The World Unseen

Chapter One

E
VEN LYING ON THE ROOF
, with only the cheap slates in her line of vision, she could tell that it was a police car. There was a carelessness in the skid of the tyres over the sandy road, and in the way the handbrake was pulled up while the wheels were still turning, leaving a slight screech hanging in the heavy air. She stopped hammering, and peered over the edge of the eaves. They had parked so close to the restaurant door that they had broken one of the flowerpots that Jacob had planted only the day before.

“Bastards,” she said, under her breath.

She left the sign half-nailed and hanging, and climbed down the ladder. Her steps were measured, gaining her time to think. A year ago she would have been inside the café within seconds, running in her eagerness to grasp and fight whatever new obstacle was being thrown in her way. But many months of struggling against rules and regulations that made no sense to her at all had blunted her appetite for confrontation, and so she walked more slowly now, curbing her natural impulse, and when she looked over at the police vehicle, her brow showed tiny lines of concentration.

One of them, the driver, was still in the car. She knew many of the local police, but this one was a stranger to her and she was taken for a moment by his looks – a square, handsome face edged with soft blond hair – until she met his cool, blue gaze, which showed only arrogance. He looked her up and down, and resolutely, she held his look for a moment.

“Never seen a woman in trousers before?” she asked, too softly for him to hear; but to her chagrin he wound down his window.

“What?”

She had no choice but to repeat herself. She spoke clearly, and his mouth gave a slight curl.

“Never seen an Indian girl in trousers, that’s for sure,” he replied.

She turned away and went inside, stopping just by the door. The place was more than half full, she noted, but she could still hear the
boerewors
sausages frying all the way back in the kitchen. Nobody spoke, and nobody looked up, but every pair of eyes was covertly fixed on the policeman standing at the counter. Jacob could see her, she knew, but he made no sign. He kept wiping the glasses, nodding occasionally. Officer Stewart had a friendly arm leaning on the polished wood and with the other hand he pulled thoughtfully at his trimmed beard.

“Listen, Jacob, I mean the two of you no harm, but these laws are making life bloody difficult for the police.”

“They’re not making it a picnic for us either,” Amina said, behind him. She saw Jacob give her a slight shake of his greying head.

Stewart turned, and touched his cap. “Amina. Long time.”

“Yes.”

“Guess you’ve been keeping out of trouble, eh?”

She gave a forced smile at his attempt at small talk. Walking behind the counter, she leaned into the squat ice box and extracted a bottle of Coke, holding it out, doing her best for Jacob’s sake.

“Can I offer you a drink, Officer Stewart?”

The policeman shook his head and watched as the girl drained half the bottle. She stopped, short of breath, and smiled.

“What about your colleague? Doesn’t he want to come in?” she asked.

“No, thanks. I prefer him to stay in the car. He’s a little overenthusiastic,
ja
? A little hot-headed. He has a problem with this kind of thing.”

He was gesturing to the back of the café, and as though she had no idea what he was referring to, she turned and looked at the booth where her African workers took it in turns to eat throughout the day. Doris and Jim were sitting there now, and she saw Doris’s chin lift defiantly, even while her fingers shook slightly as they held onto her coffee cup. Amina smiled encouragingly at her and turned back.

“What sort of thing would that be, exactly, Officer?”

“Now, listen Amina. You know what I’m talking about, and giving me an attitude isn’t going to help you,
ja
? You and I both know that it’s an offence for Blacks to eat in the same place as Whites.”

She put the Coke down on the counter and looked around.

“There are no Whites here. Present company excluded, of course.”

“As non-Blacks then. This is an Indian area. And Coloured.” he added with a nod to Jacob. “That means no Blacks.”

“They work for me.”

“And that is fine by me,” the policeman replied, pounding the counter for emphasis. “But they shouldn’t be eating with you. It’s illegal.”

“Where should they eat?” Amina asked.

“I don’t care! They can eat outside. Or in the kitchen, for Christ’s sake. Or when they get home.”

“Do you go without food for twelve hours at a time, Officer?”

Jacob ran a nervous hand over his cropped head and watched Amina go to her gramophone player. He wished desperately that he could step in and impose some calm, suggest some compromise. But that might overstep the bounds of his apparent role as manager of the café, and Officer Stewart had no idea that Jacob was in fact Amina’s business partner. Coloureds and Indians simply were not permitted to co-own businesses together, but a helpful lawyer had assisted them in drawing up a secret power of attorney for Jacob, and the partnership was now widely acknowledged, yet closely guarded by those around them.

Amina was kneeling down, her back to the policeman, sorting through a short stack of records. Stewart placed his peaked cap firmly back on his head and walked over to the back booth where he stood looking down at the occupants.

“Passes,” he said, holding out his hand. Doris and Jim looked instinctively to Amina.

“You know they have passes,” she said.

“I want to see them. Now.”

Jim took his from his back pocket. The cover was creased and worn from use and, even when unfolded, had a permanent curve in it from being often sat upon. Stewart turned it in his hands, and glanced down at the cook.

“This is only a travel permit.”

“Yessir.”

“Where’s your pass?”

“I don’t have a pass, Sir, I’m Coloured.”

Stewart examined the permit for confirmation of this fact.

“You’re Coloured?”

“Yessir.”

“You look like a
kaffir
to me,” commented Stewart.

“They said I was Coloured. At the board. They classified me.”

Jacob had appeared at the policeman’s side without giving anyone the impression that he had even moved, let alone hurried.

“His grandfather was White, Officer. A Dutch. Like my father.”

“Okay.” Stewart flipped the permit back on the table, and turned, taking in the café with a glance.

“You understand what I’m trying to say, Jacob,
ja
? I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m doing my job.”

The crack of a gunshot electrified the room, the sheer volume of it freezing everyone for a split second before they all ducked. Kneeling by the gramophone, Amina could see Officer Stewart huddled behind the counter and Jacob doubled over beside him. The windows still held a residual rattle, as though a train had just rushed through the café. Gingerly, Stewart drew his own gun, edging it over the counter as he slowly stood up. Amina rose with him. His partner was standing by the door, spinning a pistol on his middle finger.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Stewart asked.

The blond man grinned. “My job,” he said. “
Ach
, what are you
talking
to these people for?”

He stopped the gun mid-spin and fired another shot into the ceiling. Some plaster dust pattered down, and a high-pitched echo sang in the room.

“This is what they understand,” he said. He grinned again, and looked at Amina.

“You keep serving
kaffirs
, and we’ll kill the lot of them. Then you’ll have to find new staff.” He laughed.

“If you carry on like that,” Amina said, “we won’t need any. You’re not exactly good for business.”

His face darkened, but before the first curses were out of his mouth, Stewart was pushing him out of the door, and towards the car.

Amina looked around for Doris, but the booth was clear – every one of her staff had retreated to the kitchen or to the scuffed plot of land outside the back door. Those customers who had been waiting for take-aways had already left. Others were laying money on tables. Even the sound of frying in the kitchen had ceased. When she looked at the door again to check that the police had really gone, she noticed that the glass in the framed photograph of her late grandmother, which hung above it, was broken, the familiar defiance in her grandmother’s eyes distorted by a crack. That hurt her the most.

“Don’t ever be a slave to anyone. I was, all my life, and it ruined me.” These had been Begum’s final words to Amina Harjan. She had uttered them with a rasp of desperate conviction on a sunny Saturday morning in Bombay, while her granddaughter had sat by her sick bed and breathed in the scent of crushed cardamom pods that wafted up from the sweet-maker below. By nightfall she had been dead. Her passing had left her granddaughter floating in a strange pool of shock that slowed the energy trembling in her coltish limbs, and for the first time in her life, Amina had felt the weeks passing by without making any attempt to grasp them and make something of them. So when her father had once again raised his old wish of making a new life away from India, she had hardly noticed that the arrangements were already taking place. Mr Harjan had held an unspoken bond with his motherin-law never to emigrate to South Africa, for she had been cast out of that country in disgrace forty years before, but that promise ceased to matter as soon as she was dead.

With too few men to steady the small but awkward corpse of her grandmother, the body had slid into it’s grave with unseemly haste, landing with a thud that made those at the graveside wince. The earth was quickly piled over her, and Amina remembered being stunned by how quickly Begum had disappeared from the surface of the earth. She had been the only woman present; the others had gone back to the house after the funeral rites, as was the custom. Against her mother’s wishes, she had insisted on accompanying the men to the burial, and she had prevailed, because her father had not had the energy to argue with his fiery daughter, nor the will to deprive her of a final goodbye to his mother-in-law.

Amina stared up at the broken glass of the frame now, and looked searchingly at Begum’s face. She had to wait a long moment before meeting Jacob’s look, and when she finally turned to him with a smile, he could not tell whether the brightness in her eyes was a sign of tears held back, or of anger.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked him.

“Oh yes,” he replied. “I may be getting old, but I can still dive behind a counter when I have to.”

She laughed, as he knew she would, and without another word, they began to clear up.

Miriam stood still, a long way off from the new house, her hand raised to her forehead, shielding her eyes. The house had been a farmhouse once, and it was built long and low. Everything seemed low in this place - trees, hills, even the few buildings - low and flat and without colour, as though squashed down by the weight of the sky and its spreading blueness. The sun hit her hand with a red hot force that burned straight through the clear, veined skin of her wrist, and when she shut her eyes tightly and briefly against it, the heat still glowed under her eyelids like coals.

She opened her eyes abruptly at the cry of her son’s voice. She turned, and the boy and his sister swam into focus, small and bony, on the
stoep
of the house, dwarfed by the stacks of boxes and upturned furniture that surrounded them. She watched, frowning, as though trying to recall who they were, and he called to her again and again, his shrill high voice bouncing across to her on the shimmering waves of heat that quivered between them.

“What is it? What do you want?” she called back. She spoke in Gujerati, even though her husband had instructed her to speak to the children only in English or, when she had picked up enough of the language, in Afrikaans. But she was preoccupied, and Gujerati was the language that she had been raised with, the language that her own mother had also used to discipline her.