?Thanks, Rassie. I have to go.?
?I?ll phone you if I hear something more.?
She put the phone back in her bag and walked in to the Absa offices in the Heerengracht. At the information desk she had to wait in line. The newest information milled in her head. The phone rang again.
?Allison.?
?Hi, Allison, my name is John Modise. I do a talk show for SAFM.?
?Hi, John.?
?You broke the story about the black guy on a motorcycle.?
?Yes.?
?How would you like to be on the show this morning? Telephone interview.?
She hesitated. ?I can?t.?
?Why not??
?It would compromise my position, John. You are competition media.?
?I understand, but your next edition is only tomorrow morning. A lot can happen ??
?I can?t.?
?Did you know this guy was Umkhonto we Sizwe??
?I did,? she said with a sinking heart. Her lead was disappearing. ?How did you find out??
?My producer got it from the Beaufort West police. He slipped through their fingers just an hour ago.?
Now they were all singing like canaries.
?I know.?
?You see, it?s public knowledge. So there?s no harm in being on the show.?
?Thanks, but no thanks.?
?Okay, but if you change your mind before eleven, you call me.?
?I will.?
It was her turn at the desk. ?Hi,? she said. ?I?m looking for a Ms. Miriam Nzululwazi. She works here.?
18.
I'am finished with all these things. I am finished with fighting, with the violence, with shooting and beating and hate. Especially the hate. Finished,? he said.
That was in the hospital in Milnerton, beside the bed of his white friend Zatopek van Heerden, the two of them full of medication and bandages and pain and the shared trauma of a strange and violent experience that he and the ex-policeman had gone through together by sheer chance. That was while he worked for Orlando Arendse. He had felt an inner glow, a Damascus experience of a new life vision, pumped up by the
Van Heerden had stared expressionlessly at him, just his eyes betraying a hint of empathy.
?You don'?t believe I can change??
?Tiny, it?s hard.?
That was his name. He had rejected it in the metamorphosis, part of the process of killing off the past, like a snake shedding its skin and leaving it behind as a ghostly reminder. He had become Thobela. It was his christened name.
?If you can dream it, you can do it.?
?Where do you get that populist crap??
?Read it somewhere. It?s true.?
?That?s Norman Vincent Peale or Steven Covey, one of those false prophets. Great white witch doctors.?
?I don'?t know them.?
?We are programmed, Tiny. Wired. What we are, we are, in sinew and bone.?
?We are growing older and wiser. The world is changing around us.?
Van Heerden was always excruciatingly honest. ?I don'?t believe a man can change his inherent nature. The best we can do is to acknowledge the balance of good and evil in ourselves. And accept it. Because it?s there. Or at least the potential for it. We live in a world where the good is glorified and the bad misunderstood. What you can do is to alter the perspective. Not the nature.?
?No,? he had said.
They left it there, agreeing to differ.
When he was discharged and left the white man behind in the hospital, he said good-bye with so much enthusiasm for reinventing himself, on fire for the new Thobela Mpayipheli, that Zatopek had taken his hands and said, ?If anyone can do it, you can.? There was urgency in his voice, as if he had a personal stake in the outcome.
