The memories found their own way into his head. He had no need to summon them.
Summer, 1967. He had just passed his sixth birthday when he discovered a talent distinguishing him from the other children he used to play with in the dusty slum just outside Johannesburg. They had made a ball out of paper and string, and it suddenly dawned on him he had far more skill with it than any of his friends. He could work miracles with the ball, and it followed him like an obedient dog. This discovery led to his first great dream, which was to be crushed ruthlessly by the apartheid society held sacred. He would be the best rugby player in South Africa.
It brought him untold joy. He thought the spirits of his forefathers had been good to him. He filled a bottle with water from a tap and sacrificed it to the red earth.
One day that summer a white liquor dealer stopped his car in the dust where Victor and his friends were playing with the paper-andstring ball. The man behind the wheel sat for a long time watching the black boy with the phenomenal gifts of ball control.
On one occasion the ball rolled over to the car. Victor approached gingerly, bowed to the man and picked up the ball.
“If only you’d been born white,” said the man. “I’ve never seen anybody handle a ball like you do. It’s a pity you’re black.”
He watched an airplane sketching a white streak over the sky.
I don’t remember the pain, he thought. But it must have existed, even then. Or did I simply not react because it was so ingrained into me as a six-year-old that injustice was the natural state of affairs? Ten years later, when he was sixteen, everything had changed.
June 1976. Soweto. More than fifteen thousand students were assembled outside Orlando West Junior Secondary School. He did not really belong there. He lived on the streets, lived the obscure but increasingly skillful, increasingly ruthless life of a thief. He was still only robbing blacks. But his eyes were already drawn to the white residential areas where it was possible to carry out big robberies. He was carried along by the tide of young people, and shared their fury over the decision that education would take place in future in the hated language of the Boers. He could still recall the young girl clenching her fist and yelling at the president, who was not present: “Vorster! You speak zulu, then we’ll speak Afrikaans!” He was in turmoil. The drama of the situation as the police charged, beating people randomly with their sjamboks, did not affect him until he was beaten himself. He had taken part in the stonethrowing, and his ball skills had not deserted him. Nearly every throw hit home; he saw a policeman clutch at his cheek as blood poured out between his fingers, and he remembered the man in the car and his words spoken as he bent down to the red earth to pick up his paper ball. Then he was caught, and the lashes from the whips dug so deeply into his skin, the pain penetrated his inner self. He remembered one cop above all the others, a powerful red-faced man smelling of stale liquor. He had suddenly detected a gleam of fear in his eye. At that moment he realized he was the stronger, and from then on the white man’s terror would always fill him with boundless contempt.
He was woken out of his reverie by a movement on the other side of the lake. It was a rowboat, he realized, slowly coming toward him. A man was rowing with lazy strokes. The sound from the oarlocks reached his ears despite the distance.
He got up from the stone, staggered in a sudden fit of dizziness, and knew he had to see a doctor. He had always had thin blood, and once he started bleeding, it went on for a long time. Moreover, he must find something to drink. He sat in the car, started the engine, and saw he had enough gas for an hour of travel at most.
When he came out onto the main road, he continued in the same direction as before.
It took him forty-five minutes to get to a little town called Almhult. He tried to imagine how the name was pronounced. He stopped at a gas station. Konovalenko had given him money for gas earlier on. He had two hundred-kronor bills left, and knew how to operate the automatic dispenser. His injured hand was hindering him, and he could see it was attracting attention.
An elderly man offered to help him. Victor Mabasha could not understand what he said, but nodded and tried to smile. He used one of the hundred-kronor notes and saw it was only enough for just over three liters. But he needed something to eat and above all he needed to quench his thirst. He went into the gas station after mumbling his thanks to the man who helped him and drove the car away from the pump. He bought some bread and two large bottles of Coca-Cola. That left him with forty kronor. There was a map among various promotional offers on the counter, and he tried in vain to find Almhult.
He went back to the car and bit off a large chunk of bread. He emptied a whole bottle of Coca-Cola before his thirst was quenched. He tried to make up his mind what to do. Where could he find a doctor or a hospital? But he had no money to pay for treatment anyway. The hospital staff would turn him away and refuse to treat him.
He knew what that meant. He would have to commit a robbery. The pistol in the glove compartment was his only way out.
He left the little town behind him and continued driving through the endless forest.
I hope I don’t need to kill anyone, he thought. I don’t want to kill anyone until I have completed my assignment, shooting de Klerk.
The first time I killed a human being, songoma, I was not alone. I still can’t forget it, even if I have difficulty in remembering other people I have killed later. It was that morning in January, 1981, in the cemetery at Duduza. I can remember the cracked gravestones, songoma, I remember thinking I was walking over the roof of the abode of the dead. We were going to bury an old relative that morning; I think he was my father’s cousin. There were other burials taking place elsewhere in the cemetery. Suddenly there was a disturbance somewhere: a funeral procession was breaking up. I saw a young girl running among the memorial stones, running like a hunted hind. She was being hunted. Somebody yelled that she was a white informant, a black girl working for the police. She was caught, she screamed; her despair was greater than anything I had ever seen before. But she was stabbed, clubbed, and lay between the graves, still alive. Then we started gathering dry sticks and clumps of grass we pulled up from between the gravestones. I say “we,” because I was suddenly involved in what was happening. A black woman passing information to the police-what right had she to live? She begged for her life, but her body was soon covered in dry sticks and grass and we burned her alive as she lay there. She tried in vain to get away from the flames, but we held her down until her face turned black. She was the first human being I killed, songoma, and I have never forgotten her, for in killing her I also killed myself. Racial segregation had triumphed. I had become an animal, songoma. There was no turning back.
His hand started hurting again. Victor Mabasha tried to hold it completely still in order to reduce the pain. The sun was still very high in the sky, and he did not even bother to look at his watch. He still had a long time to sit in the car with his thoughts for company.
I have no idea where I am, he thought. I know I’m in Sweden. But that’s all. Perhaps that’s what the world is really like. No here nor there. Only a now.
Eventually the strange, barely noticeable dusk descended.
He loaded his pistol and tucked it into his belt.
He no longer had his knives. But then, he was determined not to kill anybody, if he could possibly avoid it.
He glanced at the gas gauge. Soon he would be forced to fill the tank. He needed to solve the cash problem- still, he hoped, without killing anyone.
A few kilometers farther on he came upon a little store open at night. He stopped, switched off the engine and waited until all the customers had gone. He released the safety catch on his pistol, got out of the car and went quickly inside. There was an elderly man behind the counter. Victor pointed at the cash register with his pistol. The man tried to say something but Victor fired a shot into the ceiling and pointed again. With trembling hands the man opened the cash drawer. Victor leaned forward, switched the pistol over to his injured hand, and grabbed all the cash he could see. Then he turned and hurried out of the store.
He didn’t see the man collapse on the floor behind the counter. As he fell, he hit his head hard on the concrete floor. Afterwards, they would decide the thief had knocked him down.
The man behind the counter was already dead. His heart could not cope with the sudden shock.
As Victor hastened out of the store, his bandage caught in the door. He had no time to carefully extricate it, so he gritted his teeth against the pain and jerked his hand free.
Just then he noticed a girl standing outside, staring at him. She was about thirteen, and wide-eyed. She gaped at his bloodstained hand.
