Shadrack speaks with great difficulty. He chokes with emotion.
‘Maybe you can tell us the whole story when you are better, Bhut’Shaddy. Maybe talking about it makes you worse right now.’
‘No, Noria. I want you to know what they did to me. They were like crazed people. They punched me. They dragged me out of my kombi and kicked me. I tried to scream, but they throttled me. Then they loaded me like a sack of potatoes into the police van.’
They lowered the van’s side-blinds, and drove away with him. After about half an hour, Shadrack could feel the van reversing. It stopped and the door was opened. His kidnappers dragged him out of the van, and he was ordered to enter a dilapidated room whose door was opened just in front of him. It was freezing in the room. It was filled with naked corpses lying on the cement floor. More corpses were stacked on big shelves against the walls.
The men told him that they were going to kill him, and started assaulting him again. He stumbled over the corpses, and fell among them. When he tried to rise, the corpse of an old man was thrown onto his chest. He fell down again. One of the men grabbed him by the shoulders and ordered him to make love to a corpse of a young woman.
‘I told them I’d rather die than do that with a dead person.’
‘What did they say they wanted from you, Bhut’Shaddy? Why were they doing all this to you?’
‘They didn’t ask for anything, Noria. They were doing it just because it was a fun thing to do.’
After further assaults he was ordered out of the mortuary, and driven back to his taxi. They just dumped him there, after thanking him profusely for the good time he had given them. ‘Let’s do it again sometime soon,’ they said, shaking his limp hand. Another taxi driver saw him lying in the road next to his old kombi. He took him to the central police station where he made a statement.
‘Only a few minutes ago, just before you arrived here, I was told that one policeman had been arrested in connection with the incident.’
‘That’s better, Bhut’Shaddy. At least they are doing something about it.’
‘Only because I have all the evidence, and full descriptions of the policemen involved. I was smart enough to contact my lawyers.’
Shadrack explains that last night, while he was writing the statement, the police officers denied that the vehicle he was describing was a police van. A Lieutenant-General even made some thinly-veiled threats, saying that if he proceeded with the matter, it would make a lot of important people angry. When important people were angry, he warned, there was no knowing what cannon they might unleash. The police could certainly not be responsible for what these angry people would do.
‘Why don’t you forget about the whole matter and go home to your wife and kids?’
‘I am not forgetting about the matter, sir. I have been beaten up and tortured for nothing. I am laying a charge against the police. I am contacting my lawyer right away. I am contacting human rights lawyers too.’
‘That’s the problem with these educated ones. They think they know everything. You are a stubborn man. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.’
Now the police have admitted that it was indeed their van. What makes him mad is that they claim that this is an isolated incident, which does not form part of any pattern. Yet many other taxi drivers have gone through similar tortures. The experience is known as ‘the hell-ride’ in the taxi business. Taxi drivers who have wanted to save their lives have made love to the corpses of beautiful women with bullet wounds. Although many have survived to tell the story, some have died from the beatings. Their bodies have then been stripped naked, and left among the other corpses in the mortuary. It was sheer luck that Shadrack was able to take the registration number of the van, and then contacted his lawyers immediately. Lots of taxi drivers just consider ‘the hell-ride’ an occupational hazard, and never do anything about it. But with Shadrack, these sadists picked the wrong victim. He says he is going to sue the government for a lot of money.
‘I tell you, I am going to be rich, Noria. They don’t know what’s coming to them. I am unleashing my own cannon. The hell-ride is going to make me rich. I am going to buy a brand new kombi, straight out of the box. I am going to build a big house — a real house made of bricks and roofed with tiles.’
Toloki is amazed at this man — who has ignored him since opening his eyes — surrounded by all the contraptions that speak of how close to the door of death he lies. Yet all he can think of is how rich he is going to be.
Noria tells Shadrack that they must now leave. She will come back to see him again very soon. Toloki and Noria are just about to walk out of the door of the ward when Shadrack calls Noria back. She goes back to his bed, while Toloki remains at the door, straining his ears to catch every word they say.
‘Noria, is there any hope?’
‘Oh, yes, Bhut’Shaddy. I am sure you’ll get well again. Soon you’ll be back in your business.’
‘I mean about us, Noria. Is there any hope?’
‘No, there is no hope. Absolutely no hope. I am very sorry about it, Bhut’Shaddy, but there is nothing I can do.’
‘What do you see in him, Noria?’
‘In who?’
‘In Toloki. He has nothing to offer you.’
‘He knows how to live, Bhut’Shaddy’
‘He stinks!’
‘Not today, he doesn’t. And he won’t stink again.’
Toloki and Noria walk down the street to the bus stop where they will catch a bus that will drop them at the main taxi rank in the city. There they will be able to catch a taxi back to the settlement. They do not know when or how it happened, but they find themselves actually holding hands. They both pull away in embarrassment.
‘I still don’t understand it, Noria. You lead a difficult life. To eat you must draw water for shebeen queens. Yet you turn down a man who can change your life forever.’
‘I have been chewed, Toloki. Chewed, and then spewed.’
Toloki has no idea what she means by this. But he decides not to question her further. Sometimes she talks in riddles. All that really matters is that she cares for him, as a homeboy of course. He cares for her as well, as a homegirl. Remember, he is of the stuff that venerable monks are made of.
Dusk has fallen over the settlement by the time they reach the shack. Noria opens the door, and they both enter. Noria’s shack is never locked. None of the shacks in the settlement are ever locked, since there is nothing worth stealing in them. Only rich people like Shadrack lead the lives of birds that fear for their nests, and have to be on the look-out all the time to check that no one breaks into their property to steal.
Noria lights a lamp that she has made out of a half-jack bottle. There is a hole in the bottle cap, through which a wick made of an old rag is passed. She has filled the bottle with paraffin, which she got from one of the neighbours she often helps with water. They spread some papers on the floor, and sit down. It is strange for Toloki to be in a house. For many years, he has spent all his evenings in waiting rooms.
He has not slept in a house since his shack was destroyed by the vigilantes many years ago. He had just started working as a Professional Mourner at the time. Funerals were held only on Saturday or Sunday mornings those days, because death was not as prevalent then as it is at present. Today, as you know, there are funerals every day, because if the bereaved were to wait until the weekend to bury their dead, then mortuaries would overflow, and cemeteries would be overcrowded with those attending funerals. As a matter of fact, even with funerals taking place daily, the mortuaries are bursting at the seams, and the cemeteries are always jam-packed. Often there are up to ten funeral services taking place at the same time, and hymns flow into one another in unplanned but pleasant segues.