Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

Because her father was at work and her mother was at morning bridge, she let herself into the house that she expected to be deserted except for their maid. The maid had been a young nanny once, but with Ros and Jan grown up the nanny's role was gone. She could hear the maid in the back washhouse. Ros didn't announce herself, went up the stairs to her room.

Because the radio was playing in Jan's room she went to the slightly opened door. It surprised her to hear the radio.

She thought her brother must have left it on when he had gone to Wits – always late. She eased the door open. The room was empty. The bed was made. The radio was playing.

There was a sprawl of papers on the small teak wood desk where he did his studying.

Because Ros sometimes wished that she had gone to university and not straight to work when she had left school, because she always took an interest in what Jan read and what he wrote in his essays, she glanced down at the papers on the table.

Because of that short series of coincidences Ros van Niekerk found herself staring down at the drawn plans made by the old Hungarian for Jacob Thiroko.

She was no fool. She understood immediately the content of the map drawn on the uppermost sheet of paper. The broad strokes of the roads were marked. Potgieterstraat, Soetdoringstraat, Wimbledonstraat. There were rectangular blocks drawn beside the roads. Local, White Political, Pretoria (Old) Central, New Women's, Beverly Hills. She knew what she looked at.

Mechanically, as if she sleepwalked, she lifted the piece of paper. The second sheet was drawn to a larger scale. A rectangular block enclosing another block, and a part of the inner block was drawn in detail. She read. Gate house and radio control, wooden gates, steps, light, watchtower. She read measurements. The longest of the outer lines was marked as 200 metres, what she took to be an inner wall was marked at 100 metres.

She heard the toilet flush down the landing. Her eyes didn't leave the detail. She read. Corridor, C section 1, exercise yard, visit r o o m… She heard Jan's trailing footstep shuffle towards his room. .. She read. Workshop, washhouse, preparation room. She read the one word… She heard him stumbling from the door towards her… She read. Gallows… Jan's hand caught at her, spun her away from the papers.

"What the hell are you doing?"

She faced up to him. He was the boy but he was no taller than her. She could look straight into his eyes.

"You bloody ask yourself what you're doing."

She had never before seen such violence on Jan's face.

She said, "This is bloody treason."

He shouldered past her, he was snatching at the papers.

She caught his arm.

She said, "You can't undo what I've seen. I've read the word. Gallows. That map's treason."

He shook her hand off him. There was a high livid flush on his face. He was vulnerable, in her eyes always had been.

"You shouldn't have come snooping in here… "

"I come in here, I find a map of Pretoria prison. I find a map of the place where they hang people. You have to do better than tell me I'm snooping."

He thrust the papers into his desk drawer. He locked the drawer with the key on his waist chain. He turned to her, defiant, cornered.

"So what are you going to do?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Are you going to inform on me?"

"I'm your sister, Jan. Your bloody sister. Where did you learn that sort of bloody talk? Sister, got it."

"Are you going to Father, are you going to the security police?"

"For God's sake, I'm your sister. I love you, you're my brother."

They clung to each other.

Ros said softly, "How long have you been living a lie, Jan?"

"I swore an oath of secrecy."

"I'm your sister, I'm not your enemy."

"It was an oath, Ros."

"We never had secrets."

"You wouldn't understand."

"That my brother is involved in treason, perhaps I wouldn't understand that."

"Treason is their word. It isn't mine."

"Jan, I love you, but you are involved in something that is against the law."

"That's important?" He shouted at her. "It's only important because it's against the law? Don't play the bourgeois cretin, Ros. The evil in this country is ending, its time's up.

We're on the march, going forward. It's over for the Boers and the racists… "

"The Boers make the laws." Her voice raised against his.

"If you go against the law then you go to prison."

"I swore the oath, Ros."

"For what?" A snap of contempt.

"To be able to look in the eye the men and women of our country. To have my pride. You have to fight something that is wrong. Not like those bastard businessmen fight it, mealy statements about 'concern', plane trips to Lusaka to plead with the Freedom Movement not to give all their shares and their stocks to the people when the revolution comes. Not like those crappy Liberals at Wits, all piss, all wind. I fight the evil with the language the system understands."

She snorted at him. "What do you do?"

"I do my part."

She couldn't help herself, there was the sneer of the elder sister. "What's your part? Running messages on your little moped?"

"My part."

"How can little Jan van Niekerk hurry the revolution?"

"I do my part."

"The Blacks wouldn't trust you."

"They trust me."

"How do they trust you?"

He turned away from her. He went to his bed, flopped down. His head was in his hands.

"I swore an oath of secrecy."

"How do they trust you?"

She knew he would tell her. She had always had the power to take anything from him, even the things that were most

" precious. He was always weak in her hands.

"Is it the terrorists of the African National Congress? How do they trust you?"

He spoke through his fingers. She had to lean forward to hear him.

"The bomb in John Vorster Square. I delivered it to the man who placed it."

"What?" Incredulity widening her mouth.

"They trust me that much. I moved that bomb."

"You could go to prison for the rest of your life."

"That's a God-awful reason for backing off the fight against evil."

"Rubbish."

He looked up at her, clear faced. "You go to the police, Ros."

She hissed, "Say that again."

"Just go to the police, Ros, turn me in."

She took the step towards him. She raised her hand. He didn't flinch. She slapped his face. His head rocked. She saw the smile that was beaming up at her.

"What are you going to do?"

She stared out of the window. She saw the maid hanging the washing on the rope line. She saw her father's good quality shirts, and her mother's good quality underwear, and she saw Jan's T-shirts and her blouses. She saw neat gardens ablaze with shrubs and flowers. She saw a Black man collecting grass cuttings. She saw their world that was comfortable and familiar, and now threatened.

"I'm going to fight to keep you out of prison."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that on your own you'll rot the rest of your life in prison."

The words were music to Jan van Niekerk.

Quietly he told her that he was under instruction to go to a certain place and deliver a message for a man to make a rendezvous. He knew the name of the man. He said it was the man who had taken the bomb into John Vorster Square police station. He told her that he had to meet the man and give him the plans of the Pretoria Central prison complex.

"Left to yourself, little brother, you'll rot for the rest of your life," Ros said.

The man was White.

He had been born in Latvia. He was a colonel in the K.G.B. He was marked for assassination by the security police and National Intelligence Service in Pretoria. He was the chief planner of Umkonto we Sizwe operations inside South Africa. More than a year before he had authorised the fire bomb attack on the Rand Supreme Court. That attack was one of a long list of projects that had crossed his desk.