‘Why should they want to hold us? Once this is finished we’ll be out of here.’
‘You think there aren’t other townships, other bodies? They’ll take us with them. Or perhaps they’ll shoot us.’
She spat, a globule of moisture in the dust. What an odd collection of belongings littered the killing ground: there were quantities of shoes in different sizes and colours, some matching pairs as well as abandoned single shoes; there was a baby’s pushchair, rusted, in blue leather, but still usable; there was, besides, a petticoat touchingly embroidered with pink lace, pink lace finely worked; a pair of spectacles with one lens smashed; a set of dentures, the teeth clicked shut, a bizarre solitary expression of naked obstinacy, the teeth presented an air of invulnerability which reminded him of that unyielding almost jaunty bravado that skeletons wear; and then, somehow most touchingly of all, there was the up-ended kitchen chair lying on its side as if someone had leapt from it only minutes before and left in a hurry. These small domestic details were more sad, and somehow more vocal, than the torn, shapeless bodies. The work was very hard. Joyce continued to drag the bodies to the stoep. He lifted some of them despite the strain and his aching muscles but he was now moving very slowly. Things changed when he came across a mother and child killed by a single bullet. The child was strapped to its mother’s back in a red and blue blanket, tightly knotted. Their combined weight was too much for him to lift and he was forced, reluctantly, to try and separate the bodies but their blood had soaked the blanket and the knots would not budge. His hands slipped and reddened. With a snort of impatience Joyce came over and seized the mother’s hands. He took her feet and between them they carried the bodies to the stoep. Joyce would have laid the mother out, face down, with the baby above but Blanchaille was revolted by the unnaturalness of this and gently turned the woman on her side so it looked as if mother and child were curled up asleep.
Perhaps this sign of gentleness softened Joyce, for she took up the next body with a brisk nod at Blanchaille, indicating that from now on they would clear the field together. Hoping this was the beginning of better relations, Blanchaille set the chair back on its feet, as if it would preside, become a witness, over their business. Joyce seemed to understand and approve of this gesture for there is always some comfort in extreme situations in the restoration of an even temporary normality. In the course of his work Blanchaille learnt something of bullet wounds. Learnt how the entry point may be smooth, how the speeding bullet may draw threads of clothing with it into the wound and the bullet, often encountering no obstacle on its passage through the body, burst out with ugly force from shoulder or neck. Or it might take a wildly eccentric course through the inner organs rebounding off bone to emerge in unexpected places, anything up to a foot above or below the point of entry. Head wounds could be particularly severe, seen from behind.
He went to Colonel Schlagter. ‘You said that these people had been attacking your men.’
Schlagter eyed him warily, ‘Well?’
‘A lot of them have been shot in the back.’
‘Christ man, what’s that got to do with it?’
‘Well it looks like they were running away.’
Schlagter shook his head. He laughed grimly. ‘Front, sides, back — what the hell does it matter? Look, you’ve never been under attack. Let me tell you that when you’re being attacked you don’t stop to ask what direction the people are running in. Anyway, like I told you, they’re a crafty lot. I mean for all you know some of them turned round and were running at us backwards. Have you thought of that?’
Blanchaille admitted that he had not.
When at last all the corpses were laid out on the long wooden veranda in front of the police station and an armed guard posted, ‘just in case’, Schlagter came over and thanked them for their work. ‘You have been an indispensable help. You have served your country. All these people you see lying here will now be counted and photographed and their relatives will be brought to identify them, and afterwards they will be allowed to reclaim the members of their families. This is a strict procedure because the enemies of our country like nothing better than to inflate the figures of those killed and to claim that all sorts of people have been killed when they know this is a lie and a slander.’
The armed police were stood down and relaxed visibly. The Saracens left. Schlagter directed Blanchaille and Joyce to a stand-tap behind the police station building and asked them if they’d like to wash their hands.
Joyce washed first, holding her feet under the tap and then scrubbing ferociously at the blood stains on her white dress, folding handfuls of gravel into the material and rubbing it harshly, catching the water in a great scoop of her skirt like a prospector panning for gold and in this way she managed to reduce the vividness of the blood marks, but the stains remained.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, so the story went, Blanchaille reflected. Only it wasn’t like that, not here. It was blood to dust and dust to mud and mud to water and away down the ditch with it. He watched as Joyce scrubbed at the blood which had caught in the cracks of her nails using the wet hem of her dress.
‘I think they’re going to let us go now.’
‘You? Think! This is the new life you promised me. When I see how it starts, God knows how it will end!’
Blanchaille stepped up to the tap conscious of her rage, of her eyes boring into his back. He cleaned his face and his hands as best he could and rubbed rather hopelessly at the blood stains on his clothes but only succeeded in darkening and spreading them. When he turned again, Joyce was gone. He was not surprised and doubted whether anyone would have tried to stop her. Well, she would have a great deal to tell Makapan when she returned.
He walked to the front of the police station and, as he had expected, no one took any notice. He picked up his suitcases, one in each hand and one, bulky and uncomfortable, underneath his arm and began moving towards the front gate. Away to his right a group of policemen in shirt sleeves were playing a game of touch rugby using a water-bottle as a ball. The kitchen chair stood where he had left it, surveying the killing ground. He barely got out of the front gate before he collapsed, exhausted. He sat down in the dust on his suitcase beside the road.
And then I saw in my dream that a man driving a yellow Datsun estate stopped and offered him a lift. A short and balding man with a pleasant smile whose name was Derek Breslau. A commercial traveller for Lever Brothers dealing in ladies’ shampoos. The inside of his car was so heavily perfumed it made Blanchaille swoon and he could barely find the words to thank him for his kindness.
‘Don’t mention it. Couldn’t leave a guy sitting by the side of the road outside a bloody township. Normally I put my foot down and go like hell when I pass a township. You never know what’s going on inside. Gee, you took a risk!’ He examined Blanchaille’s bloodstained, muddied clothes with interest.
‘My bags are heavy and I can’t go very far at a stretch.’
‘Well, keep away from the townships.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Blanchaille, ‘but I always believed that the townships were peaceful now.’
Breslau nodded. ‘Well it depends on what you mean. If you mean the townships are peaceful except when there are riots, then I suppose that’s correct. So I suppose you could say the townships are peaceful between riots. And I must say they’re pretty peaceful after riots. If we need to go to the townships that’s usually when we go. They have a period of mourning then, you see, and you got time to get in, do the job and get out again.’
‘I suppose then you could also say that townships are peaceful before riots,’ said Blanchaille, trying to be helpful.
Breslau thought this over and nodded approvingly. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s right. I never thought of it that way. But leaving all this aside, the truth is you can never be sure when the townships are going to be peaceful. You can drive into a township, and I have no option since I do business there, and find yourself in the middle of a riot. You can find yourself humping dead bodies or driving wounded to hospital. You can find yourself dispensing aid and comfort.’
‘Aid and comfort?’
‘Sure! That comes after the riots, usually, when they’ve laid out the victims and the relatives come along to claim them. It’s an emotional time, as you can imagine. What they usually do these days is to get the priest up from the church and he gives each relative a blessing. Well one day I arrived just as the blessings had started. They didn’t seem to be comforting people very much so the police officer in charge commandeered me and my vehicle and all my samples and he suggested that each relative should also get a sample of my shampoo, plus a blessing. Of course they weren’t my samples to give, but on occasions like this you don’t argue. Well, I stood next to the priest and he gave the blessing and I handed out the sample. Of course there was no question of matching hair types. I mean you can’t stop the grieving relatives and ask them whether they suffer from dry, greasy or normal hair. I mean that’s not exactly the time and place to start getting finicky. Can I drop you somewhere in town?’