TEN YEARS - DISA

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wrenched painfully from the depths of slumber. At first he thought
that he had just woken from a terrible nightmare in which ghouls
had converged upon the house screaming for his blood. When he
recovered from the shock, he realised that it was the unmistakable
knock of the police that had jolted him from sleep. While he
reached for his trousers on the small bench near the bed, he tried
to remember what he had done wrong. 'A guy's mere existence is
a crime in this cursed world. You break the law without being
aware of it, no matter how you try not to,' he thought.
'Vula, open up, or we break in!' a furiously impatient voice with
a Xhosa accent shouted from outside, followed by another nervewrecking
knock.
From the other bedroom Vusi's mother's tremulous voice sailed.
'Who is it, Vusi?'
It's the blackjacks, ma. I wonder what they want,' answered
Vusi, having peeped through a slit in the curtains to see. He felt a
slight relief: Usually the WRAB police did not mean serious trouble.
'Let them in quickly, my child,' Vusi's mother said, and to herself
she muttered, Thixo wami. At this time of the night! It must be
something bad. But we've been paying the rent. Let me rise and
see what they want.'
'Okay, I'm coming. Stop knocking like we were deaf,' Vusi said
exasperatedly as he went to open. Dikeledi's eyes shone in the
semi-darkness. She smothered the cries of their baby, who had
been woken by the rude knocking, with her breast. The other baby,
two-year-old Nontsizi, was whimpering with fright on the floor
beside the bed. Temba, the little boy who had come with Dikeledi
from the dusty streets and was now calling Vusi baba, slept
soundly next to his sister. In the other room on the sagging sofa,
Muntu was sleeping off the last dregs of the skokiaan he drank
every day, snoring like a lawnmower. Vusi felt an urge to kick him
in the ribs. He knew, however, that he could never bring himself to
do it, in spite of the revulsion he felt towards anyone who drank
excessively; Muntu was his brother, moreover his elder brother.
He switched the light on and the big bulb flooded the room with
a glare that sent the cockroaches scampering for cover. They
made the grimy walls look more grimy and Vusi felt ashamed that
he was about to let strangers into such a house. It was slightly
better when Dikeledi had spruced it up. The insects were a
nuisance as well as part of the family, having always been there,
surviving all the insecticides on the market.
He unlocked the door and heaved. There was a screech that set