Love in the Time of Apartheid Page 2
“No,” he said, improvising. He did not want to tell horror stories. “I’ve just been down there trying to straighten out a personnel matter. In our factory.”
“What was that?”
“You can’t want to know,” Gat said. He wondered what he would tell her if she insisted.
“But I do!” she said. “You’ve heard all this boring business about my husbands.”
“We had a Congolese—” He would model this character on Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first prime minister. “Quite an extraordinary fellow really. Even if he had three wives.”
“All at the same time? I can’t imagine!” Tina laughed. “I’ve had my problems with two husbands, one at a time!”
“He was running our factory for us,” Gat explained, improvising on Lumumba’s situation. “There were problems, of course. That was to be expected in a shift to Congolese management. But it was nothing that time and a little patience could not have worked out.”
“But who has either?”
“Right,” he replied. “The inevitable problems arose. The Congolese was very capable. He had been told that he’d be running things. But he was supposed to understand, of course, that he would not really run them. A Belgian ‘advisor’ would.”
“Oh, goodness.”
“The Congolese caused problems. In fact, he fired the Belgian ‘advisor’ who happened to be the grandson of the company’s owner. The grandson locked the Congolese out of the factory. The Congolese got the work force to walk off the job. It got very ugly. Threats were made. I was sent down to straighten things out.”
“Were you able to?”
Gat paused, trying to work out the plot of his improvisation. “Well, the situation’s resolved.”
Tina looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“The Congolese refused to meet with the grandson. He insisted that threats had been made on his life.”
“Had they?”
Gat sipped his coffee, playing for time. Then he saw how his riff on Lumumba’s story would evolve. “The grandson was a bad lot,” he said. “I didn’t understand that at the time. He ran with a crowd that wanted to take revenge on Congolese. That was understandable, given what independence was like.”
“What happened?”
“At the grandson’s suggestion I set up a meeting with the Congolese. At night. In the factory office. He agreed to come because he trusted me. I sent a car and a driver for him.” Gat paused.
“And?” asked Tina.
“The car was found the next morning. The Congolese was inside it. Dead.” Tina gasped. “He’d been shot five or six times. The driver had disappeared.”
There were silent for several moments. Finally Tina said, “That’s going to happen here, isn’t it?”
“I doubt it,” Gat said. “If it does, you’ll have gone long since.”
“It’ll happen here,” Tina said, “and it’s us they’ll kill. I must get my children out of this country.” Then she asked, “What’s happened at the factory?”
“It’s back at work. There’s a warrant out for the driver’s arrest.”
“But he’s disappeared.”
“Probably gone back to his village. And here I am,” Gat said. “Would you like to walk around the block? I need to settle my dinner.”
After the walk they had a nightcap in her room. They joked about each wondering how the other would be in bed. “I didn’t wonder,” Gat assured Tina. “I knew you’d be fantastic.”
Tina suggested, “Why don’t you hurry down to your room for a toothbrush and anything else you might need?”
In his bathroom he collected the toothbrush, a change of underwear, and condoms. Examining his face in the mirror, he advised himself to give her a pass. He needed a woman to help him restart his life. Not a practiced courtesan, hungry for a tumble, so little aware of him she would not remember his name tomorrow morning. He recognized the advice as good, but military service had schooled him to seize the benefits that came his way.
When he returned to her room, she had changed to a negligee. He undressed as she watched, a little as if he were performing. They embraced.
In his opening move he kissed her shoulder. “Do you take offense easily?” she asked. The pucker left his lips; his mouth fell open. He had not expected talk. “I hope not,” she said. “You a little nervous?” Gat cocked his head. No, he did not feel nervous. “I am,” she confessed. She gave him an oft-used smile. He thought: No, lady, you are not a very good actress. For she was not nervous, just take-charge. “I want this to be amazing for both of us,” she professed. “That’s how it’ll be if you let me give you a tip now and then along the way.”
“A tip?”
“It’s always— You know— The first time.”
Gat felt the excitement in his groin drain away.
“A new lover can always use a little help, I think.”
“I have done this once or twice,” Gat said, keeping it light.
“Of course. But a little help can’t hurt.”
So she gave him tips: about which parts of her body to touch and when and with how much pressure. She cooed when pleased and emitted tiny whimpers when she was not. She warned, “Not yet! Not yet!” for what seemed forever. As Gat held off, he felt himself move out of his body to cross the room and look over at the two of them on the bed, writhing in the gymnastics of sex, wrestling for the purpose of joining their bodies in what was called love, but without possessing the slightest interest in one another. Then finally she cried out, “Now! Now!” and he pounded into her hard because he did not like her. “Oh, my god, now!” Then, “Harder!” And then, “Faster! Faster!” And then “Oh! Ohh! Ohhhh!!” Theatrical gasps of pleasure. She rolled away from him. They lay silently side by side.
She wound herself about him. He held her without pleasure. After a time she asked, “Did you get any black ass in the Congo? I assume that’s de rigueur for businessmen from Brussels.”
“I’ve had nothing as good as you in I can’t remember when.” That was the line he was supposed to say.
“But you must have wanted to try black ass.”
“There’s only one reason for that. You’re in a hurry. A Congolese girl takes longer counting her money than giving you a pop.”
She laughed, curled away from him, and brought her knees against her breasts.
FOR A long time Gat lay in the darkness. Usually he slept after sex, but now he was wide awake. Tina’s backbone pressed against him, the vertebrae like silky nubs of fire. Gat felt depressed, drained, ready to leave. He stared toward the ceiling he could not see.
When he was very young, not yet twenty, he had tried to make a success as a planter in the region of the Congo called the Equateur. When he was failing, running out of both food and money, children from a nearby village found him. A village girl brought him food. The third time she brought it, she spent the night, sleeping on the mattress in the back of his pickup. They could hardly communicate. Still, bringing him food, sleeping with him, he sometimes thought of her as “saving his life.” He thought now: How pure that girl’s giving had been compared to this woman’s!
Finally he moved to the side of the bed. He sat up. Before he could stand, Tina wrapped her arms about him. “Don’t go,” she said. In the quiet of the room her whisper sounded in his ears like a shout. “I really can’t sleep unless there’s a man within reach,” she said. She twined herself about him. The air cooled his shoulder where she licked him. Her warm hand slid to his groin. “Come to me again,” she pleaded. He said nothing and, even as her hand aroused him, he thought, I should have given this a pass.
Tina slid her body around his. She caused their bodies to join, rocked back and forth against him. She gasped. She clung to him. Tighter, tighter. “God, you are fantastic,” she whispered. Her voice fluttered in what might have been a sob, might have been a laugh. “And I’m fantastic too. Aren’t I?” He said nothing. “I am fantastic,” she said. “Let him screw twenty-year-olds.”
He said nothing.
“I’ve had manufacturers. Not one of them ever gave me that kind of pleasure.” The minutes ticked by. “So who are you?”
He said nothing.
“Did you make up that story about the Congolese who got killed?”
He said nothing, wondering if the night would ever end.
“Or did you kill him?”
So . . . She suspected that he had killed men. He waited till she was deeply asleep, snoring. He slid from the bed, gathered his clothes, shoes, and the toilet articles kit, and walked naked through the halls of the Mount Nelson Hotel back to his own room.
CHAPTER TWO
CAPE TOWN
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1961
Riding the bus south to the Cape of Good Hope, Gat watched sheer cliffs plunge into an ocean the color of blue ink. Seagulls soared and squawked overhead. Pungent salt air filled his lungs and left its taste on his tongue. The little towns seemed picture perfect, home to a settled, prosperous people. Or as the Afrikaners would say: the volk. If he were truly a manufacturer of furniture seeking enlarged opportunities, he wondered, would he actually contemplate emigrating here? The social problems waiting down the line seemed obvious: ethnic tension leading to sabotage, violence, and terror, possibly a race war. Could such a manufacturer discount them? Or assume they’d be avoided? If he found a companion like Tina Windsor, would he, too, be lulled into a stupor of affordable servants and creature comforts? Tina Windsor. He didn’t want that.
He scanned the news in the Cape Times. According to it, Patrice Lumumba, termed “the Congo’s hapless prime minister,” was still being held incommunicado in an undisclosed prison in Katanga. Gat smiled tightly: deceit and half-truths. He read a squib reporting that Negroes in America were continuing to conduct “sit-ins” at drugstore counters and diners. Mentored by Communists and provocateurs, the report said, they were inciting violence, endangering the fabric of traditional life in the southern United States.
Gat laid the paper aside. He watched bleached cliffs and waves hitting them, white gulls, indigo sea, cerulean sky. He wondered: How could a land of such incredible beauty be a place of such cruelty and division?
At the Cape he skipped the tour and avoided the long-fanged, fluffy-haired baboons. They patrolled the parking lot, delighting urban tourists before snatching and devouring their sandwiches. He walked out to the end of the viewing plaza and stood in the wind. Grown cold, he went into the small canteen for a cup of coffee.
The place was empty except for the counterman, an African busy measuring coffee into a filter, his back to the counter. When the man turned, Gat felt a jolt of ice flash across his body. Had he seen a ghost? The counterman was perhaps six foot four, slender as a rifle barrel with the clipped mustache and the small goatee. Glasses shielded his intelligent eyes; his glance both penetrated and seemed oddly gentle. The man had cropped his kinky hair close to his head, incising a slit into the left side to suggest a part.
Gat immediately recognized the man’s homage to Lumumba. His appearance communicated his solidarity, at least to those who actually looked at him. Gat felt an urge to signal his recognition. But would it unnerve the African? Gat asked for coffee. When he paid, he left a five-rand tip. “That’s for you.”
“Thank you, baas.”
Gat moved to a display of postcards and feigned inspecting them while scrutinizing the counterman. If Gat believed in reincarnation, he would have thought that Lumumba was now working in this canteen. Gat bought a postcard and once more tipped the African generously. The man left the tip on the counter, tempted to pocket it but not quite trusting the impulse.
“You get many visitors here?” Gat asked.
“Oh, many, baas. Very many.”
“From far away?”
“Oh, yes, baas. From very far.”
They looked at one another. The man would venture no conversation beyond cheery, bland replies. Adept at roles, he chose obsequiousness as the safest with an unknown white man.
“I’m from America,” Gat said. “I’ve been in the Congo for a while.”
“We read many bad things about that place, baas.”
Gat did not believe in ghosts despite his years of officering men who did. Still, just to be sure, he spoke a greeting in Lingala. The counterman looked at Gat with apprehension. He turned back to the coffee machine. Gat was satisfied that he was not an incarnation of Lumumba. Still, might as well be sure.
Gat made a couple of attempts to engage the man in conversation. But connecting with him was like winning the trust of a cat beaten by strangers. Finally Gat said, “I read that you were in prison in Katanga. I’m glad to see that you escaped and found a job down here. You make good coffee.”
“Pardon me, baas. I don’t understand what you mean.” “No? If you’re not Patrice Lumumba himself, you look very much like him.”
A moment of uncertainty between them. “I don’t know what you mean, baas.”
Gat gestured thumbs up. The man offered no indication that he understood. “There’s no need to call me ‘baas,’ ” Gat went on. “I’m an American.”
A couple came into the canteen. The counterman quickly pocketed the tip Gat had left. After buying drinks, the couple left. Gat returned to the counterman and asked if he might have more coffee. The man refilled his cup. Then he whispered in a voice so low that Gat could hardly hear, “What will happen to Lumumba?”
Gat shrugged.
“They’ve already killed him, haven’t they?”
Gat nodded that they had. That he should give that response surprised him.
The counterman looked upset. He glanced toward the door to see if shadows foretold the arrival of customers. He listened carefully. Then he ventured: “The Belgians thought the Congolese would accept a false independence, didn’t they?” Gat nodded again. “They think Africans have just come ‘out of the trees.’ ”
“I’m afraid it’s going to be bad there for some time.”
“It keeps getting worse here. The government thinks we will accept false homelands. We will not. Eventually Lumumba’s ideas—”
Other members of the tour entered the canteen. “Lumumba” resumed his servile persona. “More coffee, baas?” he asked Gat. Gat held out his cup, nodded his thanks to the man, and went outside.
Sipping his coffee he was amused at pretending to be an American liberal. He rather liked the game. When he was first in the Force Publique, an experienced officer had taken him aside. “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Your men will perform better if you do not think of them as savages. Find something positive that each man can bring to the unit. They’ll perform better and your superiors will think you’re a leader. But don’t tell them the trick.” Gat had taken the advice and it worked. In E’ville he let his comrades think he was tougher than, in fact, he was.
Later as Gat stood at a railing watching waves crash against the promontory, he felt the presence of another person. He glanced over to see the African counterman. He nodded. The man moved nearer, wanting at last to talk, but anticipating a rebuff. Gat opened noncommittally: “Beautiful here.”
“Very beautiful,” came the reply. Then in a lowered tone, “Many interesting things happening in your country.”
“Are there?” Oh, yes, he had claimed to be American. He knew how the State Department was interfering in the Congo, but little else. But wait a minute. A new president had just been elected.
“Our brothers in America are pulling down the apartheid of the South. Gone with the Wind is going, going, gone.”
Gat smiled.
“Your new president. John F. Kennedy. What will he do?”
“He’s younger than Eisenhower,” said Gat. “Maybe that’s a plus.”
“African intellectuals say that America is trying to replace Belgium in the Congo. Is that true?”
“The
Americans are obsessed with the Cold War.” Gat reinhabited his pretended nationality. “We Americans, I should say. The people running my government are afraid that Africans will go Communist.”
“We are not Communists!” the man whispered vehemently. “It is a trick to hold on to what is ours.”
Gat shrugged. “I am afraid Americans must always have an enemy.”
“When you go back home, tell people that we are not the enemy. We need your help! Look what happened in the Congo,” the man whispered urgently. “The Belgians declared the country independent, then immediately landed troops in Katanga. Lumumba tried to stop the secession. But the UN refused to help him. You Americans wouldn’t help. No one in the West would help. So he turned to the Russians. Does that make him a Communist?”
“It does if you are obsessed by Communism. Your government—”
“The government of die boere is not my government, sir,” the man quickly corrected Gat.
“I’m sorry. The government here seems as obsessed about Communism as the Americans.” Gat changed the subject. “What’s this treason trial all about?” he asked. He was sure the man would have a different view than the actress.
The counterman’s vehemence flared again. His whispers now had the sound of steam released under pressure. “The government arrested one hundred fifty of our leaders. More than four years ago! They said they would prove that these men conspired to overthrow the government.” The man looked out at the ocean and shook his head. “There was no conspiracy. A state conspiracy! That’s what it is.”
“At least you are on the side of history,” Gat said. It was the only comforting thing he could think to say.
“That itself sounds Communist,” the counterman said. He was almost able to smile. He looked around to be sure that no one was monitoring their conversation. Then he spoke very quietly. “We will have to take up arms,” he said.
“Will that work?” Gat asked.
“What else can we do? The government is pressing us every way they can. First it was Bantu education, pass books, and the treason trial. Then came ‘separate development.’ Very soon it will not be possible for me to talk to you like this. They will find a way to make a law against that!”