Life Times Stories - By Nadine Gordimer Page 0,68

‘Not today, is it?’ I couldn’t see his face properly but I knew he didn’t know whether to answer or not.

‘Not today.’ I was so happy I couldn’t go to sleep again.

In the evening Josias managed to make some excuse to come out with me alone for a bit. He said, ‘I told them you were a hundred per cent. It’s just the same as if I know.’

‘Of course, no difference. I just haven’t had much of a chance to do anything . . .’ I didn’t carry on: ‘. . . because I was too young’; we didn’t want to bring Emma into it. And anyway, no one but a real kid is too young any more. Look at the boys who are up for sabotage.

I said, ‘Have they got them all?’

He hunched his shoulders.

‘I mean, even the ones for the picks and spades . . . ?’

He wouldn’t say anything, but I knew I could ask. ‘Oh, boetie, man, even just to keep a look out, there on the road . . .’

I know he didn’t want it but once they knew I knew, and that I’d been there and everything, they were keen to use me. At least that’s what I think. I never went to any meetings or anything where it was planned, and beforehand I only met the two others who were with me at the turn-off in the end, and we were told exactly what we had to do by Seb Masinde. Of course, neither of us said a word to Emma. The Monday that we did it was three weeks later and I can tell you, although a lot’s happened to me since then, I’ll never forget the moment when we flagged the truck through with Josias sitting there on the back in his little seat. Josias! I wanted to laugh and shout there in the veld; I didn’t feel scared – what was there to be scared of, he’d been sitting on a load of dynamite every day of his life for years now, so what’s the odds. We had one of those tins of fire and a bucket of tar and the real ‘Road Closed’ signs from the PWD and everything went smooth at our end. It was at the Nek Halt end that the trouble started when one of these AA patrol bikes had to come along (Josias says it was something new, they’d never met a patrol on that road that time of day, before) and get suspicious about the block there. In the meantime the truck was stopped all right but someone was shot and Josias tried to get the gun from the white man up in front of the truck and there was a hell of a fight and they had to make a get-away with the stuff in a car and van back through our block, instead of taking over the truck and driving it to a hiding place to offload. More than half the stuff had to be left behind in the truck. Still, they got clean away with what they did get and it was never found by the police. Whenever I read in the papers here that something’s been blown up back at home, I wonder if it’s still one of our bangs. Two of our people got picked up right away and some more later and the whole thing was all over the papers with speeches by the Chief of Special Branch about a master plot and everything. But Josias got away OK. We three chaps at the roadblock just ran into the veld to where there were bikes hidden. We went to a place we’d been told in Rustenburg district for a week and then we were told to get over to Bechuanaland. It wasn’t so bad; we had no money but around Rustenburg it was easy to pinch paw-paws and oranges off the farms . . . Oh, I sent a message to Emma that I was all right; and at that time it didn’t seem true that I couldn’t go home again.

But in Bechuanaland it was different. We had no money, and you don’t find food on trees in that dry place. They said they would send us money; it didn’t come. But Josias was there too, and we stuck together; people hid us and we kept going. Planes arrived and took away the big shots and the white refugees but although we were told we’d go too, it