Chapter 4
Saturday was market day in Cape Town and the streets were crowded with shoppers looking for bargains, meeting friends and lovers. Boers and Frenchmen, soldiers in colorful uniforms and English ladies in flounced skirts and ruffled blouses mingled in front of the bazaars set up in the town squares at Braameonstein and Park Town and Burgersdorp. Everything was for sale: furniture, horses and carriages and fresh fruit. One could purchase dresses and chessboards, or meat or books in a dozen different languages. On Saturdays, Cape Town was a noisy, bustling fair.
Banda walked along slowly through the crowd, careful not to make eye contact with the whites. It was too dangerous. The streets were filled with blacks, Indians and coloreds, but the white minority ruled. Banda hated them. This was his land, and the whites were the uitlanders. There were many tribes in southern Africa: the Basutos, Zulus, Bechuanas, the Matabele - all of them Bantu. The very word bantu came from abantu - the people. But the Barolongs - Banda's tribe - were the aristocracy. Banda remembered the tales his grandmother told him of the great black kingdom that had once ruled South Africa. Their kingdom, their country. And now they were enslaved by a handful of white jackals. The whites had pushed them into smaller and smaller territories, until their freedom had been eroded. Now, the only way a black could exist was by slim, subservient on the surface, but cunning and clever beneath.
Banda did not know how old he was, for natives had no birth certificates. Their ages were measured by tribal lore: wars and battles, and births and deaths of great chiefs, comets and blizzards and earthquakes, Adam Kok's trek, the death of Chaka and the cattle-killing revolution. But the number of his years made no difference. Banda knew he was the son of a chief, and that he was destined to do something for his people. Once again, the Bantus would rise and rule because of him. The thought of his mission made him walk taller and straighter for a moment, until he felt the eyes of a white man upon him.
Banda hurried east toward the outskirts of town, the district allotted to the blacks. The large homes and attractive shops gradually gave way to tin shacks and lean-tos and huts. He moved down a dirt street, looking over his shoulder to make certain he was not followed. He reached a wooden shack, took one last look around, rapped twice on the door and entered. A thin black woman was seated in a chair in a corner of the room sewing on a dress. Banda nodded to her and then continued on into the bedroom in back.
He looked down at the figure lying on the cot.
Six weeks earlier Jamie McGregor had regained consciousness and found himself on a cot in a strange house. Memory came flooding back. He was in the Karroo again, his body broken, helpless. The vultures...
Then Banda had walked into the tiny bedroom, and Jamie knew he had come to kill him. Van der Merwe had somehow learned Jamie was still alive and had sent his servant to finish him off.
"Why didn't your master come himself?" Jamie croaked.
"I have no master."
"Van der Merwe. He didn't send you?"
"No. He would kill us both if he knew."
None of this made any sense. "Where am I? I want to know where I am."
"Cape Town."
"That's impossible. How did I get here?"
"I brought you."
Jamie stared into the black eyes for a long moment before he spoke. "Why?"
"I need you. I want vengeance."
"What do you - ?"
Banda moved closer. "Not for me. I do not care about me. Van der Merwe raped my sister. She died giving birth to his baby. My sister was eleven years old."
Jamie lay back, stunned. "My God!"
"Since the day she died I have been looking for a white man to help me. I found him that night in the barn where I helped beat you up, Mr. McGregor. We dumped you in the Karroo. I was ordered to kill you. I told the others you were dead, and I returned to get you as soon as I could. I was almost too late."
Jamie could not repress a shudder. He could feel again the foul-smelling carrion bird digging into his flesh.
"The birds were already starting to feast. I carried you to the wagon and hid you at the house of my people. One of our doctors taped your ribs and set your leg and tended to your wounds."
"And after that?"
"A wagonful of my relatives was leaving for Cape Town. We took you with us. You were out of your head most of the time. Each time you fell asleep, I was afraid you were not going to wake up again."
Jamie looked into the eyes of the man who had almost murdered him. He had to think. He did not trust this man - and yet he had saved his life. Banda wanted to get at Van der Merwe through him. That can work both ways, Jamie decided. More than anything in the world, Jamie wanted to make Van der Merwe pay for what he had done to him.
"All right," Jamie told Banda. "I'll find a way to pay Van der Merwe back for both of us."
For the first time, a thin smile appeared on Banda's face. "Is he going to die?"
"No," Jamie told him. "He's going to live."
Jamie got out of bed that afternoon for the first time, dizzy and weak. His leg still had not completely healed, and he walked with a slight limp. Banda tried to assist him.
"Let go of me. I can make it on my own."
Banda watched as Jamie carefully moved across the room.
"I'd like a mirror," Jamie said. I must look terrible, he thought. How long has it been since I've had a shave?
Banda returned with a hand mirror, and Jamie held it up to his face. He was looking at a total stranger. His hair had turned snow-white. He had a full, unkempt white beard. His nose had been broken and a ridge of bone pushed it to one side. His face had aged twenty years. There were deep ridges along his sunken cheeks and a livid scar across his chin. But the biggest change was in his eyes. They were eyes that had seen too much pain, felt too much, hated too much. He slowly put down the mirror.
"I'm going out for a walk," Jamie said.
"Sorry, Mr. McGregor. That's not possible."
"Why not?"
"White men do not come to this part of town, just as blacks never go into the white places. My neighbors do not know you are here. We brought you in at night."
"How do I leave?"
"I will move you out tonight."
For the first time, Jamie began to realize how much Banda had risked for him. Embarrassed, Jamie said, "I have no money. I need a job."
"I took a job at the shipyard. They are always looking for men." He took some money from his pocket. "Here."
Jamie took the money. "I'll pay it back."
"You will pay my sister back," Banda told him.
It was midnight when Banda led Jamie out of the shack. Jamie looked around. He was in the middle of a shantytown, a jungle of rusty, corrugated iron shacks and lean-tos, made from rotting planks and torn sacking. The ground, muddy from a recent rain, gave off a rank odor. Jamie wondered how people as proud as Banda could bear spending their lives in a place such as this. "Isn't there some - ?"
"Don't talk, please," Banda whispered. "My neighbors are inquisitive." He led Jamie outside the compound and pointed. "The center of town is in that direction. I will see you at the shipyard."
Jamie checked into the same boardinghouse where he had stayed on his arrival from England. Mrs. Venster was behind the desk.
"I'd like a room," Jamie said.
"Certainly, sir." She smiled, revealing her gold tooth. "I'm Mrs. Venster."
"I know."
"Now how would you know a thing like that?" she asked coyly. "Have your men friends been tellin' tales out of school?"
"Mrs. Venster, don't you remember me? I stayed here last year."
She took a close look at his scarred face, his broken nose and his white beard, and there was not the slightest sign of recognition. "I never forget a face, dearie. And I've never seen yours before. But that don't mean we're not going to be good friends, does it? My friends call me 'Dee-Dee.' What's your name, love?"
And Jamie heard himself saying, "Travis. Ian Travis."
The following morning Jamie went to see about work at the shipyard.
The busy foreman said, "We need strong backs. The problem is you might be a bit old for this kind of work."
"I'm only nineteen - " Jamie started to say and stopped himself. He remembered that face in the mirror. "Try me," he said.
He went to work as a stevedore at nine shillings a day, loading and unloading the ships that came into the harbor. He learned that Banda and the other black stevedores received six shillings a day.
At the first opportunity, Jamie pulled Banda aside and said, "We have to talk."
"Not here, Mr. McGregor. There's an abandoned warehouse at the end of the docks. I'll meet you there when the shift is over."
Banda was waiting when Jamie arrived at the deserted warehouse.
"Tell me about Salomon van der Merwe," Jamie said.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
Banda spat. "He came to South Africa from Holland. From stories I heard, his wife was ugly, but wealthy. She died of some sickness and Van der Merwe took her money and went up to Klipdrift and opened his general store. He got rich cheating diggers."
"The way he cheated me?"
"That's only one of his ways. Diggers who strike it lucky go to him for money to help them work their claim, and before they know it Van der Merwe owns them."
"Hasn't anyone ever tried to fight back?"
"How can they? The town clerk's on his payroll. The law says that if forty-five days go by without working a claim, it's open. The town clerk tips off Van der Merwe and he grabs it. There's another trick he uses. Claims have to be staked out at each boundary line with pegs pointing straight up in the air. If the pegs fall down, a jumper can claim the property. Well, when Van der Merwe sees a claim he likes, he sends someone around at night, and in the morning the stakes are on the ground."