Crime Beat: Bathing with Perlemoen by Deji Olukotun

The consolidated version of ‘Bathing with Perlemoen’ by Deji Olukotun. Check him out at these two sites: dejiridoo and at FictionThatMatters

1
Thursday Malaysius had worked at Abalone Silver for two years. It was the largest abalone farm in the southern hemisphere, covering ten hectares, with kilometers of epoxy tanks teeming with the mollusk. The long administrative buildings were made from prefabricated aluminum siding. When Thursday clocked in at eight, a fog layer nursed Hermanus Bay, and whales could be heard snorting and breaching in the distant waves in the spring time.

Thursday used to work as a clam shucker in one of the government fish factories, but got fired after negotiations with the employee union went south. So he simply walked down the street to Abalone Silver and they hired him as an abalone cleaner. The main difference between the creatures was that a clam had two sides to its shell and an abalone only had one, and was more of a glorified snail that fetched hundreds of dollars in East Asia. When the abalone were happy, they slid along on tiny eggplant coloured tentacles, which they would retract when afraid. He sometimes imagined a battle between the abalones and clams of the world; the clams might be better at slicing the abalone with their shells, but the abalone were faster and could suck out the clam with their large feet and then cut it up with their teeth.

He thought about this battle more than you might think. Although he tried to remain objective, he would play favorites and manipulate the battle conditions in his mind so that the abalone, surviving in a narrow latitude around the world (compared to clams, which flourished in rivers and streams), could come out victorious. Abalone functioned better in the darkness, so he gave them that, and abalone liked fresh kelp, so he put that there, too, in the battles of his imagination.

The work at the abalone farm was more stressful than at the fish factory. The bosses were looking to turn a profit rather than provide a government service to society, so the lunch breaks were short and no one brought any brandy. And the job was messier. The sea water got piped in and the mollusks lived for years, so the tanks had to be regularly cleaned and scrubbed, whereas the clams at the fish factory had been killed on the spot. Thursday was charged with trimming the slimy green foot from the seventy millimeter adult abalone for export to China. He was good with a knife and could get through about four in a minute. But when the sea water grew too warm or the pumps clogged, worms would wiggle in and eat the shells, and they were a nuisance because the abalone would outgrow the half-eaten shells and taste acidic. For two months every year, baby anemones would wiggle in through the filters and then mature in the tank. They would squirt their seeds into his eyes and cause them to swell up, making it hard for him to get a date. He didn’t cut his fingers much because of his clamming skills.

Thursday was a steady, reliable worker. He didn’t put in overtime but he punched in on time and didn’t sneak off early. He acknowledged his mistakes and was amenable to criticism. After eighteen months at Abalone Silver, he’d been promoted twice with a two rand per hour increase each time. He also managed to pocket a few shells and buff them into an opalescent sheen for the whale watching season to sell to tourists, but he was discrete about it. Discrete that was, until Brother Leon showed up while Thursday was counting the big adults on an abacus.

“Aweh howsit, Thursday?” Brother Leon asked.

Brother Leon considered fish factories and abalone farms beneath him. Leon was good looking and cinnamon-skinned, affable, persuasive, skilled at domineering, and wore a hat all day, not a sailor’s snoek cap like his father, but a red brimmed baseball cap that covered a beautiful head of dark-curled locks. Thursday was balding and wiry and the squat Malay nose had never been bred out of him. His deep brown eyes were lozenge shaped, with the left one half-closed in a squint. Brother Leon considered fish factories and abalone farms beneath him. Being a mate, Leon liked to remind him of all of these things. Leon also had a bigger penis.

“How’d you get in here?” Thursday asked.

“I snuck in through the gate.”

“Get out of here or you’ll get me in trouble.”

Brother Leon had a way of completely ignoring what you said and making you think you were having a conversation. “Give me a few of those perlies, will you, Thursday?”

Thursday declined.

“I just need ten. No, say, a few tens. Seventy.”

“No ways, my bru. We count in every day. I’ve got a promotion coming.”

Leon raised his red cap off his head and his locks spilled onto his forehead. This was a trick he used with the women: get ‘em drunk, and then razzle-dazzle with the locks. “What’s that promotion going to bring you? An extra rand, my broer. That’s donkies. You can make a lot more than an extra rand.”

“I told you a hundred times that I won’t. I’m not a poacher. They’ve got that dog. Snoopy. The paper said her nose can smell perlemoen through the water.” Feeling righteous, Thursday added: “I’m an honest man.”

Leon looked hurt. “Ten is all I need.”

“You that broke?”

“It’s terrible.”

Thursday would not give in to Leon’s pleading that easily, not until Leon gave his word to pay it back. Brother Leon was never really down and out. He had a half dozen girlfriends who would have given him the PIN numbers to their credit cards just to catch a glimpse of his pretty face. Three of them, Jackie, Fadanaz, and Thembisa, left their windows unlocked at night in the hope that he would sneak in. He said. Thursday decided to bring Brother Leon a bag full of some polished shells over the weekend and even bought him some chips, but didn’t listen to his pleas. Then he returned to work at the abalone farm thinking he was as right as rain. Trimming and counting, cleaning and slicing, Thursday enjoyed the gentle way of the abalone.

2
Thursday’s boss Mr. Pretorius, a jolly biologist from Kwazulu-Natal, called him into his office one day. It seemed unrealistic to receive another promotion, but Thursday wasn’t going to complain.

“Thursday, have a seat,” Pretorius said.

Mr. Pretorius’ mauve sweater stretched over his beer belly in a way that made him look like a butternut. He had a round, lumpy nose and eyes that must have been bright blue as a child, but had faded. He moved in a big way, an assured family man with two kids that played rugby and enjoyed the library, and he maneuvered the steering wheel of his bakkie with the butt of his palm, easy and smooth. Pretorius liked to buy Thursday bags of crisps and loose cigarettes and enjoyed handling the abalone in the tank. He was fantastic at the kind of small talk that can only be perfected by businessmen, and could say entirely original things if he passed Thursday ten times in a day.

Pretorius’ office had a few posters of the Orient on the walls. Black sample cans of their Abalone Silver export product lined the shelves in eight different languages.

“You’ve been great here, Thursday, so I—” Pretorius avoided looking Thursday in the eye. “—I think the easiest thing is to look at this yourself.”

Bashfully Pretorius left the room, returning with a television stand with a video player. He juggled his belly around, wheezing, and plugged in the unit.

Maybe a training video, Thursday thought. For the promotion.

Pretorius turned on the television and took the remote with him to his desk. He sat heavily in his neoprene office chair. The screen flashed on with a date, then there were some rows of something stretching into the distance. Everything was greenish.

“This is a surveillance camera, Thursday. We had them installed before you got here.”

Onscreen a man walked by with a night-stick.

“That’s Ronald,” Pretorius said.

Ronald was a security guard from Gabon. In the video Ronald sat down and had a smoke.

“Going to have to talk to him about that,” Pretorius muttered.

He fast forwarded the tape and the video turned greener. He pressed Play.

“Night time now. Watch over there, by the generator. Look, where the fence is. There!”

On screen a black form could be seen behind the wire fence. The form raised up some clippers and then you could see the fence wobbling. Thursday leaned in. The fence peeled up and the figure stepped through, walking straight in the direction of the camera for a few paces. Wearing a cap. Then the figure turned and disappeared off screen.

“We didn’t get him on the next camera,” Pretorius said. He hit the pause button and swiveled his office chair towards Thursday. “Do you know who that is?”

He was looking at Thursday with a discerning eye. Pretorius was a business man who had grown Abalone Silver from a few tanks to 10 million rand enterprise in five years. He talked straight. If he was asking, he had a good reason.

“Can I see it again?”

Pretorius obliged him, rewinding the tape. There was the form in the green darkness. The fence wobbled and then the athletic, confident swagger of the intruder. Then the hat, the turn and the form disappeared off screen. No doubt now: Brother Leon.

“We lost forty of our oldest females over this, Thursday. A few of them have been around since I started this business.” He leaned forward. “Those will fetch about thirty thousand rand on the streets and they’re worth much more to us for breeding. I’d be grateful if you could tell me who might have done such a thing.”

Thursday swallowed. Leon! He knew that Brother Leon had a bad thing coming to him. It was plain to see. And any self-respecting man would have turned Leon in, returned to the tanks to shuck, clocked-out, gone home. Come back and worked again the next day as the market forces adjusted to the loss of the stolen abalone. This was what Pretorius wanted him to do, though he was giving Thursday his poker face, and trying to act neutral about it. But Pretorius didn’t see some things.

When they were ten Leon told Thursday that the first feeling he could remember was jealousy. He didn’t say what he was jealous of. That was the same year that Leon had changed for the worse, the year that the new green ping-pong table had become a prime attraction at Chief Albert Luthuli Elementary school.

Leon and Thursday played together as a team. Leon painted the corners with his wristy forehand and Thursday could block smashes with his good reflexes. They’d made it to the semifinals of the school tournament and been eliminated by a pair they should have beaten. The other kids cheered for the teams in the finals while Leon and Thursday sulked. The prize of a set of fishing lures, they thought, was going to the wrong people.

“John can’t even serve, my broer,” Leon said.

“He’s got no backhand,” Thursday agreed.

“I didn’t want the lures anyway. Line fish is for voetsaks.”

“Ja.”

Thursday didn’t care much for fishing himself, or for competition. As they stood and brooded, a kid named Diego decided to play a trick on Thursday. Diego was the class clown. He shuffled next to Thursday while his eyes were following the game. Thursday was in the perfect position, with his knees locked tight and his back already straight, for the take-down to work. It worked even better than Diego had expected.

Thursday fell back and banged his head hard against the ping pong table. Diego went to help him straight away, but one of the kids began egging Thursday on to fight. Thursday just laughed it off.

“Good one, Diego,” he said. “You got me with that one, bru.”

Then Thursday saw Leon’s face. He was scowling at Diego in anger. Thursday smiled sheepishly at Leon and he smiled back, but with his lips curled full of venom. Just as soon the look was gone.

Leon leapt on Diego in a fury. Diego scuffled and tried to use Leon’s weight against him but Leon had this deadly headlock, where he’d clamp his arm around you and then needle his little bicep into your neck. The cheering and the shouting fanned Leon’s rage and he wrapped Diego in that headlock so fast he didn’t know what hit him. Diego’s face grew bright red and he scrambled to take a breath, but Leon held him firm and used his free hand to slap him. There was laughter.

The teacher came and broke it up. Diego ran home to his mother’s house. The finals were rescheduled and never played because a storm blew in. But something about Leon’s eyes told Thursday that he never would have let go. That whatever rage was buried in him had just been awoken.

Over the years he watched Leon beat men senseless for the most ridiculous affronts. Sometimes it would be slights against Thursday for his squinty eye—calling him an ugly badprop maybe—other times Leon would be insulted if someone looked at his girl, at his clothes, or just looked him in the eye. Leon would be calm for weeks, months maybe, before he’d erupt. For anyone besides Thursday it was hard to perceive any sort of pattern. The criminal charges were usually dropped because Leon was charming enough to repent to his victims. By the time he attacked again, the prior incident would have been forgotten or considered circumstantial. And Thursday had to admit that Leon stuck up for him. Leon would track down the bullies and knock their teeth out, with Thursday on the side wondering if he should intervene. Leon would smile, kiss his lacerated knuckles, and spit down into his victim’s face. It was his signature. Even thugs with guns would bow down before Leon, pocketing their pistols as if the bullets would only bounce off him. And Thursday knew that Leon’s fury was of the unstoppable kind. Practical things defrayed it —witnesses, evidence, tourists, whites, police sirens—and they were mere happenstance. If those little obstacles hadn’t been in the way, Leon would have left a string of bashed-in dead men around Hermanus. And this fact, that he was being stopped from carrying out his will, fueled his rage even more.

It’s not that Leon’s home life was all that bad, either. Thursday had been over to Leon’s house any number of times. His family had a neat, well-swept home that they kept free of roaches, with a good gas range and a wide stoep. There were always poinsettias and creepers blooming with bright flowers in the garden and seven kinds of pepper plants. His father wasn’t good with money, but he loved his children, and his mother made the sweetest koeksister pastries in the whole town. They were generous people.

So maybe Leon’s anger had nothing to do with that school yard. Maybe that was just the first time that Thursday had seen it, and it had been there simmering beneath the surface all along. Maybe Leon was just a man who’d been taking names from the day he was born, furious at the dirty friction of the world.

All Thursday knew was that it was that day in the school yard that he stopped thinking all men were created equal. He’d really been expecting something else.

That was what Thursday was thinking as Pretorius sat back and blue-eyed him, not the family, not the ping-pong, but Leon’s rage. A prison cell couldn’t keep in that rage. Leon was too strong for it, too smart. Pretorius, with his straight-talking bottom line ethics, would never understand that rage, and one day somebody like Leon would come along and crush his rugby-winger boys and their Herman Charles Bosman bedtime stories.

Brother Leon had a bad thing coming to him, that was plain to see. But Leon was tough and smart, and he’d stuck up for Thursday so many times that he’d lost count. If Thursday turned him in, Leon would call up one of his girls and make bail, and then he’d shoot out of the prison looking for names. He’d know. Somehow he’d know.

The green video screen was fluttering over him. Thursday could hear the digital hiss and the whir of the VCR motor.

“I don’t know who that is, Mr. Pretorius. I count in every day. You can check my logs.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Pretorius said. “You’re in the clear. I know you wouldn’t do that kind of thing. I just want to know if you have an idea. Perhaps a name or a face.”

Thursday was happy to hear he was in the clear. But he felt Leon was right there in the office with them, lifting his hat and spilling out his locks, listening. Leon went everywhere with Thursday. He was a part of him. The difference was that Leon knew what to do in situations like this.

“I—”

“Yes, Thursday?”

Mr. Pretorius the butternut stared at him with those faded blue eyes. The eyes: quick, compassionate, of a family man. Leon hated families. He never would have kissed a fat white family man’s arse in an office full of white folks. That was what Leon would do, go on the attack. The best defense is a good offense.

“Why do you think I would know, Mr. Pretorius? Because I’m coloured?”

Pretorius took a long, slow gaze at him and sighed. He averted his eyes and fished out a cigarette. It was the look of a disappointed father. He offered the cigarette to Thursday, gave a weak smile.

“Thursday, I’ll ignore that. I think you and I both know that I’m not a racist. And I think you’re above that too.”

But Thursday was committed to his statement now. To Leon’s statement.

“That’s what all white men say! You think I don’t know how it works? Us coloureds do the heavy work while you drive your bakkies. That’s the business.”

“What about Paul? He’s out there with you. And Stefan. They’re white and you’re all friends.”

Thursday felt that he was rehearsing a speech that he’d seen on TV somewhere, the lines came out so easily: “No, we can never be friends. They go home to their wives and gardens and I go home to my shack.”

“I don’t think you mean that.”

Thursday wasn’t sure if he meant it. “I do.”

“I’m sorry then. I didn’t have you pegged that way.” Pretorius offered up the pack of cigarettes again. “I know it wasn’t you, Thursday.”

What wasn’t me, Thursday thought, the theft or the TV speech? Could he still blame it all on Leon and save face? Could he get down on his knees and beg?

But Pretorius was done with him. “That’s all.”

Thursday took a cigarette and left.

3

Mr. Pretorius told Thursday a few days later that he knew Leon had stolen the abalone, but he didn’t intend to press charges. He also said that he couldn’t keep a liar on his staff so Thursday had to leave. Thursday bummed around for a while, going to his mother’s, who didn’t mind the attention, but she soon grew tired of him.

“Thursday, you only come here to feed, you lazy hollang. Go out and get yourself a job!”

There weren’t many to be found. Hermanus was a small town that thrived on whale watching tourism. There were a few little shopping centres, some bed and breakfasts, and upscale restaurants that the locals could not afford. A chain of mountains filled with pinpoints of purple blossoms overlooked the town, and you could run on the beach for kilometers. Most of the young men wanted to quit Hermanus and get to Cape Town as soon as possible. Thursday, on the other hand, thought Hermanus offered him what he needed and saw no reason to leave it.

He applied at a new internet café but he didn’t have any web design experience, and he had neither the charisma nor the acting ability to serve the tourists at the cafés lining Old Hermanus bay. It was the low season anyway and the managers told him no one would be hired for a few weeks. He borrowed his brother-in-law Angus’ fishing rod but wasn’t able to catch anything, and Angus began to lord it over him, asking him to do the dishes, weed the garden, and so on. Thursday drew the line when his sister tried to set him up with an ugly friend of hers, and stopped visiting them.

To Thursday’s surprise, he was happy to see Leon when he drove up the street in an iridescent, champagne painted Merc, and rolled down the window.

“Lekker car, Leon.”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Come on, I brought it for you, my bru. Get in.”

They drove around, popping in to see Fadanaz, and then Luluma—his latest acquisition—and Leon dropped hundred rand bills here and there with no explanation. Thursday could sense that Leon wanted him to ask where he’d found the money, but managed to hold off, hoping Leon might confess about the theft. Then he started realizing that the perlies he’d stolen from Abalone Silver would never cover the cost of a Merc, and his curiosity got the better of him.

“You’re rich, Leon!”

“No,” Leon said. “This is donkies. This is just the beginning, bru.”

“But, how Leon? I can’t get a job as a dishwasher.”

They were sitting at the corner table at The Anchor. Leon slapped a coin down on the bar and the bartender brought over another quart. The Anchor had a policy of leaving all the empties the customers ordered in front of them so that they couldn’t stiff on the bill. Leon looked at the row of receptacles that had once held the liquids sloshing inside him. “We’ve only had eight quarts, Thursday. Last night I had fourteen, and Thabisa had six. The positions that put her in – like a gymnast. So flexible. Listen to me, brother, six quarts and a girl will do anything. Six quarts and a pair of earrings.” Thursday reminded him about his question. “I don’t want to talk about money right now. I was hoping you wouldn’t bring it up. You come with me tomorrow and I’ll explain everything.”

It took four nights of heavy drinking, cajoling, and a wet kiss from Leon’s girl Fadanaz for Thursday to say he would consider going into the water. Even then he never thought it would come to pass. But soon they were sitting in the Merc next to a row of strelitzia palms that wound along a dirt road to the beach in the dusk, their fronds spreading out like press-on fingernails. He would have been able to hear the pounding surf if Leon wasn’t thumping his kwaito music, and they’d both grown up near the sea so he didn’t smell the seaweed any more. Thursday had resolved that this time he would be firm with Leon — he was not going in the water, there was no way he was going in.

“I can’t do it, my broer,” Thursday declared. “I don’t know how.”

“Come on, Thursday,” Leon said. “I started with nothing. I was out there in the rocks all alone with the police, pulling myself on the kelp.” Leon laughed, in awe of himself, reminiscing. “Should have been on the news. I can barely even swim. You’ve got the breather and my lank equipment. The breather is easier than a tank.” He began pumping his head to the syncopated rhythms of the kwaito.

“Can’t you give me your mask?”

“I gave you my old mask, voetsak. My new one cost a thousand bucks. It’s not my fault you’ve got a conch for a nose.”

“You must be mad,” Thursday said. “I’m not going out there. There’s a storm coming. There’s sharks.”

“There hasn’t been an attack in months.”

Thursday was skeptical. Attacks on poachers were never reported anyway. Another diver would just walk up and deliver the news to the family, and if he was polite, give over whatever money he’d made from selling his catch. That was how it worked in Hermanus.

“You sure?” Thursday asked.

Leon assured him that no poacher had been attacked in months and reminded Thursday of his victories on the swim team in Standard Eight. “You need a lookout, Thursday. That’s the first rule. I would have let you be the lookout, but I’m sick.” He shivered for emphasis. “I set everything up yesterday. If you don’t take the perlies someone else will. Just go for the blue plastic eggs. I’m the only one who uses them. There’s hundreds there. Maybe five hundred. That’s like two hundred thousand rand. But I’m not selfish: you just take as many as you can and bring them back.” He showed him the pistol stashed beneath his seat. “Don’t worry. We’re protected.”

You’ve got to be firm, Thursday thought. He reached over and turned off the stereo. “Don’t listen to your music. I don’t want any cops.”

“Stop being such a poes. You said you need the money, right? I’m doing you a favor. The cops stop at four and it’s seven o’clock. You’ve got the cell phone, né?”

Thursday adjusted the condom-wrapped cell phone he’d shoved next to his crotch. “You’ll call if they come?”

“Of course.”

“No music.”

“Ja, no music.”

They went over it one more time. He was to look for the plastic eggs, the blue ones with sand in them. Three buzzes on the cell phone or six flashes on the light meant get out of the water. Thursday took the dry suit and the fins and the surface breather. The condom was lubricated so the cell phone slipped down to his calf by the time he walked along the crescent beach and waded into the surf.

4

Thursday swam around for half an hour in the bay, kicking his fins quickly from fear in the darkness, and the only thing of interest he found was an old warped field hockey stick. Leon had made it sound like the visibility would be just like the television show Baywatch, and once he was underwater he’d see everything as clear as a bathtub. The blue plastic eggs would be sparkling like jewellery, and he would be able to kick leisurely down and scoop up the abalone. But condensation kept covering his mask and he had to blow out hard with his nostrils to get the steam out, then there was the problem of the umbilical line of the surface breather, which must have had a leak in it, because the air had a wet taste to it that made him wheeze. He could see about a meter in front of him. In the blackness there could be anything: fish, abalone, a whale, a rock, a chest of gold doubloons.

Moonlight streaked down and he realized he was near a kelp bed; then the shafts retracted behind a cloud bank. He kicked towards the edge of the kelp bed and turned on the flashlight attached to the tip of his speargun. An octopus scowled at him from a cragged rock, but when he reached in to grab it, it disappeared in a splotch of ink. There was nothing else in the water but kelp and tiny green diatoms, things he could not eat or sell, not even a crab. He could not believe it — Leon said he’d been here only yesterday, and marked the area with a blue plastic egg. He’d said five hundred. Thursday had expected fifty.

But now everything had been picked clean and canned, or picked clean and dried, bound on a ship to the orient. Perhaps another diver had already found the plastic eggs. There was no point in shivering in the water.

His head surfaced in a white rush of foam. In the distance, he could see the stacks of dark-churning clouds being flash-bulbed by the heavens above Old Hermanus. The storm’s advance was not fast — Leon had been right about that. On shore, the soft curl of the beach spread blue in the moonlight, and dim stars shined through the mozzie net of salt spray. Leon had parked the car behind the tallest tree. Thursday lifted the flashlight from the water and beamed out a simple signal, telling him that he would be coming back on shore.

He waited for Leon’s response, and it came. Four flashes, nothing else. This had no meaning other than the fact that he was there waiting and not, hopefully, listening to music.

But then there was another torch: moving, bobbing. A light that had come from the beach. No, two of them. Moving quickly.

He could see them bouncing up and down the sand and out towards the forest, then disappear into the dark foliage behind the beach. Then, a flash of red and blue lights from far on the other side of the beach streaking towards the foliage, right where Leon was waiting.

A raid.

Treading water, he saw Leon’s headlights go on and then start out through the forest, and then just as soon stop. The red lights and flashlights surrounded the car. Two more sets of red and blue lights approached on the beach and he could hear the warble of a megaphone. Some muffled dog barks. There was no way around it: Leon was caught.

“Yissus!” Thursday breathed.

He sank and rose in the rhythm of the night swells. Leon had not prepared him for this situation. Other than the flash signals, they had not developed any kind of plan for arrest. He had no idea what to do as he de-fogged his mask.

Suddenly, a wide beam of light swathed through the waves around him. He rose up in a swell and turned to see another wave about to crash, but he ducked his head under the wave with the respirator clumsily in his mouth. Shouting voices could be heard:

“—one hundred meters… ident—”

Then more barks, more megaphone.

The swell rose up and the beam of light came closer, and when he sank with it, the light silhouetted him briefly in his lycra-capped skull onto the approaching swell, then moved off him. But in a few seconds the beam had swung back around and steadied onto his head. They’d spotted him.

A rogue wave dropped down on Thursday hard and pushed his head below, tumbling him about. He swallowed water and surfaced and began to cough, but the umbilical line was sucked into the next swell and before he could take his lips off the respirator it pulled his whole body forward as it got caught into the surf and advanced towards the beach. His mouth exploded in pain. He cut himself free with the tip of his spear gun, then finned down hard and held his breath, listening to the steady chug of the boat. The breather rumbled and gasped as the brine seeped into the battery, sending up green alkaline tufts of cloud.

Under the flotsam he could hear the engine of the police boat as it coordinated the arrest with the officers on the shore. They would be watching for air bubbles. Maybe for his flashlight too. He could make out the boat’s silhouette against the moonlit surface. When it passed over, he kicked up, taking a few more breaths. The police spotlight was fixed on the surface breather and already he could see a long hook being extended down into the water to pick it up. He dove down again, finning hard, until he was clear of the wave break. The police boat continued scanning the waves in the surf with its spotlight.

“This is the police!” the megaphone blared. “We know you are here! Come to the surface and identify yourself or we will shoot!”

That didn’t sound like the police. The Hermanus police were soft and never shot anyone, much less put any poachers in jail. That was why half the town poached: easy money with low probability of capture. A few months of steady abalone picking and you could buy yourself a Merc. That’s what Brother Leon had told him tonight, anyway, in his Merc.

Crack!

Crack!

Thursday could see the water splash up in the circle of the spotlight in the surf.

But he could see from the spotlight that the boat was headed in the wrong direction, towards a cove popular with the poachers. Maybe there were other divers out tonight. Hopefully there were. He caught another breath and sank down again in the black wash of the sea.

The storm clouds slowly swallowed up the moon, and he found himself in total darkness, with no sense of up or down. His imagination went wild and he started to panic: sharks, hostile poachers, police bullets, all of them could be hurtling towards him in the water. He fumbled to hit the button on his flash light, expecting to see a jaw full of jagged teeth about to gulp him whole, or a bullet streaking towards his brain.

But there, in the midst of the shooting and the raid and the approaching storm, he didn’t see any sharks. No bullets, either. What Thursday saw instilled in him the deepest relief he’d had since he’d left Abalone Silver: the beacon of the blue plastic egg. He’d descended right into Leon’s abalone patch.

The mollusks were healthy and active in the night, sliming along the rock in a little garden of red weed. There were urchins, a couple of alikreukel, and a rock lobster. He found a largish abalone covered with seaweed and pried it off. The abalone slid its foot onto his hand and nursed at it like a babe.

He couldn’t believe its weight: enormous, much bigger than the oldest abalone at the farm. It was so big that the shell covered both his hands. Maybe thirty years old, maybe forty, and worth a few thousand bucks by itself. The flat kelp noodled up harmless to the surface, and nothing dangerous was in sight.

Above him the boat chugged off towards the cove, expecting the divers to flee onto the beach. Any other novice would have swam into the hands of the cops by now. But Thursday was beginning to feel comfortable without the tangled line of the surface breather. And amongst the abalone, with their patient ways, he felt to be amongst friends. He could hold his breath longer than most and his ears didn’t bother him when he dove down deep. He just had to be careful about the spotlight. It would be some time before the police boat stopped searching, and he might as well make the best of it. It would take maybe ten trips. He took out his pry bar and went to work.

5

Hermanus’s biggest industry was whale watching and the tourism that went with it: stuffed animals, shipwreck maps, shell jewelry, whale carvings, fynbos guides, hiking books, whale videos, whale song audio recordings, whale novels, kites, ships-in-a-bottle, chocolate dolphins; then handicrafts made from carded lamb’s wool, wicker, stinkwood, pine, and tie-dyed cotton. These trades did not give rise to a lot of crime, so the police station was simple. The most frequent users were residents needing certified copies of ID books.

The station was shaped like an L. The grey holding cells stretched out the back and were located right next to the courtroom, which had a door that opened into the magistrate’s chambers and, on the other side, the prosecutor’s office. It was a one-stop shop for justice.

The guard told Thursday they had ten minutes. Leon wearily approached the window, looking haggard and grumpy in an orange jumpsuit, but on spotting Thursday he assumed a dignified expression. He didn’t smile.

“Howzit, Leon?” Thursday asked.

Leon tensed his muscles. “How do you think it is, bru? It’s kak. I’ve been in here four days. And you come to me now all smiling and cute. They’re transferring me to Pollsmoor in a week.”

Thursday hadn’t smiled, and he wasn’t sure if he had been acting cute. He let it slide. “I didn’t want any trouble.”

“Trouble? Trouble? Now you’re in a shitload of trouble, you poes.”

“Me?”

Leon leaned in and whispered. “Yeah, you, voetsak. You ratted me out.”

Thursday got confused. Leon was the one who was supposed to warn him if the police were coming, by calling him on the condom-wrapped cell phone.

“They came from the ocean,” Leon explained. “Didn’t you hear the boat? You flashed like a hundred times, broer. They saw you. You gave me away.”

“But you flashed back, Leon.”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down, broer. Keep it down. I’m in enough shit as it is. That wasn’t me. That was them. I was supposed to flash six times, remember? Six times. That was the cops.”

Thursday thought over it. “What were you doing, then?”

“I was listening to my klop kwaito, broer. And if I’d kept on listening I would have been fine. Then you bloody gave me away, you poes. When I get out of here I’m…”

“When do you get out?” Thursday asked nervously. He knew what would happen when Leon got out and didn’t want to hear the grisly threats.

“I don’t know. But I’ll get out a lot quicker if I give them something.”

“Like what?”

“A name.”

There was something sinister about the way Leon said ‘name’.

“Whose?”

“Who do you think?” Leon grinned.

“Me? But I didn’t do anything, Leon. I’m an honest–” He wanted to say that he was an honest man, but that excuse no longer seemed appropriate. “What about bail? Can’t you call up Thembisa? She’s got to have some money. Or Fadanaz.”

“It’s a hundred thousand rand. Fadanaz has a thousand.”

Thursday frowned. Thembisa had a good job as an assistant manager at a bank, but she certainly didn’t make a hundred thousand rand in a year. All of Leon’s girls put together probably couldn’t muster up more than ten thousand, and Thursday had been fired from Abalone Silver with five hundred bucks to his name. Rent was four hundred.

“What about the Merc?”

“Impounded.”

“A hundred thousand rand? But you didn’t have anything on you, Leon. How can they charge that?”

Leon looked away. He hesitated and said, softly: “Racists, bru.”

Thursday barely heard him. He was scared already and distracted, thinking about how Leon would chop him up, or crush his head in a vice — Leon was capable of all of these things. And Thursday would never survive Pollsmoor prison. He knew he wasn’t tough enough, not like Leon.

“I got the work, Leon.”

“What?”

“I said I got the work, my broer.”

Leon’s eyes widened. He relaxed his shoulders a bit, and Thursday could see him thinking out a strategy already. Leon was quick.

“How many?”

“Two hundred. Big. Thirty years old.”

“Where are they?”

“I’ve got them in the bath.”

Leon was calculating.

“Two minutes!” the guard shouted in.

“Alright,” Leon said eventually. “That’s enough. That’s enough but you’re going to have to go straight to Ip.”

Everyone in Hermanus had heard of Ip, but few had ever seen him. First you went to a dry-house and shriveled up the abalone. Then a runner stuffed the dried perlies in rooibos tea boxes and took them to Ip. Thursday was under the impression that Ip lived in another universe, in China maybe, and didn’t want anything to do with him.

“Don’t you know a runner?” Thursday asked.

“No, no. Two hundred in the dryer won’t make it. If they’re as good as you say, they’ve got to get there alive. He’ll pay twice as much. And it should do.” Leon explained how to contact Ip, tussling his own dark locks with relief. “You’ve done good, Thursday. I always knew I could trust you.”

The guard escorted Leon away, and Leon looked over his shoulder and winked. A moment ago, Thursday remembered, Leon was about to tell him how he was going to kill him.

6

Of the poachers in Hermanus, Thursday was better suited to take care of live abalone than all of them because of his time at the factory. He’d already gone down to the rocks to pick up some fresh kelp, but the abalone were having a hard time digesting the seaweed with all the stress. He walked straight out of the police station to the pet shop in Old Hermanus. The large black-winged gulls were nibbling muffin bits and crisps from the sidewalk, awaiting the arrival of the whale-watching children who would stuff their gullets full of sweets. The sun rippled off the bay through the shop awnings at the end of the street.

He got a couple of cans of low-protein fish meal and took them to the counter. The two tellers were busy poring over the Times.

“I can’t believe it,” one said. “She was so young.”

“It’s awful,” the other agreed.

“What happened?” Thursday asked, to move things along.

He was so new to the smuggling business that he felt guilty buying fish meal, as if the cans were attached to a hotline and the police would come arrest him on suspicion of feeding perlemoen in the bathtub. As if fish meal was an indicator of criminal activity.

“You haven’t heard?” the teller asked. She was a plump white girl with hairy dreadlocks.

“No.” Thursday never heard anything.

She showed him the front page. There was a healthy black and white Border Collie nobly posing over a mound of abalone. The fishnet sacks had been arranged so that it looked as if the police had just dumped the shells onto the floor. He could practically hear them clattering against the tiles. It was the dog that the police had trained to track down abalone in drying facilities.

“It’s Sassy,” the teller said.

“Can I take a look?” Thursday asked.

She handed him the paper. The headline was clear enough: “Sassy Killed by Poacher”. He scanned the story:

New Hermanus Bay

Sassy, the loving Border Collie that became the pride of Hermanus, died of complications at Protea Veterinary on Wednesday.

“We tried everything,” veterinarian Linda Sussex explained. “She fought hard but the bullet had crushed her left ventricle. It’s a miracle she lasted as long as she did.”

The police said that Sassy was shot with a nine millimeter pistol. A local Hermanus man is being held on charges.

Sassy left in glory, on the eve of the successful launch of Operation Trident. Trident represents new coordination between South African Police Services (SAPS), the border patrol, and the South African Navy, with increased powers of search and seizure and lower evidentiary standards for abalone poachers.

It is hoped that these efforts will curb the illicit trade that is plagued by local thugs, Chinese triads, and international drug smugglers. The threatened Haliotis midae is considered second in quality only to Mexican abalone.

On Friday, ten poachers were arrested in four hours and a catch valued at R730,000 was confiscated. The success of the operation was credited to Sassy.

“We owe the entire catch to her,” presiding officer Van Zyl Smit explained.

“She’s a hero.”

On the inside page there was an editorial about Sassy and animal rights in general.

Thursday looked up to find the tellers staring at him, expecting a reaction. He just shook his head and paid for the fish meal. This seemed to be enough for them.

Sassy’s demise actually made him relieved because she wouldn’t be sniffing him into prison. The new powers of search and seizure were what worried him. All he had was a padlock on his front door.

Casually, he went through the procedures required to contact Ip the smuggler. He sent an SMS to the name Telemann. Ip sent a return SMS within moments. Efficient. Thursday went to a pay phone and dialed the number. It picked up after the first ring.

“Leon?” Ip asked.

Thursday didn’t know whether to say he was Leon or not. If Ip didn’t know him, then he might get scared and hang up.

“Yeah,” Thursday said.

There was a pause. “You don’t sound like Leon.”

“I’ve got the flu. Two hundred fresh adults,” he said. “Thirty years old.”

The phone hung up.

Shit, Thursday thought, as he continued home. That was evidently the wrong answer. He must have been too aggressive. Now what would he do? He had no contacts and Leon would kill him if he found out he’d blown the phone call.

The abalone had all receded into their shells and were unmoving in the bathtub, unhappy with their new claw-footed home. Poor dears. He dropped in a few scoops of fish meal. His tiny, lime-washed house only had two rooms, and in those two rooms there was one couch, a rickety pinewood table, and a mattress on the floor, so he spent as much time as he could smoking outside, listening to the far off hoots of the ships navigating the bay. He left and lit a cigarette.

The phone call was a fuck-up, but Thursday was a cautious optimist. He played with the idea that maybe he could take the perlies to Abalone Silver. There were some prime females in the bathtub. Maybe Mr. Pretorius would offer him some money for them and give him his job back. If that didn’t work, he could give some to Leon’s mom. She made a nice abalone stew and it would make her happy, which she might tell Leon about. Also some to Leon’s stepsister, who had a beer batter recipe she liked to cook perlies with. That might be the difference between death and survival, by a hair. But a hair was enough. He returned to the tub and saw that a few of the more adventurous abalone had already begun extending their radulae to nibble on the fish meal.

There was a hard knock on the door. He carefully drew the shower curtain around the tub and shut the bathroom door behind him. He peered out from his bedroom and relaxed. It was Leon’s girl, Fadanaz.

He opened the door and found her looking pouty in a red shawl, with one foot stomping in front. He smiled and leaned in for a kiss, but she held him back.

“How could you do it?” she asked.

He stopped smiling. So she knew he’d been involved. Play it cool, he thought. She doesn’t know you have the perlies in your tub. All that’s in there are shampoos and soaps. “How could I do what?”

“What do you mean, ‘do what’? You know what you did. You are a pig. You don’t deserve him, you poes. But I won’t let him go to jail for you. Not my Leon. I’m turning you in, Thursday!”

Fadanaz’s breasts pushed out when she was angry, and their presence made it hard for him to register her words. “Leon was supposed to warn me.”

“So you go and shoot a dog, Thursday! A dog! You are a pig.” She turned on her heel, but Thursday grabbed her by the elbow.

“What did you say, Fadanaz?”

“Leave me alone, you killer. A helpless dog. You pig! I’m not going to let Leon go to Pollsmoor for you. No one, and I mean no one, will take away my Leon!”

“Fadanaz, I didn’t shoot Snoopy.”

“Sassy!”

“I was in the water. I don’t know who shot Sassy.”

“You lie. Leon told me everything. I can’t pay for bail! I can’t help him!” She began whacking him with her purse. “And I’m not going to let your arse go free!”

Thursday covered his head with his hands as she battered him. He considered showing her the bathtub, but she ran off when he took his hands away. He fished out a cigarette.

What had Leon been talking about, saying that he shot Sassy? Why would Leon make that up? Thursday had promised to help him at the police station, and Leon was dependent on him now. Why would he lie about that?

The only thing he could come up with was that Fadanaz had gotten to Leon first, and he’d said some nonsense to get Fadanaz to help him. Leon always talked a lot of kak, and Thursday couldn’t blame him for wanting to get out of jail. If he got transferred to Pollsmoor there were 60,000 prisoners ahead of him who hadn’t even had a trial yet. But now Thursday had a bathtub full of poached perlemoen and Fadanaz was on her way to turn him in.

He had to move, and he had to move fast. If she informed the police that he’d shot the dog, they’d be there in minutes, with photographers in tow. He ran inside and picked up the fishnet bag, and began stuffing the abalone in, handfuls at a time, recklessly.

“Hang in there,” he cooed, “I’m taking you home.”

Their tentacles retracted into their shells in abject fear. He put the fishnet sack in a garbage bag, gathered up all the money he had, and deadbolted the door. Circling around the building, he weaved behind some houses through a paddy of wild lilies towards the bay.

Why, Leon?

He crunched along the small pebbles of the beach and scrambled over boulders until the waves were crashing just in front of him, his face wet with salt spray. Teetering he held the bag up over the water, and began to toss the abalone towards a kelp bed one by one. They were strong enough, he hoped, to slime out to safety.

Then he felt the cell phone vibrating, and dug it out of his pocket with his free hand. ‘One new message’. He opened it:
78A, L. Main. Obz. C.T. 10am. Ip.

Cape Town was two hours away by minibus taxi. Half of the perlemoen had already been plunked into the water. The other half, still in the sack. Beyond he could see the reflection of an ocean tanker on the water, and far away on the beach, the mahogany sheen of a child running along the sand in the spume.