Tandia by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online

sign, jong, or you in the deep shit, you hear?'
    He dropped the sheet of paper at her feet and lowered himself back onto his chair. 'Pick it up!' He pointed at the fallen chair. Sobbing Tandia righted the chair; she was still seeing stars from his blow. 'The paper also!' he shouted.
    She felt faint and could barely see it on the floor. Her hands shook so violently she had to make several attempts to grip the edge of the charge sheet. She held it out to the policeman who snatched it from her and dropped it onto the table. Then he picked up the pen. To Tandia's surprise he now spoke softly. 'C'mon, man, now sign. It's late, I want to go home, I'm already an hour and a half late, I want to go home and have my breakfast.'
    Tandia burst into tears. The police officer leapt from his chair and struck her a violent blow on the side of her face, knocking her over and sending her sprawling across the polished cement floor.
    Seemingly in an instant, he was at her side. 'Fok you, kaffir! Get up!' He bent down and grabbed her ann and pulled, but Tandia resisted and the white man released his grip on her bleeding wrist. 'Fok! Get up! I haven't got all day!' It was then that she noticed the dirt on his trousers, a soil mark just above his knees where she had kicked him in the cemetery. A moment later he drove his boot into her kidneys. Tandia screamed then gave a low moan and passed out.
    She came to as she was being dragged by two black policemen along a long corridor. Tandia tasted blood and she tasted the hate and she kept her eyes tightly closed. They came to a halt and she was lowered to the floor. Her face still stung from the violent slap she had received and the polished cement floor was cool on her bruised cheek. She heard the slight rattle of keys and the sigh of a heavy door opening, then she was picked up again and lowered to the floor of the cell.
    Long after she'd heard the clunk of the door closing and the rattle of the keys as she was locked in, Tandia continued to lie with her cheek pressed against the cool cement floor of the dark cell. She was like one of those stick insects that continues to play dead long after its attacker has lost interest in it. Eventually she opened her eyes, raised herself to a sitting position and looked around the small cell. It contained a bench which ran the length of one wall. A toilet bucket sat in one corner smelling sharply of disinfectant. On the floor beside the bucket lay a single scrap of newspaper. A light bulb, protected by a cover made of heavy wire mesh, was set into the ceiling at least twelve feet above her. The light was off and the only light coming into the cell was from a small barred window about ten feet from the floor. The effect was like being thrown into an empty well or a dark pit.
    Tandia rose and sat on the bench. The fact that she was alone and the shouting had stopped was an enormous relief, but she was too numbed to think. She vaguely sensed that it was a useless pursuit anyway. The act of thinking suggests there are choices and she was beginning to realise that for a black person the choices are almost non-existent.
    Tandia wondered briefly about the welfare of her basin, though now it seemed to represent a life which had been taken from her. The idea that she could educate herself in an environment where mere survival took all the energy she possessed suddenly seemed ridiculous. After the events of the past few hours Tandia was prepared to give up even before she got started.
    After a while, when she had become accustomed to the dark cell, Tandia lay down on the bench and gazed up at the square of light coming through the window. Beyond it she could see a patch of blue sky and, just cutting into the frame, the white crescent of a day moon.
    She must have dozed off for a while, for she was startled to hear the key in the door. It opened only slightly and she heard the 'Scrape of a tin plate as it was pushed into the cell. Tandia waited until the key had been turned