Nigerians in Space Read online

Thursday fell back and banged his head hard against the ping-pong table. Diego went to help him straight away, but one of the kids began egging Thursday on to fight. Thursday just laughed it off.

  “Good one, Diego,” he said. “You got me with that one, bru.”

  Then Thursday saw Leon’s face. He was scowling at Diego in anger. Thursday smiled sheepishly at Leon and he smiled back, but with his lips curled full of venom. Just as soon the look was gone.

  Leon leapt on Diego in a fury. Diego scuffled and tried to use Leon’s weight against him but Leon had this deadly headlock, where he’d clamp his arm around you and then needle his little bicep into your neck. The cheering and the shouting fanned Leon’s rage and he wrapped Diego in that headlock so fast he didn’t know what hit him. Diego’s face grew bright red and he scrambled to take a breath, but Leon held him firm and used his free hand to slap him. There was laughter.

  The teacher came and broke it up. Diego ran home to his mother’s house. The finals were rescheduled and never played because a storm blew in. But something about Leon’s eyes told Thursday that he never would have let go. That whatever rage was buried in him had just been awoken.

  Over the years he watched Leon beat men senseless for the most ridiculous affronts. Sometimes it would be slights against Thursday for his squinty eye—calling him an ugly badprop maybe—other times Leon would be insulted if someone looked at his girl, at his clothes, or just looked him in the eye. Leon would be calm for weeks, months, maybe, before he’d erupt. For anyone besides Thursday it was hard to perceive any sort of pattern.

  And Thursday had to admit that Leon stuck up for him. Leon would track down the bullies and knock their teeth out, with Thursday on the side wondering if he should intervene. Leon would smile, kiss his lacerated knuckles, and spit down into his victim’s face. It was his signature. Even thugs with guns would bow down before Leon, pocketing their pistols as if the bullets would only bounce off him. And Thursday knew that Leon’s fury was of the unstoppable kind. Practical things defrayed it—witnesses, evidence, tourists, whites, police sirens—and they were mere happenstance. If those little obstacles hadn’t been in the way, Leon would have left a string of bashed-in dead men around Hermanus. And this fact, that he was being stopped from carrying out his will, fueled his rage even more.

  It’s not that Leon’s home life was all that bad, either. Thursday had been over to Leon’s house any number of times. His family had a neat, well-swept home that they kept free of roaches, with a good gas range and a wide stoep. There were always poinsettias and creepers blooming with bright flowers in the garden and seven kinds of pepper plants. His father wasn’t good with money, but he loved his children, and his mother made the sweetest koeksister pastries in the whole town. They were generous people.

  So maybe Leon’s anger had nothing to do with that school yard. Maybe that was just the first time that Thursday had seen it, and it had been there simmering beneath the surface all along. Maybe Leon was a man who’d been taking names from the day he was born, furious at the dirty friction of the world.

  All Thursday knew was that it was that day in the school yard that he stopped thinking all men were created equal. He’d really been expecting something else.

  That was what Thursday was thinking as Pretorius sat back and blue-eyed him, not the family, not the ping-pong, but Leon’s rage. A prison cell couldn’t keep in that rage. Leon was too strong for it, too smart. Pretorius, with his straight-talking bottom line ethics, would never understand that rage, and one day somebody like Leon would come along and crush his rugby-winger boys and their Herman Charles Bosman bedtime stories.

  Brother Leon had a bad thing coming to him, plain as day. But Leon was tough and smart, and he’d stuck up for Thursday so many times that he’d lost count. If Thursday turned him in, Leon would call up one of his girls and make bail, and then he’d shoot out of the prison looking for names. He’d know. Somehow he’d know.

  The green video screen was fluttering over him. Thursday could hear the digital hiss and the whir of the motor of the video player.

  “I don’t know who that is, Mr. Pretorius. I count in every day. You can check my logs.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Pretorius said. “You’re in the clear. I know you wouldn’t do that kind of thing. I just want to know if you have an idea. Perhaps a name or a face.”

  Thursday was happy to hear he was in the clear. But he felt Leon was right there in the office with them, lifting his hat and spilling out his locks, listening. Leon went everywhere with Thursday. He was a part of him. The difference was that Leon knew what to do in situations like this.

  “I—”

  “Yes, Thursday?”

  Mr. Pretorius the butternut stared at him with those faded blue eyes. The eyes: quick, compassionate, of a family man. Leon hated families. He never would have kissed a fat white family man’s ass in an office full of white folks. That was what Leon would do, go on the attack. The best defense is a good offense.

  “Why do you think I would know, Mr. Pretorius? Because I’m coloured?”

  Pretorius took a long, slow gaze at him and sighed. He averted his eyes and fished out a cigarette. It was the look of a disappointed father. He offered the cigarette to Thursday, gave a weak smile.

  “Thursday, I’ll ignore that. I think you and I both know that I’m not a racist. And I think you’re above that, too.”

  But Thursday was committed to his statement now. To Leon’s statement. “That’s what all white men say! You think I don’t know how it works? Us coloureds do the heavy work while you drive your bakkies. That’s the business.”

  “What about Paul? He’s out there with you. And Stefan. They’re white and you’re all friends.”

  Thursday felt that he was rehearsing a speech that he’d seen on TV somewhere, the lines came out so easily: “No, we can never be friends. They go home to their wives and gardens and I go home to my shack.”

  “I don’t think you mean that.”

  Thursday wasn’t sure if he meant it. “I do.”

  “I’m sorry then. I didn’t have you pegged that way.” Pretorius offered up the pack of cigarettes again. “I know it wasn’t you, Thursday.”

  What wasn’t me, Thursday thought, the theft or the TV speech? Could he still blame it all on Leon and save face? Could he get down on his knees and beg?

  But Pretorius was done with him. “That’s all.”

  Thursday took a cigarette and left.

  Mr. Pretorius told Thursday a few days later that he knew Leon had stolen the abalone, but he didn’t intend to press charges. He also said that he couldn’t keep a liar on his staff so Thursday had to leave. Thursday bummed around for a while, going to his mother’s, who didn’t mind the attention, but she soon grew tired of him.

  “Thursday, you only come here to feed, you lazy hollang. Go out and get yourself a job!”

  There weren’t many to be found. Hermanus was a small town that thrived on whale watching tourism. There were a few little shopping centres, some bed and breakfasts, and upscale restaurants that the locals could not afford. A chain of mountains filled with pinpoints of purple frutencen blossoms overlooked the town, and you could run on the beach for kilometers. Most of the young men wanted to quit Hermanus and get to Cape Town as soon as possible. Thursday, on the other hand, thought Hermanus offered him what he needed and saw no reason to leave it.

  He applied at a new internet café but he didn’t have any web design experience, and he had neither the charisma nor the acting ability to serve the tourists at the cafés lining Old Hermanus Bay. It was the low season anyway and the managers told him no one would be hired for a few weeks. He borrowed his brother-in-law Angus’s fishing rod but wasn’t able to catch anything, and Angus began to lord it over him, asking him to do the dishes, weed the garden, and so on. Thursday drew the line when his sister tried to set him up with an ugly friend of hers, and stopped visiting them.

  So he was happy to see Leon when he drove up the s
treet in an iridescent champagne painted Merc and rolled down the window.

  “Bemandge car, Leon.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. Come on, I brought it for you, my bru. Get in.”

  They drove around, popping in to see Fadanaz, and then Luluma—his latest acquisition—and Leon dropped hundred rand bills here and there with no explanation. Thursday could sense that Leon wanted him to ask where he’d found the money, but managed to hold off, hoping Leon might confess about the theft. Then he started realizing that the perlies he’d stolen from Abalone Silver would never cover the cost of a Merc, and his curiosity got the better of him.

  “You’re rich, Leon!”

  “No,” Leon said. “This is donkies. This is just the beginning, bru.”

  “But, how Leon? I can’t get a job as a dishwasher.”

  They were sitting at the corner table at The Anchor. Leon slapped a coin down on the bar and the bartender brought over another quart. The Anchor had a policy of leaving all the empties the customers ordered in front of them so that they couldn’t stiff on the bill. Leon looked at the row of receptacles that had once held the liquids sloshing inside him. “We’ve only had eight quarts, Thursday. Last night I had fourteen, and Thabisa had six. The positions that put her in—like a gymnast. So flexible. Listen to me, brother, six quarts and a girl will do anything. Six quarts and a pair of earrings.” Thursday reminded him about his question. “I don’t want to talk about money right now. I was hoping you wouldn’t bring it up. You come with me tomorrow and I’ll explain everything.”

  It took four nights of heavy drinking, cajoling, and a wet kiss from Leon’s girl Fadanaz for Thursday to say he would consider going into the water. Even then he never thought it would come to pass. But soon they were sitting in the Merc next to a row of strelitzia palms that wound along a dirt road to the beach in the dusk, their fronds spreading out like press-on fingernails. He would have been able to hear the pounding surf if Leon wasn’t thumping his Kwaito music, and they’d both grown up near the sea so he didn’t smell the seaweed any more. Thursday had resolved that this time he would be firm with Leon—he was not going in the water, there was no way he was going in.

  “I can’t do it, my broer,” Thursday declared. “I don’t know how.”

  “Come on, Thursday,” Leon said. “I started with nothing. I was out there in the rocks all alone with the police, pulling myself on the kelp.” Leon laughed, in awe of himself, reminiscing. “Should have been on the news. I can barely even swim. You’ve got the breather and my lank equipment. The breather is easier than a tank.” He began pumping his head to the syncopated rhythms of the Kwaito.

  “Can’t you give me your mask?”

  “I gave you my old mask, voetsak. My new one cost a thousand bucks. It’s not my fault you’ve got a conch for a nose.”

  “You must be mad,” Thursday said. “I’m not going out there. There’s a storm coming. There’s sharks.”

  “There hasn’t been an attack in months.”

  Thursday was skeptical. Attacks on poachers were never reported anyway. Another diver would deliver the news to the family, and if he was polite, give over whatever money he’d made from selling his catch. That was how it worked in Hermanus.

  “You sure?” Thursday asked.

  Leon assured him that no poacher had been attacked in months and reminded Thursday of his victories on the swim team in Standard Eight. “You need a lookout, Thursday. That’s the first rule. I would have let you be the lookout, but I’m sick.” He shivered for emphasis. “I set everything up yesterday. If you don’t take the perlies someone else will. Just go for the blue plastic eggs. I’m the only one who uses them. There’s hundreds. Maybe five hundred. That’s like two hundred thousand rand. But I’m not selfish: you just take as many as you can and bring them back.” He showed him a pistol stashed beneath his seat. “Don’t worry. We’re protected.”

  You’ve got to be firm, Thursday thought. He reached over and turned off the stereo. “Don’t listen to your music. I don’t want any cops.”

  “Stop being such a poes. You said you need the money, right? I’m doing you a favor. The cops stop at four and it’s seven o’clock. You’ve got the cell phone, né?”

  Thursday adjusted the condom-wrapped cell phone he’d shoved next to his crotch. “You’ll call if they come?”

  “Of course.”

  “No music.”

  “Ja, no music.”

  They went over it one more time. He was to look for the plastic eggs, the blue ones with sand in them. Three buzzes on the cell phone or six flashes on the light meant get out of the water. Thursday took the dry suit and the fins and the surface breather. The condom was lubricated so the cell phone slipped down to his calf by the time he walked along the crescent beach and waded into the surf.

  Thursday swam around for half an hour in the bay, kicking his fins quickly from fear in the darkness, and the only thing of interest he found was an old warped field hockey stick. Leon had made it sound like the visibility would be just like the television show Baywatch, and once he was underwater he’d see everything as clear as a bathtub. The blue plastic eggs would be sparkling like jewelry, and he would be able to kick leisurely down and scoop up the abalone. But fog kept covering his mask and he had to blow out hard with his nostrils to get the steam out, then there was the problem of the umbilical line of the surface breather, which must have had a leak in it, because the air had a wet taste to it that made him wheeze. He could see about a meter in front of him. In the blackness there could be anything: fish, abalone, a whale, a rock, a chest of gold doubloons.

  Moonlight streaked down and he realized he was near a kelp bed; then the shafts retracted behind a cloud bank. He kicked towards the edge of the kelp bed and turned on the flashlight attached to the tip of his speargun. An octopus scowled at him from a cragged rock, but when he reached in to grab it, it disappeared in a splotch of ink. There was nothing else in the water but kelp and tiny green diatoms, things he could not eat or sell, not even a crab. He could not believe it—Leon said he’d been here only yesterday, and marked the area with a blue plastic egg. He’d said five hundred. Thursday had expected fifty.

  But now everything had been picked clean and canned, or picked clean and dried, bound on a ship to the Orient. Perhaps another diver had already found the plastic eggs. There was no point in shivering in the water.

  His head surfaced in a white rush of foam. In the distance, he could see the stacks of dark-churning clouds being flash-bulbed by the heavens above Old Hermanus. The storm’s advance was not fast—Leon had been right about that. On shore, the soft curl of the beach spread blue in the moonlight, and dim stars shined through the mozzie net of salt spray. Leon had parked the car behind the tallest tree. Thursday lifted the flashlight from the water and beamed out a simple signal, telling him that he would be coming back on shore.

  He waited for Leon’s response, and it came. Four flashes, nothing else. This had no meaning other than the fact that he was there waiting and not, hopefully, listening to music.

  But then there was another flashlight: moving, bobbing. A light that had come from the beach. No, two of them. Moving quickly.

  He could see them bouncing up and down the sand and out towards the forest, then disappear into the dark foliage behind the beach. Then, a flash of red and blue lights from far on the other side of the beach streaking towards the foliage, right where Leon was waiting.

  A raid.

  Treading, he saw Leon’s headlights go on and then start out through the forest, and then just as soon stop. The red lights and flashlights surrounded the car. Two more sets of red and blue lights approached on the beach and he could hear the warble of a megaphone. Some muffled dog barks. There was no way around it: Leon was caught.

  “Yissus!” Thursday breathed.

  He sank and rose in the rhythm of the night swells. Leon had not prepared him for this situation. Other than the flash signals, they had not developed any kind of plan for arrest
. He had no idea what to do as he de-fogged his mask.

  Suddenly, a wide beam of light swathed through the waves around him. He rose up in a swell and turned to see another wave about to crash, but he ducked his head under the wave with the respirator clumsily in his mouth. Shouting voices could be heard:

  “—one hundred meters… ident—”

  Then more barks, more megaphone.

  The swell rose up and the beam of light came closer, and when he sank with it, the light silhouetted him briefly in his lycra-capped skull onto the approaching swell, then moved off him. But in a few seconds the beam had swung back around and steadied onto his head. They’d spotted him.

  A rogue wave dropped down on Thursday hard and pushed his head below, tumbling him about. He swallowed water and surfaced and began to cough, but the umbilical line was sucked into the next swell and before he could take his lips off the respirator it pulled his whole body forward as it got caught into the surf and advanced towards the beach. His mouth exploded in pain. He cut himself free with the tip of his spear gun, then finned down hard and held his breath, listening to the steady chug of the boat. The breather rumbled and gasped as the brine seeped into the battery, sending up green alkaline tufts of cloud.

  Under the flotsam he could hear the engine of the police boat as it coordinated the arrest with the officers on the shore. They would be watching for air bubbles. Maybe for his flashlight, too. He could make out the boat’s clothes-iron silhouette against the moonlit surface. When it passed over, he kicked up, taking a few more breaths. The police spotlight was fixed on the surface breather and already he could see a long hook being extended down into the water to pick it up. He dove down again, finning hard, until he was clear of the wave break. The police boat continued scanning the waves in the surf with its spotlight.

  “This is the police!” the megaphone blared. “We know you are here! Come to the surface and identify yourself or we will shoot!”