Peter Morris worked as a producer and writer in the film industry while living in South Africa and now lives in Portugal working as a teacher and a translator.

Bad City

By Peter Morris

Real African Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Peter Morris
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9870347-6-2
CHAPTER 1

Arrivals

The Sun Lee Meat Festival on the corner of End and Pritchard Streets was well placed to catch the passing trade opening its doors every day except the Chinese New Year.

A sign outside read: JOHANBURG BEST CASH MEAT.

Inside on the wooden block, the chopping was presided over by three expressionless men in bloodstained aprons. The carcasses were brought out from the back and displayed on hooks in the window along with bags of chickens’ feet, sheeps’ and pigs’ heads, loops of grey-blue organs hanging on rods, or lying in their own dirty juices in enamel bowls.

The Sun Lee had been there long enough to have stained the red brick of the building as if the blood of the butchered animals had seeped into its joints. The original proprietor had been an indentured rail worker brought over from the Chinese mainland. When he gained his freedom he got a loan from the Triads. The corner shop was the perfect location, and the business flourished and was sold twice to others who themselves had loans. And the men in cheap suits still visited, still made their presence felt, a protection of their investment and a stop off on their endless collection rounds for the fahfee numbers. There had only been one attempted robbery in all those years, and a young man called Chen Han had carved into the intruder with the deftness of his trade, gutting him. Soon after, he had been invited to go in with his masters. Now he was the one extending the loan and sending his bagman at intervals to filter the cash out in a plastic bag to be taken to his office in the Chinese quarter downtown.

So the meat passed in and out, an intersection of coins and blood. The butchers kept to themselves and did not talk openly with their customers. Expressions never changed, not even in moments of happiness or goodwill or the recognition of luck in holding onto another passing day. A steel shutter banged down each night, concluding the day’s business.

There were two Indian drapers’ shops next to the Sun Lee with cheap sharkskin suits and brogues in the window, two boarded over shop fronts and two identical cafés, one next to the other, catering to what looked like the same clientele, offering the same food, all of them behind wire mesh.

On the pavement a number of stalls were set out on wooden boxes. One sold oranges, another, bananas, the next soap and detergent; while another offered four brands of smokes and one of matches.

By a quarter to eight the morning street was filled with people carrying bags, moving with the day’s destination. The shops stayed open mainly for the three surges of the day. Anyone out on the street after eight in the evening had no money to spend, or were out to collect it.

Joao Mucavinho had been in the city twenty-four hours and there wasn’t much he wanted to remember: the hive of the taxi rank; the emptiness of the darkening streets; the sparkling electricity of the city; an unfinished cigarette waiting for him on the pavement and the cardboard box under the flyover where he had slept. And the bitter cold. Colder than anything he had experienced home in Mozambique. The rest was fear.

He walked into the nearest café – “Mallies” – a five note tucked into the lining of his pocket. Mallies called itself a “restaurant” but it was just another slop house, dishing out chips cooked in three-week-old oil, chicken pieces, offal, stew and pap.

It was quiet in there behind the glass counter from which the proprietor, Ahmed, directed two short-order men from his post at the till. Th