Imaginings of Sand

by Andre Brink

  I telephoned later from Heathrow to apologise, but Michael wasn’t home, or didn’t want to answer. Unfinished business. God, how much of it have I accumulated in my life. But I have to face it. I’m a big girl now.

  4

  IF YOU ARE to spend a few more hundred pages with me I suppose I should have gone all out from the beginning to make a better impression. You may already have taken a dislike to me. Mea culpa. I am in many respects not a pleasant person. I can be nasty, prejudiced, petulant, vindictive, unreliable, you name it. My father undoubtedly thought of me as a witch. (Perhaps that was what the man on the plane said, ‘Witch’.) That is, if he ever took the time to reflect on me. One learns to deal with many things; others return to haunt you, or to take revenge on you at unguarded moments. It is all the more difficult to cope if one tries, as I am doing, to work through it in what remains something of a strange language. At the same time it offers the kind of distance useful for the soul-searchings I’m indulging in. During my years in London I became quite fluent in English, of course; I’ve been told that I have a ‘flair’. But it can never be my native tongue. And I have delusions of grandiloquence. I tend to say ‘impetuous’ when ‘wilful’ would do, or ‘proceed’ rather than a simple ‘go’. So be warned. You’ll have to take me as I am. Also, I’m left-handed.

  5

  ANNA IS THERE to meet me at the pretentious little airport outside George. In Johannesburg I was swiftly deserted by my two surly companions. One was swept up in the crowd; the other, the textile man with the ring, Mr Tarquin, I happened to see again as we emerged from Customs and he stepped into the enthusiastic collective embrace of a woman and two teenage daughters. I could not restrain myself from sidling up to him and taking him by the arm. ‘Thanks again,’ I said. ‘For everything.’ I patted his hand. ‘Do keep in touch. You’ve got my number.’ I walked off with my scruffy suitcase, followed by their silence. In a dingy cubicle I positioned myself under a shower head that haphazardly and intermittently squirted three thin, well-separated jets of water, two cold, one scalding, in the general direction of my lathered body below, and dried myself with the towel an inattentive attendant had handed me between bouts of shouted conversation with an invisible person presumably at the far end of the airport building. I had a cup of tea, and a sandwich draped over a plate – the persistence of memory – and paged through a lurid Sunday paper. There was something on page three. Centenarian attacked on remote farm. Seventh elderly victim in past three weeks. Massive manhunt launched by police. Commando of farmers scouring district. Minister warns not to take law in own hands. Security to be stepped up in country districts. Mrs Kristina Basson, who celebrated her hundred-and-third birthday two months ago, reported to be in a critical condition. At that stage, mercifully, my connecting flight was called. For three more hours I’ve lolled and dozed, open-mouthed for all I know, this time undisturbed by prospective ravishers. And here, at last, I am; here she is.

  At first I do not even recognise her and walk right past her, stopping to turn only when I hear her voice behind me. Can eleven years make such a difference? This tired, shapeless person surrounded by what seems like innumerable children: is this the sister once held up to me as the model of all I should but never possibly could be? She engulfs me, wetly kisses me, then hands me over to her swarming brood to be pummelled and mauled and drooled upon (‘Auntie, Auntie, did you bring me something?’)

  I fend them off. Ever since what happened in London I’m intimidated by children. I know I’ll have to work on it, but I’m simply not up to it now.

  Emerging at last from the ruck I gasp at her, ‘Anna, is she all right?’

  Her face contorts. But she nods furiously. ‘She’s alive. That’s about all.’

  ‘Can you take me to her straight away?’

  ‘Don’t you want to rest first?’

  ‘No, everything else can wait.’

  I grab my battered suitcase from the conveyor.

  ‘Is that all you have?’ asks Anna; but whether I should read envy or disparagement into her voice is difficult to tell.

  ‘I don’t need much,’ I say, as neutrally as possible. ‘It’s only for a few days.’

  She darts a calculating look at my hand. ‘No ring yet?’

  ‘No ring.’

  ‘But there was one, once?’

  I shrug. Before the inquisition can proceed the children descend on me, pulling and tugging, to wrench the suitcase from me. Anna makes no attempt at all to impose even the semblance of discipline on their tumultuous ranks; it is clear that she has given up. She seems bedraggled and confused, her make-up has been applied half-heartedly, her clothes are nondescript, hanging limply from a body in need of care. How different from the elder sister I remember in her prime, erect and tall and beautiful, with ample breasts and a predilection for dresses and blouses with necklines practically down to her clitoris. The recollection brings a new warmth of sympathy for my sister. But it is tinged with anger too, at the dissipation of all that early energy and exuberance. Look at you now, I feel like saying; but I cannot hurt her so.

  Amid vociferous protests the children are bundled into the back of Anna’s bakkie parked outside; only the youngest, an unpleasant little boy, is allowed inside the front compartment with us.

  ‘Not very comfortable,’ I say, as always putting my foot in it. ‘You should get a car.’

  ‘I used to have one,’ says Anna, with what I take to be a touch of resentment. ‘But Casper thought this would be more practical.’

  ‘For you or for him?’

  She blushes briefly, grates the gears, then explains emphatically, ‘Oh, I have a lot of deliveries to do, you know. Also, it’s easier with the children.’

  ‘Where is Casper?’

  ‘He’s out with his commando. I thought I told you? The farmers are up in arms about this whole business, you can imagine.’

  ‘Isn’t it better left to the police?’

  ‘They don’t trust the police any more. With the elections coming up next week, I tell you, the whole country is in a mess.’ She turns her head to study me. ‘I can’t believe you’re really here. You look so – smart.’

  ‘You look good too,’ I say perfunctorily.

  ‘Please!’ A sudden edge to her voice. ‘I know what you’re really thinking. I must look like a country bumpkin. But when you live the kind of life we have there’s no time to think of appearances.’

  ‘And you think I –’ I’ll have to change the subject; why have we never been able to spend ten minutes together without getting into each other’s hair? I restrain myself to say as neutrally as possible, ‘I want to know about Ouma. How come she was all by herself?’

  ‘Have you forgotten what she’s like? We’ve tried time and time again to get her into an old-age home. She’s as stubborn as always. Worse. And anyway, who would have thought –’ She’s on the verge of tears again. ‘I mean, other people die when they’re seventy or eighty, perhaps ninety. Couldn’t they just have left her to die in peace? For a thing like this to happen when you’re over a hundred –’

  ‘She’s incredibly strong.’

  ‘She won’t survive this. No one else would have come out of it alive. I told you, I think she’s hanging on only to see you.’ Adding with a new touch of reproach, ‘You’ve always been her favourite. Casper says she –’

  ‘I suppose Casper can’t wait to lay his hands on Ouma’s farm.’

  Her face flushes a very deep red. But instead of reacting aggressively, as I’d rather hoped she would, she resorts to the long-suffering whining tone again. ‘It is the family farm,’ she says. ‘And I’m the oldest. Casper is my husband, so it’s only fair –’

  ‘Ouma isn’t dead yet,’ I interrupt her with a flash of anger. Then I let it go: what is the use? I love a good fight; but attacking Anna is like pummelling a pillow. ‘Anyway, I haven’t come to deprive anyone of anything. My life is elsewhere.’

  ‘When we spoke yesterday –’ she says impulsively, a brief
brightness in her voice. ‘I wish you weren’t quite so far away. We used to be so close when we were kids.’

  ‘Not really,’ I say, not to offend her, merely to remind her. ‘You had your own crowd, you did everything together. I was much too young for you. I cramped your style. By the time you were having boyfriends, I suppose I was a real pest.’ I stop to let the memory find its way. ‘You were quite a hit in those days, remember? You could pick and choose. I still don’t understand why –’ I stopped, contrite. ‘Sorry, Anna. I’ve done it again.’

  She gives a small grimace; both her hands are tight on the wheel. She drives like an old woman, staring grimly ahead. The town falls away behind us as we enter the dark mountains. There is a sharp fragrance of pine. I turn down the window; a gust from the sea, far below, comes washing over us. The child shouts in angry protest. I close the window again.

  It has been so many years since I last drove along this pass, but it all comes back as forcefully as that reminder from the sea. The sensation, not of following the contours of the mountains but of moving right into them, enfolded by their moist immediacy, the rich darkness of their colours, the many greens, the blacks and browns and near-reds, the intimation of secret bird and animal life, clusters of virgin forest in deep folds, glimpses of thin white cataracts. Even the child between us falls, temporarily, silent.

  Already I anticipate the next stage. This I will never get used to: the suddenness with which the mountains drop back as one is thrust out on the high plateau beyond. I almost gasp as the high light breaks over us, with a ferocity my eyes are no longer used to. Nothing gentle or attenuated here: all is brutally immediate. A rough and tumbling landscape, ochre and burnt umber (it is too early for the aloes); as if the earth heaved and tossed, and then froze in mid-motion. And then the restlessness subsides, the landscape opens up, the plains unscroll around us to expose its still indecipherable hieroglyphics of scrub and stones, erosion ditches, clumps of brittle grass, clusters of blue-grey sisal plants or prickly pears, rows upon rows of blue hills in the distance. And we, too, become part of this ancient writing, a story whispered among the others in the wind.

  Touches of desert: not as stark as in most of the seasons I remember (the rains must have been recent, and abundant), but emphatic both in its outlines and its detail. Configurations of rock. Patterns of earth and sand. Minimal and bare, the clear lines strip away whatever is mere ornament or fancy, challenging the imagination. A space in which mirage becomes a condition and a starting point. This has always been Ouma Kristina’s landscape. If one looks hard, and for long enough, they will appear, I know: the woman who had her tongue torn out; the one who wrote – because no one would give her pen or paper – on the bark of trees, on rocks, on sand; the one who disappeared, whose footprints simply stopped; the one who tended sheep she turned to stones to prevent their wandering away; the ostrich woman; the tree woman; the child who bore a child; Ouma Kristina herself. ‘Look around you, my child. This is where you’ll find out about what lasts and what the wind will blow away. Once upon a time –’

  ‘Did Ouma ever tell you the story of the woman who came from the desert?’ I ask Anna.

  She glances at me, frowns, shakes her head. ‘Can’t say that she did. She can be such a bore.’

  ‘Well, this woman lived in the desert. No one knew anything about her. And only three times in her life did she ever leave the desert to come into the city. Every time she asked the same question.’

  ‘Which was?’ She stops at a traffic light; we have reached the town. Outeniqua: the name itself lets in a new flood of memories. Awareness of the desert is temporarily suspended, but its intimation lingers.

  ‘She asked the people, “Do you know what I am going to say to you?’”

  ‘A rather stupid question, I must say.’

  ‘The first time she came, the people said No, they had no idea. “You are ignorant,” said the woman, and returned to the desert. Then, many years later, she came back and asked the same question. Remembering the first time, the people slyly said Yes, they knew. “In that case you don’t need me,” said the woman, and she went away to the desert again. For years and years the people kept on talking about her. And then, one day, the woman was back. “Do you know what I am going to say to you?” she asked, as before. This time the people were ready for her. Half of them answered Yes, the other half No. The woman gave a tired little smile and said, “In that case the ones who know can tell those who don’t.” Then she returned to the desert and no one ever saw her again.’

  Anna laboriously turns into a side street. ‘Is that it?’ she says.

  ‘What more do you want?’

  ‘Really, Kristien.’ She stops. ‘We’re here.’

  6

  THE AMAZING THING about the hospital is the birds. The whole red roof of the building, the surrounding bluegum trees, all the lamp posts as far as the eye can see, are covered in birds, all kinds of them, swallows and sparrows and weavers and mousebirds, long-tailed birds of paradise and hoopoes, and even larger ones, hadedas and guineafowl and partridges.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ I ask Anna.

  ‘Where? What do you mean?’ It is obvious that she hasn’t even noticed.

  ‘The birds. Look at them. They’re going crazy.’

  ‘Well, it’s autumn. I suppose they’re getting ready to migrate.’

  ‘The swallows perhaps. Not the others. You ever seen guineafowl or hoopoes migrate?’

  ‘How must I know?’

  ‘They’re Ouma Kristina’s birds,’ I exclaim in a moment of illumination.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why should they …’ Her voice trails off as she notices a pair of barn owls stirring, eyes at half-mast, under an awning near the entrance. ‘Better go inside,’ she says hurriedly and turns back to the bakkie.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘No. This is your turn.’

  There is a flurry of activity at the reception desk when I announce myself. From the deeper recesses of the building a doctor is fetched by a squall of nurses. Hands behind his back, glasses perched on the tip of his fleshy nose, looking for all the world like a benign marabou – is this a hospital or an aviary? – he emits, in several small bursts of chattering, a series of random comments among which I recognise phrases like, ‘Stabilised, thank heavens’ – ‘thirty per cent burns’ – ‘receding danger of lung failure’ – ‘heavy sedation most of the time’ – ‘incredible resources’ – ‘intensive care’ – ‘swelling beginning to subside’ – ‘breathing more easily’ – ‘at her age’ … The rest is submerged in the twittering of his white-starched underlings, one of whom finally escorts me to the end of a very long bile-green corridor.

  A small bundle which I take to be Ouma Kristina lies on a high narrow bed against the wall opposite a large closed window. A tangle of tubes and leads connect her to futuristic machines and drips on tall stands: she seems wired up for an electric chair.

  With showy eagerness the nurse pushes past me and starts chattering, pointing at the objects surrounding us as if I’m a late-comer at a party to be introduced to the other guests. ‘Plasma – antibiotics – glucose – morphine …’ Pleased to meet you all. The introductions are interrupted by a thud against the window opposite, followed by a screeching sound. A starling has hurled itself against the closed pane and now lies dazed, with fluttering feathers, on the outside sill.

  The nurse seems curiously unperturbed, if not wholly unaware of the racket. But I cannot prevent myself from going over to the window. A number of small dead birds are scattered across the path and the threadbare lawn immediately outside the room; it looks like Ouma’s littered yard after that thunderstorm.

  She looks like an ancient withered embryo peeled from a shell. The few wispy hairs on her head resemble the scraggly baby-feathers of a young pigeon; her closed eyes look like a dead chicken’s, the pink lids veined, thin as rice paper. One single talon lies, knobbly and twisted, on the edge of the sheet, with the needles of var
ious drips taped to the wrist; the other, like most of the rest of her, is swathed in bandages. Her face is blotched. There is no sign of life at all in the withered bundle. Bone, I think, everything reduced to bone, as the landscape beyond is cast in stone. How terribly small she is. A little scattering of dolosse, a witch-doctor’s clutter of bones. But what can it still foretell of a future, remember of a too-distant past? Only this insignificant hard knuckle, a joint on which the familiar world hinges on another.

  Another bird flings itself against the pane and falls, flapping, yellow beak gawking in surprise and pain, to the sill below, from where it turns a round, baffled, accusing eye towards us.

  ‘Is she dead?’ I whisper. But the nurse has left already.

  The transparent eyelids flutter. Two pale milky eyes gaze at me from their deep hollows. She whispers something. The talon unfolds, then closes again.

  I bend over with my ear against her mouth. There is the merest sigh of breath.

  ‘Open the window,’ she whispers.

  ‘But –’

  A weak, impatient twitch of her knuckled hand.

  Casting a cautious look at the door I hurry to the window and open it. Almost instantaneously the whole room is invaded by birds. I huddle in a corner as they come sweeping past in a great rush of sound, wings fluttering, tail-feathers spread, delicate long toes outstretched for the landing; it is like one of the wild pillow fights we sometimes had as children in Ouma Kristina’s house, when a whole room would be turned into a blizzard of swirling feathers. It takes quite a while for them to settle on whatever perches they can find, most of them on the bed, turning it into a living, undulating, multicoloured quilt.