55 pages • 1 hour read
Lauren BeukesZoo City
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 33-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary
Zinzi and Benoît head to Odi’s neighborhood, where Benoît, clothed in his security guard uniform, convinces the guard that he’s early for the shift change. Once the current guard leaves, Benôit opens the gate and lets Zinzi’s Capri through. They have a limited time to act before the actual shift change shows up.
At Odi’s house, Benôit and Zinzi sneak up behind James. Benôit knocks him out, and they see that James was gathering equipment: a surgical saw, three hacksaws, an axe, and a pair of pliers. On the patio, they find a heavily drugged and bloody Carmen, who is stabbing herself with a knife at Mark’s command. Mark reveals that Carmen was supposed to become an animalled superstar, in the vein of the disgraced Slinger, but Zinzi made her suspicious of Odi and ruined their relationship. Mark notes that the knife Carmen is using leaves very distinct wounds; he says that the victims at Mrs. Luthuli’s were stabbed to death before they were burned.
Zinzi asks if the burned bodies were Song and S’bu, and Mark confirms that they were not, although the victims were street kids who resembled the twins, and he thinks the police will assume that Song and S’bu died in the fire. Mark also lets Zinzi know he left a half-filled container of petrol beneath the sink in her apartment—the same petrol used to start the fire.
Odi is about to perform a ritual: Mark will contribute his shavi, which is making others’ shavi more potent. A struggle breaks out, and Zinzi and Benoît tie Mark to a table with the zip ties from Benôit’s security uniform. Just then, “something sickly white and huge with scales” emerges from the pool (333). It traps Benoît in its jaws and drags him under.
Chapter 34 Summary
Zinzi dives in after Benoît and swims into a tunnel beneath the pool until she finds a cavern, where she comes up for air. The creature, an albino Crocodile, is trying to kill Benôit. Zinzi lunges for it, but Sloth stops her—she knows there’s nothing she can do to help Benôit.
At the cavern’s edge, Odi stands with a naked Song and S’bu, who are handcuffed together. Patrick’s Aardvark is still alive. Amira pulls it from a cage and grabs a machete.
Gathering her courage, Zinzi dives again to find her own lost thing: Benôit. The Crocodile strikes her, cracking her rib. Under the water, she feels a corpse with two bandaged fingers and realizes it’s Ronaldo. She retrieves Benôit’s body from where the Crocodile jammed it and fights her way back to the surface. Ronaldo’s body bobs behind her. As she works to revive Benôit, who still has a pulse, she hears Odi ask the twins if they’d like to be friends with his Crocodile.
Once Benôit is breathing again, Zinzi turns her attention to Odi and Amira. Amira has killed the Aardvark, along with a Toad. Song and S’bu have been released from their handcuffs and are circling each other, holding knives; the Crocodile lies near them. S’bu stabs Song repeatedly, and Zinzi realizes they are drugged. She calls out, and Odi points his gun at her. Zinzi dives into the water, taking shelter under Ronaldo’s corpse, but is hit by two bullets, one that grazes her ankle and one that lodges in her collarbone.
S’bu stabs Song repeatedly until she dies. The Undertow is coming. Odi commands the Crocodile to eat Song’s flesh. It takes a bit of her leg. He slices open his palm, drags it through the dead animal entrails, and says, “I offer this boy in my place. Let him not be animalled. Let him take mine” (346). Fearing the Undertow, S’bu says “I take this animal” at Odi’s command (347). The Crocodile lunges at S’bu, but with affection; it’s bound to the boy instead of Odi. Amira shoots S’bu in the head.
The Crocodile head-butts Song’s body as Odi and Amira escape. Zinzi emerges and tells the Crocodile they plan to chop it up and sell it for muti. The Crocodile motions toward the stairs; Zinzi climbs, leaving Benôit behind because she can’t carry him.
On the patio, Amira has freed Mark from his bonds. They shove Carmen into the water as Crocodile bait; the animal emerges and closes its jaws around Odi. Odi grabs his gun and shoots the Crocodile in the head. Mark and Amira leave him to die, giving up their plan to sell the Crocodile for muti. Armed security finds Zinzi poolside, with Benôit’s Mongoose.
Chapter 35 Summary
From an article from the Daily Truth, written by Mandlakazi: Investigators find 20 bodies in Odi’s compound, including a skeleton that they think is Lily Nobomvu. Mandlakazi reports that Odi was a zoo and says that money is missing from his account. She also mentions that a Mach senior editor—Gio—has been running email scams from his office.
Chapter 36 Summary
Zinzi heads to the Zimbabwe border with forged papers in a now-black Capri. Benoît remains in the hospital trying to recover from bite wounds imbued with magic. Zinzi has Benôit’s wife and children’s names and ID numbers, and she’s going to find them—although she’s still under investigation and doesn’t have permission to leave South Africa.
Chapters 32-36 Analysis
Mrs. Luditsky, the murdered mashavi, and Song and S’bu are all part of a single plot to free Odi from his animal, an albino Crocodile. Odi has stayed hidden so no one would find out that he was animalled, which would have revealed his criminal activities, including drug smuggling and murder. Prior attempts at separating from his Crocodile account for the writing black stubs Zinzi can see around Odi’s head.
Mark and Amira selected Zinzi to frame for the crimes from the beginning. At the end of the novel, she is still under investigation. Zinzi cannot save Song and S’bu, or any of the animals. She does, however, rescue Benoît and help Mandlakazi publish the truth.
As mentioned by Ndebele in Chapter 18, twins are thought to have magical powers in many folk religions, which helps to explain their presence at Odi’s separation ritual. Song and S’bu have acquired tremendous fame and wealth by becoming musicians, but because they are orphans, they are vulnerable to exploitation. Odi punishes them for any kind of recreational drug use by sending them to rehab, but he happily drugs them with prescription medication and sangoma remedies. The twins die tragically before they can separate and before each can become actualized on his or her own. S’bu is forced to kill his sister—similar to the way Benôit was forced to kill his friend as a child soldier—and he spends his last moments knowing what he did, which reinforces Odi, Mark, and Amira’s cruelty.
Despite the ongoing investigation, Zinzi heads to Zimbabwe to meet Benoît’s family while he convalesces from his wounds. She says this will be “the best thing” she’s ever done with her life (358). It seems likely that she will bring them back to Benoît, thus using her talent to find lost things to help the person she loves most—even if it means losing him.
