don’t know why it makes us angry to hear talk of Spike Maphosa.
It’s the first time I’ve thought that Faceman and I are alike. It’s not a good thought.
Now Faceman lets Taiba fall in a heap, and I quickly turn my eyes away as he swings round, but I’m too late. He’s noticed me.
So now it’s my turn because I’m in charge of these recruits. I’m supposed to keep them working – as Faceman reminds me, and for me the abuse all comes in siSwati. The South African kind. Sometimes I hear Mahlori and Takunda mocking the way we Swazis speak it.
I’m being thrashed and all the time I’m wondering how the boys can respect me and listen to me when they keep seeing this being done to me?
Hate fills my head, pounding from the inside to match the pounding of Faceman’s fists. I try to push it out. Hating is another kind of weakness because it stops you focusing on your work if you’re thinking about how much you hate.
It would be different if there was a chance of doing something with the hatred – taking revenge or changing things down here.
But there isn’t. No chance at all. Everything will always be the same. We’ll be down here, and we’ll go up, and then we’ll be down here again. It’s my life. I’ve chosen it. When I was a stolen zama zama recruit like Taiba and the others, I didn’t have a choice. Now I do.
So hating is pointless, whether I’m hating Faceman or Taiba. Taiba has brought this beating on me, but catching myself hating him, I get a fright. He is probably dead from Faceman’s blows, and hating the dead . . . things could turn bad for me. Four years, and I’ve had more escapes, more luck, than a lot of others. I mustn’t do anything to change that.
“Work! You work, you make the other boys work.” Faceman must be starting to get tired because now there are longer pauses between his blows. “You think I’m a fool? You think I don’t know how useless these lazy dogs are? I was a boy in a mine like this, so I know. The others were cowards. I did all the work.”
Then it’s over and he has moved off. It’s the first time he has ever said anything about himself. It’s strange to think of him as a boy. I can’t imagine anyone ever picking on him and beating him. Or maybe they did and that’s why he’s like he is now. But that would mean boys like Taiba or Aires could also grow up to be brutal bullies, and I can’t see it. I can’t see Aires growing up, full stop.
Faceman is shouting again, at Moreira and Juvenal first, and then at Mahlori and all the other South Africans. He’s always angry, that man.
It troubles me when people make noise underground. These rock tunnels have their own sounds, the creaks and groans as troubling as explosions or the roar of rockfall. I imagine men’s noise competing against the earth’s voice, and the earth resenting it, and shifting to punish us.
“Sebentani! Work!” I say to the recruits, although all through Taiba’s beating and then mine they’ve been too scared to stop and have kept at it.
I don’t know where Taiba’s lamp is. Maybe it broke. Mine shows me his body lying in a heap. I remember when I came out of the tunnel and saw Januario’s body like that, only making a bigger heap because he was eighteen. Some of the men pushed or kicked it in passing, booted feet and even bare.
I won’t do that.
Then I hear Taiba groan.
I leave him lying there until our shift ends. Occasionally he groans or whimpers. The men take no notice, even when the shift is over.
I wasn’t planning to do anything, but because of nothing I can understand, I say to Aires, “Help your friend.”
Then I remember he doesn’t understand English, so I pull Taiba up and throw him over my shoulder. I carry him to our resting place. He makes a long wavering sound, a cry full of pain. So he’s still alive.
And I’m the crazy one now.
“Give him your water,” I tell Aires as I let Taiba down among the mess of empty food tins and bits of clothing we were wearing the day we came down.
Aires doesn’t even understand I’m talking to him, so I take his bottle as he’s lifting it to his mouth. I’m not sharing mine. That’s taking madness too far.
Aires doesn’t even seem surprised. I suppose he has grown used to being abused, even with Taiba looking out for him. He won’t last long. If Taiba makes it, he won’t be fit for anything except surviving.
“Fix yourself.” I speak to Taiba in my roughest voice so he knows he’s not going to get anything more from me. “Or tell Aires how to do it.”
I turn away and switch off my lamp. For a long time I sit on the rock floor with my knees pulled up. I wouldn’t call it thinking, what I’m doing. It’s more like letting my mind wander around, over and through everything that has happened in the last few hours.
I lie down. After a time I hear Taiba and Aires murmuring together in their language. Taiba’s voice has a fine, hurting sound. I think he must be telling Aires what to do to help him. I wonder if he will be fit to work again. It will be bad for him if he isn’t. Bad for Aires too.
A long time later when I’m stinking and sweating, sunk in the listening mine-sleep, watching leering monster-faces and rockfalls chasing each other across the inside of my eyelids, someone says my name.
“Regile?”
Taiba’s voice has slowed right down now, slurring, maybe because of broken teeth. It comes from so close, I know he must have shifted nearer to me. No one else is talking. One boy snores. He is lucky to be able to sleep like that. I open my eyes. There is only darkness.
“What?” I’m harsh.
“Sorry, my brother.” I can hear it’s difficult for him to speak.
“What?”
“Sorry. Me, I do it. Make Faceman to hit you.” His breath wheezes in and out of his chest, making me think of my mother and my youngest sister when they have the attacks the doctor said were asthma.
I feel angry with Taiba. I don’t want to remember things from home, not bad things like the asthma or good things like how when I first took money home it paid for the doctor and their new asthma pumps.
“Shut up,” I tell him.
“I must talk at Faceman, please to understand.” He doesn’t listen to me. “Aires, he can’t work –”
“I know why you did it.” I break into his story. “You’re crazy. Mad. Now, phumula! Rest. Or you can’t work the next shift and then there’s big trouble.”
“My light . . . lamp.” He takes a whistling, bubbling breath. “It is broke.”
“Tomorrow you and Aires can work close, with just one lamp. Then we’ll tell that man who brings food for you boys. Papa Mavuso will send a new lamp.”
“No. No.” It always sounds like “nor” when Taiba says no. “This is my idea I have, Regile. Aires, we hide him. These small-small places? Take food for him. I take his lamp. I work. Faceman says where is the other one? We say he died, the beating was too hard. Faceman, he won’t know, is it me or Aires working. Same-same for him. Then it’s time we go back, up to Papa Mavuso, we take Aires. And Spike Maphosa, he come get us.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Please, my brother Regile, listen me. Aires, he is not strong. The work, he cannot do it. I do it. I can. Even now. Me, I am strong.” He has to stop and take big breaths and swallow twice, a clicking sound. “Always at home Aires, he is with me. He follows me. So the first man, when he says he has work, I say nothing. And Aires, me and Aires, come for the work.”
“So Aires is a stupid boy, following you like that,” I say, and I’m thinking that if one of them can survive, it’s Taiba, but only if he dumps Aires – stops trying to save him. “And you’re