“All I hope,” Ralph said, “and it’s a fairly faint hope, I know— is that the country will grind to a halt under the weight of its own ludicrous bureaucracy. You can hardly see a gap where a man can slip though.”
“There’s no slipping through,” Koos said. “Everybody’s watching everyone else. This country is like that. My hometown, my people—Jesus, man, you can’t imagine.”
“I think I can,” Ralph said.
“My father believes the world was made in seven days. It’s in the Bible, he says.” Koos laughed.
In the new year the early-morning raids began. They happened over three days. On the first morning, the police entered the township at five o’clock. They had armored vehicles, and they came in force. They cordoned off the area they had chosen and went from house to house, kicking in the doors. Next day, when people came down to the mission to give their accounts, this as much as anything gave rise to indignation: that they had shouted out that they were police, that the doors must be opened, but then they had given no time for the householders to obey them. “As if we were animals,” a woman said, “who would not understand.”
They were looking for liquor, the police said, for evidence of illicit stills. They were also looking for arms; there was a rumor current, which Ralph wished he had not heard, that materiel had been brought into Elim by night, and stowed away against a braver age.
Since the riot—the so-called riot—the atmosphere had been restless and strained, and the corner boys had a sullen, knowing look. He no longer allowed Anna to go out alone. Where people knew them, they were safe enough. Where they were unknown, a white face had become a provocation.
Those nights of the raids, Ralph found it impossible to sleep. There was the fear that some wider kind of trouble would blow up; that forewarned of the police action a crowd would gather, young boys heedless of the consequences, with sticks and bottles and, God knows, perhaps these mysterious arms; then there would be a replay of the baton charge, or perhaps much worse, perhaps bullets. He felt foolish, helpless, inconsequential, as he lay on his back staring up at the ceiling, an orange light insinuating itself through the gap in the curtains.
It had become necessary to fix these lights around the mission compound. A week ago, the nursery school had been broken into. There was no money for the thieves to take, no food; they had kicked the little tables about, torn up some books, ransacked Anna’s broom-cupboard office and made a small fire in there. It could, of course, have burned down the building, if Father Alfred had not seen the flames from his bedroom window.
Then, on Sunday, when the mission workers were at their various services, a sneak thief had entered Rosinah’s single-room house, taken her clothing, including a woolen hat which belonged to Dearie and which Rosinah had extracted from her on a forced loan. The cook’s retching sobs had been out of all proportion to the loss. They had —himself and Anna, Dearie, the gardeners—spent an hour trying to coax her to stop crying. Clara, the educated washerwoman, stood by the door not speaking. There was no expression on her face. She looked like a woman who might have lost everything, many times over.
Hence the security lights. Their sleep had been broken since. His wife’s tension seemed to communicate itself to Ralph through the sagging springs of the bed. Toward dawn he dozed. Phrases ran through his head, the phrases that he lived with each day:
And toward dawn on the third day the police came to the mission. It was almost a relief to hear them pounding at the door. He and Anna were both out of bed in a moment; their faces peaked in the gray light, they understood the extent of each other’s wakeful-ness. Ralph pulled on the trousers and shirt he had left folded by the bed. Anna belted her dressing gown over her long nightdress. What was the point of rushing? The police would break the door down anyway.
In the event, the police checked themselves; as if, here on the mission steps, some notion of civility still held sway. “It’s you,” Ralph said, opening the door; Quintus stood there. He had feared unknown faces, Special Branch perhaps. Haifa dozen men trooped in. Quintus introduced his colleague, Sergeant van Zyl. They had hardly got through the pleasantries when the men began to stomp through the house, looking in the cupboards and under the bed. “Of course, Sergeant,” Ralph said, you spotted at once that I’m the type to run a still. Me and my wife, aren’t we just your typical shebeen-owners?”
Sergeant van Zyl said, “We are looking for a person we have reason to believe may be on your premises.”
“What person? Dr. Verwoerd? Mickey Mouse?” Van Zyl looked baleful. He was a big man; hitching his thumbs into his belt, he moved the burden of his belly a little. “You wrote a letter to the
Let’s stay calm, Ralph said to himself. “My letter was only to tell people what really happened the day of your baton charge. I wrote to invite people to come up here and look at Elim for themselves. To look at our churches and our schools, and ask themselves if we are the hotbed of vice and crime they are constantly told that we are. To look at what we do here, and ask themselves if we deserve to be destroyed.”
“We know what your letter said,” van Zyl told him. “We have read it ourselves in the newspaper. The brigadier doesn’t like your tone, Mr. Eldred.”
“Well, if it’s only my tone,” Ralph said easily. “The content doesn’t trouble him?”
“You’d have more idea about crime,” van Zyl said, “if you spent some time with us at the police station.”
“But I do spend time. I could hardly spend any more. Unless I moved in with you.”
“I suppose that might be arranged,” van Zyl said.
The police had given up on the mysterious person, whoever he was. They were in Ralph’s office, rummaging through his papers. Sergeant van Zyl settled on his desk. Again he twitched at his belt, settling his bulk comfortably, as if his gut were something apart from him, a pet animal he kept.
“If I knew what you wanted,” Ralph said, “I could perhaps help you out.”
“Help yourself out, man,” van Zyl said. “Keep out of our way.”
Quintus attempted covert signals. He looked sick. Ralph would not meet his eyes. His clear meaning was, be careful, for van Zyl is not your decent type of policeman. And that was evident; there was no need to collude on it. If Quintus felt bad, let him quit; he, Ralph, was not going to do anything to ease a policeman’s conscience.
The search was a perfunctory one, but as messy as could be contrived. They had done it for the nuisance value, Ralph thought. Even so, he knew that Anna, standing against the wall, was trembling. He would have liked to turn to her, hold her in his arms, but he did not want to take his eyes from van Zyl’s eyes. He would not be the one to look away first.
