The Curator

by Jacques Strauss

  ‘No – leave it for now.’

  Outside, dogs were playing with a torn rugby ball. He wondered how it was that the family had again adopted a pack. They looked friendly enough. When was it that that ousie came to the house selling grass brooms? There was a moment before it happened when everyone knew – even the ousie – what was coming. Something about the stance of the staffies; the way they all lifted their heads. He tore the dogs off the woman before she was seriously hurt. Petronella gave her some stitches, bandaged her legs and handed her a bottle of disinfectant to apply twice a day. Each dog yelped when Hendrik shot it. After the first one, the other dogs tucked their tails between their legs and started shaking. By the time he’d killed the third, he’d broken into a sweat. The last dog sat in the corner, whimpering. He raised his gun, took aim and then lowered it again because he couldn’t keep his hand steady. He grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck, pressed the barrel against its head and pulled the trigger. He made a point of remembering the difficulty he had in shooting the last dog. Years before he’d walked into his bedroom with a gun behind his back. He had sufficient rage and despair to shoot his wife, but perhaps not enough to carry on and kill the rest. Maybe only farmers had what it took. Nellie could wring the necks of chickens and slice the throats of lambs. The ease with which she performed these tasks unnerved him, but he admired her brisk efficiency. His ample black maid killed things all the time too – chickens, goats, sheep – with even less sentiment.

  He glanced at the newspaper lying on the table. Perhaps the Labuschagne woman had had an affair, which sent the husband into a rage. He could not imagine Petronella having an affair. Moedswill; a strange name for a farm – purposefulness or wilfulness or wantonness? Or was it moedswillig? Spiteful? That time in the bedroom, he stood there while his wife was sleeping and considered what he would have to do next. He would shoot Werner. Then Marius. And then he would shoot himself. That was the only thing one could do. But at what point was one’s courage likely to fail? After the first child, or the second? When the house was littered with bodies and you had to put the barrel in your own mouth? He was young and drunk. Was the gun even loaded? Labuschagne slaughtered his children as an act of mercy, an act of love. But from where did he get the will? Did the first murder not drain him of his anger and his madness? Did the first murder not make him keel over with shock and grief and horror? Did he not sweat and puke, as Hendrik did after shooting a dog? A dog. Where did this man find the strength, the resolve, to walk through the house executing his children?

  Werner and Marius came into the kitchen and joined their mother at the table. She ruffled the boys’ hair, but Werner shrugged her off.

  ‘Ag, child,’ she said, ‘is it too much for a mother to touch her son?’

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and took a cigarette out of Hendrik’s packet. She stood by the kitchen door and smoked. Petronella allowed herself only one cigarette a day, since she read that smoking caused crow’s feet. Early in the morning, with her family around her like this, she felt a sense of ease. Petrus was tending to the garden. He had worked for Hendrik since they’d moved here. She was not sure how old he was. Looking at him, you would guess at least sixty. But life out here was hard. She would not be surprised if he was younger. Petrus was the most senior of their servants and, as such, entrusted with ferrying the boys to and from school. The workers’ village where the blacks lived was about a hundred metres from the house, tucked away behind a thick clump of wattle trees and bush. She could smell the cooking fires in the village and saw thick plumes of white smoke. Someone had probably thrown a wet branch on the fire. Beyond the thatched huts was a gorge with a small river, which ran into a dam that was used for the veld-school activities. Before they moved here, she and Hendrik lived in Pretoria. He taught geography at a local high school and she was a nurse in a state hospital. When the position at the camp was advertised she was not enthusiastic. Petronella believed her husband should have concentrated his efforts on becoming a principal of a real school. But over the years she first grew accustomed to, and then fond of, the rhythms of the place.

  Steyn, the assistant principal, stepped out of his thatched rondavel and waved to her. Twenty-eight and separated from his wife, he knew the bushveld better than any of them. He was an imposing man and gave the impression of being ill-tempered, which made him a good disciplin-arian. There was no child that Steyn could not break. If boys were caught smoking or drinking, Steyn would chase them up the koppie, cane in hand, beating their legs, until at least one of them vomited or fainted. But for all his good points, there was no doubt that the man retired to his rondavel and drank. Hendrik said it was none of their business. Petronella worried sometimes that Steyn posed a threat to the girls. In spite of their explicit instructions to all visiting schools that girls NOT WEAR BIKINIS OR OTHER INAPPROPRIATE ITEMS OF CLOTHING, they did so anyway. It was not as if Steyn had done anything, but who knew if he had the wherewithal to suppress his impulses? And one had to wonder, especially with the English girls, if they had the wherewithal to suppress theirs. Petronella stubbed out her cigarette in the empty flowerpot beside the door.

  ‘Boys, finish up and get changed. Petrus is ready to take you to school.’

  Werner and Marius sat in the back of the pickup truck, a Datsun bakkie, holding their school and tog bags. They pressed against the back of the cab. It was nicer to travel the thirty or so kilometres like this, unless Petrus hit a pothole or a bump in the road. The two steel seats on the side were the most uncomfortable. The morning had turned cool and the boys were wondering whether they shouldn’t have got into the cab instead. Marius pulled his jersey over his knees. Werner clipped the side of his head.

  ‘You’ll stretch it. Ma will be bevoetered.’

  ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘Don’t be a baby.’

  ‘Tell Petrus to pull over. I want to get in front.’

  ‘We’re nearly there.’

  Marius started banging the back of the cab window, but Werner punched him in the arm.

  ‘I’m cold! I’m going to tell Ma!’

  Werner kept on punching him. ‘You’re a big poof. A real moffie.’

  ‘I’m not a moffie.’

  ‘You’re the biggest moffie in school – everyone says so.’

  ‘I’ll tell Ma you’re drawing a picture of Jesus.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You’re not allowed. It’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s not wrong. You’re just a baby.’

  ‘Fine – then I’ll tell her and we’ll see what she says. We’ll see if she says it’s wrong.’

  ‘If you tell her, I’ll fuck you up. I’ll moer you.’

  ‘You see! You know Ma will be mad. You know it. That’s why you don’t want me to say.’ Marius turned around and started banging on the back of the cab again. ‘Petrus! Stop the bakkie!’

  Werner lost his temper and grabbed Marius’s wrist. He twisted it behind his back and Marius fell on the floor.

  ‘What did I say? Huh? What did I say?’

  ‘Please, Werner! You’re hurting me! Please!’

  ‘Are you going to ask Petrus to stop?’

  ‘I won’t. Let me go!’

  ‘Swear?’

  ‘I swear! Let me go!’

  ‘Are you going to tell Ma about the picture?’ Marius said nothing, so Werner twisted his arm a little more and forced it higher so that the tips of his fingers reached just above his shoulder blade. Marius screamed. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No! You’re going to break my arm!’ He started crying and Werner let him go. Marius, whimpering, squeezed himself into the corner between the cab and the side of the bakkie. He pulled his jersey over his knees and wiped his nose on the sleeve. ‘I hate you.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell Ma everything. There are some things Ma doesn’t have to know about.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like when you go and look at the girls when they’re changing in the camp.’

  ‘You s
howed me that! You showed me where to go.’

  ‘You want me to tell Ma?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want me to tell Ma you play with yourself while you watch them?’

  ‘I don’t play with myself. My tottie was itchy because Maria was using that bantu washing powder.

  They travelled in silence for a while.

  ‘Why do you want the picture?’ Marius asked.

  ‘Because . . . just because,’ Werner said.

  Nobody loved Jesus Christ as devoutly as Werner Deyer: Jesus Christ the boy, Jesus Christ the precocious wunderkind. ‘I was in my father’s house,’ Jesus said to his parents. In his father’s house. A boy – no older than Werner – declaring himself the Son of God. All those people fawning. The disciples and Pontius Pilate and King Herod and the crowds of cripples and beggars who reached out just to touch him. All that love; all that adoration! Jesus was magnificent. When people exhorted Werner to love Jesus, it was the easiest thing in the world. Jesus is your best friend, they said. You must love Jesus with all your heart. And Werner did. He worshipped Jesus. Jesus was everything he wanted to be. Beautiful. Powerful. Adored. It was hard to love God. What was God? But it didn’t matter that he had no affection for God. His love of God was manifest through his intense and passionate devotion to Jesus. But when Marius asked, ‘Why do you want that picture?’, a thirteen-year-old could not possibly hope to untangle the myriad desires and beliefs that found full expression in Christ of St John of the Cross.

  In the early evening, before Hendrik came home, the phone rang and Petronella answered. It was Anja.

  ‘Is Steyn there?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Anja, he’s still working.’

  ‘Oh. Did you give him my message?’

  Petronella was annoyed.

  ‘Yes, I did, Anja. But things have been very busy here. I’m sure that he wants to call you. He’s just needs to find the right time.’

  ‘I don’t understand. We were so happy.’

  ‘You know how it is with young men sometimes. They’re very confused. It will work itself out.’

  ‘Every day the boys want to know where their father is. What am I supposed to say to them? What can I tell my sons about their father? Why can’t he just talk to me? I need to understand why. Do you think he doesn’t love me any more?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not it. Anja, I have to go now. But I will talk to Steyn when he gets in. Tonight, I promise.’

  As she put down the phone she heard Hendrik come in.

  ‘That was Anja again,’ she said. He shrugged. ‘Don’t shrug at me. You don’t have to put up with the phone calls.’

  ‘What can I do, Nellie? Just tell her to stop calling.’

  ‘Who am I to tell her to stop calling? She wants to talk to her husband. What sort of man is Steyn that he won’t even talk to his wife?’

  ‘Why do you think a man would refuse to speak to his wife?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Think, woman.’

  ‘Ag no – that’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m going to go and talk to Steyn.’

  ‘I’m warning you to stay out of it.’

  ‘I have to give him the message, don’t I? I have to tell him his wife phoned.’ She walked out of the kitchen door.

  ‘Just give him the message – that’s all.’ She marched towards Steyn’s rondavel and knocked.

  ‘Steyn, can I have a word?’

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  ‘Ag, man – no – it’s too hot. Come outside and have a cigarette.’ He smoked in silence while Petronella thought about what to say. ‘Your wife has been on the phone.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t say sorry to me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But it can’t carry on like this.’

  Steyn blew the smoke out of his nose. He flicked a cigarette butt onto the ground and extinguished it with the toe of his shoe, then kicked it into the grass that was growing underneath the tap.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Nellie?’

  ‘I want you to talk to your wife. I want you to talk to your boys. God knows we’ve all made mistakes. Even me – I’ve done some things in my time. Phone your wife and tell her to pack her things and bring the boys.’ He said nothing. ‘At least talk to her.’

  ‘It’s hot,’ Steyn said.

  ‘Are you not listening? Did you not hear what I said?’

  ‘I heard you, Nellie.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I wish things were so easy.’

  ‘Do you love your wife?’

  ‘Yes, I love my wife.’

  ‘And your boys?’

  ‘I love them too.’

  ‘Well then – it’s easy.’

  ‘Nellie, I will talk to her.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This week.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Petronella said. ‘Come by the house. Any time. I’ll get out of the way.’

  Neither Petronella nor Steyn spoke and the silence was filled by the high-pitched hum of the teeming, fecund bushveld.

  ‘Nellie, I will call my wife, but then I don’t ever want to talk about this again.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said and turned to walk back to the house.

  4

  WERNER HAS HIS own office in a building affectionately known as The Ship. It is the administrative building of the University of the Transvaal. He arrives at his office at seven-thirty to review the files. His first appointment is at eight-thirty. His final appointment is at three-thirty. His job is to decide whether applicants are eligible for hardship bursaries. Although he now has some seniority in the department – he is often called upon to review the decisions of his more junior colleagues – he has been doing the same job, more or less, since 1985, the year following his graduation from the same institution that now employs him. With his degree in art history he’d hoped to get a job as an assistant curator at the university’s Cultural Bureau. Its then-director, Dr Breedt, said Werner was a man of ‘uncommon talent’ and that as soon as a suitable position became available he’d be the first to know about it. Werner took a job in administration and waited. The first interview he ever conducted was with the son of a bankrupt farmer. The boy, embarrassed, recounted his family’s woes at length; the death of his mother; the failure of his father’s crops. Werner nodded and made notes. The boy called Werner meneer – sir.

  He made sure to walk by the Cultural Bureau regularly so that if Dr Breedt happened to be passing, he could say, ‘Morning, Doctor.’ In 1988 the doctor resigned, not having made good on his word.

  The phone rings.

  ‘Deyer,’ he says.

  ‘Werner, I’ve decided to take your father in for a check-up this afternoon.’

  ‘Why, Ma?’

  ‘His bed-wetting. It’s got me worried. I spoke to the day-nurse. She said she took him to the toilet twice. And there’s that cough as well.’

  ‘Well, if you think it’s necessary.’

  ‘Can you leave work early?’

  ‘Ma – it’s not so easy, I have appointments.’

  ‘The medical aid doesn’t want to pay for an ambulance to take him for a check-up.’

  ‘Why don’t you just get a doctor to come round?’

  ‘Maybe they need to do X-rays.’

  ‘Well can’t you ask the doctor to phone the medical aid?’

  ‘That’s not his job. Werner, it’s a small thing. For once can’t you just help me do this?’

  ‘Fine. What time?’

  ‘Three. I’ve taken the afternoon off.’

  He lights a cigarette and looks at his schedule. He will need to cancel two appointments or ask a colleague to cover for him. It’s difficult with the blacks. They never have the paperwork needed. ‘Where is your birth certificate? Where is your father’s death certificate? I know your mother is a maid, but I need proof of her wages. Who is her employer?’ When he calls the employers, th
ey are unhelpful. He doesn’t care, he explains, if they pay below the minimum wage. ‘You don’t understand,’ they say. ‘I do lots of other things for her. I give her food and a place to live. I give her children clothes. I take her to the doctor. I buy her medicine. I’m the one who said the child should go to university.’ Werner’s facility for sorting out difficult cases is one reason he is valued in the department. He hardly ever deals with white students any more. His life and his mother’s life have symmetry. She hardly ever has white patients. Two old-time Boers, accustomed to dealing with blacks in their brusque and paternal manner. ‘Listen to me. You have the HIV, neh? Do you understand about the HIV? Where is your husband? You must tell him to come into the clinic. We must test him for the HIV.’

  Werner and his mother arrive at the flat at the same time. They dress the old man and put him in a wheelchair. Petronella asks the day-nurse to wash more sheets in case there are future accidents.

  ‘That is not my job,’ she says and leaves.

  ‘Bitch.’ Petronella mutters.

  Werner pushes his father’s wheelchair into the lift. In the car park he lifts him out of the wheelchair and loads him onto the back seat of his mother’s Toyota Corolla. Hendrik is passive today. He leans his head against the window and stares out.

  ‘Are you okay, Hendrik?’ Petronella asks. He ignores her.

  ‘He’s bad-tempered, Ma. Leave him.’

  Werner folds up the wheelchair and puts it in the boot. His mother drives. It’s a government hospital and one wing is reserved for state medical-aid patients. In the waiting room Petronella helps Hendrik drink a Coke.

  ‘You’re in a better mood now, huh?’ she asks. Hendrik continues to ignore her. ‘Fine, be like that.’ Werner is reading a copy of You magazine. There is an article about a man whose child was eaten by a crocodile. It includes a picture of a poor and forlorn-looking Boer pointing towards some muddy brown water; in the corner is an inset of a blonde twelve-year-old girl with pigtails. The headline reads: My child was eaten by a crocodile. It makes Werner giggle.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ his mother asks.

  ‘This man’s child was eaten by a crocodile,’ he says.