South Africa - 20 miles northeast of Johannesburg.
Lindiwe Ndebele hurried her steps along the side of the unpaved road to Elizabethtown. She had spent the night with friends having been locked out by her employers from their house. She had been a live-in maid for the Groenewalds in a white district until yesterday when she decided to take her chance and asked for a raise. ‘Don’t try to be clever, stupid black.’ was the answer. When she returned that morning she found out that she had been fired and that she would not be allowed to collect any of her clothings or furnitures from her room in the servants’ quarters. Lindiwe knew she could not return to her friends who lived in Soweto. With already eight people living in a tiny shack made from bits of board, plastic sheet and corrugated iron, they couldn’t help her even if they wanted to. Before she left, she had asked a maid who worked next door to call for her Mama Guguletha, a woman from the same Zulu tribe she’d met once and who had told her she could call on her whenever she was in need.
Lindiwe had been walking for more than three hours and dusk was setting on the deserted stretch of the road. She was exhausted and tears were running down her cheeks. At 28, she was now alone and without a job. It had been more than ten years since the end of apartheid and the situation of her people had remained the same, if not worse, now that racism was coming from both sides, black and white. She might be just a poor illiterate woman but she knew. She had heard those awful stories of senseless killings by both blacks and whites.
With almost no strength left in her legs, she willed herself to keep walking when she noticed something unfamiliar not far from the road, something she did not understand. A huge column of air was bending. It was bending as if something was pushing it from the other side… but the other side of what? She stopped walking, looked around, gripped by the fear of the unknown. The column of air was now moving slowly like a wave and seemed to be stretching out towards… towards what? A moment later, a deafening, ear-splitting, thundering crack in the air shook the ground under her feet accompanied by a violent rush of air that lifted an enormous amount of dust covering everything in its path. Lindiwe was crouching, her hands over her bent head, shaking, not daring to look up. She stayed on the ground for what seemed to be a very long time before the dust settled down. A cold air of a very strange nature swept around her. Air so pure that it made her look up despite her fear. What she saw made no sense. The column of air was now retreating and closing on itself and was dissolving slowly into the surrounding atmosphere. Lindiwe struggled to stand up on her feet when she noticed a crumpled body ahead covered in dust where the column of air had been. It wasn’t there a moment ago, she thought. Where did it come from? Still shaking from the event, she approached the body hesitantly. She could make out that it was the body of a man and was relieved to see that he was breathing. She kneeled down, leaned over and turned the man over.
– “Baas, please baas, are you okay?” she asked in English when she saw that the man was white.
– “Baas, are you okay?” she kept asking, not knowing what else to say with her limited English and a complete ignorance of Afrikaans.
The man half-opened his eyes and looked confused, disoriented. There were no signs of blood or burn on the man’s strange dusty clothes. She rubbed the dust off the man’s face and a feeling of shame ran through her. She had never seen a man so handome. His features were flawless and she was drawn to his face despite herself.
Lindiwe did not know what to do but she knew one thing. She could not be seen holding a white man. Although the law forbidding the mixing of races had been repealed more than ten years ago, she knew that people still had reservations about such thing and to be seen doing it in public could only attract troubles.
She tried to help him on his feet in the hope that he might be able to walk on his own and that she could be allowed to be on her way. Struggling with the man’s weight, she placed his arm around her neck and pulled him up when she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Lindiwe almost let go of the stranger who seemed to have sensed her apprehension. The pickup truck slowed down, radio blaring and came to a stop by their side. Three black men were inside. They were speaking Xhosa. “Look at that whore” shouted one of them over the loud radio, “she’s doing a white man.” “Bitch.” yelled the other one. Lindiwe, being Zulu, understood perfectly well Xhosa. She kept staring at the ground, not moving, the stranger still holding on to her. “Hey whore, we’re talking to you.” said the driver.
The three men got out of the truck and Lindiwe’s heart was racing. “Oh bra, she’s a cute one. Let’s take her with us for the night.” said one of them. The others were laughing. “Yeah bitch, come on. Get in the bakkie.” Lindiwe fought back tears, knowing well what would happen to her. One of the skollies came closer, “Did you hear what my friend say, whore? Get in the bakkie!” he shouted, “Tonight your ass belongs to us.”
The one who seemed to be the leader reached out to grab her by the shoulder but was stopped by the pickup truck’s radio suddenly changing between stations erratically. He turned to the driver, “Hey man, what’s wrong with your damn—” He didn’t finish his sentence. He turned around abruptly, a finger in the air, “Did you hear that?”
– “Yeah, the damn static noise.” said the other.
– “No, no. Not the radio, the sound—”
– “What sound?” said the driver, “All I hear is that damn noise.”
But the man kept turning his head left and right. What the hell? I’m not crazy, he thought. I’m hearing sounds. Sounds that came to his ears as if someone were testing his hearing with different tones which grew higher and higher in pitch. The man was now becoming agitated. His friends looked at him as if he was possessed. The sound had now reached a pitch where he could barely tolerate the pain and then, as if someone knew that it was the right frequency, the sound shot up to a volume that sent him lurching backwards, his hands covering his ears, screaming in pain. He hit the pickup truck violently under the horrified looks of his friends.
– “What the?” said the driver.
Their friend was now lying in a fetal position, his hands over his ears, moaning and twitching in pain.
Lindiwe peered at the whole scene from the corner of her eyes without moving. The driver stepped closer and got instantly hit by the same disease. He went back reeling in pain his hands over his ears and fell to the ground, legs jerking. The remaining skollie stood frozen, not daring to make a move. None of them said a word. The air was still and the South African night was falling rapidly. It was then that Lindiwe felt a tug from the stranger and they both started walking away without glancing back.
