six months, but usually we’re inside the earth for three or four.
It could happen that Taiba Nhaca is the first corpse we get from this time underground.
Something in my chest gives a big jump. Taiba isn’t even pretending to work, and he’s still talking. Talking directly to Faceman. No one does that.
“You want to beat me?” He is challenging him. “That Papa Mavuso –”
Faceman makes a sound that’s like roaring, and he’s charging at Taiba now, the way an angry kraal dog will go for another that’s come sniffing around its territory.
I have a moment of wanting to be deaf and blind, wanting the dense darkness of our rest times, which I mostly hate, so I don’t have to see.
“Mavuso! Don’t speak to me about that stupid old man. Useless foreign boys he send us.”
I have to look, even if I don’t want to. Faceman has grabbed Taiba with one hand, and the other is a fist, pumping like a machine, driving into Taiba faster than the angry words. If he wasn’t holding Taiba up to hit him, the kid would have fallen after the first punch.
“Spike Maphosa, he is going to come, make you to stop, you Faceman.” Taiba is panting, and grunting with every blow, so that he can hardly get the words out, but still he keeps on with his talking, true crazy talk now. “Spike Maphosa, he is saving the boys in this mine, and all the other boys –”
“I’ll cut your tongue out of your dirty foreign mouth. Inja!”
Faceman is blown up with the worst rage I’ve ever seen in him, banging Taiba back against the rock wall he was supposed to be working, and back again, and I think I’m going to see a person killed in front of my eyes. They say Faceman killed Januario in the other mine, but I was sent down a different tunnel that day so I didn’t see it.
“Spike . . .” It’s a thread of whistling sound from Taiba now, because he must be nearly unconscious.
“No person! No person!” Faceman is screaming, and I can hear he’s wanting to fall into siSwati except that he wants Taiba to understand. “Inja! No Spike. Thula!”
I don’t believe in Spike Maphosa either, and the thought comes to me that some day my disbelieving might be as hard and angry as Faceman’s and I’ll be screaming like he is. I won’t hit the boys, though.
I 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
