The Curator

by Jacques Strauss

  ‘Sies, man,’ Petronella says. ‘That’s nothing to laugh about.’

  He turns to the article about the vet who castrated himself after cheating on his wife. The vet displays the instruments from his surgery that he used. The man’s wife is proud of him. It goes to show, she explains, how committed he is to their marriage.

  The doctor says the check-up may take a few hours, so Werner tells his mother to phone when he’s needed again and leaves. It’s been a long time since he’s had an afternoon off, but he’s not sure what to do. In the car park a group of black teenagers approach him.

  ‘Baas!’ they say, ‘Please, baas, we watch the car for baas, nice.’

  ‘You weren’t here when I arrived,’ he says.

  ‘No, baas – we see baas. We watch the car nice. Please – give us two rand. We are so hungry. We eat nothing.’

  ‘Leave me alone. My father has just died. I don’t have the energy for this.’

  They slink away. It is wonderful how one can wield death, like an axe, to drive people away, even a pack of street children. He drives back to the flat. Sunnyside used to be a nice suburb, and although there are still many students who live here, there are more and more blacks moving in. On the top floor of their building are two Nigerian men. Petronella is convinced they are drug-dealers. Werner thinks she is probably right. If they do not move soon, they will be trapped in Sunnyside, like the pensioners who are trapped in Hillbrow. This is another reason his father must die soon. His mother has suggested they sell the flat and use the additional money to buy a smaller place somewhere safe, preferably in Pretoria East, which she believes will remain white for the rest of her lifetime. Werner resists this idea. The money is his. He has no desire to buy a flat in which he and his mother will spend the rest of their days. His gallery, he tells her, is a better solution. Once his gallery is up and running, he will be able to buy her a flat wherever she chooses. He may even be able to buy her a house and then she can give up her job in the hospital. She will no longer have to supervise a ward filled with blacks in their death-throes.

  At home he watches the news and a soap opera. The characters live in a nice multicultural building. There’s a coloured woman who is continually bickering with a racist Afrikaans tannie from the platteland. Actually they are best friends and would do anything for each other. They are the lovable comic duo. It is anesthetising and he rarely misses an episode. The phone rings. He ignores it. His mother can wait. But two minutes later the phone rings again. Maybe his father is dead. He jumps up and answers.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer the first time?’

  ‘I was in the toilet. Do you want me to pick you up?’

  ‘Your father is sick,’ she says.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he says breathlessly. It’s lucky that excitement and concern can sound so much the same. His mother starts crying. ‘I’m supposed to be a nurse. The doctor says he has a severe infection.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Werner says.

  ‘How could I not know? Why didn’t he say something?’

  ‘He’s losing his mind, Ma. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘He must be in so much pain.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Ma.’

  She sniffs and stops crying. ‘I thought his colour was a bit off.’

  ‘Do you want me to come by?’

  ‘Do you know,’ she says, not answering him, ‘it’s very lucky we took him in when we did. At least we caught things pretty early. Another day or two and he could have been terribly ill.’

  ‘Ja – it’s lucky,’ he says flatly.

  ‘Can you come and pick me up in an hour?’

  ‘Sure, Ma. Wait for me outside. We’ll pick up some takeaways on the way home.’

  He puts down the phone. ‘Fuck!’ How much further servitude has his childish impulse bought him? He goes to the kitchen and pours himself a glass of wine. What can he do, short of smothering his father with a pillow, short of outright murder? He lights a cigarette. His mother goes to bed at ten and gets up between five and six. An overdose of morphine? Do they have any morphine? If not, could he buy some? Perhaps the Nigerians upstairs could provide him with heroin? Would the hospital perform an autopsy? Werner shakes his head. Is he really thinking about murdering his father? It’s not murder. Euthanasia. It’s unlikely that anyone would perform an autopsy. He is a bedridden man with a brain injury, who has suffered multiple strokes. There would be nothing suspicious about his death. It is difficult to imagine injecting a dose of badness. His hand would shake uncontrollably. His father would wake up. He would know what Werner was doing. He would call out. His mother would wake up. She would catch him murdering. It would be worse than the time she caught him masturbating. But a lethal dose of heroin would be a good way to go. What would be a lethal dose anyway? Would the Nigerians upstairs know? How much does heroin cost? He could tell the Nigerians his father is in terrible pain. They can no longer afford the painkillers required. He looks at his watch. He’s running late. He hurries downstairs and drives to the hospital.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ Petronella asks as she gets into the car.

  ‘Just a glass of wine,’ he says.

  ‘You smell like a brewery. Why do you drink so much?’

  ‘I was worried about Pa.’

  ‘You mustn’t drink so much. Do you want to get diabetes?’

  ‘Let it go.’

  ‘Maybe I should drive.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. How’s Pa?’

  ‘Not good,’ she says. ‘I’m worried.’

  Werner puts his thoughts of murder on hold. Please, God, he thinks, don’t force my hand. I’ll be really pissed off.

  The next day at work a colleague knocks on his door.

  ‘Morning,’ she says brightly.

  ‘Morning,’ he says.

  ‘Have you heard the news?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Bureau has appointed a new assistant curator.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought you wanted the job?’

  ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘It was something I thought about a while ago.’

  ‘Everyone says you wanted to work for the Cultural Bureau.’

  ‘Well – everyone is wrong.’

  The woman is disappointed. ‘Well, you would never have got the job anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ he says sharply.

  The woman narrows her eyes. ‘You did want the job.’

  ‘I said not really – but why do you think I couldn’t have got it?’

  ‘Affirmative action. They employed some black. A fine-arts graduate. Anyway, you’re too old now. Best you stick with this. Some people say if you stick around you’ll be head of the department in ten years.’

  In the evening they visit his father in hospital. Werner takes some consolation from the fact that the man looks unwell.

  ‘The infection must be getting worse,’ his mother says.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The antibiotics,’ she says, looking at the drip.

  ‘Have you spoken to the doctor?’ he asks.

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘There is nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Then why are you worried?’

  ‘For a doctor there is never anything to worry about when a person is old.’

  He hopes this is true.

  5

  HENDRIK WALKED AROUND the back garden picking up the empty beer bottles, while Maria cleared away the plates.

  ‘Maria, you can have the rest of the vetkoek. It’s in the kitchen.’

  ‘Thank you, baas.’

  ‘There’s some foil in the drawer. Take the plate – but bring it back tomorrow morning before the missies sees.’

  ‘Yes, baas.’

  Petronella had gone to bed earlier in the evening and Hendrik had been left to entertain the teachers.

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘Yes, baas?’

  ‘Tell me – do you know the maid who used to wor
k for Mrs Labuschagne?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I mean the one who worked in the house.’

  Maria turned on the hot-water tap and squeezed some washing-up liquid into the sink.

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘Yes, baas?’

  ‘I said do you know her?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What do you mean: you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know if you mean this one or that one or that one. There are many, many people on that farm.’

  ‘No, Maria, I mean do you know the lady who worked in the house?’

  Maria put the dishes in the soapy water. She was not a talkative woman but was rarely evasive. It was irritating, but he understood it was not insolence, rather the discomfort she felt about discussing the Labuschagnes.

  ‘It’s just the missies said to me that the maid saw what happened.’

  ‘Baas, I don’t want to make trouble. This girl – she is a very stupid girl.’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Her father is my mother’s cousin. It’s a very bad thing, baas.’

  ‘But she’s spoken to the police?’

  ‘Yes, baas. She tell them everything.’

  ‘Is it true that she tried to stop him? You know, the baas.’

  ‘Some people say.’

  ‘Have you not spoken to her?’

  ‘No, baas.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘He say she is doing nothing. She just sit. She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t sleep. She sit. He say she doesn’t talk.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Lerato. But the missies there, she call her Lettie.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to the farm.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If his brother takes it, they might not want her to work in the house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think maybe she should come and work here?’

  ‘I don’t know, baas.’

  Hendrik put the empty beer bottles into a sack, twisted it and tied a knot in the top. He opened the kitchen door and took the bag of beer bottles outside. When he came back into the kitchen he leant against the kitchen counter, crossed his arms and watched Maria wash the dishes.

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘Yes, baas?’

  ‘You don’t think it will be a nice thing to give this woman a job?’

  ‘I don’t know, baas.’

  ‘Stop washing the dishes.’

  ‘But the missies, she will—’

  ‘Maria, I said stop washing the dishes.’

  She dropped the dish in the sink, but remained where she was, with her back to Hendrik.

  ‘Turn around.’ She did so. ‘Is it not rude in your culture? Huh? To stand with your back to someone when they’re talking to you?’

  ‘Sorry, baas.’

  ‘I was just thinking. The missies told me about the maid – and I thought: ag, shame, this woman is going to lose her job. So I was thinking maybe she wanted to come and work here.’

  ‘In the house, baas?’

  ‘No – not in the house. I thought maybe she could work in the kitchens or she could do some cleaning. There is a lot of work to do here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘If baas say so.’

  ‘Jissus! Sometimes it’s hard to talk to you people.’ He poured himself a whisky and lit a cigarette. Maria stood by the sink, staring at the floor. ‘You can carry on washing the dishes, Maria.’ He laughed. ‘You know – you people are so . . . suspicious. I don’t know. Here I was thinking you’d be happy. And all you can say is, “I don’t know, baas.” Not everyone is out to get you. Don’t you think I am a good baas? If you go down to the farm where we grew up, you’d see the happiest blacks in the world. When I was a lightie I used to play with the bantu kids all day. They were my chommies. I can’t understand why you’re so suspicious. Here we are, having a nice conversation – talking – just like any two people.’ He took a drag of his cigarette. ‘I am going to go down to the farm and I am going to give Lerato a job. I think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Yes, baas.’

  ‘Good. Now finish up. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Yes, baas.’

  ‘Incident’. This was how people now referred to it. At first it was ‘massacre’, then it was ‘murders’ and finally they settled upon ‘incident’ so that, when necessary, it could be discussed without calling to mind the full horror of what had happened. Petronella’s interest was like the rest of the town’s: tabloid-like and mawkish. As far as she was concerned, what took place there, at Moedswill, was completely other and could only be explained by brain tumours or madness. But Hendrik could feel something in the murders, something dim and shrouded, a distant shape in the recesses of imaginative possibility. It was the risk of unwittingly stumbling not just into the possibility, but the necessity, that made him want to understand what happened. Who would know better than Lerato, an unassuming maid, invisible to the family who would bicker and argue and ultimately murder and remain indifferent to her presence? The truth of the thing would be distorted by the gossip of his wife and the women like her, who would talk about it for years, who might even – in the tangle of rumours and misinformation – come across a strand of the truth, but then cast it aside, for there was nothing left by which to judge its authenticity and, in any event, authenticity was not a measure of a thing’s worth to his wife. Did all the white men in the area have the same idea as him? Did all the men not want to find out how to stop themselves before it was too late?

  He poured himself another whisky. The only light still burning was the bare bulb above the sink. It was drawing in the mosquitoes. Whites camped outside Lerato’s hut engaged in a bidding war to secure the secret of not murdering their families. Come and work for me, Lerato, and tell me when I’m losing it. Come and be the bantu in the cave of my soul and, when you start choking, squawk, bantu girl, squawk before I fucking kill the lot of them. The fact that he thought about this: did it make him safer, this self-scrutiny? The pull of death was felt in different places: the train tracks, the rope bridge. The bushveld could be demarcated into areas of instant possibility. The best thing would be to forget it. Forget Lerato. Forget Labuschagne. She could not protect him. She was the danger. Lerato would be a constant reminder that anything was possible. All it took was twenty minutes of doggedness and then the thing was done.

  The pupils were taken down to the dam and given oil drums, jerrycans, planks of wood, bamboo and rope with which to make rafts. The teams had two hours in which to construct their vessel. Afterwards they would race to the other side of the dam. It was a good activity. By now Steyn knew the finer points of raft-building. He had watched the students do this so many times that within the first twenty minutes he could predict who would win the race. To prevent the activity from descending into chaos, he went round from group to group, giving advice on how to improve the construction. It was no good if all the rafts disintegrated.

  ‘If you tie the rope like that, it’s going to come loose.’

  ‘How should we tie it, oom?’

  ‘Think, man – think! When you put the raft into the water, what’s going to happen to these jerrycans?’

  ‘They’re going to float, oom.’

  ‘Ja, they’re going to float. So they’re going to pull up like this.’ Steyn tugged on the jerrycan. ‘So do you think it’s a good idea to put them here?’

  ‘No – maybe here.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe you’re not so thick as you look.’ The boys laughed.

  Werner and Marius came down to the edge of the dam to watch.

  ‘Hey, lighties,’ Steyn said.

  ‘Hello, oom,’ the boys said.

  ‘You don’t have cricket today?’

  ‘No, it was cancelled,’ Marius said. ‘We were going to play Fairlands.’<
br />
  ‘I heard. They’re from Johannesburg?’

  ‘Ja – but their bus broke down yesterday.’

  ‘That’s a shame. And Werner – why are you so quiet?’

  ‘Nothing, oom – just thinking.’

  Steyn took a cigarette out of his packet and lit it. ‘Mmm, I worry when you think, Werner. It usually means trouble.’

  ‘No, oom. No trouble today.’

  ‘Marius, what’s your brother thinking about?’

  ‘Girls.’ Werner punched his brother and Marius laughed.

  ‘Hey, Werner – have you got a girlfriend?’ Steyn asked.

  ‘No. Marius, you’re so stupid.’

  ‘Hey, Werner – don’t be so ugly, man. He’s just a little lightie.’

  ‘He has such a big mouth. He always thinks he’s being funny.’

  ‘Let me tell you: it’s good to have a brother. Maybe he’s just a little lightie now . . .’

  ‘I’m not a little lightie. I’m eleven.’

  ‘Ja, Marius. You’re right. You two are practically the same age.’

  ‘No, we’re not.’

  ‘One day you will see – two years is nothing. Does your ma know you two are down here?’

  ‘Ja – what time is oom finishing today?’ Werner asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe three. Why?’

  ‘I was just wondering.’

  ‘You think because I am down here you can go and cause kak, huh?’

  ‘No, oom.’

  Steyn stubbed his cigarette in the gravel. The area around the dam was lush and green and the bush was so thick in places that you’d have to take a machete to carve your way through. He looked at the boys building the rafts with a mixture of jealousy and contempt. Unrelenting exposure to these smooth, brown-limbed Peter Pans, who arrived sullen and self-assured, like the regular striking of the clock, made him feel the slow decay of his body, the sapping of his prowess.

  Werner knocked and, when nobody answered, he opened the door. Steyn was lying on his bed.

  ‘Werner?’

  Even through the sweetness of the freshly cut thatch, he could smell that Steyn had been drinking, and that sourness mixed with the ripe smell of Steyn’s sweat. There were four empty cans of Castle lager on the bedside cabinet.

  ‘What do you want?’ Steyn asked.