the calm of Miriam and Pakamile.
He was in the hospital, he and Van Heerden, when it happened. When he saw himself for the first time. Afterward, not a day would pass that he did not think of it, that he did not try to unpick the knot of destiny.
He was shuffling down the hospital passage late one evening, his body still broken from the thing that he and Van Heerden had been in. He stood in a doorway to catch his breath, that was all. No deliberate purpose, just a moment of rest, and he glanced into the four-bed ward and there beside the bed of a young white boy a doctor was standing.
A black doctor. A Xhosa as tall as he was. Round about his fortieth year, gray hinting at the temples.
?What are you going to become one day, Thobela?? His father, the same man who Sunday after Sunday hurled God?s threats so terrifyingly from the pulpit with a condemning finger and a voice of reproach, was soft and gentle now to chase away the fear of an eight-year-old of the dark.
?A doctor,? he had said.
?Why, Thobela??
?Because I want to make people better.?
?That is good, Thobela.? That year he had had the fever and the white doctor had driven through from Alice and come into the room with strange smells around him and compassion in his eyes. He had laid cool, hairy hands on the little black body, pressed the stethoscope here and there, had shaken out the thermometer.
speaking Xhosa to him,
The miracle had happened, that night he broke through the white-hot wall of fever into the cool, clear pool on the other side where his world was still familiar and normal, and that?s when he knew what he wanted to be, a healer, a maker of miracles.
Where he stood watching the white boy and the black doctor in the doorway, he relived the scene, heard his own words to his father, and felt his knees weaken at the years that had been lost in the quicksand. He saw his life from another angle, saw the possibilities of other choices. He sagged slowly down against the wall, the weight too much to bear, all the brokenness, all the hatred, the violence and death, and the consuming deep craving to be free of it swallowed him up. Oh Lord, to be born again without it; he sank to his knees and stayed like that, head on his chest and deep, dry sobs tearing through his chest, opening up more memories until everything lay open before him, everything.
He had felt the black doctor?s hand on his shoulder and later was conscious that the man was holding him, that he was leaning on the shoulder of the white coat, and slowly he calmed down. The man helped him up, supporting him, laid him down on his bed, and pulled the sheets up to his chin.
He had slept and awoken and he had fought again, barefisted, honestly and honorably against the self- justification and rationalization. Out of the bloodied bodies of the dead rose a desire? he would be a farmer, a nurturer. He could not undo what had happened, he could not blot out who he had been, but he could determine where and how he would go from here. It would not be easy, step-by-step, a lifetime task, and that night he had eaten a full plate of food and thought through the night. The next morning before six he went to Van Heerden?s room and woke him up and said he was finished, and Van Heerden had looked at him with great wisdom, so he had asked with astonishment at the way he was underestimated: ?You don'?t believe I can change??
Van Heerden had known. Known what he had discovered last night under a bridge in the Free State.
He was Umzingeli.
Twenty kilometers south of Mpandamatenga, through the fever and hallucinations, he became aware of movement to the left of him. Between the trees and grass he saw three giraffes moving like wraiths against the sun, cantering stately as if to escort him on his journey, heads dipping to the rhythm in his head. And then he was floating alongside them, one of them, and he felt a freedom, an exuberance, and then he was rising higher and looking down on the three magnificent animals thundering on; he surged up higher and turned south and caught the wind in his wings, and it sang. It swept him along, and all was small and unimportant down there, a scrambling after nothing; he flew over borders, rolling kopjes and bright rivers and deep valleys that cut the continent, and far off he saw the ocean, and the song of the wind became the crash of the breakers where he stood looking out from the rocky point. Sets of seven, always sets of seven. He folded his wings and waited for the oasis of calm between the thunder, the moment of perfect silence that waited for him.
42.
B
y quarter past two, sleep began to overcome Tiger Mazibuko, so he put the machine pistol under the rubber mat at his feet and climbed out of the car for the umpteenth time. Where was the fucker, why wasn'?t he here yet?
He stretched and yawned and walked around the car, once, twice, three times, and sat on the edge of the hood, wiping the sweat from his face with a sleeve, folded his arms, and stared down the road. He did the calculations again. Maybe Mpayipheli had stopped for lunch or to have his wounds tended to by a quack in Francistown. He looked again at his wristwatch? any minute now things should start happening. He wondered if the dog was riding with his headlight on, as bikers do. Probably not.
Sweat ran down his back.
He did not pay the Land Rover Discovery much heed, as other luxury four-wheel-drive vehicles had passed. This was tourist country, Chobe and Okavango to the west, Makgadikgadi south, Hwange and Vic Falls to the east. The Germans and Americans and the Boers came to do their Livingstone thing here with air-conditioned 4x4s and khaki outfits and safari hats, and they thought the suspect drinking water and a few malaria mosquitoes were a hang of an adventure and went home to show their videos? look, we saw the big five, look how clever, look how brave.
It approached from the direction of Kazungula, and he tried to stare past it to keep watch on the road. Only when it pulled off the road opposite him did he look, half angry because he did not want to be distracted. Two whites in the front of the green vehicle, the thick arm of the passenger hanging over the open window. They looked at him.
?Fuck off,? he called across the road.
The small eyes of the passenger were on him, the face expressionless on the thick neck. He could not see the driver.
