White Dog Fell from the Sky

22



He stood at a distance and watched. The guard was sitting in such a way that Isaac could see only one side of his face. He was a large, serious man, about Isaac’s age, with clear skin and bushy eyebrows. From the way he held his chin, from the way his eyes moved, Isaac thought he was not a mild man. And he thought further that he would have no chance if it came to a physical contest between them.

While he waited, he looked at the place where he’d been standing when he first met Kagiso, the spot where he’d sat on the front stoop with White Dog. He thought Kagiso’s breasts would have been plump with milk when she died. This made him so sad he could hardly see or hear or think.

He walked away so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion and then returned when the darkness was deeper. All the time, his legs would hardly move because of the hunger in them. Although he had not gone to the she-been, he was drunk on an idea that wouldn’t let him go. When Isaac came back, the guard walked behind the house to relieve himself. When he returned to his post, he ate some jerky that he took from his back pocket. Inside the neighboring lean-to shacks, oil lamps were going out. People had become quiet, although the dogs had not. Isaac thought of White Dog waiting for him in the dark. When he returned, she’d be in the same place where he’d left her.

He walked away and came back. He sat on his haunches just out of sight and waited several hours more. When the guard finally slept, it was fortunate that he did not go to sleep across the threshold. He slept a little to one side. So when Isaac saw that he was snoring soundly, he came from his hiding place and made his way to the door. He knew the place well even in the dark, but it was one thing to know a place, and it was another to feel, crawling on your skin, the evil that lingered there.

As fear crept up the back of his neck, he thought, if you run from things that frighten you, you will never do anything. And very quietly, with his heart pounding into his eye sockets, he crossed the threshold into the house. He felt his way to the room where he had put the money, went down on his knees, and lifted the chunk of concrete. All the time, the hair on the back of his neck was shouting, Run! But the money was still there, and when his fingers closed around it, he felt triumphant. What he did not realize was that someone had moved the only chair, a metal chair, to a different place. Where it had been against a wall it was now in the middle of the room. In his haste to leave, he ran into it, and it scraped across the floor with a loud noise. Before he could get out the door into the night, the guard was blocking his way.

The light of a torch flew into his face. “O mang?!” the guard shouted loudly.

Isaac gave him his name.

“O tswa kae?” He sounded almost as frightened as Isaac.

It didn’t seem wise to say where he came from, and he remained silent.

“O tswa kae?” the guard repeated, louder still, and Isaac told him he was from the Old Village.

“What is in your hand?”

He showed him the money.

“Where did you get it?”

“There,” Isaac said, pointing.

He grabbed Isaac’s wrist and said, “Show me.” He had not put the concrete back for fear of making noise, and it was clear, once they were inside the room, where he had found it. “You knew it was here.”

“Yes.”

“Give me the money.” Isaac put it in his hand. “You are with the ANC.”

“No. I am not with them.”

“Then how did you know the money was here?”

“I lived in this place.”

“Then you are with the ANC.”

“No, rra, I am not with them.”

“Your speech is South African. You are not from Botswana.”

“No, rra, I am not from here. May I explain to you?”

“You may explain to my superior. We will wait here until morning when I will be relieved, and then I will take you to the station. Do not try to escape. Do you understand?”

“Yes, rra, I do understand. But please let me tell you. I was living here …”

“Rola ditlhako.”

“My shoes?”

“Take them off.”

“But they are my brother’s shoes.” He was crazy with hunger and fear, or he would not have said such a thing.

“I don’t care if they are your grandmother’s shoes. Take them off.” He had the fiery zeal of a young man doing his first work.

Isaac took them off, and the guard closed the door of the house, with himself and Nthusi’s shoes on the outside and Isaac on the inside. It was suddenly very quiet. Isaac felt the man’s presence just outside the door, alert. Sitting on the floor in the darkness, terror entered his bones and traveled the river of his blood and beat in his head. He imagined his friends waking to the explosion of guns. He wished to be out of that place, but he also wished that dawn would never come. He was like a monkey cornered by a lion. He had always been told how clever he was. He had begun to believe that his life was charmed. But he thought, sitting on the concrete floor in utter darkness, that he had been stupider than stupid.

After the sun rose, he heard voices speaking outside, and then the door opened. There was the young policeman and an older policeman who’d come to relieve the young one. They looked him up and down. The older man’s eyes were puffy and full of sleep. His skin was slack, and his tummy large.

“What is your name?” he asked.

Isaac told him.

“You are South African?”

“Ee, rra.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I am a refugee.”

“You are with the ANC?”

“No, rra, I am not.”

“Where are you working?”

“I am a gardener in the Old Village.”

“What were you doing in this house?”

“I was getting some money I had saved. I was living here with an old school chum and his family.”

“Your friend was with the ANC?”

“I cannot say, rra.”

“If you cannot say, he was. Then it is likely that you also are with the ANC.”

“I am not with the ANC.”

The two men held a conversation at a distance from where Isaac was standing. He could hear the younger one saying that Isaac was lying and the older one neither agreeing nor disputing. In the end, they decided Isaac would be taken to the chief of police. He hoped the old one would take him. He thought he could persuade him on the way to let him go. But it was not to be. He was too fat and tired and didn’t wish to walk to town.

“Come,” said the younger one. He handed Isaac Nthusi’s shoes, which he put on. He had no handcuffs, so he tied a rope tightly around both Isaac’s wrists and held it in his hand. Isaac followed him like a goat on a tether. The guard did not wish to walk side by side. All the same, Isaac tried to talk to him. He asked if he was from Gaborone.

“Francistown,” he muttered.

“You grew up there?”

He was not wishing to talk further.

When they were almost to town, Isaac tripped over a rock in the road. It would not have made him fall down if he’d eaten and slept. The policeman was angry, thinking that he had fallen on purpose. “Get up!” he shouted. “Why do you do this?”

The chief of police had not yet arrived when they reached the station. The young policeman and Isaac sat down to wait. Isaac asked for water, but he did not dare to ask for anything else.

When the chief arrived, his secretary brought him a cup of milk tea, and various subordinates went in and out of his office. Finally, Isaac was taken to see him. The policeman who caught him began his story by saying that Isaac was with the ANC and had been found stealing at the house. By telling it this way, Isaac knew he was trying to make himself important, as though he’d caught a big fish, but anyone with any brains could see that he, Isaac, was nothing like a big fish.

The chief looked at him steadily. His eyes seemed large, a little bulging, and between his eyebrows was a deep line. He had short cropped hair and a long face. He didn’t give anything away with his face. It was not a bad person’s face, but it was closed. He waved the young policeman quiet when he tried to tell the story. “Take off that rope,” he said. “You may go now.”

The young policeman left the room. Isaac felt that he must be disappointed because he had been trying hard to make a good impression. He relaxed a little after the guard left, his wrists free, but when the chief began asking him questions, the same questions that the older guard had asked him back at the house, he became full of fear. He answered him honestly, and his heart beat in the back of his eyes until he could no longer see properly.

After he’d answered all the questions about the money, about why he was living in Naledi, the chief took a new tack. “If you were living in Naledi, why were you not there on the night of the shootings?”

Isaac told him that he was staying in the house in the Old Village while the madam was on a trip.

“Where was her husband?”

“He was not there.” He didn’t want to say they were living separately in case madam wished to keep that information private.

“You were staying in the servant’s quarters?”

“No, rra, I was sleeping in the main house.”

“Why is this, when you are an employee?”

This man was an expert rat catcher, good at sniffing things out. “The servants’ quarter is occupied.”

“Then why was the servant not watching the house instead of you?”

“She was away visiting her mother.”

“Then the servant’s quarters were empty so you could have stayed there.”

His hunger and tiredness pulled him down. He would be found guilty of something, it didn’t matter what. “The servant did not wish me to be there.”

“Because she did not trust you?”

“No, rra, she does not care for men.” The ghost of a smile crossed the chief’s lips. “Or, rather, she cares for men, but …” It was too complicated to explain.

“So you were staying in the main house. I see.” Isaac thought maybe it would be all right then, but the chief was waiting to strike.

He dropped his voice. “Your timing was perfect,” he said.

“I beg your pardon, rra?”

“Who is your mistress? Is she also with the ANC?”

“I am not with the ANC, rra.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Her name is Mrs. A. Mendelssohn.”

“She is South African?”

“No, rra, she is from the United States.”

“Her husband is South African?”

“I do not know, rra.”

“Does he visit South Africa regularly?”

“I do not know this, rra.”

“I thought you said you worked for them.”

“Ee, rra, but I do not know where he goes.”

“So he does go away on a regular basis.” Isaac could see that the chief thought he was getting somewhere. He also saw, with a blur of surprise, that he had only one eye. The other eye was made of glass and roamed around. Sometimes it looked where the good eye looked. Sometimes it went somewhere else. It made Isaac unsteady, as though he might need to vomit.

“He has been away for some time,” Isaac said.

The vertical line between his eyebrows deepened. “In South Africa?”

“I do not know this, rra.”

“Has he taken you on any of his trips?”

“No, rra.”

“Has he spoken with you about his work?”

“No, rra. I do not know him well.”

“But you know the missus well? You know her quite well?”

Isaac saw what the chief was getting at and felt himself grow angry. “She is not involved,” he said, the heat rising into his face. “She is not involved at all.”

“Then you are involved,” he said.

“Involved in what?”

“What you were speaking of.”

“No, rra, I too am not involved.”

“How long have you been in Botswana?”

“Eight months.”

“Long enough to get the lay of the land.”

“Excuse me, rra?”

“You were living with ANC people, but conveniently you were not there on the night when you knew there would be a raid by the South African Defense Force. You are a clever man, anyone can see that. You have been playing one side against the other.”

“No, rra, I am only a gardener.”

“You are working with the South African Defense Force, isn’t that it? You are a double agent.”

“No, rra.”

“You are telling me that you are not a double agent?”

“I don’t know what this is, double agent.”

“Then how do you know enough to say you are not when you did not know what it was?”

“I only work for the madam in the Old Village. No one else.”

“Your story is too simple. Where is your passport?”

“I have no passport.”

“How did you get into Botswana?”

“I traveled by car.”

“Why were you not stopped at the border?”

“I was hiding.”

“Where?”

“It’s best if I don’t say, rra.”

“You are protecting someone. Who would that be?”

“I cannot say, rra.” Thinking better of it, he said, “I traveled in a hearse, hidden under the body of a Botswana government official who became late before I left South Africa.”

“You are not a good liar. That is impossible. You were in the casket?”

“No, rra. Please, sir, I only wish to live my life. I am harming no one.” He thought of White Dog waiting for him at the gate. And the cats hungry. “Please let me go now. I am supposed to be looking after the garden and the house in the Old Village. There is no one there to do these things.”

The chief looked at him with his good eye while the glass eye looked at the floor. His cheeks were hanging, as though he had not slept well. Isaac could see he didn’t know what to do with him. “I need to make a phone call,” he said.

He left the room. Perhaps Isaac could have escaped but it seemed that the chief trusted him not to. Besides, where could he have gone? To run was to admit guilt, and he could not fulfill his duties if he was in hiding. His fate was in this chief’s hands. They were small hands, he’d noticed. He was a man who wielded power, but he did not look like a bold man to Isaac. More like someone who tried to stay out of trouble, however he might do that. In this, Isaac saw little hope. In that he had one eye and knew what it was to suffer, he saw a grain of hope.

He was gone a long time. Isaac’s eyes became heavy and his heart fell into despair. He expected he would go to the prison where the old man with the sunken garden had been. Perhaps he would work in the garden and become proficient with plants. He would be an old man when they set him free, his whole life wasted.

The chief returned. He sat down as though he weighed twice as much as a man of his size. He looked at Isaac. “I believe that you are not telling the truth. I believe that you are a double agent. Botswana is a peace-loving country. We cannot harbor people such as yourself. You are a danger to us. I am sending you back across the border.” His good eye twitched once as he said this.

Isaac was stunned, without words for a moment. Then he said, “Please, rra, they will kill me there. Let me stay here. I risked my life to come here.”

The chief was not a man who changed his mind, although Isaac thought he saw a small flicker of misgiving in his face.

As two policemen led him away, Isaac wondered whether there was any point at which he might have saved himself. If Kopano and he had not stood on that train platform. If he had not met Amen on the path. If he had not fallen a little in love with Amen’s wife. If he had eaten and slept the day after the shooting and not become small brained like that bird who fell down the chimney into the jaws of a cat.

They told him to wait. They were searching for a car to take him across the border. He sat on a bench wearing handcuffs, beyond hunger. His head hung low. He counted on his fingers the days before madam would be back. Five days. White Dog and Horse and Mr. Magoo would die. The young tomato plants and pepper plants would wither and die. She would think that her trust had been misplaced. He imagined her returning, finding the animals dead, the vegetables dead, the kitchen untidy, his bed unmade. He would have made everything nice before she returned. He thought of his mother and Nthusi and his younger brothers and sister. Of Boitumelo whom he was to marry. He thought of his mother’s employers who had been so kind to him. He would disappear the way his father had disappeared.

And he thought of Kagiso. His heart was full of grief. Kagiso had woken in terror and known enough to cover Ontibile’s body with her own.