The Curator

by Jacques Strauss

  As he walks home he decides not to go straight to his rondavel and cuts through the bush instead. He finds himself in small clearing by the river. He washes his face and his hands. Like a baptism, he thinks. Like a christening. Steyn the kiddy fiddler. Steyn the paedo. Steyn the pervert. He takes off his clothes and scrubs his body. He washes between his legs and his thighs over and over again. Then he sits on the riverbank and cries, not for what he still might lose, but for what he has already lost. He cries because God has turned him into a monster. He cries for being given a life not worth living; a life of perverted, thwarted, terrible desire. He cries for his sons. He cries for his wife. He cries for the poison in his veins, which every boy can smell. And when there is nothing left he walks home, sits on his bed and waits. He listens for the sounds of approaching footsteps. He listens for the knock on the door. He listens for Hendrik. What will he say? Pervert – that’s what he’ll say. He won’t knock. He’ll kick open the door and say, ‘You fucking pervert.’ Then he’ll hit Steyn. And if this happens, he will take it. He’ll lie there on his bed and take it. He won’t hold up his hands to shield himself from the blows. He won’t apologise, for that will be craven and cowardly. He will have the only kind of dignity a pervert can have. He will say nothing and do nothing. He will take it like a man. And then Hendrik will either call the police or run him off the camp. Whatever he decides to do, there will be no protest. Above all, Steyn will have dignity. So he waits and waits, but Hendrik never comes and he finally dozes off.

  The following morning he packed his things and went to Pretoria. His mother was surprised, but happy to see him. It was late afternoon by the time he arrived. She’d bought tickets for a play at the university theatre. Would he not like to join her? He agreed to go along. He was never one for the theatre, but the performance was passable. During the interval he drank two glasses of wine when his mother went to the bathroom. A woman saw him and made a joke about the play not being that bad. From close up, he could see that she was a few years older. Did he want to go for a drink? He did not care about the disapproving way his mother looked at him when he told her he’d be going out afterwards. He and the woman walked to a bar in Hatfield. She knew a place where the students didn’t go. She was in no mood for hostel brats. The place had changed since Steyn lived here. The university had built more skyscrapers. He was taking all this in when the woman asked what he thought about the play. He shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know much about the theatre.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ she said and laughed.

  ‘Did you have anything to do with it?’

  ‘I directed it.’

  ‘In that case, I liked it very much.’

  She laughed a little. She was completing her Masters degree in drama. A sure sign, she said, that she was a failed actress. She had different aspirations now. She wanted to be a theatre director or perhaps a playwright. They sat down in a small bar. He ordered a beer and she ordered a glass of wine. ‘There are some famous people in the department. Some of South Africa’s greatest actors and actresses. Luminaries.’ He nodded. And what did he do?

  ‘I teach.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Geography.’

  They had a few more drinks and made small talk. Eventually she said, ‘I hope you understand, I’m not loose. I’m liberated.’ Steyn nodded. ‘I take it you’re the strong, silent type,’ she said. Steyn shrugged and she laughed. He downed his beer.

  They walked back to her apartment. She shared a flat with another postgrad, but she was away. They opened a bottle of wine. By the time she led him to the bedroom he had to steady himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said. The sex was satisfactory. At one point she put Steyn’s hands on her neck and told him to squeeze, just a little. He shook his head and she blushed. Afterwards Steyn had to sit upright in bed, to prevent the room from spinning. He stared at the buildings in Sunnyside. He could see his mother’s block, not far away. Eventually he dozed off. He woke just before dawn with a stiff neck. It was drizzling outside and cool. He got out of bed and started getting dressed. The woman stirred.

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Are you married? I don’t care if you are.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not kinky or anything.’ Steyn looked at her, not sure what she was referring to. ‘I thought you’d want something different from your popsie girlfriend.’

  ‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘Do you want to see me again?’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘Just wait a minute – I’ll make you some coffee.’ She got out of bed and put on a robe. He followed her into the kitchen. She made two mugs of instant coffee. ‘Damn – I don’t have any milk. I spend all the time at the theatre and never do any shopping.’

  ‘It’s fine. I like my coffee black. Thank you.’ Steyn thought how it could be pleasant to do this. To make love to a nice woman and then stand around in the kitchen, while it was raining outside, sipping coffee. He liked the anonymity of Pretoria. There were many blocks like this, ten, fifteen storeys high, each with dozens of apartments filled with couples and families, all rousing for the morning in flats that smelt of tinsel.

  On a notepad she wrote down her full name and address, her home telephone number, her office at the university and her work number.

  ‘Here,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’ He folded the piece of paper and tucked it into his pocket. ‘I have to go.’

  She nodded and kissed him on the cheek. It was only a little after six. His mother would soon be awake, but he did not want to go back to her flat. So he walked through Arcadia, along the streets he used to play in as a child. He wondered if Werner had said anything yet. Perhaps Hendrik had phoned his mother’s flat. Perhaps the police would come knocking on the door. Here in the street he could be an innocent fugitive. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were looking for me.

  When he went back to the flat, his mother asked him if he had had a nice evening.

  ‘Very nice, thank you.’

  ‘She seemed like a nice girl.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Are you going to see her again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘The marriage is over.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. I did nothing. I was just not meant to be married to her.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There is nothing to understand. But if you want to talk about this, I will leave.’

  ‘Please don’t leave. I hardly see you.’

  ‘Then stop it.’

  ‘Are you going to see the boys?’

  ‘At Christmas.’

  ‘You were so beautiful together.’

  14

  WERNER HAS BEEN granted two weeks’ compassionate leave. He makes a discreet enquiry about whether it is transferable. Could it not, perhaps, be tacked on to his annual leave? There is stunned silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Never mind,’ he says to the woman from HR and puts down the receiver. Two weeks of leave is not what he needs now. After he drops his mother and brother off at the airport, he drives home and opens a bottle of wine. He drinks it quickly and smokes half a packet of cigarettes. It is a relief to be rid of his mother.

  He has not thought of Johann in many years. Perhaps he has opened his motorbike shop after all. Would Johann understand that Werner’s father has committed a gross injustice by leaving the money to him? Could Werner go to Johann and say, ‘My mother and I cared for my father for more than a decade. He has left us destitute. Taking this money is not right.’ Destitute; a good old-fashioned word, and to make an appeal on behalf of his mother was good too. ‘My father has left me and my mother destitute.’

  He falls asleep on the settee at seven in the evening and wakes up at around four the next morning. There is nothing to do, so he takes a sleeping pill and goes back to bed. He wakes up
at nine, groggy and bad-tempered. There is a knock at the front door. Still half-asleep and smelling of alcohol, he opens the door. It is Ezenwa, the Nigerian missionary. He is holding a bouquet of flowers. Werner invites the man in. Ezenwa takes in the flat: the overflowing ashtrays, the empty bottle of wine, the dirty plates and dishes. Werner quickly tries to clear the worst of it, stacking the plates and removing the ashtray and bottle of wine to the kitchen. He offers Ezenwa tea or coffee, but he declines. He has put the flowers on the dining-room table.

  ‘My mother has gone on holiday. But she will be very grateful for the flowers. Thank you.’ The man nods. Werner considers apologising for the other evening, but decides against it. He has suffered a bereavement, which should wipe the slate clean.

  ‘When my father died,’ Ezenwa says, ‘I was very sad. When I heard, I thought about my own father. And I have been thinking about you and your mother. I have been thinking about how sad you must be.’

  Unexpectedly Werner feels a wave of affection for the man. His words bring a lump to his throat and his eyes start tearing up.

  ‘Let us pray,’ the man says. He takes both Werner’s hands and they sit side by side on the settee. Together they recite the Lord’s Prayer. Werner opens his eyes when they say ‘Amen’, but the man squeezes his hand and recites the prayer again. They repeat the prayer over and over again like an incantation. It is not the religiosity of the gesture so much as its intimacy that touches Werner.

  When the man leaves, he sits on the settee for a long time. He cannot simply wait in the apartment for two weeks and then return to work. He telephones the lawyer and asks for Johann’s and Lerato’s telephone numbers. The lawyer’s tone changes. It would be a mistake, he warns Werner, to do anything rash.

  ‘Johann is a childhood friend,’ he assures the man. ‘I thought it would be nice to get in touch.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We are over the initial shock.’

  ‘And Ms Dlamini?’ the lawyer asks.

  Werner is not sure what to say. He eventually settles on the explanation that he is curious. The lawyer says that, in his experience, it is best to leave the past alone. No need to cause any further pain to his mother.

  ‘You can understand my point of view,’ Werner says. ‘My father seems to have had an affair with a black woman in 1976. Maybe she was the love of his life. Maybe he was the love of her life.’

  ‘I think you are making a serious mistake. I really think you and your family should just move on.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  The lawyer relents and gives him Johann’s telephone number and address. For the woman he only has an address; it’s a farm called Moedswill.

  ‘Does she work on the farm?’ Werner asks. The lawyer does not know. He has sent letters to the farm’s owner, in an attempt to reach the woman. If she is uneducated or illiterate, then he will look to the farm owner to make suitable arrangements for the management of the money on her behalf. Of course the woman might have left or be dead. There is still a lot of information that he needs to obtain.

  ‘What if the woman cannot be found?’ Werner asks.

  ‘We will find the woman.’

  ‘But if you can’t?’

  ‘Well, then the money becomes part of the residue.’

  ‘The money comes to us?’

  ‘Your mother.’

  ‘Do you not have a telephone number for the farm?’

  ‘It is a curious situation,’ the lawyer says. ‘Most of the farm seems to be leased to another company. I believe the owner lives in the farmhouse. But there is no number.’

  There is hope that the woman has simply disappeared. Werner would like to know at what point the law finally grows impatient and turns its beneficent gaze back upon him, the rightful heir, but he does not ask. Blacks, as he well knows, without birth certificates, passports or paperwork of any kind, disappear all the time. It would be less of course than he’d hoped for, but something may yet be salvaged. This small bit of news lifts his spirits. He looks at the address. Johann still lives in the same house. Are they all still there – an infestation of rats? What would Johann make of this windfall? He’d spend the money on some ludicrous scheme: a bar, or motorbikes. His father might as well have flushed the money down the toilet. Perhaps he could appeal to Johann’s sense of honour; perhaps he could guilt him into fifty grand or so. I got nothing, Johann. My mother and I got nothing. He dials Johann’s number. A woman answers. She is young, sweet-sounding. He can’t speak and puts down the receiver. On the fridge his mother has left the contact details of the friend in Port Elizabeth. He calls his mother. He too has decided to take a holiday. Where? Durban, he lies.

  As he drives east towards Mozambique, the landscape becomes greener and lusher. He stops in Emalahleni for breakfast and then again for tea in Machadorp. Free of Pretoria and the flat and his life, his mood improves as he heads towards Barberton. It is extraordinary, he thinks, that he has not been back. But then what was there in Barberton?

  When he arrives he experiences the strange intersection of the familiar and the unfamiliar. He parks the car in the main street and finds a small tourist office. He picks up a brochure that lists local hotels and bed and breakfasts. The location of each has been marked on a map. There is a small family hotel near the Lomati dam, within the nature reserve. Studying the map, he sees that it is within walking distance of the camp, which itself has been renamed Mpumalanga Eco Camp. He calls the hotel to check if they have any vacancies and books a room. When the receptionist asks how long for, he hesitates. Would it be extravagant to stay for a week? A week, he tells her.

  His hotel room is basic. The furniture is raw pine, but the bed is comfortable and there is the added benefit of a small television. He unpacks his clothes and pushes the suitcase under the bed. And now? It is late afternoon. He has not formulated a plan as such, but he has come here to do things – to get things done. At the back of the hotel, with views of the dam, is a bar and restaurant. He sits down outside, orders a pint and smokes a cigarette. There are only a few guests staying in the hotel. A family with two children, an elderly couple, two women in their late fifties and a few young people that Werner takes to be foreign backpackers. The family, he thinks, are from Germany. They are sitting too far away and talking too quietly to be sure. The view is good, but not magnificent. Can that really be the dam? His dam? It looks smaller, muddier than he remembers. That is the story of his life. Everything is smaller, muddier than it should be. He finishes his beer and then walks towards the dam. He turns round to get his bearings. In the distance he can see a cluster of buildings that must now be the Eco Camp. The receptionist told him that it’s a ‘private place for rich kids’.

  Even though it is now late afternoon, it is still hot and the high-pitched hum of the bushveld is loud and insistent. He swats away a cloud of gnats. The dam is further than it looks and several times he stops to catch his breath and mop his forehead. As he approaches the water he sees a boy, fourteen perhaps, standing on the bank. Werner sits down on an old tree stump and starts undoing his shoelaces. After he has taken one shoe off, he sits up, to catch his breath. The boy, who has not seen him, kicks off his flip-flops and with the insouciance of youth, slips out of his shorts, shirt and underwear to reveal his small hips and firm young arse. Werner blushes. He has intruded on a private moment. He feels like a thirty-three-year-old man who has snuck into a teenager’s bedroom to watch him change. Still, he cannot stop staring. The boy puts on a swimming costume and wades into the water. Werner bends down to remove his other shoe; this the protocol he has adopted of a fat man on holiday. It is permissible to remove your shoes, roll your trousers up to mid-calf and stand in the shallows. It would be unacceptable to expose any more. Once the boy has swum some distance out, Werner gets up and walks towards the water, leaving his shoes and socks behind. Here at the dam, where so much happened, he is overcome. Can he feel a panic attack coming on? No, not that, but the urge to cry. Ridiculous! He bends over and splashes his
face with water. Did he ever look that beautiful to Steyn? Did he ever make Steyn want to weep, as this boy does him? He cannot imagine it. They were together three times. Together. A strange word for what transpired, but that is how he thinks of it. And after that, Steyn chose his brother instead. Perhaps his brother made Steyn want to weep. But people do not love Werner. He is not beautiful.

  In the evening he has dinner outside. It is a little cool but pleasant. The family sit a few tables away. They are later joined by the boy he’d seen swimming. He is transformed into a sullen teenager, wearing baggy jeans, a sweater and a baseball cap. His mother says something to him and the boy shrugs. They are not German. They are Scandinavian. Danes? Swedes? He cannot tell. The father speaks to him and the boy removes his baseball cap. He brushes the long blond fringe out of his eyes and tucks some of his hair behind his ears.

  It is unseemly to stare at a teenager. Werner angles his head so that anyone would think he’s looking at the views. Nobody here knows he’s a failure. What would they think about a fat man holidaying alone in Barberton? He couldn’t be a businessman, not in this hotel. A writer perhaps? Or an artist? He settles for being a writer. Should the opportunity arise to talk to the boy’s parents, he will say he is a writer. And if they ask about his books he will make something up. Being Swedes or Danes, they are unlikely to know better. Or would they? The problem with the Scandinavians is that they are so cultured. Those two stern-looking adults and their beautiful offspring probably have a lively interest in post-colonial literature; would want to discuss Coetzee and Gordimer and Lessing. He imagines having dinner with the family. He could tell them how he grew up not far from here and how those early years still exert a significant force on his work. In what way? they would ask. Oh, you know, the politics, but also the land. There is something, he would say, about this place that is unforgiving. The adults would nod solemnly. And afterwards he would overhear them say to their son: You are lucky to have met a writer. He thinks these things while he drinks and waits for his food to arrive.