Borderline

by Marita van der Vyver

  Jacques, however, decided that he was going to study economics and ‘become as rich as possible as quickly as possible’, not necessarily in South Africa. He wanted to get his military service over and done with, so he could start making money. And then he went and got himself selected for the navy. It was probably no picnic but he wasn’t sent to the bush; he never went near the border. And whatever it was that he had to do out at sea, at home he didn’t discuss it with his sisters. They were still only schoolgirls; he was starting to behave like a man. A bit full of himself, but Theresa was nevertheless proud of him, ramrod straight in his dashing black uniform with the white cap that made his suntanned face look more handsome than ever before.

  Much too full of himself, she’d decided by the end of his military service.

  Then she became a student too, at the same university as her brother, but while she sought fellowship among ‘left-leaning liberal party animals’ (his description of her friends), he felt at home among the more ambitious and more moderate students, the academic high achievers and star athletes. They drifted further and further apart.

  And, to Theresa, the war remained as incomprehensible and as unreal as ever. The border was an abstract concept, not a place. And the place beyond the border, inside Angola, was unimaginable.

  The youthful rebelliousness that had made her mother sigh so deeply, almost inevitably nudged her towards the left after she finished school. Never very far left. She attended an Afrikaans university where anyone who so much as questioned the National Party’s policy could feel like a rebel with almost no effort. Her friends were ‘dissenting’ language students or future philosophers, drama students and art students who dressed weirdly, but not a single one of them ever actually stormed the Christian-Nationalist barricades. They preferred sitting around in pubs, drinking, to attending political meetings.

  When she started working as a reporter in Cape Town in the early eighties, she made new friends. They were still overwhelmingly white, still mostly Afrikaans, but some were actively involved in the Struggle – as the fight against apartheid laws was generally known – and she sometimes took part in demonstrations with them. From journalistic curiosity more than anything else. She even ended up in a township on a few occasions, visited some of the residents in their homes along with a friend who worked for a democratic legal aid organisation, attended a protest meeting in a church hall where her pale skin and blonde hair made her feel like a creature from another planet.

  And she was sprayed with tear gas once, when she found herself, almost by chance, in a protest march against conscription. That was something she would never forget. The way your throat and your nose and your eyes caught fire, the way tears streamed down your cheeks and you gasped for air and coughed helplessly until you wanted to vomit to get rid of the burning pain.

  There were people who were regularly exposed to this sort of torture, she realised that evening, studying her bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror in her flat on the mountainside. And to far worse punishments that she could scarcely imagine. Electric shocks, wet sacks pulled over heads, punches and kicks, solitary confinement.

  Alone in a cell for weeks or months on end.

  ‘I would’ve been a pathetic activist,’ she confesses to her colleague Theo at the paper the next day. (They are at this point best friends and colleagues. Nothing more.) ‘If I am this traumatised by a bit of tear gas.’

  ‘We can’t all be activists,’ he deadpans and lights her a cigarette.

  ‘Yes, but we also can’t all be doing nothing either,’ she counters, between anxious puffs of the cigarette.

  ‘We are not doing nothing. We are changing the system from within,’ Theo reminds her with his customary ironic smile.

  But she’s in no mood for irony today. Her eyes are still stinging a little. Whether it’s the physical aftermath of the tear gas or actual crying, she doesn’t know.

  ‘We are doing fuck-all to the system, Theo – you know that as well as I do. The thing is, and don’t laugh at me, now, I feel a need for … greater commitment.’

  He raises his eyebrows above his clear blue eyes and deliberately misunderstands her. ‘What is it with women and commitment? Mitzi has been accusing me of a lack of commitment for weeks now.’

  Mitzi is his current partner, as delicate and pretty and Bambi-like as all her predecessors. Theresa is relieved to hear the relationship is nearing its end. Because she knows by now that once they start complaining about commitment, it’s only a matter of time.

  ‘I’m talking about a different kind of commitment, Theo. I am looking for a connection with a more diverse group of my fellow citizens. I can’t go toyi-toyi in a township – it would make me feel completely fake. I am on the side of black people, I know the system is unfair and the laws have to change, but I cannot actually feel their pain. That’s why I think the End Conscription Campaign is something I could support …’

  ‘Because you can feel the pain of the white guys who have to go to the border?’ His tone isn’t even ironic now, it’s openly sarcastic.

  ‘No, of course not, but I see the damage around me every day. Every single one of you who was sent to the border is fucked up one way or another.’

  He exhales a few angry smoke clouds, like a fiery dragon, before he picks up the conversation. ‘And you think the ECC can help us?’

  ‘No, it’s too late to help you lot.’ She is unaware of how cruel these words must sound. At this stage she has no idea of what Theo endured on the other side of the border. ‘But if conscription were cancelled or even just changed, it would help all those guys who would otherwise be called up in the future. Never mind all the black people they would have to shoot at.’

  ‘If my mother knew I was working with a nice Afrikaans girl who wanted to help the “terrorists” on the border …’ He looks genuinely amused. ‘She would never forgive you.’

  Prophetic words, Theresa would reflect years later.

  Throughout her marriage she believed that there must have been some mistake, that she could make her mother-in-law like her if only she figured out how. ‘I’m a nice person!’ she insisted to Theo and Nini and her sister and anyone else who was prepared to listen. ‘Aren’t I?’ Everyone usually agreed. But after the divorce she conceded defeat and cut all ties with Elize. Which only made her former mother-in-law even more hostile.

  But on this day in a Cape Town newspaper office she just shakes her head at her colleague’s levity. She has no reason to believe that she may someday be introduced to Theo’s mother. Let alone become her daughter-in-law.

  ‘It has long ceased to be just about the border,’ she reasons with Theo. ‘You know these days the soldiers are being sent into the townships. Imagine having to sit inside a tank and shoot at children whose mothers and fathers could be working in your kitchen or in your garden.’

  ‘When you’re sitting inside a tank, you don’t look at the faces of the people you are shooting. You just shoot.’

  ‘Even if they are children?’

  ‘If you have been brainwashed thoroughly enough, you shoot at anything that moves.’

  He isn’t looking at her; he is gazing out the window, at the harbour and the sea, the cranes and the ships, Robben Island on the horizon.

  ‘But how do you carry on living? Once you have done that?’

  ‘Fuckit, Marais, now you are becoming far too serious for a Thursday morning. Don’t you have a story about a beauty queen you have to go write?’

  ‘Go to hell, Van Velden.’

  She stubs out the cigarette and marches back to her cubicle. She isn’t really cross with him; this is just the way they talk to each other. ‘Well hello, you old slut,’ she would tease him when there’s yet another new Bambi dangling from his arm.

  ‘Fuck off, Marais, you’re just jealous because you aren’t getting any.’

  ‘What would you know about my sex life, Van Velden? I’m not a show-off like you!’

  Mocking and self-mocking comrades. Nothi
ng more.

  Theresa did become a supporter of the ECC – but as usual she didn’t go ‘all the way’. She wasn’t actively involved in the movement; she cheered them on from the sidelines, more or less the way her father and her brother supported the Western Province rugby team. With loud shouts of encouragement, and by buying and wearing clothing and accessories that displayed their allegiance. Theresa bought a stack of T-shirts with ECC slogans to distribute among her ‘leftie’ friends, but she didn’t give one to Theo.

  ‘He’s just not really a T-shirt kind of guy,’ she made excuses for him. ‘He prefers yuppie shirts with collars and buttons.’

  ‘Give it to him to wear when he goes jogging,’ a colleague suggested.

  ‘He’s also not really a guy for wearing his heart on his sleeve or for declaring his beliefs on his chest, hey?’

  She wears her own ECC T-shirts often, once even to a Sunday lunch at her parents’ house. Her mother and father say nothing – it is possible they don’t know what the letters ECC stand for – but her brother confronts her in the kitchen shortly before they sit down to eat. ‘Who are you trying to impress with that T-shirt?’ His voice is quiet because he doesn’t want their parents to hear, but his tone is aggressive.

  Theresa is holding the dish with roast potatoes she had come to fetch in the kitchen, and looks down at her T-shirt with a show of innocence. A white background with the black letters ECC very discreet, like three links in a broken chain. Black outlines of armoured cars and the slogan, War is no solution. ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘You’re only doing it to upset Ma and Pa.’

  ‘I chose this one precisely because I didn’t want to upset them. The other one has a map of South West Africa with blood dripping from a machine gun and a whopping great slogan that says Peace Now SADF Out.’

  ‘You’re looking for trouble. As always. You and Pa are going to end up fighting and then everyone’s lunch will be ruined again.’

  ‘I could always divert attention away from my T-shirt by telling them you’re planning to emigrate soon?’

  ‘I’ll tell them myself,’ he says, just a little too quickly.

  ‘When?’ The roles of attacker and defender have switched.

  ‘Not now.’ He glances at the door as if he feels trapped. ‘It’s not the right time.’

  ‘But it’s the right time to criticise my political principles?’

  ‘I’m not criticising your “political principles” – I don’t even know if you have such a thing – I’m criticising what you’re wearing.’

  At that moment their mother walks into the kitchen, immediately senses the tense atmosphere, and looks at them anxiously: ‘What are you two fighting about now?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Ma. Jacques thinks I’m not properly dressed.’

  While Hannie studies her daughter for a moment, Theresa tries to see herself through her mother’s eyes – long blonde hair always a little unkempt, no make-up, white T-shirt with a slogan and black jeans ripped at the knee, with grubby black sneakers – but there is no hint of disapproval in Hannie’s eyes, only endless forbearance. Theresa tries to look at her mother with the same forbearance. Hannie’s lips are still pink from the lipstick she applied before church this morning, her short dark-blonde hair combed neatly as always, but she has at least changed out of her church dress. She is now wearing what she considers ‘casual wear’: navy-blue slacks with a pleat ironed down the front, and a floral-print blouse.

  ‘I don’t care what you wear when you come home,’ she says, bending down to take the lamb roast out of the oven. ‘I am only too happy to see you for a change.’

  She carries the roast to the dining-room table where her husband is already waiting. Before Theresa follows with the roast potatoes, she sticks her tongue out at Jacques. She is still young enough to sometimes behave like a child – especially when visiting her parents’ home.

  When she takes her seat at the table next to her sister, Sandra smiles sweetly and says, ‘Nice T-shirt.’

  Theresa had increasingly been starting to question whether her sister really was the naive Snow White everyone thought she was.

  Her mother probably knew what ECC meant, she realised years later. Hannie Marais had often acted dumb in order to keep the peace in the house. She herself might even have supported an organisation that could prevent her son from being sent to the border. But she would never have admitted it out loud, especially not to her husband. To keep the peace.

  In the mid-eighties, by the time Theresa and Theo had finally become an ‘item’, she bought two cassette tapes that she often listened to while driving her old Beetle. Forces Favourites was a collection of songs you would never hear on the radio, by South African musicians who openly opposed conscription. Songs like ‘Don’t Dance’ by the Kalahari Surfers and ‘Shot Down in the Streets’ by the Cherry Faced Lurchers and ‘Too Much Resistance’ by Nude Red made her feel less alienated in her own country.

  It didn’t provide the connection with her black fellow citizens that she wanted so badly. After so many decades of apartheid, it wasn’t as though she could suddenly boast with a slew of black friends. But the sense that more and more white people also felt the way she did, seemed like a sort of consolation prize.

  The other tape she played until it was so worn out she had to keep inserting a pencil into the little hole to spool it back manually, was the mysterious Bernoldus Niemand’s music. He was a ‘rooinek’ who wrote Afrikaans songs under a pseudonym, she eventually discovered, but ‘Hou my vas, korporaal’ was the first Struggle song she ever heard in her own language. Even Theo listened to Bernoldus Niemand, surprised that Afrikaans music could simultaneously be so funny and so subversive. ‘Snor City’, which roundly sent up all the moustache-wearing men in his hometown of Pretoria, made him laugh out loud.

  Sometimes this alternative South African music also got playtime at her friends’ parties, along with Bob Dylan’s or Joan Baez’s protest songs. One summer evening on a balcony in Vredehoek, everyone had drunk too much cheap box wine and ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’ got stuck on a turntable somewhere inside the flat – ‘Everybody must get stoned … get stoned … get stoned’ – until a bearded guest in a bandana, who was apparently already stoned, got up with a sigh, walked over to the turntable, took off the record, and hurled it from the balcony like a frisbee.

  ‘My elpeeeeeee!’ the hostess screamed while everyone on the balcony watched in amazement as the round black disc described an arch above the city lights and for a moment hung suspended against the background of the sea. And way in the distance, the twinkling lights of a tiny island where the future president of the country was being held in prison.

  And then someone started giggling, at the Unidentified Flying Object, at the hostess’s screaming indignation, at the record-thrower’s stoned devil-may-care attitude, and within seconds a dozen people on the balcony were helpless with laughter. It might not have been nearly as funny if everyone had been sober and, well, not stoned.

  But what Theresa particularly remembers about that evening is that it ended with everyone standing in a circle in the middle of the sitting room, their arms slung around one another’s shoulders and rocking from side to side as they sang in full voice, ‘We shall overcome’. Even in her inebriated state she recognised the absurdity of the gesture. A dozen white South Africans appropriating a gospel song from the American civil rights movement because they didn’t know the words of the Struggle songs their own black fellow citizens were singing.

  Just as well Theo hadn’t been at this party. She couldn’t imagine him singing along, even if he was drunk out of his skull. And afterwards he would have mocked her mercilessly for allowing herself to be co-opted into situations like that against her better judgement.

  15. SUN HAT, SCARF, AND SUNGLASSES

  The city traffic is behind them and the highway stretches out ahead. She looks up at the fleece clouds veiling the blue sky, enjoying the warm breeze on her bare arms. Ruben had wanted
to close the roof of the old sports car to protect her pale skin from the sun on the long road to Cienfuegos, but she’d stopped him. She preferred to apply a thick layer of sunscreen to the exposed parts of her body. The wide brim of her sun hat, which she has secured with a long scarf tied under her chin to keep it from blowing away, also provides a band of shade across her nose.

  And even if she arrives in Cienfuegos with a reddened face, a bit of sun damage is a small price to pay for this feeling of almost reckless freedom she is experiencing in an open sports car on the open road. Probably the closest a cautious woman like her would ever come to the excitement and adrenaline of extreme sports.

  When did she become so terribly cautious? So scared of any kind of injury, whether physical or emotional? She’d been rebellious from an early age – more so than anyone else in her family anyway – but her rebelliousness was always tempered by caution. ‘Take a walk on the wild side,’ she would hum along with Lou Reed, but every time she ventured a few steps on the wild side of life, she soon scurried back to safety. Perhaps this built-in fear had been her salvation when she was younger. She could try everything without ever completely losing her way. But after she and Theo were divorced, her fear began to hold her back. Perhaps it was precisely because he had tossed all caution to the wind – and she’d been a witness to the terrible consequences – that she started living more and more cautiously.

  More and more fearfully.

  Or perhaps it was just an inevitable part of growing older.

  And yet. Here she is riding in a Plymouth Fury 1958 through an unknown country, with a stranger at the wheel, on her way to who knows what may be waiting for her in the next unknown city. This could be the most courageous thing she has done in twenty years.