aroused by this dramatic display of township bullycraft.
Boy-Boy's histrionics continued, ‘Yerrrre! A drunk girl came from under a table, and tried Mpedi for a drink. “Au, Bura Mpedi, give me a beer.” Bura Mpedi put a boot on her shoulder and pushed her back under da table. Hai, man, hai man, dat outee is coward-cool, man. And he hates cherry coat-hangers. But dat night his eyes were going all over looking for Mahlalela. Yeffies! If he'd caught Mahlalela dat night …!’
Lifted by the wide-eyed admiration of his pals, Boy-Boy went on to surpass himself. He flung out his right arm recklessly, and declared, ‘Bat dat's nutting yet! You should have seen Bura Mpedi when dey sent four lean cops to come and take him. Payroll robbery, Booysens … one thousand pound! Assault with Grievous Bodily Harm, Newlands … three men down and out! Housebreakin' 'n Thatha … Lower Houghton!
‘Dey came, man dey came. Four cops; two had guns, two had small inches. Dey surrounded da joint in Gibson Street, and dey called out to him to give up. Dey didn't know Mpedi with moonwash in his brains and a human intestine round his waist. He drew his point-three-five and his forty-five, and he came out shooting: Twah! Rwah! Rwah! Da two cops with the small inches ducked into a shebeen near by and ordered themselves a ha' nip brandy. One with da gun ran down Gibson Street for reinforces. Da last cop took a corner and decided to shoot it out with Mpedi. But da bullets came so fast he never got a chance to poke out a shot.
‘Hee-e-e, I tell you Mpedi was da outee.’ Then, still carried forward by the vibrance of his enthusiasm, Boy-Boy rounded off his dramatization by backing away slowly as he fired off imaginary guns, and barked, ‘Twah! Twah! Twah!’
But the elation that had swelled up in Macala was now shot through with envy. ‘How come,’ he grumbled, ‘Da cops got him so easy now?’ Yet what really worried him was that he knew how far he was beneath the fabulous Mpedi; that even in his own weight division, he could not make such an awe-inspiring impression. He was not even as good an actor as Boy-Boy to recount and represent the exploits of the almighties. He looked at Boy-Boy bitterly and told himself, ‘I'll beat his brains out if he gets smart with me.’
It was Jungle who wrenched him out of his sour reverie. ‘Boys, I think we should go finish off da Berliners,’ Jungle said, prosaically.
A flash of fear leapt into Boy-Boy's eyes, for he knew this meant war. Macala was himself a bit scared, but seeing the fear in Boy-Boy, he screwed his heart through a hole too small for it.
And Jungle's ‘gurkha’ went on scraping the pavement concrete, screech-screech! screech-screech!
‘Come-ahn, let's go,’ Macala suddenly decided.
They swaggered along Victoria Road, filling it from pavement to pavement as if they were a posse. Silent. Full of purpose. Deliberately grim. Boys and girls scampered for cover. Grownups stepped discreetly out of their way. Only the bigger tsotsis watched them with pride, and shouted encouragements like ‘Da men who rule da town! Tomorrow's outees!’
On the corner of Meyer Street, they broke up a ring of young dicers and forced them to join up. Along the way they collected non-schoolgoing loafers who lounged against shop walls; blue- jeaned youngsters who twisted the arms of school-girls in rough love; odd-job boys who ran errands for shopkeepers; truants, pickpockets, little thugs, within their age limit—the lot.
By the time they turned into Edith Street, they were a miniature army of hell-bent ruffians. Macala led them and felt the strange thrill of the force behind him. He chose Edith Street because it rose into a rocky hill with plenty of stones for ammunition, and dropped suddenly into that part of Sophiatown they called Berlin, where the walls were smeared with crude swastikas.
Macala split his men into two groups. Those with thick, bronze buckle belts were to go under Jungle through a cut in the row of houses precariously perched on huge boulders.
The excitement chopped Macala's breath into collops as he gave out his instructions. ‘You boys get dem from de back. You start de war. When dey come running up Edward Road, dey'll meet us. Use dat butcher of yours, Uncle Jungle.’
Jungle gave one of his rare smiles, and his men took position.
Macala and his group, first placing a sentinel on the hill-top, slowly clambered down the rocks and waited for Jungle to get around.
Though going into the den of the enemy, Jungle did not find it difficult to rout them. There was a biggish group of them playing dice in the usual ring, and when he swooped upon them, they instinctively thought it was the police and dashed up Edward Road, sticks and buckle belts raining on their heads.
Jungle himself had chosen a heftily-built fellow and was stabbing at him as he ran. Boy-Boy was later to describe it graphically, ‘Yerre! Dat guy just wouldn't fall. Jungle had him—zip! But he ran on. Jungle caught him again in the neck—zip! He stumbled and trotted on his hands and feet. Jungle got him in the buttock—zip! But, yerrr! He just wouldn't fall!’
Before the Berliners could rally and make a stand, they had run into Macala's stone-throwing division. Though very one-sided, the fight became fierce. The Berliners were now fighting, and because they were trapped and because they had to fight with their bare hands most of the time, they became young devils from the playgrounds of Hell.
Stones and all sorts of other missiles were hurled in all directions. Knives were brandished and plunged, big-buckled belts were swung in whistling arcs, arms were flailed in the centre of the imbroglio with desperate savagery. Women screamed, shops closed, traffic diverted itself. Now and then, a blood-bespattered boy would stagger off the street to a side wall just to sit down and watch, too done in to flee.
Then suddenly came the shrill warning cry, ‘Arrara! Arrarayii!’ The action stopped almost as abruptly as those ancient films which froze in mid-motion and transfixed the movement into a photograph. And just as suddenly after, they scattered all pell-mell. When the police van came round the corner, it was impossible to decide which flee-ers to pursue. For, now, everybody was running up and down and off the streets. The scores of small boys, ordinary pedestrians who had just alighted upon the scene, Fah-fee runners with full-blown cheeks a-chumping the incriminating tickets of their illicit lottery; everybody was running. In Sophiatown, you do not stop to explain to the police that you had nothing to do with it, or that you knew some of the culprits and could help the police.
The mobile squad were satisfied with merely clearing the street.
Breathless and bruised, Macala found himself at the open commonage called Maccauvlei, adjacent to Waterval Hospital, which served as the waste dumps to the city, and ‘golf course’ to those Africans who went in for the sport of leisure. Macala knew that most of his gang would sooner or later find their way there. He sat on a mound of ash, gasping heavily.
By the time Boy-Boy had arrived, he had regained his breath, and was pitching chalky, burnt-out pebbles rather pointlessly. Jungle came, for once, apparently, in his seventh heaven. Dipapang, too, grinned happily though his shirt had been torn down and hung like a hula. A few other stragglers from the Black Caps joined them, and then came the News. News that oddly took the shape of ‘They say’.
‘Dey say,’ announced one urchin, ‘dat one of de Berliners is dead.’
Stultifying fright seized them all. Some small boy simply broke out crying. Macala had trouble with a choking clod in his throat.
‘Dey say,’ came in another boy, ‘de Berliners are going to call in de Big Berliners.’
‘Agh,’ grunted Macala in contempt, ‘we'll go'n tell Bura Shark.’
‘Dey say de cops're going to round us all up tonight.’
Despite all their bravado, all their big-shot stances and their blistering contempt for cops and the law, there is one thing that this knighthood really fears, and it was expressed by a crackling of interjections from each according to his own lights.
‘Six lashes and reformatory!’
‘De cane and off to a farm!’
‘Cuts with a light cane and no fine!’
Someone elaborated the procedure by filling in the gory details: ‘Dey say, two huge cops hold you down over a big bench an' you got nothin' on. You can't move. Now, maybe de magistrate he said “Six cuts”. Dat's nothin'. If you cry, for every one you get two. An' dose cops who give de lashes, dey train for you, dey pick up weightlifting for you, dey grip a grip all day for you. Den when de other cops got you on de bench, an' you can't move, an' you don't want to cry, de lashing cop he takes de cane, he swishes it over his head, one-two-three, whish! De tattoo jumps up on your buttocks.
‘Dey say, he den goes to sit down, lights a sigareete, and talks with de other cops. Den he comes again. One of de cops holding you turns your head so you can see de lashing cop coming. He swishes de cane, one-two-three, whish! 'Nother tattoo comes up, dis time with blood. Red blood from your buttocks. He goes for 'nother puff at his cigarette, or maybe he looks for his tea dis time.
‘He comes again. Dis time he sneezes his nose on your buttocks, and makes jokes how black buttocks is tough. He swishes the cane, one-two-three, whish! If you don't cry, maybe you get your six lashes straight. But if you cry, only just Maye Babo—oh-ho-ho! …
‘An' dey say, sometimes after you get lashes, six days, two weeks, you can't sit in de bus, you give your seat to de aunties. Hai, dat cane dey keep in de salt water when nobody get lashes!’
By that time the horror of the prospect had seeped through every delinquent soul. It was Macala who spoke first.
He said determinedly, ‘Me, I'm not going home tonight.’
But Boy-Boy did not like the idea. He knew that his mother would not rest until she had found out where he was. Worse still, she might even go ask the police to help her find him. ‘Naw, Macacix, I'm going home. I don't like cops catching me when my ma is not there. I'm going home.’
As he walked away, the whole little gang suddenly broke up and walked home their different ways. As they scattered, Macala went frantic with panic. With consternation twisted in his face and his arms floating like a blind man's in front of him, he looked half-comic as he stood on that mount of ash.
‘Hey, hey, you guys won't leave me alone. We're de boys …’
He heard a sound of impatience behind him, ‘Aargh! Let them go, Macala.’ He turned round and reeled unsteadily a little as he saw Jungle standing there, not looking frightened at all.
‘Wh-what you going to do, Jungle?’
Jungle took out his ‘gurkha’ and scraped it across his palm from left to right, right to left. Then he said, ‘I'm going home, Macala,’ and that mournful expression crept across his countenance. ‘And when de cops come to get me tonight …’ He made an ugly motion with his knife under his chin. He walked away with the slow, lanky movement of that gawky body of his.
By the time Macala decided to leave Maccauvlei, it was getting dark. But he knew where he was going. Rather unnecessarily, he skulked along the fences of the street, looking this way and that. Now and then, he would petrify at the zoom of a passing car or duck into an alley when headlights bore goldenly through the dark of the street. But ultimately he reached the open space where Gerty, Bertha, and Toby Streets used to be. He saw the dark building for which he was headed. He ran forward and stopped in front of it, but this side of the street. Slowly now. Somewhere here there was a night-watchman, a Zulu with a thick black beard and barbel moustache, black uniform and black face that rubbed him out of sight in the dark, and a gnarled knobkerrie known to have split skulls.
But Macala knew where the corrugated-iron fence had snarled out a lip of entrance for him. He went on his hands and knees, and crawled away from the immense double gate towards this entrance. He found it and coiled himself inside. He knew there were stacks of corrugated iron in this timber yard, and if he touched them, the racket would alert the night-watchman. So he did not go far, just nestled himself near his exit.
A little breeze was playing outside, hasting a piece of paper down the street, and now and then a bus or lorry would thunder by. But Macala slept, occasionally twitching in the hidden mechanics of sleep. Far from where he could hear, a woman's voice was calling stridently, ‘Mac-a-a-ala! Mac-a-a-a-la! Hai, that child will one day bring me trouble.’