Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     ‘. . . and make sure that lazy hound Gideon turns up for work tomorrow!’

     ‘I don’t know, Danie. I’d rather leave it to him. If it isn’t safe for him to come, I’d rather he stayed away.’

     ‘Look,’ said Danie, his hand on the car door. ‘I know what I’m talking about. I know the way natives think. Let Gideon off tomorrow because he says it’s dangerous, and we’ll never know where we are again. He’ll be taking a day off every week because it’s “dangerous”. Now — do as I say! Make sure Gideon works tomorrow. Mind — I’ll be asking about it as soon as I get back . . . Bye-bye  for now — and don’t forget to lock everything up and bank the cash.’

     Danie Claassens, off for a night into the veld to see the farmers from whom the little dairy got its supplies, climbed into his shooting-brake and was off. His wife watched him go. She knew he loved these trips in which, with his dirty corduroy shorts, his old slouch-hat and his gun stowed in the back, he felt himself a pioneer venturing into territory filled with unknown dangers.

     With luck he might bring back a guinea-fowl, though, since most of the farmers shot at sight anything which walked or crawled or flew over their land, such treats were becoming rarer.

     That night, as they were putting up the shutters, Mrs Claassens spoke to Gideon.

     ‘I hope you’ll manage to come to work tomorrow, Gideon. With the baas away I can’t possibly get by on my own.’

     Gideon put down his work, as he always did to answer any question, and gazed at his mistress with concern. He was young, not more than twenty, lightly-built. He wore an old pair of his master’s slacks, rolled up round the ankles — not given, Claassens had charged him £1 for them since ‘Natives never appreciate anything unless they pay you for it’. Outside the trousers hung a flowery Palm Beach shirt; below them showed an old pair of blue gumshoes and socks of incandescent green. On his head was an absurd little round straw hat with a piece of red chiffon round the crown. The mistress had several times laughed at him for it, and the master had more than once knocked it off his head, but Gideon simply picked it up, dusted it, and put it on again.

     He even wore it to play football.

     Often at lunch-time half-a-dozen of the boys from the little group of shops would gather on a piece of waste ground under the shadow of vast blocks of flats. They did not pick sides and play matches as whites would have done. Theirs was not a contest, but a mutual display.

     With a lithe grace and wonderful dexterity they would juggle an old tennis ball among themselves. Bouncing it with the sole of a foot; with each foot in turn; balancing it on the instep; tossing it up on to the knee; rolling it along the thigh. They would hop with it balanced on an extended toe, run with it seemingly glued to their forehead before — with a shout and a jerk of the neck — flicking it accurately on to another black pepper-corned crown . . .

     ‘No,’ said Gideon at last, giving a hitch to his belt. ‘Not come to work tomorrow. Tsotsis kill anyone who works tomorrow.’

     ‘That’s all nonsense,’ declared Mrs Claassens, with a confident cheerfulness she did not feel. ‘If you all come to work the tsotsis can’t hurt you. How can they know you’re coming to work anyway? You might just be coming to town to meet your girl.’

     ‘No one come to work tomorrow,’ Gideon answered. ‘Only a few, like schoolteachers, cleaners in offices of government. And in evening tsotsis wait for these men. Wait outside stations. Wait by bus-stops. Pull these men out and beat them up.’

     ‘How d’you know? You’ve been listening to the boys chattering.’

     ‘Men come round all the shops this morning, missus. They say no one must work tomorrow.’

     ‘What? You mean they came in here? Never! I didn’t see them.’

     ‘Missus did see them,’ Gideon answered stoutly. ‘Missus sell one of them a pint of milk. Other two men talk to me, say no one is to come to work.’

     ‘The cheek!’ cried Mrs Claassens angrily. ‘If I’d have known I’d have given them something. Why didn’t you tell me? If they come back, now — be sure to point them out to the master.’

     Gideon made no reply. The gap between the realities of life and the picture of it held by white people was too enormous to be bridged by words.

     ‘I know,’ said the woman suddenly. ‘I’ve got it! You take the delivery bicycle home with you. Don’t come in on the buses at all. Get up early and come by a back way. Nobody will see you.’

     ‘Tomorrow,’ said Gideon slowly, ‘everyone see everything. Everyone watch everyone. Not possible I come to work tomorrow.’

     Mrs Claassens was impressed. Gideon, so volatile and as a rule so easily persuaded, was for once in earnest. For herself she would have let him stay away, faced doing the extra work or closed the shop, but she daren’t admit having done so to her husband.

     ‘You’re always giving way to the kaffirs. That’s the way all the trouble in this country starts. People being too soft . . . Now look at me . . .’

     The row there had been when he found she had put Gideon’s wages up from £9 to £10 a month still rose up at times to choke her.

     ‘I can’t help it, Gideon,’ she said firmly. ‘I must have you here tomorrow. If you don’t mean to work, then I’ll pay you off tonight and find another boy.’

     Gideon pushed his hat back and scratched his head. This was worse than he’d bargained for. None of the other shop-boys would be at work tomorrow. They’d all just stay at home and make excuses afterwards. Why hadn’t he done the same? How had he got himself into all this argument? ‘Never argue with a white’ was a basic principle of life. Do what you mean to do, then get out of trouble afterwards the best way you can . . .

     It wasn’t losing the job he minded. He’d lost and found a good many jobs in his short life. It was Mrs Claassens.

     Youngish, plump, good-natured, still pretty in a bovine way — highly efficient and practical as well — she had impressed herself deeply upon Gideon’s mind. It wasn’t love — at least not in the word’s usual meaning. It wasn’t desire, or gratitude, or filial feeling. Too vague to be called devotion, it was a tie, a bond that had grown up between them based on his wish to please and her acceptance of him as a human being.

     At midday Gideon often had a bit of whatever the family were eating. He had his own chipped enamel plate and mug which he cleaned himself. Once when Gideon’s plate was missing, Claassens had simply tipped his share out on to the step. When his wife came back and noticed it, she knocked the newspaper her man was reading out of his hand.

     Claassens looked up amazed, suspended in mid-chew: ‘What the hell’s gone wrong with you?’

     ‘The boy’s human, damn you! He’s not an animal.’

     ‘Not an animal,’ laughed Claassens, picking his paper up again. ‘That’s rich!’

     But Mrs Claassens was waiting for Gideon’s answer. ‘Which is it to be then — do you come to work tomorrow, or have I to pay you off tonight?’

     ‘No one else is coming. All their madams let them stay at home.’

     ‘What — none at all?’

     Perhaps this would be sufficient answer for her husband.

     Gideon hesitated. ‘Only “Doc” in the newspaper shop — he’s coming to work. But Doc doesn’t live in the townships. He sleeps here in town.’

     ‘Where does Doc sleep?’

     This was too difficult. Doc slept with his girl friend, who worked in a block of flats where the superintendent was too drunk to supervise.

     ‘I not know where Doc sleeps, missus. Maybe he sleeps in the shop.’

     ‘All right. Then for once you can sleep in the shop as well. You can make a bed up out of the sacks, and I’ll send you down some supper by the girl.’

     Gideon felt he was outwitted, but could hold out no longer. ‘Very well, missus,’ he said. ‘I sleep in the shop and work tomorrow.’

     Despite this solution, Mrs Claassens passed an uneasy night. She had a soft spot for Gideon, for his responsiveness and unfailing good temper. He was always ready to slip away from work if he could, yet under her eye he worked as well as she could wish, and often stayed on for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoons to help her clear things up after her husband had gone off to his Rugby match.

     He had a rather high-pitched voice, more like a girl’s, and a gentleness of manner which affected her in a way she could not describe. Once, going out into the backyard where Gideon had a small shed allotted to him, she had found him seated on an upturned packing-case with a younger boy beside him, a boy of startling but soft good looks whom she took to be about twelve years old. Gideon had his arm round the child and was teaching him to read out of an infants’ primer.

     ‘Who was that boy with you in the yard?’ Mrs Claassens asked later.

     ‘My brother.’

     ‘How old is he?’

     ‘Seventeen.’

     ‘They call any relation of theirs a brother and any girl a sister,’ said her husband when she mentioned it to him. ‘If Gideon starts bringing other boys round here I’ll put a stop to it pretty sharp. We don’t want the place broken into.’

     However, Gideon’s brother was not seen again. ‘The police send him to work on a farm,’ Gideon explained. ‘They say his pass not in order . . . Does missus think perhaps the master would one day ask the police what happens to my brother?’

     ‘No,’ Mrs Claassens was obliged to answer. ‘I don’t think the master would do that.’

     Keeping Gideon in the shop all night would ensure his being safe in the morning, but how about when he went home the next night — for certainly her husband wouldn’t let him stay after he got back? And what about the men who had come round threatening? Suppose they came round again to check on who was working? Mrs Claassens tossed uneasily, torn between fear of her husband and concern for Gideon.

     As for Gideon, it was not his way to worry about future evils. He would have to worry about tomorrow when it came, but it had not come yet. Meantime he had a good supper, and there was a heap of sacks in the corner of the shop. Over those sacks at this moment were spread a couple of Mrs Claassen’s blankets. They had been spread there by the house girl who, when she had finished clearing up upstairs, would — Gideon knew — be only too happy to slip silently down and share his impromptu bed.

     Next day was a day of trouble. Nobody came in to work. The city itself was strangely quiet. No stream of Africans flowing out from the bus depots and railway station in the early morning. No gossiping girls outside the flats. No groups of men at lunch-time playing draughts on the pavements so that passers-by must step into the street.

     In a few factories white men made desultory efforts to do the rough work usually done by ‘the natives’. But most had been supervising for too long to be able to lift and heave and haul and carry. They went through the motions once or twice, then knocked off for a cigarette and sat around the rest of the day smoking and complaining of the idle kaffirs.

     In the offices, from which all tea-boys were missing, typists and secretaries made tea for themselves and their bosses — an unheard-of indignity for whites.

     Out in the townships the police were busy. This was not the first day the black man had stayed away from work. Strikes were illegal for the blacks, but lately they had taken to cooking up excuses — days of mourning, days of prayer — which had the effect of strikes without tangible breach of law. This time the police had their plans laid well ahead.

     By daybreak they were on the job. Taking one township at a time, they would throw a cordon round it to stop anyone going out, and newspapermen or other inquisitives from coming in. Then an armoured convoy of Saracens escorting lorry-loads of police would drive into the middle. Out would leap the police, to go through each street systematically, combing out the houses.

     Doors were bashed open; all able-bodied men seized and asked why they were not at work. Anyone who answered back was an ‘agitator’. Those who couldn’t or wouldn’t answer — and many who did not get answers out in time — were gone over with fists and batons. In addition, suitcases were burst open or kicked apart, drawers and wardrobes turned inside out and the contents flung on floors.

     Official instructions were for ‘a round-up of tsotsis and agitators and a thorough search for subversive literature’.

     Unofficial instructions from the officers before action started were ‘to teach the bleddy kafflrs a lesson they won’t forget’.

     When one township had had its lesson, the convoy reassembled and moved on to do further educational work in the next one. As the report ran ahead and tempers rose, the township dwellers made feeble attempts at resistance. One or two roadblocks were put up. Stones were flung, in impotent rage, at Saracens strong enough to stand machine-gun fire or transport vehicles with plated sides and steelmesh coverings. The stones were the occasion for fresh punishment.

     Hundreds of Africans were rounded up, herded into closed vans, and driven off to the cells. When, and if, they would ever come to court was a matter to be decided later by their captors.

     Towards nightfall the police withdrew, and the enraged and frantic township dwellers turned on the only victims they could find, the few who had gone to work. In the absence of all political leadership — locked up for the emergency — tsotsis and thugs had taken over. Men were pulled off buses and kicked lifeless. Others, who had thought to get home by taking taxis, were stopped, dragged out and hammered with stones.

     Back in the city, the men Gideon had seen in the shop the day before had been making their rounds again, passing back the names of those at work, through their own underground organization.

     ‘They’ve been here again, missus,’ Gideon reported.

     ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I told you you were to tell me if they came back.’

     ‘Men not come into the shop, missus. They just looked through the window at me and write something in a book . . . Please can I stay here again tonight, missus? Not safe for me to go back home tonight.’

     ‘You must ask the master when he comes in.’

     The master was back at four o’clock and Gideon went to him at once with his request.

     ‘Sleep here? No, of course you can’t. You natives aren’t allowed to sleep in towns. There’s a law against it. What’s your locations for?’

     ‘Please let Gideon stay,’ Mrs Claassens pleaded. ‘He only came to work to help me out. It isn’t safe for him to go home tonight.’

     ‘Not safe — why not?’

     ‘Tsotsis kill all boys who work today,’ said Gideon. ‘Today no one allowed to go to work.’

     ‘Who the hell’s running this country?’ shouted Claassens angrily, jumping up. ‘Us — or the tsotsis? Now just you clear out. Go on back home and mind you’re at work on time tomorrow.’

     Gideon looked despairingly at his mistress.

     ‘I do think you should let him stay, Danie. It isn’t his fault the natives are making trouble. He’s come to work when the others didn’t. Does he have to suffer for helping us?’

     ‘Gideon won’t suffer,’ declared Claassens with a laugh. ‘He’ll be all right. It’s his own people, isn’t it? Anyway, the sensible ones should band together and put down these tsotsis. If they all stay out of the way, of course the tsotsis can take over. Now!’ he ordered, holding his hand up as he saw his wife about to speak. ‘No more! Go in and make supper. I’ll clear up the shop. And Gideon, off you go — and think yourself lucky to get away while it’s still light.’

     On the train, as it sped out of town towards the locations, there were many other frightened men besides Gideon. One in the same carriage was a boy he knew well called Enoch. Enoch had not been working. He had been up to town to try and find out from the police what had happened to his father. Caught during the week distributing leaflets urging people to stay at home, he had been carried off in a police van and nothing heard of him since.

     ‘Once the train pulls in to the station,’ Enoch whispered in Gideon’s ear, ‘we’re dead. They put petrol on two boys at Shortlands and set fire to them.’

     ‘Let’s go on one station further,’ Gideon answered, ‘and walk back along the line. Then join in with the crowd and make sure lots of people see us. Late at night, when it’s safe, we can go home.’

     ‘No. They’ll just pull us out of the train as soon as it gets in. Look — you do what I say. When this train slows down before we get to where the signals are — jump off together and run into the wood. We’ll hide there a few hours. Then, when the crowd’s gone, we’ll go home too. Everyone in our road knows why I went up to town. You sleep at our house, and I’ll say you spent the day with me.’

     ‘Some men saw me at work,’ confessed Gideon, hesitant.

     ‘Never mind. I’ll tell them it was a mistake. My mum and I will talk them out of it.’

     As the train rattled on into the twilight, the two boys sat tensed. Sure enough, as it approached the signals, it slowed down. Gideon flung the door open and leaped out on to the line, followed by Enoch. Down on their knees they crashed and slithered, picked themselves up with bleeding hands and dashed for the woods. Around them like shot birds landed a spatter of others who had had the same idea. These too stumbled, slithered, crashed, picked themselves up and bolted for cover.

     But whoever had planned the campaign of revenge, had planned it well. The cover rose up before them as they reached it; the woods were full of men lying in wait. Gideon and Enoch ran, dodged, tripped over roots, dived behind tree trunks, struck out, hit, missed, struck again panting, and ran on; both were at last seized and dragged into a clearing.

     Something like a trial was taking place. Each of the prisoners was led up in turn to the light of a blazing fire, asked who he was, and why he had not joined the stay-at-home. Enoch was quickly recognized and cleared. Someone dusted him down and offered him a drink out of a bottle. A boy was told off to see he reached home safely, but when Enoch tried to speak up for Gideon he was quickly silenced.

     ‘This one was at work today, we know him. Come on, you, hand over your pass.’

     Gideon handed the precious book over, his permit to work, receipt for taxes, his permission to live in the location, the document which, for an African, is almost as precious as his life. It was torn in half and flung into the fire. Four other men who had been to work had their passes burned. All were then told to stand to one side while their captors decided on their punishment. The five stood silent, eyeing each other with shifting glances, not one perhaps expecting to survive the night.

     But whatever was going to happen would not happen here. An order was given, and in the darkness the whole group set off stumbling through the wood together, prisoners in the centre.

     Down on the road going was easier, and Gideon managed to exchange a word or two with his companions. They were not bound, but their captors were too many and surrounded them too closely for there to be any chance of an escape.

     For half-an-hour they trudged on, then, as they neared the station, they heard shouting and a scatter of shots. A moment later cars came racing towards them, headlights blazing.

     ‘It’ll be Speedy and the other chiefs,’ said someone.

     But as they reached the group it was suddenly clear what the cars were - a Saracen and two troop-carriers. They had been called out in the night to deal with the fighting round the station, where a couple of trucks had been toppled down the embankment on to the line.

     As the convoy halted, the men on the road vanished — leaving their prisoners standing — into the veld. From what bits of cover they could find, a few flung stones and shouted. Then, from somewhere far away, came the echo of a shot.

     In a flash one of the men in the Saracen had started firing back, traversing his automatic weapon.

     ‘Stop that, you fool!’ shouted an officer, and the splutter of sound died irregularly away.

     As it faded, the few figures who had been standing, the captives who had been to work, sank to their knees, pitched forward, twisted in strange attitudes.

     From the burst head of one a round straw hat spun off into the dust.

     A day or two later Claassens was drinking with a friend.

     ‘Hear you’ve lost that boy of yours,’ said the friend, pushing a coin across the counter. ‘Same again, please, Charlie — two brandies and a coke.’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘What’d he been up to?’

     ‘“Shot while resisting arrest”, the police told us.’

     ‘H’m. Always seemed quiet enough to me, but you can’t tell. Often these quiet kaffirs are the worst. Got yourself a new boy yet?’

     ‘Yes. We’ve got a new one and he seems okay. Trouble is my wife.’

     ‘Why? What’s up with her?’

     ‘She’s upset.’

     ‘What — over a kaffir being shot?’

     ‘She is, man! I tell you. The other night I went up to her—we were just getting into bed — and she pushed me away. She did, man. I’m telling you. Pushed me away.’

     ‘What’d she say?’

     ‘She says, “Don’t you touch me, you bleddy murderer” — and she burst into tears. Can you beat that, now — me a bleddy murderer?’

     ‘Ag, man. All women are crazy. You don’t want to listen to their crap. C’mon. Drink up — this one’s on you.’