Читать книгу The Courier - Ava McCarthy - Страница 9

Finding a diamond could mark a man out for death. Mani knew this, but still he had no choice.

Black dust swirled in the beam from his helmet, thicker than smoke. There was always dust. It burned his throat and crusted against his skin. Most of the time, he could barely see his own hands.

He adjusted the mask over his mouth. It was a poor fit, inadequate for wide, African noses. Most of the men pulled them down under their chins after the first twenty minutes.

‘They don’t fit,’ Takata explained. ‘Besides, Van Wycks, they say the dust is safe.’

But Mani knew better.

He tightened his grip on the drill, holding it like a machine gun, one hand in front of the other. Pickaxes clinked in a nearby tunnel, and in the distance someone buzzed up a chainsaw. Mani lodged the bit into a crevice on the blue kimberlite rock and leaned into it, the pressure burning through the knife wound in his arm. His heart pounded against the butt of the drill.

‘Mani? Are you all right?’

Mani could hardly see Takata’s face, but he felt the old man’s bony fingers on his arm and heard his wheezing chest. Mani nodded, blanking out the cramped tunnel and the ceiling that seemed ready to crush him.

He pictured the layers of rock pressing down from above. Three or four feet of loose black soil up near the surface. After that, the soft yellow ground, for another fifty feet. Then the blue ground, where the kimberlite was hard and dense, to a depth of six hundred feet. All of it right above Mani’s skull. And all of it packed with diamonds.

‘Mani?’

The bony fingers squeezed his good arm. Mani shook the sweat out of his eyes and fired up the pneumatic motor. Vibrations hammered through his body. The drill chewed into the tunnel wall, spitting out chunks of blue-grey rock. The noise blasted his eardrums till they felt like they might bleed.

He released the trigger and squinted at the blast hole. The drilling had ground up more black dust and Mani could feel it coating his skin. The heat was suffocating, the reek of chemical explosives filling his sinuses.

Up until a month ago, his days had been spent in air-conditioned libraries and classrooms. He’d been studying engineering at the University of Cape Town. The student hostel was small but clean, and he’d had his own room. Here at the Van Wycks mine, he shared a locked-down compound with thirty other men. The toilets were filthy and had no doors, and the single shower doubled up as a refuse dump.

‘Roer jou gat!’ Move your arse!

The guard punched Mani hard on the shoulder. Hot pain sliced through the wound in his arm, and he winced. He half-turned, being careful not to meet the guard’s eyes. His name was Okker. He stood with his legs wide apart, anchoring his twenty-stone bulk in place. His face was a white moon, slick with sweat.

‘Daardie gat is te klein.’ That hole is too small.

Okker slapped a wooden club into the palm of one hand. Mani knew, as did all the men, that the large business end was weighted with a sheath of lead. The guard stepped towards him.

‘Doen dit oor.’ Do it over.

‘Yes, sir.’

Mani knew the switch to English would annoy him. Mani’s Afrikaans was fluent, but he rarely gave voice to its guttural sounds. He turned back to the wall, fumbling for the blast hole with the drill bit. He felt Takata’s hand under his elbow, guiding him.

A sickening crack split the air. Takata cried out and slumped to the floor. Mani spun round in time to see Okker raise his club again.

‘Stupid old man,’ Okker yelled in English. ‘Didn’t you understand what I said? I told him to do it!’

He swung the club down with both hands. In the same instant, Mani hurled himself in front of Takata. The club smashed into Mani’s shoulder. He yelled, sank to his knees. The old man’s chest heaved with his wet bubbling cough.

Behind Mani, wood slapped against skin in a slow, menacing rhythm. He snapped his gaze round. Okker lashed out with his foot, crunching it into Mani’s ribs. Stabbing pain shot through him. He doubled over, clutching his side. Dear God. Was he going to die here in this rat hole?

He thought of his brother and gritted his teeth. If it wasn’t for Ezra, he wouldn’t be here. He flashed on his brother’s face leering up at him from the bed, one tooth missing. The diamonds, they belong to the African people. And beside him, Asha, beseeching him with her calm, almond-shaped eyes.

Asha.

He tensed his muscles, heaved himself to his feet, and turned to face Okker. The guard was flexing his fingers around the wooden club, his hands small for such a large man. There was no one else around.

A hooter shrieked in the distance, and Okker froze. He narrowed his eyes. Then he rammed the club into Mani’s chest, forcing him backwards and pinning him against the wall. Jagged rock bit into Mani’s back.

‘I’ve been watching you.’ Okker’s voice was low. ‘And I know what you’re up to.’

Mani stopped breathing, every muscle suspended.

‘I don’t know how you’re doing it,’ Okker went on. ‘But I’m going to find out.’ He jabbed the club up under Mani’s chin, and leaned in close. His breath was hot and sour. ‘And when I do, you and the old man are dead.’

Mani dug his nails into the rock behind him, his muscles rigid. Okker’s eyes slid down to Takata’s motionless body. Then he jerked the club away and stepped back.

‘Get him out of here.’

Mani rubbed his jaw with a trembling hand, then bent down and lifted Takata to his feet. The old man was light, his flesh parchment-thin on birdlike bones. Takata was fifty-three, but his body was older, too old to be down here. His sons and grandsons all worked in the mine. So had his daughter, for a time.

Looping one arm around Takata’s waist, Mani half-carried him along the uneven path, ignoring the fiery pain in his own ribs. The tunnel widened. Cones of light criss-crossed through the blackness as other miners spilled from their own tunnels into the belly of the mine.

‘You should not have done that.’ Takata’s voice was low.

‘I should have let him kill you?’

Mani felt Takata shrug. He guided the old man towards the lift shaft.

‘Your daughter would not thank me for letting you die,’ Mani said.

Another shrug. ‘Asha, she knows I will not live for ever.’

Mani didn’t answer. Together they trudged alongside the metal conveyor that carried the ore to the crushers. It creaked and rattled, hauling thousands of tonnes through the tunnels. The dust here seemed paler but just as dense, whipped up by dry ore on the move. Dry drilling was the rule in the Van Wycks mine. Dust-suppressing water sprays would have cleaned the air, but were forbidden in case they harmed the kimberlite.

Mani pushed into the lift along with Takata and a dozen other men. Daylight bled down through the shaft, and all around him the miners hacked out their damp, rattling coughs.

The ancient crate groaned upwards. Inch by inch, the darkness thinned, the air grew warmer, until finally they broke through the surface. Mani squinted against the sunlight and the blizzard of dust. The lift clattered to a halt, and Takata hobbled out, following the other men. Mani trailed after them, his mask still in place.

The throb of diesel engines filled the air. Tractors and dumper trucks lumbered around the open pit. The men on the ground, mostly black, guided the heavy machinery with yells and hand signals. None of them wore a mask.

Mani flicked a glance at the tonnes of ore piled in the waste pits a few hundred yards away. There were diamonds in those discarded mounds, if you knew where to look.

‘I’m watching you, kaffir.’

Okker was so close that Mani could feel the heat radiating from his white flesh. He slid his gaze away and shuffled behind the other men, keeping his eyes on the ground until Okker had moved away. Then he turned to stare again at the stockpiles of kimberlite ore. Dust caught in his throat, and he coughed like the other men, pain slicing his lungs like slivers of glass. His eyes watered, blurring his focus. His gaze drifted beyond the waste pits to the shadowy Kuruman mountains in the north. The mountains they called the Asbestos Hills.

Diamonds and dust.

He wondered which would kill him first.