Corners of My Soul

By Siya Mbalekwa

1997
A father’s only goal when raising his child is to mould them into the goodness he believes the world to possess. But what if his perception of the world is radically altered and as a series of disasters occurs , causing the gap between his perception of reality and reality to draw closer and closer till they finally meet.
Anton is a South African mercenary who is excited to be finally returning to South Africa to be with his wife and child as the government of Sierra Leone has relieved him and his team of their duties in Sierra Leone.
Things take a turn for the worst when they are recalled to Freetown as a result of the Revolutionary United Front soldiers entering Freetown and using civilians as shields.
His deepest fears become a reality as he is captured by a group of soldiers and kept prisoner which catapults his life into a downward spiral and his life as he knows it to be is changed forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Siya Mbalekwa
• Release date: Feb 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9780620742511

Siya Mbalekwa

Siyabulela Mbalekwa was born in 1986 and raised in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. He has four siblings. He attended most of his primary and secondary schooling at St Dominic’s Priory in Port Elizabeth He then attended Rhodes University where he obtained his Bachelor of commerce degree majoring in accounting.He began his career as a banker and eventually made his transition to the auditing profession. He is currently studying towards his Certificate in theory of accountancy in pursuit of the Chartered Accountant South Africa qualification.He is also currently in the first level review editing stage of his second novel titled the shadow of the sun which will be published late May 2017

Book preview

Chapter One

Fear and its paralysis

Sierra Leone 1997

So what time will you be landing in Johannesburg? Anton’s wife Nikita asked him over the static sound of his phone as he marched around the room in search of signal. We should arrive late in the afternoon Anton responded with a clear voice in case the signal was lost.

Your father offered to fetch you from the airport, is that okay? she asked when the sound cleared. Yeah why wouldn’t it be? Anton asked with a puzzled look on his face. Well I know how your relationship with… she paused for a second before she concluded by saying Never mind. Okay so he will be at the airport at three P.M.Before he knew it there was tension on the phone and this irritated Anton as this was the one time that he felt they should be celebrating his return home.

Anton held the phone to his ear, playing with his passport and flicking the cover open. He paged through the many pages, counting the stamps when he heard the sound of a crying baby on the other side of the phone.

Guess who’s awake? Nikita asked.

She’s growing so fast though Anton. I’ve had to buy clothes every three months she said as Anton sat there listening to the crying sounds as though it were a symphony. Your mother came by yesterday and dropped off some of your music books. She thought it would be nice if you taught Becky how to play when she is old.

I haven’t played since I was twelve years old Anton said as he chuckled at the absurdity of the suggestion.

Anton heard the door handle of his room opening and quickly stood up as he spoke to his wife Okay baby I have to go, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.

The definition of hot had a whole new meaning for Anton as the temperature lazily reached forty degrees Celsius. The vibrations of the car manoeuvring its way on what was once a tar road now turned gravel provided a soothing rhythmic comfort for Anton as he sat in the backseat staring out of his window.

Trees began to have a new meaning too since they reminded him of his childhood dream of one day owning a large piece of land that had a vast and perpetuating forest. The forests would serve as a training ground for lack of better description or rather a grooming exercise for his ‘boy’ even though up until now he was father to a precious baby girl.

A bitter sweet taste filled his heart as he realised he hadn’t even held his baby girl since she was born a year ago. This burdened him as he felt that he was off to a poor start to being a father. To him this was the highest accolade for a man. Being a father demanded the most virtuous characteristics in a man in his eyes, to mould another able body to be the good that he saw the world to be.

He couldn’t work out if his ideology was because he believed that he could be that father or was it because he sadly wanted to correct the mistakes of his own father.

His wandering eyes had failed him again when they met Kevin’s eyes on the rear view mirror while Kevin’s bland voice drilled holes into the archives of Anton’s mind, as Kevin rambled on about what the first thing was that he was going to do when he returned to South Africa.

Anton acknowledged their discomforting, intangible embrace out of politeness after which he dropped his head to look at his watch for the umpteenth time. But this time the hands of the watch caught his attention when he noticed how they moved in sync with the pulse of his tapping foot.

Anton’s shoulders dropped in a sigh of relief when silence finally filled the car like oxygen to a new born baby’s lungs and for the briefest of moments, Anton could finally hear his own thoughts.

The rotating arms of his watch and the tapping of his foot spoke volumes for him as the watch was a subtle humbling reminder that patience is a virtue and no amount of occupation or consumption of time would make time move any faster.

The tapping of the foot was a way of gradually reminding him of a distant familiarity that he had taken for granted for most of his life right up until that moment, family.

Familiar scents of soft cotton linen that only knew him and his wife filled his nostrils as he imagined lying next to her. He specifically remembered how he had picked up a habit of tapping his foot in bed when he would wake up from childhood. He would lie in bed with his eyes open and just listen to his thoughts. After some time his thoughts would become so loud that his foot would just randomly begin to twitch as he lay there. After some time of this, Nikita would gently place her foot on his. This simple gesture let Anton know that whatever he was worrying about could be fixed by the two of them.

Nikita had a gift of calming Anton down when the weight of tomorrow became too much for Anton. She served as a compass for Anton’s complex mind.

All of a sudden memories rushed through his caving walls of rationalisation. He remembered the constant bickering between the two of them about him being needed more by her than a foreign country that was in civil turmoil. Anton smiled as he looked outside his window because for some reason these arguments seemed so petty in retrospect, but he knew that it wasn’t bickering that upset him, but rather being told what to do.

Now and again he would steal a moment and close his eyes as he imagined himself standing in a shower and just letting the water run off his body, as it carried his accumulation of salty dried sweat secretion from days of not having seen a drop of water and soap.

He allowed himself to indulge in this fantasy, imagining his wife joining him in the shower and seducing him, when suddenly his eyes opened and a flood of images and memories of the life he once knew revived his dying flame of hope.

His train of thought was distracted as his seat belt tightened on his chest. He instinctively turned his head and squinted his eyes, peeking through the narrow gap of Kevin’s headrest and seat belt attachment only to see a large herd of cattle crossing the road. Without thinking about it, he began to count the number of cows in an attempt to roughly estimate how long this derail would take.

One hundred and thirty three cows he counted. He couldn’t help but notice the irony of it all in that at least a third of this herd had inherited the country's misfortune of having emaciated frames. He sighed, rolled his neck and then sat up, rotating his abdomen in an attempt to crack his back. He then leaned over and reached his hand to the floor and moved his hand around till it grabbed his back pack. He rattled the inside of his bag and pulled out his flask. He turned his head to look out the window across from his side, taking a gulp of water as he did so, and smiling as he put the bottle back into his bag, he remarked:

I bet you no one is going to miss the water here,

The other men in the car laughed.

Two fucking years in this dump. All I want is to go to a restaurant, eat something and not question what went into making it, Kevin continued.

I just want to go back to a place where I am not looked at like an alien because I’m white and in military uniform, Dave said as he looked back from the front passenger seat.

I just want to have sex and not worry about her status, Timothy attempted in vain to contribute to the conversation as a result of being the youngest in the group.

The other three men slung their heads as they turned to look at Timothy.

Perplexed by Timothy’s statement Anton looked at him with his eyes half shut as he attempted to conceptualise what had just been said Wait, wait, wait... You did what?

Anton could see it in Timothy’s eyes that he wasn’t joking and lost all hope as he shook his head and turned to look out the window after which the other men did too.

Kids of fucking today, Kevin mumbled as he turned and looked at the last three cows crossing the road.

The car began to move again as the sound of the engine served as a voice while each man continued to live in his thoughts. Without looking, Anton could sense that Timothy was itching to explain himself.

All three of you are married. It’s not my fault I can have variety while you guys are stuck with the same woman,

Before he could continue, Anton interjected:

Watch yourself kid. First of all we were here for a job. What if that girl you were having fun with goes and tells the police that one of our men raped her? You think that will go down well when we get back to South Africa? Our reputation has been questionable since we got to Sierra Leone. Numerous articles have been written about Executive Outcomes saying that we are exploiting a bleeding country and now you want to give them another reason to hate us? Anton paused to see the lights switch on in Timothy’s eyes.

But even more importantly, if you keep thinking the way that you are currently thinking, you will die from AIDS and I swear to you now as God is my witness I will not attend your damn funeral. Anton turned to look out the window. He stared at the passing trees then mumbled AIDS is a disease of choice. If you want to be ignorant and small minded, then you’ll continue the way you are, in an attempt to conclude his message to Timothy.

Anton continued to stare out of the window as his nostrils flared. What upset him was the ungrateful tone that Timothy had in his voice. Throughout the whole mission, he spoke and acted like he was wearing a bullet proof vest. His words and actions spoke to the kind of man that he was and this did not sit well with Anton at all. On principle alone, a man needed to carry himself like a man when he became an adult and Timothy did no such. He drank excessively, spoke loudly as if everyone in the car was deaf and had very little respect for woman or black people at that. It was all just a game to him yet to Anton these were the cards that life had dealt him and the product of a sequence of choices between conflicting imperatives.

Anton’s parents did the best that they could do for him while growing up. They didn’t have a lot of money but they made do with what they had. Money had always been a sore matter at home as his father was a struggling mechanic who also had developed a gambling problem. But through all the adversities they faced as a family his parents did their best to hide these issues from Anton and created a home filled with love and support.

His mother had always wanted a daughter to teach classical piano to, therefore saw fit to make Anton her student. From the age of five, it was a daily routine for him from the day he could read sheet music which included an hour of scales and arpeggios, followed by another hour of classical pieces.

Over the years, he grew fond of a handful composers and pieces such as Chopin, Bach and Satie but he was more drawn to Claude Debussy. Anton’s favourite pieces were from Debussy’s book of Preludes. He loved the creativity that was used in the composition of these pieces; their structures deviated from the standard structures used by other composers.

A smile crept onto his face as he thought it would be nice to teach his daughter the piano. He hadn’t played in so long but he consoled himself by comparing it to riding a bicycle. Without even knowing it, he was doing the one thing he hated the most about himself which was to dream about the future. Dreaming and fantasising about the future had the torturous tragedy of creating unrealistic expectations of him and almost always led to disappointment.

The silence in the car was too good to be true as Anton sat in a trance while staring out of the window. A familiar irritating voice emerged as if the volume was gradually turned up from being mute.

What are you guys going to do with your new found wealth? Kevin asked as his eyes met Anton’s again in the rear view mirror.

Dave without hesitation responded with his fluid tongue which demanded the utmost attentiveness:

My brother in law is an investment banker and he was telling me that I should use it for something they call leverage where I use that investment to get more money so I can invest offshore since he says the future of South Africa is uncertain at this stage. Apparently the ANC is talking about changing the constitution and certain laws so we don’t really know where South Africa is heading.

In an attempt not to offend Dave for lack of interest, Anton stared vigorously into the abyss. Not being argumentative had its setbacks for Anton. His silence was constantly misinterpreted as disagreement and he had become used to it now. It wasn’t that he disagreed with Dave’s views on South Africa but that he actually agreed with him. He unfortunately felt that he was the victim in all of this as he was now going to have to pay the price for his ancestors.

My wife and I are thinking of relocating to the UK, Kevin added. Hopefully the dividends from this company will take care of us till I’m dead. I mean it’s a diamond mining company for God sake. We will be sipping Champagne like the Oppenheimers do.

Anton glared at the farmland as they passed. He counted every yard pole in an attempt to deafen the meaningless conversation that was being made. He knew nothing about companies and their mechanics. The Companies Act was a foreign concept that only accountants knew. He knew nothing about voting rights and share buybacks. For example, what did he have to do if he needed to withdraw from his investment? How often did the company pay out their dividends? Most importantly would this investment secure his child’s future? In twenty years would the profits of the company be able to pay for Rebecca’s tuition fees? These were the sort of questions that paralyzed Anton’s optimism because from where he sat, there were a lot of unanswered questions and more dangling carrots put in front of them to motivate them. To date, they had not signed any documentation with regards to these diamond concessions and the last time that this matter was addressed was by his manager at the briefing two years ago before they were deployed to Sierra Leone.

Throughout his whole life he had lived a life of principle, a life that had a blueprint. It was far from accurate, but it had served him more as a guide. He learnt at a young age that he needed to be pragmatic about life and erase any delusions of fame and fortune.

It was a daily conflict within him, hating that he always saw the worst in everything rather than trying to see the glass as half full. At the back of his mind he wondered if his father was to blame for this jaded outlook on life. Without even knowing it he realised that he was now psycho analysing himself as he asked why he didn’t have a good relationship with his father. He knew the answer to this question but had always eluded from admitting it.

Anton was woken from his dreams by the static noise of the transceiver in the front of the vehicle when a voice spoke:

Station commander, this is Sergeant Steenskamp, we have been informed that the rebel soldiers have entered Freetown. All men are to turn back and head back to Freetown. Be warned as the rebel soldiers are armed and we have been informed that they are using civilians as human shields. All soldiers need to be armed immediately and ready for combat.

Reality sunk in as Anton looked at Timothy and the other men as they realised that this nightmare was not over. A feeling of reluctance filled Anton and he could see it in the other men too. It wasn’t reluctance due to the fear of combat but rather due to fatigue. They were physically and emotionally drained by this war and wanted to go back home to be with their loved ones. They could only witness so much violence and poverty.

I guess we’re not going home any time soon boys, Kevin said as he turned the vehicle and drove back to Freetown.

Chapter Two

Gravity and its true Nature

The sky was filled with clouds of smoke from the burning tyres and vandalism of the shops in the city as Anton and his men drove into the city. Anton wrinkled his face with confusion as he looked out the window.