by Andre Brink
She got up out of the chair and went over to the window behind the overloaded desk, a narrow figure against the darkening evening outside, a childlike defencelessness about her shoulders and the trim roundness of her bottom.
“If there really was a specific incident which made me open my eyes,” she said, turning back to him, “it was something utterly trivial in itself. One day our housemaid fell ill at work and in the afternoon I took her home to Alexandra. She’d been with us for years, first with Dad and me; then, after my marriage, with Brian and me. We got along very well; we paid her decent wages and everything. But that was the first day I’d ever set foot in her house, you know. And it shook me. A tiny brick house with two rooms. No ceiling, no electricity, concrete floor. In the dining-room there was a table covered with a piece of linoleum, and two rickety chairs, I think, and a small cupboard for crockery; and in the other room a single bed and some paraffin boxes. That was all. That was where she lived, with her husband and their three youngest children and two of her husband’s sisters. They took turns with the bed; the rest slept on the floor. There were no mattresses. It was winter, and the children were coughing.” Her voice suddenly choked. “Do you understand? It wasn’t the poverty as such: one knows about poverty, one reads the newspapers, one isn’t blind, one even has a ‘social conscience’. But Dorothy was someone I thought I knew; she’d helped Dad to bring me up; she lived with me in the same house every day of my life. You know, it felt like the first time I’d ever really looked right into someone else’s life. As if, for the first time, I made the discovery that other lives existed. And worst of all was the feeling that I knew just as little about my own life as about theirs.” With a brusque movement she came from behind the desk and picked up his empty glass. “I’ll get you some more.”
“I’ve had enough,” he said. But she had already disappeared, followed by a couple of soundless cats.
“Surely you didn’t get divorced because of that?” he asked when she came back.
Her back turned to him, she put a record on the player, one of the late Beethoven sonatas, turning the volume down very low; almost imperceptibly the music flowed into the cluttered room.
“How can one pinpoint such a decision?” she said, curling up in her chair again. “That wasn’t the only thing that happened. Of course not. I just felt more and more claustrophobic. I became irritable and unreasonable and uptight. Poor Brian had no idea of what was happening. Neither did Dad. As a matter of fact, for about a year I stayed away from him altogether, I couldn’t face him, I didn’t know what to say to him. And after the divorce I moved into my own flat.”
“Now you’re back with your father,” he reminded her.
“Yes. But I didn’t come back to get pampered and spoilt again. Only because, this time, he needed me.”
“And then you became a journalist?”
“I thought it would force me, or help me, to expose myself. To prevent myself from slipping back into that old euphoria again. To force me to see and to take notice of what was happening around me.”
“Wasn’t that rather drastic?”
“I had to do something drastic. I knew myself too well. It wouldn’t take much to sink back slowly into self-indulgence and the wonderful luxury of being cared for by others. But I dare not let it happen again. Don’t you understand?”
“Did it work?” Ben asked. The second brandy was reinforcing the effect of the first, causing him to relax in heavy mellowness.
“I wish I could give you a straight answer.” Her eyes were searching him keenly as if hoping for a clue or a cue from him. After a few moments she went on: “I went on a long journey first. Just wandering about. Mainly in Africa.”
“How did you manage that on a South African passport?”
“My mother was English, remember. So I got a British passport. It still comes in handy when the paper wants to send out a reporter.”
“And you came through it all unscathed?”
A brief and almost bitter laugh. “Not always. But then, I couldn’t really expect to, could I? After all, that was one of the reasons I’d broken away.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged, noncommittal. “I really don’t see why I should pour out all my sob-stories on you.”
“Now you’re the one who is evasive.”
She looked straight at him, weighing, reflecting. Then, as if she were depressed or threatened by something unless she could move around, she got up again and started wandering about the room, pushing the odd book into line with the others.
“I was in Mozambique in ‘74,” she said at last. “Just when Frelimo was getting out of hand after the takeover.” For a moment she seemed to have thought better of it; then, her back turned to him, she said: “One night on my way back to the hotel I was stopped by a group of drunken soldiers. I showed them my press-card but they threw it back at me.”
“And then?”
“What do you think?” she asked. “They dragged me off to an empty lot and raped me, the whole lot of them, and left me there.” An unexpected chuckle. “You know what was the worst of it all? Arriving back at my hotel long past midnight and finding that there was no hot water.”
He made a hopeless, angry gesture. “But couldn’t you report it or something?”
“To whom?”
“And the next day you flew straight back?”
“Of course not, “she said. “I had to finish my assignment.”
“It’s madness!”
She shrugged, almost amused by his frustrated anger. “Two years later I was in Angola,” she said calmly.
“Don’t tell me you were raped again?”
“Oh no. But they arrested me with a group of other foreign journalists. Locked us up in a schoolroom until they could check our credentials. Kept us there for five days, about fifty or sixty people in that one room. It was so crowded, there was no space to lie down and sleep. One simply had to prop oneself up against one’s neighbours.” Another chuckle. “The main problem was not so much the heat or the lack of air or the vermin, but a stomach complaint. The worst squitters I’ve had in my life. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I left in the same pair of jeans I’d been wearing when they caught me.”
From the bottle of brandy she’d brought with her, she touched up his glass, uninvited, and her own as well.
“Soon after that the paper sent me up to Zaire,” she went on. “When the rebellion started. But that wasn’t quite so bad. Except one evening, when we were on the river in a small motor boat and suddenly got caught in crossfire. We had to drift downstream, clinging to any old piece of wreckage, hoping they wouldn’t shoot us all to bits. The man with me got a bullet in the chest but he pulled through. Fortunately it was getting dark, so they couldn’t see us any more.”
After a long silence he asked, aghast: “Didn’t it muck you up completely? That time in Mozambique – didn’t it make you feel you’d never be the same again?”
“Perhaps I didn’t want to be the same.”
“But for someone like you – the way you grew up – a girl, a woman?”
“Does that really make a difference? Perhaps it even made things easier for me.”
“In what possible way?”
“To get out of myself. To free myself from my hangups. To learn to ask less for myself.”
In one gulp he emptied his glass, shaking his head.
“Why does it surprise you?” she asked. “When you first got involved with Gordon – the things that came naturally to you I had to learn from scratch. I had to force myself every inch of the way to get there. And sometimes it still frightens me to think I haven’t got there yet. Perhaps ‘getting there’ is just part of the great illusion.”
“How can you talk about anything coming ‘naturally’ to me?” he protested.
“Didn’t it then?”
And now it was inside him it was happening, the sudden loosening, like a great flock of pigeons freed from a cage. Without try
ing to stop or check it, encouraged by her own confessions and by the lived-in ease of the room in that comforting dusk which made confidence possible, he allowed it to flow from him spontaneously, all the years he’d cooped up inside him. His childhood on the Free State farm, and the terrible drought in which they’d lost everything; the constant wandering when his father had the job on the railways, and the annual train journey to the sea; his university years, and the ridiculous rebellion he’d led against the lecturer who had sent his friend from the classroom; and Lydenburg, where he’d met Susan; the brief fulfilment of working among the poor in Krugersdorp, until Susan had insisted on a change, embarrassed by living in such a place surrounded by people so far below them; and his children, Suzette headstrong and successful, Linda gentle and loving, Johan frustrated and aggressive and chomping at the bit. He told her about Gordon: about Jonathan working in his garden over weekends and growing moody and recalcitrant, and mixing with questionable friends and disappearing in the riots; and his father’s efforts to find out what had happened, and his death; about Dan Levinson, and Stanley, and his visit to John Vorster Square; and Captain Stolz, with the thin scar on his white cheekbone, and the way he’d stood there leaning against the door throwing and catching the orange, squeezing it with casual, sensual satisfaction every time it came down in his hand; every single thing he could think of, important or irrelevant, up to that day.
After that it was quiet. Outside, night had fallen. From time to time there was sound – a car driving past, the distant siren of an ambulance or a police van, a dog barking, voices in the street – but muffled by the old velvet curtains and the many books padding the walls. The Beethoven had ended long ago. The only movement in the room, now and then, almost unnoticed, like shadows, was that of cats sidling or rippling past, looking for a new spot to sleep, yawning, smoothing their fur with small pink tongues.
Much later, Melanie got up and took his glass from him.
“Like some more?”
He shook his head.
For an instant she remained close to him, so close he could smell the slight scent of her perfume. Then she turned and left the room with the glasses, her dress swinging round her legs, her bare feet soundless on the floor. And in her soundlessness and the quiet grace of her movement he found something so intensely sensual that he could feel his face grow hot, his throat tautening. An awareness of him and her alone in this half-dark house, and the silent lustre of the light, the wealth of books, the stealthy shadows of the cats; and beyond the walls of the double room with its grotesque elephant tusks, there was the suggestion, a mere subconscious stirring, of other rooms and other dusks and darknesses, available emptiness, beds, softness, silence. A consciousness, above all, of her, this young woman Melanie, moving, invisible, somewhere through those darknesses, familiar and relaxed on her bare feet, attainable, touchable, overwhelming in her frank and unevasive woman-ness.
Almost terrified, he rose. And when she came back, he said: “I didn’t realise it was so late. I’d better go.”
Without saying a word she turned to lead him back to the front door, and opened it. On the stoep it was quite dark, the day’s warmth still slumbering in the stone; she didn’t turn on the light.
“Why did you invite me in?” he asked suddenly. “Why did you take me away from the courtroom?”
“You were much too alone,” she said, with no hint of sentimentality in her voice, a simple statement.
“Good-bye, Melanie.”
“You must let me know if you decide to do anything,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Think it over first. Don’t rush it. But if you do decide to follow up Gordon’s case, and if you need me for anything” – she looked at him in the dark –"I’ll be glad to help.”
“I’m still too confused.”
“I know. But I’ll be here if you need me.”
He did not answer. His face was burning in the half-hearted brush of the evening breeze. She stayed behind as he went to the car. There was an unreasonable, ridiculous urge in him to turn back and go into the house with her and close the door behind them, shutting out the world; but he knew it was impossible. She herself would send him back into the very world she’d delivered herself to. And without daring even to wave, he hurried through the rusty gate and got into his car. He switched on the ignition, drove a few yards uphill, turned into a driveway, and came back down the incline, past her house. He couldn’t see whether she was still standing there. But he knew she had to be somewhere in the dark. “Where have you been? Why are you so late?” Susan asked, vexed and reproachful, as he came from the garage. “I was beginning to think something had happened to you. I was on the point of phoning the police. ”
“Why would something happen to me?” he asked, peeved.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I just couldn’t come straight home, Susan.” He wanted to evade her, but she remained standing in the kitchen door, the light behind her. “The court gave its verdict this afternoon. ”
“I know. I heard on the news. ”
“Then you must understand. ”
She looked at him in sudden suspicion and revulsion: “You smell of liquor.”
“I’m sorry. “ He made no effort to explain.
Indignant, she stood aside to let him pass. But as he came into the kitchen she relented: “I knew you would be tired. I made you some bobotie.”
Grateful and guilty, he looked at her. “You shouldn’t have taken the trouble.”
“Johan had to eat early, he went to the chess club. But I’ve kept ours.”
“Thanks, Susan.”
She was waiting in the dining room when he came from the bathroom, his hair damp, his mouth prickling with toothpaste. She had taken the silver out, and opened Château Libertas, and lit some candles.
“What’s all this for?” he asked.
“I knew the case would upset you, Ben. And I thought the two of us deserved a quiet evening together. ”
He sat down. Mechanically she offered him her hand for the evening prayer; then she dished up the minced meat, rice and vegetables in her brisk, efficient way. He felt like saying: Really, Susan, I’m not hungry at all. But he didn’t dare to; and for her sake he pretended to enjoy it, in spite of weariness lying like a heavy lump in his stomach, weighing him down.
She was talking brightly, eagerly, deliberately trying to humour him and make him relax; but with the opposite effect. Linda had telephoned and sent him her love; unfortunately she and Pieter wouldn’t be able to come over the next weekend, he was working on a Bible-study course. Susan’s mother had also phoned, from the Cape. Father had to open some administrative building in Vanderbijlpark in a few weeks’ time and they would try to stay over. Ben resigned himself to the flow of her conversation, too tired to resist.
But she became aware of it, and stopped in the middle of a sentence to look at him sharply. “Ben, you’re not listening.”
He looked up, startled. “Pardon?” Then he sighed. “I’m sorry, Susan. I’m really flaked tonight.”
“I’m so glad it’s over now,” she said with sudden emotion, putting her hand on his. “You’ve had me worried lately. You mustn’t take these things to heart so much. Anyway, it’ll be better now.”
“Better?” he asked, surprised. “I thought you said you’d heard the news of the verdict? After everything that had come out in the inquest.”
“The magistrate had all the facts, Ben,” she said soothingly.
“I heard them too!” he said angrily. “And let me tell you—”
“You’re a layman like the rest of us,” she said patiently. “What do we know about the law?”
“What does the magistrate know about it?” he asked. “He’s not a jurist either. He’s just a civil servant.”
“He must know what he’s doing, he’s had years of experience.” With a steady smile: “Now come on, Ben, the case has run its course and now it’s over. Nobody can do anything about i
t.”
“They killed Gordon,” he said. “First they killed Jonathan, then him. How can they get away with it?”
“If they’d been guilty the court would have said so. I was just as shocked as you were when we heard about Gordon’s death, Ben. But it’s no use dwelling on it.” She pressed his hand more urgently. “It’s all over and done with now. You’re home again. Now you can settle down like before.” With a smile – trying to encourage him or herself?- she insisted: “Now finish your food and let’s go to bed. Once you’ve had a good sleep you’ll be your old self again.”
He didn’t answer. Absently he sat listening, as if he couldn’t understand what she was talking about; as if it were a different language.
6
On Sunday morning the photograph of Emily embracing Ben was splashed on the front page of an English newspaper with a banner headline, The face of grief, and a caption which briefly summarised the facts of the inquest (report on page two), referring to “Mrs Emily Ngubene, wife of the man who died in detention, comforted by a friend of the family, Mr Ben Du Toit".
It annoyed him, but he couldn’t care much. It was something of an embarrassment, such a public display in a newspaper; but the woman had been beside herself, she’d obviously acted without knowing what she was doing.
But Susan was upset. So much, in fact, that she didn’t want to go to church that morning.
“How can I sit there feeling everybody staring at us? What will people think of you?”
“Come on, Susan. I agree it was quite uncalled for to splash it like that, but what does it really matter? What else could I do?”
“If you’d kept out of it from the beginning you wouldn’t have brought this shame over us now. Do you realise what problems it may cause my father?”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Susan.”
But later in the day the telephone started ringing. A couple of amused, teasing friends who asked Susan whether Ben had “acquired a new fancy"; one or two – including young Viviers – who wanted to assure them of their sympathy and support. But the others, almost without exception, were negative, some openly hostile. The school principal was particularly abrasive in his comment: Did Ben appreciate that he was an employee of the Department of Education and that political action by teachers was severely frowned on?
