Age of Iron

'What are your plans?'

He looked uncomprehending.

'What do you plan, to do? Do you want to stay here?'

'I must go home.'

'Where is home?'

He stared back at me doggedly, too tired to think up another lie. 'Poor child,' I whispered.

I did not mean to spy. But I was wearing slippers, the door to Florence 's room was open, his back was to me. He was sitting on the bed, intent on some object he had in his hand. When he heard me he gave a start and thrust it beneath the bedclothes.

'What is it you have there?' I asked.

'It is nothing,' he said, giving me one of his forced stares.

I would not have pressed him had I not noticed that a length of skirting-board had been prised from the wall and lay on the floor, revealing unplastered brickwork.

'What are you up to?' I said. 'Why are you pulling the room to pieces?'

He was silent.

'Show me what you are hiding.'

He shook his head.

I peered at the wall. There was a gap in the brickwork where a ventilator had been let in; through the gap one could reach under the floorboards.

'Are you putting things under the floor?'

'I am not doing anything. '

I dialled the number Florence had left. A child answered. 'Can I speak to Mrs Mkubukeli,' I said. Silence. 'Mrs Mkubukeli. Florence.'

Murmurs, then, a woman's voice: 'Who do you want to speak to?'

'Mrs Mkubukeli. Florence.'

'She is not here.'

'This is Mrs Curren,' I said, 'Mrs Mkubukeli used to work for me. I am phoning about her son's friend, the boy who calls himself John, I don't know his real name. It is important. If Florence is not there, can I speak to Mr Thabane?'

Again a long silence. Then a man's voice: 'Yes, this is Thabane.'

'This is Mrs Curren. You remember, we met. I am phoning about Bheki's friend, from his school. Perhaps you don't know, but he has been in hospital.'

'I know.'

'Now he has left the hospital, or run away, and come here. I have reason to believe he has a weapon of some kind, I don't know what exactly, which he and Bheki must have hidden in Florence 's room. I think that is why he has come back.'

'Yes,' he said flatly.

'Mr Thabane, I am not asking you to assert authority over the boy. But he is not well. He was quite badly injured. And I think he is in an emotionally disturbed state. I don't know how to get in touch with his family, I don't even know whether he has family in Cape Town. He won't tell me. All I am asking is that someone should come and talk to him, someone he trusts, and take him away before something happens to him.'

'He is in an emotionally disturbed state. What do you mean?'

'I mean he needs help. I mean he may not be responsible for his actions. I mean he has had a blow to the head. I mean I cannot take care of him, it is beyond me. Someone must come.'

'I will see.'

'No, that is not good enough. I want an undertaking.'

'I will ask someone to fetch him. But I cannot tell you when.'

'Today?'

'I cannot say today. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. I will see.'

'Mr Thabane, let me make one thing clear to you. I am not trying to prescribe to this boy or to anyone else what he should do with his life. He is old enough and self-willed enough to do what he will do. But as for this killing, this bloodletting in the name of comradeship, I detest it with all my heart and soul. I think it is barbarous. That is what I want to say.'

'This is not a good line, Mrs Curren. Your voice is very tiny, very tiny and very far away. I hope you can hear me.'

'I can hear you. '

'Good. Then let me say, Mrs Curren, I don't think you understand very much about comradeship.'

'I understand enough, thank, you.'

'No, you don't,' he said, quite certain of himself. 'When you are body and soul in the struggle as these young people are, when you are prepared to lay down your lives for each other without question, then a bond grows up that is stronger than any bond you will know again. That is comradeship. I see it every day with my own eyes. My generation has nothing that can compare. That is why we must stand back for them, for the youth. We stand back but we stand behind them. That is what you cannot understand, because you are too far away.'

'I am far away, certainly,' I said, 'far away and tiny. Nevertheless, I fear I know comradeship all too well. The Germans had comradeship, and the Japanese, and the Spartans. Shaka's impis too, I am sure. Comradeship is nothing but a mystique of death, of killing and dying, masquerading as what you call a bond (a bond of what? Love? I doubt it.). I have no sympathy with this comradeship. You are wrong, you and Florence and everyone else, to be taken in by it and, worse, to encourage it in children. It is just another of those icy, exclusive, death-driven male constructions. That is my opinion.'

More passed between us, but I won't repeat it. We exchanged opinions. We agreed to differ.

The afternoon dragged on. No one came to fetch the boy. I lay in bed, groggy with drugs, a cushion under my back, trying with one small adjustment after another to ease the pain, longing for sleep, dreading the dream of Borodino.

The air thickened, it began to rain, From the blocked gutter came a steady drip. The smell of cat urine wafted in from the carpet on the landing. A tomb, I thought: a late bourgeois tomb. My head turned this way and that. Grey hair on the pillow, unwashed, lank. And in Florence 's room, in the growing dark, the boy, lying on his back with the bomb or whatever it is in 'his hand, his eyes wide open, not veiled now but clear: thinking, more than, thinking, envisioning. Envisioning the moment of glory when he will arise, fully himself at last, erect, powerful, transfigured. When the fiery flower will unfold, when the pillar of smoke will rise. The bomb on his chest like a talisman: as Christopher Columbus lay in the dark of his cabin, holding the compass to his chest, the mystic instrument that would guide him to the Indies, the Isles of the Blest. Troops of maidens with bared breasts singing to him, opening their arms, as he wades to them through the shallows holding before him the needle that never wavers, that points forever in one direction, to the future.

Poor' child! Poor child! From somewhere tears sprang and blurred my sight. Poor John, who in the old days would have been destined to be a garden boy and eat bread and jam for lunch at the back door and drink out of a tin, battling now for all the insulted and injured, the trampled, the ridiculed, for all the garden boys of South Africa!

In the cold early morning I heard the gate to the courtyard being tried. Vercueil, I thought: Vercueil is back. Then the doorbell rang, once, twice, long rings, peremptory, impatient, and I knew it was not Vercueil.

It takes me minutes nowadays to get downstairs, particularly if I am befuddled by the pills. While I crept down in the half-dark they went on ringing the bell, rapping at the door. 'I am coming!' I called as loudly as I could. But I was too slow. I heard the courtyard gate swing open. There was a burst of knocking at the kitchen door, and voices speaking Afrikaans. Then, as flat and unremarkable as one stone striking another, came the sound of a shot.

A silence fell in which I clearly heard the tinkle of breaking glass. 'Wait!' I called, and ran, truly ran – I did not know I had it in me – to the kitchen door. 'Wait!' I called, slapping at the pane, fumbling with the bolts and chains – 'Don't do anything!'

There was someone in a blue overcoat standing on the veranda with his back to me. Though he must have heard me, he did not turn.

I drew the last bolt, flung the door open, appeared among them. I had forgotten my gown, my feet were bare, I stood there in my white nightdress like, for all I know, a body risen from the dead. 'Wait!' I said. 'Don't do anything yet, he is just a child!'

There were three of them. Two were in uniform. The third, wearing a pullover with reindeer running in a band across his chest, held a pistol pointing downward. 'Give me a chance to talk to him,' I said, splashing through the night's puddles. They stared in astonishment but did not try to stop me.