Nigerians in Space Read online

  That didn’t sound like the police. The Hermanus police were soft and never shot anyone, much less put any poachers in jail. That was why half the town poached: easy money with low probability of capture. A few months of steady abalone picking and you could buy yourself a Merc. That’s what Brother Leon had told him tonight, anyway, in his Merc.

  Crack!

  Crack!

  Two sharp cracks rang out and Thursday could see the water splash up in the circle of the spotlight in the surf.

  But he could see from the spotlight that the boat was headed in the wrong direction, towards a cove popular with the poachers. Maybe there were other divers out tonight. Hopefully there were. He caught another breath and sank down again in the black wash of the sea.

  The storm clouds slowly swallowed up the moon, and he found himself in total darkness, with no sense of up or down. His imagination went wild and he started to panic: sharks, hostile poachers, police bullets, all of them could be hurtling towards him in the water. He fumbled to hit the button on his flashlight, expecting to see a jaw full of jagged teeth about to gulp him whole, or a bullet streaking towards his brain.

  But there, in the midst of the shooting and the raid and the approaching storm, he didn’t see any sharks. No bullets, either. What Thursday saw instilled in him the deepest relief he’d had since he’d left Abalone Silver: the beacon of the blue plastic egg. He’d descended right into Leon’s abalone patch.

  The mollusks were healthy and active in the night, sliming along the rock in a little garden of red gracilaria. There were urchins, a couple of crayfish, and a rock lobster. He found a largish looking abalone covered with seaweed and pried it off. The abalone slid its foot onto his hand and nursed at it like a babe.

  He couldn’t believe its weight: enormous, much bigger than the oldest abalone at the farm. It was so big that the shell covered both his hands. Maybe thirty years old, maybe forty, and worth a few thousand bucks by itself. The flat kelp noodled up harmless to the surface, and nothing dangerous was in sight.

  Above him the boat chugged off towards the cove, expecting the divers to flee onto the beach. Any other novice would have swum into the hands of the cops by now. But Thursday was beginning to feel comfortable without the tangled line of the surface breather. And amongst the abalone, with their patient ways, he felt to be amongst friends. He could hold his breath longer than most people and his ears didn’t bother him when he dove down deep. He just had to be careful about the spotlight. It would be some time before the police boat stopped searching, and he might as well make the best of it. It would take maybe ten trips. He took out his pry bar and went to work.

  Hermanus’s biggest industry was whale watching and the tourism that went with it: stuffed animals, shipwreck maps, shell jewelry, whale carvings, fynbos guides, hiking books, whale videos, whale song audio recordings, whale novels, kites, ships-in-a-bottle, chocolate dolphins; then handicrafts made from carded lambswool, wicker, stinkwood, pine, and tie-dyed cotton. These trades did not give rise to a lot of crime, so the police station was simple. The most frequent users were residents needing certified copies of ID books.

  The station was shaped like an L. The gray holding cells stretched out the back and were located right next to the courtroom, which had a door that opened into the magistrate’s chambers and, on the other side, the prosecutor’s office. It was a one-stop shop for justice.

  The guard told Thursday they had ten minutes. Leon wearily approached the window, looking haggard and grumpy in an orange jumpsuit, but upon spotting Thursday he assumed a dignified expression. He didn’t smile.

  “Howzit, Leon?” Thursday asked.

  Leon tensed his muscles. “How do you think it is, bru? It’s kak. I’ve been in here four days. And you come to me now all smiling and cute. They’re transferring me to Pollsmoor in a week.”

  Thursday hadn’t smiled, and he wasn’t sure if he had been acting cute. He let it slide. “I didn’t want any trouble.”

  “Trouble? Trouble? Now you’re in a shitload of trouble, you poes.”

  “Me?”

  Leon leaned in and whispered. “Yeah, you, voetsak. You ratted me out.”

  Thursday got confused. Leon was the one who was supposed to warn him if the police were coming, by calling him on the condom-wrapped cell phone.

  “They came from the ocean,” Leon explained. “Didn’t you hear the boat? You flashed like a hundred times, broer. They saw you. You gave me away.”

  “But you flashed back, Leon.”

  “Shhh. Keep your voice down, broer. Keep it down. I’m in enough shit as it is. That wasn’t me. That was them. I was supposed to flash six times, remember? Six times. That was the cops.”

  Thursday thought over it. “What were you doing, then?”

  “I was listening to my klop Kwaito, broer. And if I’d kept on listening I would have been fine. Then you bloody gave me away, you poes. When I get out of here, I’m—”

  “When do you get out?” Thursday asked nervously. He knew what would happen when Leon got out and didn’t want to hear the grisly threats.

  “I don’t know. But I’ll get out a lot quicker if I give them something.”

  “Like what?”

  “A name.”

  There was something sinister about the way Leon said ‘name’.

  “Whose?”

  “Who do you think?” Leon grinned.

  “Me? But I didn’t do anything, Leon. I’m an honest—” He wanted to say that he was an honest man, but that excuse no longer seemed appropriate. “What about bail? Can’t you call up Thembisa? She’s got to have some money. Or Fadanaz.”

  “It’s a hundred thousand rand. Fadanaz has a thousand.”

  Thursday frowned. Thembisa had a good job as an assistant manager at a bank, but she certainly didn’t make a hundred thousand rand in a year. All of Leon’s girls put together probably couldn’t muster up more than ten thousand, and Thursday had been fired from Abalone Silver with five hundred bucks to his name. Rent was four hundred.

  “What about the Merc?”

  “Impounded.”

  “A hundred thousand rand? But you didn’t have anything on you, Leon. How can they charge that?”

  Leon looked away. He hesitated and said, softly: “Racists, bru.”

  Thursday barely heard him. He was scared already and distracted, thinking about how Leon would chop him up, or crush his head in a vice—Leon was capable of all of these things. And Thursday would never survive Pollsmoor prison. He knew he wasn’t tough enough, not like Leon.

  “I got the work, Leon.”

  “What?”

  “I said I got the work, my broer.”

  Leon’s eyes widened. He relaxed his shoulders a bit, and Thursday could see him thinking out a strategy already. Leon was quick.

  “How many?”

  “Two hundred. Big. Thirty years old.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I’ve got them in the bath.”

  Leon was calculating.

  “Two minutes!” the guard shouted in.

  “Alright,” Leon said eventually. “That’s enough. That’s enough, but you’re going to have to go straight to Ip.”

  Everyone in Hermanus had heard of Ip, but few had ever seen him. First you went to a dry-house and shriveled up the abalone. Then a runner stuffed the dried perlies in rooibos tea boxes and took them to Ip. Thursday was under the impression that Ip lived in another universe, in China maybe, and didn’t want anything to do with him.

  “Don’t you know a runner?” Thursday asked.

  “No, no. Two hundred in the dryer won’t make it. If they’re as good as you say, they’ve got to get there alive. He’ll pay twice as much. And it should do.” Leon explained how to contact Ip, tousling his own dark locks with relief. “You’ve done good, Thursday. I always knew I could trust you.”

  The guard escorted Leon away, and Leon looked over his shoulder and winked. A moment ago, Thursday remembered, Leon was about to tell him how
he was going to kill him.

  Of all the poachers in Hermanus, Thursday was the best suited to take care of live abalone because of his time at the factory. He’d already gone down to the rocks to pick up some fresh kelp, but the abalone were having a hard time digesting the seaweed with all the stress. He walked straight out of the police station to the pet shop in Old Hermanus. The large black-winged gulls were nibbling muffin bits and crisps from the sidewalk, awaiting the arrival of the whale-watching children who would stuff their gullets full of sweets. The sun rippled off the bay through the shop awnings at the end of the street.

  He picked up a couple of cans of low-protein fish meal and took them to the counter. The two tellers were busy poring over the Times.

  “I can’t believe it,” one said. “She was so young.”

  “It’s awful,” the other agreed.

  “What happened?” Thursday asked, to move things along.

  He was so new to the smuggling business that he felt guilty buying fish meal, as if the cans were attached to a hotline and the police would come arrest him on suspicion of feeding perlemoen in the bathtub. As if fish meal was an indicator of criminal activity.

  “You haven’t heard?” the teller asked. She was a plump white girl with hairy dreadlocks.

  “No.” Thursday never heard anything.

  She showed him the front page. There was a healthy black and white Border collie nobly posing over a mound of abalone. The fishnet sacks had been arranged so that it looked as if the police had just dumped the shells onto the floor. He could practically hear them clattering against the tiles. It was the dog that the police had trained to track down abalone in drying facilities.

  “It’s Sassy,” the teller said.

  “Can I take a look?” Thursday asked.

  She handed him the paper. The headline was clear enough: “Sassy Killed by Poacher”. He scanned the story:

  New Hermanus Bay— Sassy, the police dog that became the pride of Hermanus, died of complications at Protea Veterinary on Wednesday.

  “We tried everything,” veterinarian Linda Sussex explained. “She fought hard but the bullet had crushed her left ventricle. It’s a miracle she lasted as long as she did.”

  The police said that Sassy, a Border Collie, was shot with a nine millimeter pistol. A local Hermanus man is being held on charges.

  Sassy left in glory, on the eve of the successful launch of “Operation Trident.” Trident represents new coordination between South African Police Services (SAPS), the border patrol, and the South African Navy, with increased powers of search and seizure and lower evidentiary standards for abalone poachers.

  It is hoped that these efforts will curb the illicit trade that is plagued by local thugs, Chinese triads, and international drug smugglers. The threatened Haliotis midae is considered second in quality only to Mexican abalone.

  On Friday, ten poachers were arrested in four hours and a catch valued at R730,000 was confiscated. The success of the operation was credited to Sassy.

  “We owe the entire catch to her,” presiding officer Van Zyl Smit explained. “She’s a hero.”

  Thursday looked up to find the tellers staring at him, expecting a reaction. He just shook his head and paid for the fish meal. This seemed to be enough for them.

  Sassy’s demise actually made him relieved because she wouldn’t be sniffing him into prison. The new powers of search and seizure were what worried him. All he had was a padlock on his front door.

  Casually, he went through the procedures required to contact Ip the smuggler. He sent an SMS to the name Telemann. Ip sent a return SMS within moments. Efficient. Thursday went to a pay phone and dialed the number. It picked up after the first ring.

  “Leon?” Ip asked.

  Thursday didn’t know whether to say he was Leon or not. If Ip didn’t know him, then he might get scared and hang up.

  “Yeah,” Thursday said.

  There was a pause. “You don’t sound like Leon.”

  “I’ve got the flu. Two hundred fresh adults,” he said. “Thirty years old.”

  The phone hung up.

  Shit, Thursday thought, as he continued home. That was evidently the wrong answer. He must have been too aggressive. Now what would he do? He had no contacts and Leon would kill him if he found out he’d blown the phone call.

  The abalone had all receded into their shells and were unmoving in the bathtub, unhappy with their new claw-footed home. Poor dears. He dropped in a few scoops of fish meal. His tiny, lime-washed house only had two rooms, and in those two rooms there was one couch, a rickety pinewood table, and a mattress on the floor, so he spent as much time as he could smoking outside, listening to the far off hoots of the ships navigating the bay. He left and lit a cigarette.

  The phone call was a fuck-up, but Thursday was a cautious optimist. He played with the idea that maybe he could take the perlies to Abalone Silver. There were some prime females in the bathtub. Maybe Mr. Pretorius would offer him some money for them and give him his job back. If that didn’t work, he could give some to Leon’s mom. She made a nice abalone stew and it would make her happy, which she might tell Leon about. Also some to Leon’s stepsister, who had a beer batter recipe she liked to cook perlies with. That might be the difference between death and survival, by a hair. But a hair was enough. He returned to the tub and saw that a few of the more adventurous abalone had already begun extending their radulae to nibble on the fish meal.

  There was a hard knock on the door. He carefully drew the shower curtain around the tub, shutting the bathroom door behind him. He peered out from his bedroom to find Leon’s girl Fadanaz.

  He opened the door and found her looking pouty in a red shawl, with one foot stomping in front. He smiled and leaned in for a kiss, but she held him back.

  “How could you do it?” she asked.

  He stopped smiling. So she knew he’d been involved. Play it cool, he thought. She doesn’t know you have the perlies in your tub. All that’s in there are shampoos and soaps. “How could I do what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘do what’? You know what you did. You are a pig. You don’t deserve him, you poes. But I won’t let him go to jail for you. Not my Leon. I’m turning you in, Thursday!”

  Fadanaz’s breasts pushed out when she was angry, and their presence made it hard for him to register her words. “Leon was supposed to warn me.”

  “So you go and shoot a dog, Thursday! A dog! You are a pig.” She turned on her heel, but Thursday grabbed her by the elbow.

  “What did you say, Fadanaz?”

  “Leave me alone, you killer. A helpless dog. You pig! I’m not going to let Leon go to Pollsmoor for you. No one, and I mean no one, will take away my Leon!”

  “Fadanaz, I didn’t shoot Snoopy.”

  “Sassy!”

  “I was in the water. I don’t know who shot Sassy.”

  “You lie. Leon told me everything. I can’t pay for bail! I can’t help him!” She began wacking him with her purse. “And I’m not going to let your ass go free!”

  Thursday covered his head with his hands as she battered him. He considered showing her the bathtub, but she ran off when he took his hands away. He fished out a cigarette.

  What had Leon been talking about, saying that he shot Sassy? Why would Leon make that up? Thursday had promised to help him at the police station, and Leon was dependent on him now. Why would he lie about that?

  The only thing he could come up with was that Fadanaz had gotten to Leon first, and he’d said some nonsense to get Fadanaz to help him. Leon always talked a lot of kak, and Thursday couldn’t blame him for wanting to get out of jail. If he got transferred to Pollsmoor there were 60,000 prisoners ahead of him who hadn’t even had a trial yet. But now Thursday had a bathtub full of poached perlemoen and Fadanaz was on her way to turn him in.

  He had to move, and he had to move fast. If she informed the police that he’d shot the dog, they’d be there in minutes, with photographers in tow. He ran inside and picke
d up the fishnet bag, and began stuffing the abalone in, handfuls at a time, recklessly.

  “Hang in there,” he cooed, “I’m taking you home.”

  Their tentacles retracted into their shells in abject fear. He put the fishnet sack in a garbage bag, gathered up all the money he had, and deadbolted the door. Circling around the building, he weaved behind some houses through a paddy of wild lilies towards the bay.

  Why, Leon?

  He crunched along the small pebbles of the beach and scrambled over boulders until the waves were crashing just in front of him, his face wet with salt spray. Teetering, he held the bag up over the water and began to toss the abalone towards a kelp bed one by one. They were strong enough, he hoped, to slime out to safety.

  Then he felt the cell phone vibrating, and dug it out of his pocket with his free hand. One new message. He opened it:

  78A, L. Main. Obz. C.T. 10am. Ip.

  Cape Town was two hours away by minibus taxi. Half of the perlemoen had already been plunked into the water. The other half, still in the sack. Beyond he could see the reflection of an ocean tanker on the water, and far away on the beach, the mahogany sheen of a child running along the sand in the spume.

  Evil Knows Where Evil Sleeps

  1993

  Stockholm, Sweden

  Wale was the first on the tram, the fifth to descend from it, and one of many walking through the balmy Stockholm streets. Somehow, at four in the morning, it was already light. The low lying boats on the canals were beginning to slide from their moorings as the sun dappled through the water. Wale was wearing a Western suit, a fresh shirt, the polysaccharides of four greasy inflight meals, and a five-at-night shadow, left in place to disguise his face.

  People were still expected to work in these conditions, Wale thought. Just pretend that they’d had a restful night of sleep with the sun prying open their eyelids and start all over again. In the winter it would be worse. Yet so many Africans on the continent thought that Scandinavia was the answer to all their problems.