LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

rapped hard with the big brass knocker. The Judas eye slid open: from inside, the visitor was scrutinised. Then the huge door swung back and Paula and her escort stepped into the third circle.

      It was clean and quiet and well lit by strips of fluorescent lighting. There was a faint whiff of detergent.

      Pinned on the back of the door was a colourful day-glo poster advertising a barbecue, with Castle beer, jumbo hamburgers and a beautiful baby competition. Nearby on the stark white wall was a green plaque, cautioning: TERRORIST WEAPONS, LOOK AND SAVE A LIFE. Life-size plastic reliefs showed SPM limpet mines, PMN anti-personnel mines and hand grenades.

      The circles were narrowing. To proceed they had to wait for a warder to unlock the grilled gate. Beyond that was another foyer, and another grille; one gate had to be relocked before the other could be opened. Limbo succeeded limbo, scrubbed and deathly – the only sound was the constant jangling of keys.

      Right at the centre of Death Row was a sunlit courtyard. On one side was the section for black inmates, on the other the section for whites. The courtyard was peaceful, like a cloister. On either side, like monks’ cells, were the visiting rooms where families spoke to the condemned through thick, barred glass partitions with the aid of microphones. They were never allowed to meet face to face or touch, not even on the eve of execution.

      In the middle of this secluded yard was a strip of grass with flowers round the border: light gold cosmos, pink roses, the white canna lily, as well as dahlias, geraniums, snap-dragons and marigolds. At the far end was a chapel. This was where the coffin was placed after a hanging. It was a spruce, sparse room, illuminated by a lustreless brown and blue stained-glass window.

      Immediately above the chapel were the gallows. Here, the hour come, the final circle: the noose.

      Paula came to the prison every day. Normally she would have gone straight into the courtyard, but today she was taken down a side corridor, into the black cell section. A senior officer accompanied her down a bare white passage to a small room used by consulting lawyers. The wedding was to take place here – the first ever to be permitted on Death Row.

      Her fiancé was waiting. He smiled at Paula. Robert McBride was not in the usual Death Row kit of dark green fatigues. Today he wore a white shirt and grey trousers. He was over six feet tall and slim. He’d lost a lot of weight in prison, but he kept himself fit. His face was soft and round, his complexion sallow.

      He had been waiting 756 days for his execution.

      For the first time the couple were allowed to embrace.

      Paula and Robert were stepping into a potentially hysterical arena. The law forbidding marriage between people of different colour had only recently been repealed. Mixed-race marriages were still an exotic rarity, disapproved of by many whites and particularly repugnant to a large proportion of Afrikaners. Even if the McBrides would not consummate their marriage, it was the very thought of such a liaison which upset the khaki-clad white paramilitaries that Paula sometimes saw outside the prison. For them, it was against nature; contrary to the will of God. She was betraying the sacred commission of white women: it was an abomination. That was why they stared at her with such hatred.

      To the authorities, the marriage was also bizarre. The young couple had been subjected to a challenging examination of their psychological states and motives. A prison major conducted the interview with Robert. A social welfare worker had visited his home. ‘What do you feel about your child marrying a person of a different race?’ she had asked.

      Doris McBride, Robert’s mother, had replied, ‘Why should I have any objections? Paula’s lovely. I couldn’t have asked for a better girl for my Robert.’

      ‘But how do you feel about your son marrying a white person?’

      Doris was a stocky, proud woman, with a round, humorous face. She could be quite belligerent. ‘Look, we don’t hate all white people, just because white people have done such terrible things to us.’ She was not going to be intimidated because all this would be read in Pretoria by some Boer. ‘We have white friends in the movement. There are whites who are working just as hard as us for liberation. Some have died in the fight, you know.’ The welfare worker had diligently written it all down. ‘I did ask Robert if he thought it was fair for him to marry Paula,’ said Doris. ‘I mean, even if you get out, I said, you’d have nowhere to live, no job, no prospects. You know what he said? “I don’t want to marry anybody else. I don’t want any other woman.” Well, there’s nothing I could say to that.’

      Most of the questions had concentrated on colour. ‘I don’t think there’s any difference.’ Doris was weary of this question, the mesmerising preoccupation of South Africa for over three hundred years. ‘Robert can mix with anyone.’ The interview had lasted 45 minutes. ‘Look,’ said Doris, ‘even if they allow Robert to live, even if one day – please God – he gets out, I’m going to be dead. It will not be my problem to see how they live. They must be allowed to live their own life, you know.’

      The wedding was a very private ceremony. Robert and Paula had no guests.

      Derrick McBride, Robert’s father, was unable to attend. He was locked up on Robben Island, the bleak island penitentury for political prisoners, 14 kilometres off the coast from Cape Town. Robert’s closest friend Gordon Webster might have been best man, but he, too, was on Robben Island, serving a 25-year sentence.

      Doris McBride was unwell. Since her husband had been incarcerated and her son sentenced to death, she had suffered a mild stroke, and she was soon to endure two more which would leave her paralysed and imprisoned in a wheelchair.

      It was a small, bare room. There was a table and two chairs. Robert and Paula sat together on a bench. Three warders stood to one side, coughing nervously and shuffling their feet, not sure where to look. One picked his nails.

      The black priest, Father Mabena, did not have a permit to perform inter-racial marriages, so Father Ambrose, the white chaplain, had been assigned to conduct the ceremony. It lasted fifteen minutes.

      Paula hardly heard a word. Then Father Ambrose was saying, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’ The warder who had been picking his nails smiled.

      The honeymoon lasted 40 minutes. The newlyweds stayed in the lawyer’s consulting room, squashed together on the bench.

      The major stayed with them for the first 20 minutes; a warrant officer took over for the second shift. They each stood by the door and pretended not to look. Robert and Paula held each other for the very first time. Then the honeymoon was over.

      ‘Time’s up,’ said the warrant officer. ‘I’m sorry.’

      He held the door open and waited patiently. Robert had read about a man in England who put super-glue on his hand. It had become their private joke. He whispered, ‘We should super-glue ourselves together, then they’d have to pull us apart.’

      Part One

      The Book of Life

      1

      To Robert it didn’t seem odd when he was growing up that there weren’t any white people where he lived.

      He saw them sometimes when they were out in the car, and he noticed that his father used to get angry at them and curse them when they were on the motorway or at an intersection. He’d often say things like, ‘Stupid bloody whites, look how they behave, they’re so arrogant, these people, they’ve no bloody consideration.’ His father would denounce all white people, muttering harsh judgements that the young boy could not understand. But he didn’t worry about it as that was the kind of thing his father did when they were out in the car and there were whites around.

      The whites lived in Durban. It wasn’t at all like where Robert and his family lived. The suburbs had a quiet, almost genteel English air about

Скачать книгу