The curfew proper for all Africans in Marabastad, Pretoria, was 10 p.m. By that hour every African, man, woman and child, had to be indoors, preferably in bed; if the police caught you abroad without a ‘special permit’ you were hauled off to the battleship-grey little police station in First Avenue, near the Aapies River, and clapped in jail. The following morning you found yourself trembling before a magistrate in one of those out-rooms that served as a court, and after a scathing lecture, you were fined ten-bob. So it behove everyone, every black mother's son, to heed that bell and be off the streets at ten.
But it was strange how the first warning bell at ten-to-ten exercised a power of panic among us, really out of all proportion. I suppose, watchless at night, when that bell went off and you were still streets away from your house, you did not know whether it was the first warning—ten-to-ten—giving you that much grace to hurry you on, or the fatal ten o'clock bell itself.
However, there were ever women in their yards, peering over corrugated-iron fences and bedstead gates, calling in sing-song voices, ‘Ten-to-ten! Ten-to-ten!’ as if the sound of the bell at the police station down there in First Avenue was itself echoed, street after street, urging the belated on, homewards, bedwards, safe from the Law.
As the first bell rang, one Saturday night, a huge African policeman roused himself from the barracks. He was enormous. Nearer seven feet than six feet tall, he towered over his fellow men like a sheer mountain above the mites in the valley. Perfectly formed, his shoulders were like boulders, his arms like the trunks of elephants, the muscles hard and corded. His legs bore his magnificent torso like sturdy pillars under some granite superstructure. He had the largest foot in Pretoria, size 15, and people used to say, ‘His boot is special made from the factory’. He was coal-black, with the shiny blackness of ebony, but had large, rolling, white eyes and thick, bluish lips.
He gave a last, critical scrutiny to his shining black boots and black uniform with tinny buttons, before he stepped into the charge office to report for duty. His was the night-beat. Every night at ten o'clock he went out with one or two other policemen to roam the slummy streets of Marabastad Location and clear them of vagrants. People looked at him with awe; nobody ever argued with him; when his immense shadow fell across you, you shrivelled, or, if you had any locomotion left in you, you gave way fast.
They called him Ten-to-Ten because of that night beat of his, and he was known by no other name. Ten-to-Ten's strength was prodigious and there were many legends in the location about him …
There was the one that he originally came from Tzaneen in Northern Transvaal to seek work in Pretoria. One day he was sitting in a drinking house when a young location hooligan came in and molested the daughter of the house. The girl's father tried to protest but the young hooligan slapped him across the face and told him to shut up. Ten-to-Ten was not accustomed to such behaviour, so he rose from the corner where he was sitting with his tin of beer and walked up to the young man.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘You can't go on like this in another man's house. Please go away now.’ He gently pushed the young man towards the door. ‘Come on, now, go home.’
The young man swung round with a curse, hesitated a moment as he saw the great bulk of the man confronting him, then with a sneer drew a knife.
They say you can pester a Venda from the North, you can insult him, you can humiliate him in public or cheat him in private, but there are two things you just cannot do with impunity: take his girl, or draw a knife on him.
That night, Ten-to-Ten went jungle-mad.
‘Ha!’ he snarled.
The knife flashed and caught him in the forearm, blood spurting. But before the young man could withdraw it, Ten-to-Ten had caught him by the neck and dragged him out of the house. In the yard there was the usual corrugated-iron fence. Swinging the boy like wet laundry, Ten-to-Ten lashed him at the fence repeatedly until the fence broke down. Then he started strangling him. Men came running out of the houses. They tried to tear Ten-to-Ten off the boy, but he shook them off like flakes. Soon, somebody sounded a whistle, the call for the police. By the time they came Ten-to-Ten was wielding and hurling all sorts of at-hand weapons at the small crowd that sought to protect the boy.
The police stormed him and knocked him over, bludgeoning him with batons. They managed to manacle his wrists while he was down on his back, then they stepped back wiping the sweat off and waiting for him to rise. Ten-to-Ten rose slowly on one knee. He looked at the police and smiled. The white sergeant was still saying, ‘Now, now, come quietly, no more trouble, eh?’ when Ten-to-Ten spotted his enemy staggering from the crowd.
He made a savage grunt and, looking at his bound hands, he wrenched them apart and snapped the iron manacles like cotton twine. The police had to rush him again while the crowd scattered.
They say the desk sergeant at the police station decided that day to make Ten-to-Ten a policeman, and Marabastad became a peaceful location.
That is the kind of story you do not have to believe to enjoy.
Another time, legend continues, the coal-delivery man had some difficulty with his horse. He had a one-man horse-cart with which he delivered coal from door to door. On that occasion, the horse suddenly shied, perhaps having been pelted by mischievous boys with slings, and went dashing down the narrow avenue, scattering women with water tins on their heads. Just then Ten-to-Ten came round the corner. He caught the bridle of the horse and struggled to keep it still, being carried along a few yards himself. The horse reared and threatened to break away. Then Ten-to-Ten kicked it with his size 15 boot under the heart. The horse sagged, rolled over and died.
But it was not only for his violent exploits that we thrilled to him. Ten-to-Ten played soccer for the Police First Eleven, he played right full-back. For a giant his size he was remarkably swift, but it was his antics we loved. He would drop an oncoming ball dead before his own goal-posts, and as the opponent's poor forward came rushing at him, he would quickly shift aside with the ball at the last moment, leaving the forward to go hurtling on his own momentum through the goal-posts. Derisively, he would call, ‘Goal!’ and the excited spectators would shout, ‘Ten-to-Ten! Ten-to-Ten!’
Sometimes he would approach the ball ferociously with his rivals all about it, and he would make as if he was going to blast them ball and all. They would scuttle for cover, only to find that he had stopped the ball and was standing with one foot on it, grinning happily.
When he did elect to kick it, he had such powerful shots that the ball went from one end of the field to the other. Once, they say, he took a penalty kick. The ball went with such force that when the goalie tried to stop it, his hands were flayed and the deflected ball still went on to tear a string in the net.
‘Ten-to-Ten!’
Yes, he had a sense of humour; and he was also the understanding kind. He knew about his great strength and seldom exercised it recklessly.
In Marabastad of those days there was a very quarrelsome little fellow called Shorty. He was about four-feet six, but as they say, ‘He buys tickey's beer and makes a pound's worth of trouble.’ No-one but Shorty every really took his tantrums seriously, but people enjoyed teasing him for fun.
‘Shorty,’ they once told him, ‘Ten-to-Ten's in that house telling people that you're not a man, but just a sample.’ Shorty boiled over. He strutted into the house with the comic little footsteps of the very short and found Ten-to-Ten sitting with a tin of beer in his hands.
He kicked the tin of beer out of Ten-to-Ten's hands, nearly toppling himself over in the process, and shouted, ‘A sample of a man, eh? I'll teach you to respect your betters. Come outside and fight.’ The others quickly signalled Ten-to-Ten that it was all a joke and he caught on. But Shorty was so aggrieved that he pestered Ten-to-Ten all afternoon.
At last Ten-to-Ten, tired of the sport, rose, lifted Shorty bodily off the ground and carried him down the street with a procession of cheering people behind them. Shorty was raging; he threw futile punches at Ten-to-Ten's chest. His dangling legs were kicking about furiously, but Ten-to-Ten carried him all the way to the police station.
It was a startled desk sergeant who suddenly found a midget landed on his desk, shouting, ‘I'll kill him! I'll kill him!’
‘What's this?’ the sergeant wanted to know.
Wearily, Ten-to-Ten explained, ‘He says he wants to give me a fair fight.’
Shorty was fined ten-bob, and when he came out of there, he turned to Ten-to-Ten disgustedly, and spat, ‘Coward!’
Ten-to-Ten walked with two other policemen, Constables Masemola and Ramokgopa, up First Avenue into glittering Boom Street. It was like suddenly walking out of an African slum into a chunk of the Orient. They strolled slowly up the tarred Boom Street, past the Empire Cinema. Now and then they would stop to look at the exotic foods in the window of some Indian shop and the pungent smells of eastern cooking and eastern toiletry would rise to their nostrils. Ahead, a hundred yards ahead, you could see the Africans who had no special permits to be out at night sorting themselves from the Indian and Coloured nightcrowds and dodging down some dark streets. They had long noticed the stalwart shadow of Ten-to-Ten coming up. He knew it too, but did not bother.
He reasoned inside himself that as long as they were scampering home, it was a form of respect for the Law. Unlike some of the other policemen who ferreted out Africans and delighted in chasing them down the road, to him, even when he caught one or two on the streets at night, it was enough to say, ‘You there, home!’ and as they fled before him his duty felt done.
Then they turned into the dark of Second Avenue of the location, away from where their eyes were guided by the blinking neons, into the murky streets where only their feet found the familiar way. It was silent, but Ten-to-Ten knew the residents were around, the silence was only because he was there. He was walking down the street, a presence that suddenly hushed these normally noisy people. In fact, he had heard their women as he entered the street calling down along it, ‘Ten-to-Ten! Ten-to-Ten!’
It was not like the adulatory cheering on the soccer field, this calling of ‘Ten-to-Ten!’ This one had a long, dreary, plaintive note … to carry it far along the street? or to express heart-felt agony? In the field he felt their pride in him, the admiration for his wonderful physique, his skill and his sense of humour. The rapport between himself and his spectators who lined the field was delicious. There even the puniest of them would rush into the field after he had scored a goal, slap him on the back happily, and say, ‘Ai, but you, you Ten-to-Ten.’
He would come off the field and find a hero-worshipping youngster carrying his coat and pants to him, and another pushing his glittering Hercules bicycle. The small boy would push out his robin chest and yell, ‘Ten-to-Ten!’ unselfconsciously.
But here, people skulked behind tin shacks and wailed their misery at whatever perverse god crushed them, round about the hour of ten. Some of them were probably muttering in whispers even now as he passed. Had he not seen lower down the street a light suddenly go out in a house? It was probably a drinking house where they sat in the dark with their calabashes and tins trying to find their ‘blind mouthes’, with the auntie of the house hissing importunately, ‘Simeon shut up, you fool, don't you know it's Ten-to-Ten?’
They passed a church and fancied they heard a rustling sound in the porch. They went to investigate. Out and past them bolted a boy and a girl. He mocked his shock after them, ‘What, even in the House of the Lord!’ They ran faster.
Fifth Street was empty and dark but before long they heard familiar grunting sounds. Ten-to-Ten signalled the other policemen to walk quietly. Off the street, hidden in an opening among tall grass, was a group of dice-players. They had formed a ring, inside which the candle was shielded from the breezes. The thrower would retreat a little from the ring, and shaking his dice in his bowled fist take a lunge forward, and cast them into the patch of light, giving a visceral grunt to coax his luck. Coins of the stake were lying in the centre.
Creeping low, Ten-to-Ten and his mates tip-toed up to them. They were so intent on the game that they heard nothing until suddenly he rose to his great height, like Mephistopheles out of the gloom, and bellowed, ‘Ten-to-Ten!’
They splashed in all directions. One boy jumped into Ten-to-Ten and bounced back, falling to the ground. A policeman put a boot on his shoulder with just enough pressure to keep him there. Another chap never even got up, a rough hand had caught him by the neck. The boy who had nursed the candle tried to get away faster than his body would allow him and his feet kept slipping under him in his haste like a panicking dog's on a hard, smooth floor. He whimpered pointlessly, ‘It's not me! It's not me!’
Ten-to-Ten just roared with Olympian laughter, ‘Haw! Haw! Haw!’
When the boy finally took ground, he catapulted away. The other policemen brought the two detainees up to Ten-to-Ten; he did not trouble to question them, just re-lit the candle and held it in their frightened faces.
Then he said, ‘Search them, Masemola. You know I'm only interested in knives.’
Constable Masemola searched them but found no knives. In the pocket of one he found a little tin containing a condom. He held it up to Ten-to-Ten like the finger of a glove. ‘Sies!’ said Ten-to-Ten disgustedly, brushing aside Masemola's hand. Then to the boys, ‘Off with you!’ and they crashed through the tall grass into the location.
The other constable had picked up the coins from the ground, and while Masemola was still wondering aloud what those boys thought they knew about the use of condoms, Ten-to-Ten noticed the other constable pocketing the coins. Again, he just said, ‘Sies!’
They went up Third Avenue, Ten-to-Ten thinking thoughts for which he could find no words. …
‘Am I, perhaps, the only fool in this job? All the other policemen take bribes, intimidate shopkeepers, force half-guilt-conscious women to go to bed with them. Some beat up people needlessly, a few actually seem to enjoy the wanton slap, the unprovoked blow, the unreturnable kick for their own selves. Of course, it's seldom necessary for me to hit anybody. Before my bulk the runts fly. Maybe that's why. Maybe if I was little like these chaps I'd also want to push people around.
‘But, really, you should hear these policemen grumble when the white sergeant barks at them in the charge office. Then they know they're black; that the whiteman is unreasonable, unjust, bossy, a bastard. But, God! See these chaps in the location on the beat. They treat their own people like ordure. And when the whiteman is with us on the beat, they surpass themselves. Damn that Ramokgopa! I felt so ashamed the other day when he hit a hopeless drunk with a baton until Sergeant du Toit said, “That's enough, now, Ramokgopa.” God, I felt ashamed! The blackman strikes, the whiteman says, “That's enough, now”.
‘And this business of making women sleep with you because you caught them with a drum of illicit beer. I can't understand it. If I want a piece of bottom—and, by God, now and then the fierce, burning pang stabs me, too—then I want the woman to want me too, to come alive under me, not to lie there like a dead fish. The thing's rape, man, however much she consented.
‘What do I want in this job, anyway. It's a bastard of a job. Funny hours, low pay, strange orders that make no sense, violence, ever violence, and the daily spectacle of the degradation of my people. Well, I suppose it's a job. Otherwise, I'd be with those workless fellows we corner every day, and arrest for not having passes. Hell, if I hadn't taken this job, I'm sure I'd be in jail now. Jail? God, me, I'd long ago have been hanged for murder if some policeman handled me as our chaps manhandle these poor devils.
‘But I have to work. I came here to work because I like to work. No, because back home in Tzaneen the people are starving, the rains haven't come these many years and the land is crying out, giving up the vain struggle to live—to push up one, little green blade, to justify herself—she lies just there like a barren, passionless woman seeing men hunger and die. No, but really because Mapula is waiting for me. Mapula? Ahhh! The memory stings me and I feel the subtle, nameless pain that only a big man knows. I can't cry … I can't cry …’
They came out of the location, again into Boom Street whose bright lights seemed to crackle into his twilight consciousness. They came out on to the bicycle shop.
A bicycle shop was supposed to repair bicycles and sell spare parts for them and there was always an upturned bicycle, one or other wheel missing, allegedly in the process of repair, outside the shop or at night in the window. But in Marabastad it was more of a music shop where the most raucous, the screechiest, the bansheest, the bawdiest cacophonies of township jazz bawled and caterwauled from the 78s inside to loudspeakers outside. ‘We-Selina, go greet me your ma!’ shrieked the lonesome son-in-law loud enough for his sweetheart, Selina, or indeed the mother-in- law herself, to hear him back in the Reserves.
Ten-to-Ten looked at his pocket-watch. Twenty-to-twelve. Odd, he thought, here was a Coloured girl dancing to music that was distinctly African township jazz—this chance thought was soon dispersed by the sight of the crowds that spilled from the Empire Cinema. Most of them were well-dressed Indian men with lovely Coloured girls; there were few Indian girls. A sprinkling of African men were in the crowd, but from their unalarmed expressions one could easily see that they had been to school and had the ‘papers’.
As they strolled along the pavement the policemen saw an old Zulu, clad in a greenish-khaki military overcoat, huddling over a glowing brazier. He was the Matshingilane—the nightwatchman. It was not clear which building he was guarding; probably several Indian bosses had chipped in to get him to look after the whole row of buildings. Lucky devil! Most times he slept well, safe in the knowledge that a policeman on the beat would stroll up and down watching the buildings for him.
‘Poisa! Poisa!—Police! Police! They're killing an African man down there!’
Ten-to-Ten and his mates dashed down the street. They found a crowd of Indians pummelling a young African man. Ten-to-Ten barged into them like a bulldozer, pushing the crowd this way and that, until he got to the man on the ground.
‘What's going on here?’ he barked.
Scores of voices replied, ‘He's a thief!’
‘A pickpocket!’
‘The lady's handbag!’
‘He hit the gentleman first!’
‘He bumped him!’
‘And swore at him!’
‘He's always robbing people!’
‘We know him! We know him!’
Ten-to-Ten lifted the African from the ground. The man cowered before the enormous form over him.
‘Well?’ Ten-to-Ten asked.
‘They lie,’ was all the man could say for himself.
Somebody tried to grab at him but Ten-to-Ten pushed him away and pulled the victim towards himself, more protectively, saying, ‘No, you don't.’
Then he addressed the crowd, ‘Look here, I'm going to arrest this man and no-one is going to take him away from me. No-one, you hear?’ He was quiet for a moment and looked around challengingly. Then he continued, ‘Now, is there anybody who cares to lay a charge against him?’
There were murmurings, but no definite charge. Someone called out, weakly, ‘But he's a thief.’
Ten-to-Ten said, ‘All right, come forward and lay a charge.’
Instead, a hand again reached for the man. Ten-to-Ten released his charge for a moment to go after the owner of the hand, a half-impulsive movement.
‘Look out!’ someone yelled, and the crowd surged away. Ten-to-Ten spun round and saw that the African had drawn a long-bladed knife.
‘Aw-right, come for me, you bastards!’ he growled.
The savage blood leapt inside Ten-to-Ten. He lunged at the man like a black flash. If the knife had been shorter, he would have got it in the neck, but it was unwieldy and only slashed him across the shoulder.
‘Ah!’ soughed the fascinated crowd.
Ten-to-Ten caught the man's knife-arm at the wrist and above the elbow, then brought it down on his upthrust knee. Crack! It snapped like a dry twig.
The sharp shriek curdled the night air and the knife went clattering to the pavement. The man went down to the ground, whining, and the fury passed out of Ten-to-Ten.
Quietly, he said to the man, ‘I could have killed you for that … knife.’
The crowd broke up in little groups into the night.
Ten-to-Ten said to Masemola, with a careless wave of the hand, ‘Take him to de la Rey. I'm coming.’
He stood thinking, ‘This was my bad night, the young, bloody fool!’