CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

(Note: In the preceding chapters, Rohan accepts an offer from Luke to stay with his family near Pietermaritzburg. The two strike up a lively friendship, and Luke shows Rohan a part of South Africa and a way of life that is entirely new to him. After a near run-in with Smallboy, the owner of the “link”, Rohan is scared off, and decides to take the train back to Cape Town via Bloemfontein. As a parting gift, Luke hands him a book titled Green and Pleasant Land, an obscure futuristic novel - using sources as diverse as William Blake and Steve Biko - in which current world power and wealth structures are inverted. Rohan reads two chapters of this book; they are quoted in the text. Then, soon after arriving in Cape Town, Rohan sees his stolen car and is sucked back into his vigilante crusade. Once again, he is hopelessly out of his depth, but this time the consequences are fatal.) Dying, inevitably, slowly, bleeding heavily from the bullet wound in his shoulder and with both his legs, he was sure, agonisingly, broken; his ribs crushed, his head bruised and cut and dizzy; dying, Rohan lay thinking to himself, Well, maybe my life was a B-grade action movie after all.     But his 20-metre fall had been no stunt. When the gun exploded at his back and the bullet seared into his flesh, he had felt only the sickening vibrations of his shoulder blade shattering. For a moment, a moment of shock and not-quite-belief, it was nothing more than a strange tingling sensation. Then the pain came. Suddenly gulping, panting for breath, gasping, staggering left and right as he heard one, two, three more rounds fired, bullets ricocheting off the boulders around him, bewildered, he lost all direction, up, down, gone. His legs exhausted, his feet with no sensation, the unfelt ground gave way beneath him even as he stumbled, disappearing below his eyes and then above his head as he fell, a heavy weight, clutching at nothing desperately, and fell, the bright sun hurling him down -         And then, nothing.         And now he lay, inevitably, slowly, he knew, dying. He didn’t know how he had regained consciousness, or how long he had been lying there, peaceful, before his eyes opened. But he wished they hadn’t. He could feel his legs but not use them. They were there, attached but somehow dislocated, excruciating pain preventing the slightest movement. He dared not look. His arms lay limp, twisted behind his back, pulpy at his sides. He wasn’t paralysed - the shock of pain running the length of his body told him that - but he couldn’t move. The pain, unbearable, closed off his mind. The pain known only by those who are about to die. Pain inviting death.         Lifting his head, he could see, at a sharp angle high off to his right, the ledge from which he had fallen. It was quite a drop. Very dramatic. Laughing inside himself, subduing the pain, he was impressed with his performance. He could follow the pattern of his tumble down the cliff-face by the bloodstains he had left. The trail led down to his side, where, as he strained his neck, he saw the edge of a small pool of blood spreading slowly away from his body. It was as if he was dead already.         The tragic hero. What was it they had learned about in high school - fear and pity? A pitiful sight he made no doubt. But somehow he felt no fear. The worst thing that could have happened to him had already happened. It was finished; he had been shot by a criminal; the bad guy won; his quest for justice had failed. What a stupid foolish idiotic waste. He had lived his life all wrong.         Needles pierced his skin, stabbing him deeper and deeper, a sudden wave of pain racked his legs, his arms, his chest, and his head flushed with heat, nausea, splitting shaking throbbing beating him into a spasm of coughing and vomiting. Wrenching forward, unable to sit up, jerking his neck forward and then letting it fall back, he turned his head to the side and let the blood and bile spill out of his mouth. As the minutes passed the pain subsided. His head continued to buzz, heavy and light with shock. He had been on first-aid courses; he understood. He knew that soon he would lose more blood than he could afford, lose consciousness … and that would be it.         He forced his eyes open, then closed them tight, and opened them again. There, off to his left, a beautiful vista spread across the land as it ran, away to the west and out of sight, to meet the sea. The sun, too, had travelled beyond the horizon, leaving a few last rays of light to burst into colour: oranges, pinks, reds, greys, whites of the clouds on the still blue sky. Day after day, despite his own raging, his love, his hate, his bitterness, his semi-violent search for peace in a country he had never quite known, this South African sky had produced the most glorious sunsets imaginable. Is this the promised end?         Is life nothing more than a series of beautiful sunsets, followed by death?         He thought of Lukanyo and the life that remarkable man led. It was full of meaning, of opportunity, of hope. Of faith. Perhaps that was it. God was It. Rohan had instinctively, if not maliciously, scoffed at Luke’s Christianity because he had always scoffed at aunt Mary’s Christianity. But maybe he had been wrong to do so. A God-centred existence, humility, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, salvation, conviction - words and ideas that had always seemed so foolish - well, he was the fool now. The way, the truth and the life. He had chosen the way of death. Was it too late to change? All he wanted was to understand, to make some sense of his experiences, to get some perspective. He tried to piece together Luke’s parting words. For people who believe in God and in His provision, there is a pattern and a reason … a plan that is real and powerful. But equally, for people who don’t believe … there is no plan or pattern. He wished he had chosen to be a believer. Was it too late, even now?         Pray.         Lord, God, if You are out there, and I think You are, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I’m in a bad way here, and I need Your help.         Should he say more? What could he say? Religion did not fit well with his life’s narrative. It was not a subject that caught his attention - a story he assumed would bore him.         He had never really prayed before, certainly not expecting an answer, and he didn’t know what answer to expect now. The light was fading, it was growing dark, and he was getting cold. But if an infinite God could communicate with infinitely limited human beings, then it seemed to Rohan at that moment that God had spoken to him through an infinite sunset in an eternal sky.         Eternity. Time. What time was it? What day was it? Numbers swirled around Rohan’s head, but he couldn’t concentrate on any of them. Then one came into focus: 2704. The t-shirt, his pride, his folly. 2704: those numbers meant something. Resonant, they dominated his mind, demanding that he acknowledge their significance. Two, seven, zero, four. Twenty-seven, oh-four. Twenty-seventh of the fourth: April twenty-seventh. Freedom Day. Freedom Day.         The irony of it sucker-punched the very centre of his being. What freedom? South Africans were still enslaved, to poverty, AIDS, crime - surely his stolen shirt, his downfall, now his death, was the evidence. Where did the criminals fit into the picture of South Africa’s liberation? He thought of Lukanyo’s father, and of his sane, sad, sympathetic words: they do not see clearly at all … the conditions of our country … many who have a mind but no conscience; who have a brain, and a body … who have, somewhere, a spirit, but are without any moral boundaries or definitions … like the by-products of a cruel and failed experiment.         There was a past. Perhaps he needed to be liberated himself: from fear, anger, bitterness, the desire for revenge. Death, great leveller, great liberator. There was a history. It could not be forgotten.     And what about his own history? Here he lay, dying, at the very edge of Africa, and he felt that for the first time his story merged with South Africa’s story. Suffering and death mixed with a strange peace, the peace of sunsets and prayer. Ambiguity, paradox: he remembered driving through Jo’burg on that morning when he saw Suzy’s shop for the first time. The images were fresh in his mind. Such creative energy, such despair; new dreams and the same old nightmares. What did the poet say? Jo’burg city, I salute you.     I salute you, Rohan thought, as long as you remember the pass-laws and the jail cells. I salute you, because even now your valleys are green after summer rains. Many of your people hide behind sunglasses, but sometimes they take them off for long enough to see the shades of light and dark and colour beautiful and ugly in parks and streets and shopping centres and city slums. With even greater respect I salute those who can afford no luxury of sunglasses, who are forced each day to let others look into their eyes, who know not only green valleys but also valleys of the shadow of death.     He felt, dying now, alive, prophetic. Was he a prophet?         Still it haunted his dreams, his own Adamastor, his Table Mountain, but in some ways more African: the Johannesburg City skyline. A fixed mental landscape, it rose sharp and clear above his groggy confusion. Hillbrow Tower, like a great cross with the arms broken off, its heart bruised - or puffed with pride? - impossible to tell. Ponty, huge, tall, round, crested by ten stories of flashing advertisement (Coca-Cola and Vodacom denying its suicide leap and tenants’ death-in-life). Jo’burg Gen in between, a long flat concrete slab of hospital bridging the fallen host: life to many, death to many. Other buildings stagger themselves to balance the scene, ballast for a land-bound craft. Close by, in Sandton, to the north, Jo’burg’s rich offspring turn their backs on its aged frame; far off in the south, across the country, its brothers and sisters mock it silently. While faith fails, still it stands, a stubborn grey silhouette. It does not promise to be a guardian. Likewise, it does not make the threats that others hear. In the shadows of those buildings, the seas roar, the winds howl, many drown.         A stubborn grey silhouette? Not always. Sometimes, as early evening light breaks through the clouds, it is full of contrast - a few colours even - and the setting sun makes it sparkle.         A holy city.     But here he was, in the fairest Cape, and here his journey had come to an end. He was sad that he couldn’t write a new chapter in his story. He was sorry that he couldn’t revisit past experiences. Times with his family. Old friends. New acquaintances, the inimitable Anna-Maria. Millions of unmet others. More than this, however, his deepest regret was that he would never find out what happened to Stephen Greenaway in Green and Pleasant Land. He wanted to be a part of South Africa’s future, whatever that may contain. Too late, he thought. But others would travel, he knew, from Johannesburg to Cape Town; from the Karoo to Durban; from Bloemfontein to Qumbu. They would not travel, as he had, compelled by bitterness and living always in fear. But they would discover, as he had, beauty mixed with struggle and kindness mixed with sorrow. They would celebrate life in South Africa, even as they encountered death.         The light in Rohan’s eyes dimmed. But before he lost first language, then memory, then sensation, feeling only the heart that ceased to beat in his chest, he grasped the words he had read, Steve Biko’s wise words, and held them eternally: WE BELIEVE THAT IN THE LONG RUN THE SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD BY AFRICA WILL BE IN THIS FIELD OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. THE GREAT POWERS OF THE WORLD MAY HAVE DONE WONDERS … BUT THE GREAT GIFT STILL HAS TO COME FROM AFRICA - GIVING THE WORLD A MORE HUMAN FACE.         *        *        *        *        *

 

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