kiosk by the taxi stop, and shook my head over the offer from Detective Shange – selling Simphiwe’s freedom like that. But right there and then I came to the decision that when Simphiwe returned I would definitely pay the bribe. I would beg and borrow if I had to, as long as I could keep him out of jail.
Sango called.
‘Have Dumisani and Simphiwe gone crazy? Those two chose the darkness when living in the light is so lovely,’ he said.
We reminisced about how bright our ambitions were when we were their age. He told me there was indeed a baby on the way, work was perfect, and gave me brotherly encouragement about my studies.
‘I hear Dumisani was seriously hurt. How is he?’ I asked.
‘Dumisani regained consciousness this morning. He doesn’t know what happened or where he is. How is your brother?’
‘Simphiwe’s story is worse, my friend. We have not heard from him in six days. Ma is going insane with worry.’
‘Now that’s what drives me crazy. They worry our parents who should be enjoying their lives, reaping the rewards of decades of hard work. Instead they wake to calls from police stations and hospitals in the middle of the night.’ He sighed. ‘Listen, Khulekani, the visiting hours at Westville Hospital are from twelve to two. Dumisani is in Ward 4C. Maybe he’ll be able to tell you what happened.’
Beautiful, but, most of all, clean – that was my verdict of Westville Hospital. I waited in the foyer for the lift to take me up to Dumisani’s ward, and inhaled only sterile air, not the dodgy smells of government hospitals.
Had we afforded to take Dad to a hospital as good as Westville Hospital, surely they could have detected the impending stroke that struck and halted his life? He was locked in a coma for four days, then he was gone. We cried our eyes out amid the chaos and pungent smell of a government hospital. If we could have afforded Westville Hospital, Dad might have still been alive and Simphiwe would be on the right path. My father loved him. Simphiwe spent his whole childhood sitting on his lap. He looked so relaxed, so sheltered when Dad was alive.
I asked for Dumisani at the reception of the ward. A light flashed on the electronic board behind the nurse attending to me – a patient in the ward was in need.
‘That’s him, Ward 4C. Follow me,’ she said.
Dumisani had his own room. Through the closed door we heard him loudly crying out. The nurse looked at the shock in my eyes.
‘He wants a painkiller. That’s how the addicts are. Especially the wunga boys. They’re so desensitised to drugs that they need four times the required dose of painkillers. They also like the opiates in it – makes the detox bearable.’
‘Those drops please. I’m dying of pain. Please, nurse, I’m dying here,’ Dumisani moaned in a mumbly, thick voice as we entered.
Both his legs had multiple breaks with a network of wires and screws running lengthwise along them. His left arm was in a cast, his other arm had stitches running down from shoulder to wrist. He was severely disfigured – his head grotesquely swollen, a stitched gash on his forehead. The upper front teeth were missing. A big chunk of his left ear was also severed. I had never seen anything like it before.
‘Please, nurse. Please!’ Dumisani pleaded.
‘I’m fetching it now, don’t worry,’ she said.
I asked Dumisani for his side of the story after she left.
‘I only remember the ride from Umlazi to Claremont and absolutely nothing after that. I did not believe it when they told me what happened. I thought I’d been in a car accident. Those idiots got me good. I was told that rocks broke my legs, a panga sliced my face, a knife my ear, and a hammer broke my fingers.’
His voice got softer as if talking was tiring him out and I scraped the visitor’s chair closer. I could barely look – that close to him the injuries were nastier, bruises everywhere, every inch of exposed skin was black and blue.
The nurse returned and injected something into the IV drip in Dumisani’s arm. Dumisani winced and adjusted back to a comfortable position. That grimace revealed that he had lost most of his bottom teeth as well.
‘They tell me Simphiwe disappeared into thin air,’ he said. ‘That boy has my respect because he has never been in jail, but he plays the part of a crook well. He knows that the number doesn’t shift backwards, it only moves forwards.’
Dumisani went on rambling. Over and above the pain he suffered there seemed to be a sense of pride in the events that led him to that hospital bed. According to the warped crook mentality he picked up in juvenile jail, it was probably a step up. It was just as well that the painkiller took over quickly, because the drivel he was speaking made me want to shut him up. He fell asleep and even then that same careless, proud smirk prevailed. I had to physically restrain my right hand with the left, because the right wanted to strangle the life out of him.
For the next two days we scoured hospitals and drug dens with my Uncle Clive. I hardly slept, surviving on ten-minute naps while we drove around searching. What woke me up each time was what I saw during those naps: Simphiwe with his back to me, then disappearing.
On the afternoon of the second day, I woke from one of those naps to see Uncle Clive looking straight at me. We were at a red traffic light. He kept his eyes on me until the light turned green and we drove off.
‘Khulekani, we must try other means. There are people with gifts out there; we must try traditional healers as well. There is one in Port Shepstone. I hear he is good at finding the lost. I know my sister doesn’t believe in that world, but in the situation we are in we have to try everything. Saved or not saved, we are still African,’ he said.
‘I have been dreaming of him since he disappeared, but more so in the last two days. He has his back to me and disappears when I focus. If the healer can help us find him, we should visit him,’ I said.
‘We have to wake up early tomorrow because Port Shepstone is far. We must be on the road by half past three at the latest.’
After a long silence he added, ‘We have to start searching morgues as well. Better sooner than later.’
That night I switched my cellphone off and cried. I tried to sleep, hoping to find Simphiwe in my dreams. But sleep was elusive, so I stared into the dimness of our room, faintly lit by the streetlight outside. I could see Simphiwe’s drawing, the one of a shimmering lake, come to life. I turned away from his art to the blank wall on my side of the room, shell-shocked that it had finally come to traditional healers and morgues.
I switched my phone on around two in the morning. There were several voice messages from Detective Shange, and one text message from Anele. She was just checking on me. Asked why I had missed the latest test; said working on test papers was no fun without me.
Detective Shange was serious in the voice messages. ‘Call me when you get this,’ all his messages said. I didn’t bother to return his calls. I was in no mood to talk about bribes. I opened the curtain and saw Uncle Clive parked at the gate. I had one of Simphiwe’s T-shirts with me. An item of clothing was necessary in aiding the traditional healer to find him.
While we were driving to Port Shepstone, Detective Shange called repeatedly – first from his cell number, then from his office number. So finally I answered.
‘There is someone at the station you need to see immediately.’ My heart filled my chest with one loud thump as I mistook what he said to mean they had found and arrested Simphiwe. Before I could speak, he proceeded: ‘He says he knows where your brother is.’
‘We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Keep him there,’ I said.
Uncle Clive changed route and stepped on it.
In Shange’s office there was a man in his late fifties. Introductions were made. This serene man was a traditional healer from Eshowe, north of the coast. He was the opposite of the traditional healer stereotype, being clean-shaven, with no beads, no traditional