Free Sometimes There Is a Void by Zakes Mda Page B

identification parade. A certain Mr X was to point out the man who addressed a
secret meeting of a PAC cell in a town called Elliot where some acts of sabotage were planned. Mr X was a secret state witness who had attended the meeting, and therefore could not be identified by name. My father knew immediately that the police had already tutored Mr X on how to identify him. He therefore took off his coat and gave it to the man next to him to wear – the people in the line-up were black men picked from the street, and he knew the particular man to whom he gave his coat. He also changed the order of the line-up. Mr X arrived wearing a mask, looked at the men in the line-up and pointed at the man wearing my father’s coat.
    â€˜That’s the man,’ he said. ‘That’s the man who addressed the meeting in Elliot.’
    Of course the man would not have held a meeting in Elliot or anywhere else for that matter. The police were angry that their identification parade had been foiled by my father’s cunning. They had to release him, but he knew that was only temporary. It would take them hours rather than days to find other ways of getting him. They would never give up. That was why he didn’t wait for them to rearrest him but escaped to Basutoland.
    Once more we were without a father.
    The first place to knell his absence was the garden. Old Xhamela had long gone to work for the South African Railways and Harbours and father’s peach trees lost their sculpted shapes. Weeds grew rampant and the seedbeds lay without new seedlings of cabbages, tomatoes and beetroot.
    For many days after my father left I could see that my mother’s eyes were red from crying. But soon she got used to the idea of his absence. After all, she had lived alone in Johannesburg for many years while he was either serving articles in the Transkei or was travelling the length and breadth of South Africa, first organising for the ANC Youth League and in later years for the Africanists. She kept herself busy by playing tennis at the township tennis courts whenever she was off-duty from Empilisweni Hospital and sometimes I joined her. Until one day she beat me six-love. I gave up tennis for ever.
    I must admit that I enjoyed the freedom that resulted from my
father’s exile. For the first time I was able to build a loft and keep pigeons, which my father would never have allowed. Also, my mother was at work for the whole day most days. Or she was doing night-duty, which meant that I could join Cousin Mlungisi in some of his nighttime activities. For instance I could go stand outside Keneiloe’s gate and whistle until she came out of the house. Cousin Mlungisi’s girlfriends came out to him when he whistled, and then they would repair behind the outhouse toilet to do naughty things. But my Keneiloe could never come to me. Her parents were too strict. She only stood at the door and waved at me so that I could see she had heard the whistling. Then she walked back into the house before Hopestill got suspicious. That was good enough for me; I had ‘checked’ my girl. I was a fulfilled boy as I walked back home where I had to sneak into my room even though my mother was absent because the nanny was likely to squeal on me if she discovered I had gone to ‘check’ girls.
    When Hopestill visited, she and my mother talked about the hardships caused by my father’s absence. They giggled like school girls at something she said to Hopestill. Then Hopestill whispered something back and they burst out laughing. I loved Hopestill at those moments. She was so beautiful. She looked very much like Keneiloe. Then my mother said in a solemn tone, ‘But, Hope, I think it’s a good thing he left when he did. Look at what the Boers have done to Bhut’ Walter and Nel.’ She was talking about her friends Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.
    Although we no longer had to draw water from the communal borehole for