by Andre Brink
‘So what do you say now?’ asks Anna, a tone of triumph in her quavering voice.
13
NOT SO EASY. The town, we find when we get there, is indeed agog with the news; but as it turns out, the poor man who was so nearly lynched, and who is now recovering in hospital, had nothing to do with the attack on Ouma’s place. Following up his story to the chemist, the police have found at his home a child bitten by a dog and in need of the bandages, ointment and pain-killers the father had gone to buy.
14
ANNA AVOIDS MY eyes and drives off on her own to do some shopping while I spend time with Ouma. Not a very profitable visit, as I find her in a sleep so deep that if the matron hadn’t warned me that she’s sedated by a constant dosage of morphine I would be convinced she has quietly expired. Her breath is too light even to ruffle a feather or cloud a mirror; but after some time there is a brief twitching of the hand on the folded sheet. For minutes on end I stand hunched over her, the way an archaeologist might study a dubious relic dug up from a disconnected past.
Is this what I have come back for? What have I really been expecting from my precipitate return? All I know is that this – her lying here so still, so insignificant that there is hardly a fold in the bedclothes to indicate the presence of a body below – is something that eludes my grasp. Not because it is too profound or too complicated, but because it is too simple. Death is too easy for a mind used to anxious or sceptical burrowings. This: to lie here, and to die. I can understand everything, but not this. I can accept anything, but not this. A small sound makes me look up. There is a single sunbird fluttering against the window. The others, the myriads of others, are still perched – I saw them as I came in – on the roof of the hospital, in all the trees, on all the wires surrounding it. But this single, miraculous little feathered creature, not trying to come in like yesterday’s kamikaze daredevils, but content merely to flutter and to stare at what, most certainly, it cannot see, moves me more deeply than those others did. I know it is not really a bird. It is the breath of the dying old woman. This urgent whirr of bright wings, this little feather, is the perverse fluttering of hope that keeps one going, the hope of not dying, of yet finding something, believing something, salvaging something, redeeming something: a fluttering, light as it is, that outweighs the confusion of history, the futility of time, the heaviness of the world.
I sit down on the straight-backed chair beside the bed. And I’m still sitting there when a plump young plover of a nurse comes rushing in to call me.
‘Miss Müller, your sister is here to fetch you.’
‘Isn’t she coming in?’
‘No, she’s waiting in front.’
‘You can tell her I’m coming.’
‘Yes, Miss.’ Mechanically, she first checks the pulse, then charges out again.
I bend over Ouma to whisper in her ear. ‘I don’t want you to die, you hear? I’ll be back. I’m taking you home.’
The sunbird thrills against the window.
‘Why didn’t you come in?’ I ask Anna as we get into the bakkie.
‘I couldn’t leave the bakkie with all the stuff in the back.’ She sounds on the verge of tears. ‘You know what happened while I was in the supermarket? They broke in’ – for the first time I notice the smashed side-window – ‘and they stole the radio. Casper’s radio.’ She swallows back a sob. ‘So I had to go to the police. He’ll just kill me.’ I cannot make out whether it would be for the missing radio or going to the police. ‘It just never stops. All the time, all the time. I can’t take it any more, Kristien. And this whole thing with Ouma too –’
This is an opening, I decide. ‘She must go home,’ I announce as calmly as I can.
‘What d’you mean, home?’ she asks, flabbergasted.
‘To The Bird Place.’
‘It’ll kill her!’
‘She’s dying, Anna. And she wants to go in peace. I’ve taken a good look at the place and I’m sure we can make it comfortable enough for her. She may not last for long.’
‘Do you still not realise how dangerous it is? For heaven’s sake, they’ve already fire-bombed the place once!’
‘Lightning never strikes twice.’
‘You’re out of your mind, Kristien. Besides, Casper will never allow it.’
‘I wasn’t planning to ask his permission.’
A furious intake of breath. But she says nothing. And I strike while the iron is hot, assuming it will be a relief to her to be rid of me for a while anyway: as there is no car rental agency in town, I persuade her to drop me off at Sinai again so that I can commandeer Ouma’s vehicle, that glorious old hearse, from a meek if wary Jeremiah.
Anna roars off, wildly indignant, in a cloud of dust. I stay behind to make arrangements with Jeremiah and Trui; then drive back to town to confer and argue, exhaustingly, with Ouma’s doctor and the hospital superintendent (when we look in on her, she is still in the same deep sleep, beyond our reach). Out of the question, they say. Neither will give permission. She is their responsibility now. They appeal to the Hippocratic oath. They treat me like an importunate child. But I am resolute. What if her condition improves, I ask them. We can arrange for a nurse to attend to her. No, they cannot possibly take that responsibility: at her age, in her condition. What if I take responsibility, I demand. They’ll first have to see. This is much too early. At best it remains inconclusive: if – if – if … But I’m confident that once she wakes up, and provided they don’t deliberately and maliciously keep her asleep, between the two of us we shall prevail.
15
BACK IN ANNA’S home, once I’ve parked the shiny black monster (immediately set upon by a horde of savage children who rapidly cover it entirely like a swarm of bees moving into a new habitat), I find her in the large pantry where she is still toiling away, trying – valiantly, but more or less in vain – to stow the veritable mountain of provisions she has brought back.
I gape in unbelief. ‘You’ve bought enough for a year!’ I exclaim, in trying my best to sound jocular.
But she takes it seriously. Almost apologetically she says, ‘One never knows –’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Well, there have been so many rumours about the election. Once the blacks take over – I mean, anything can happen. And one has to provide for the children.’
And in the evening, after the servants have gone home to their hovels and the children have been packed off to bed, Anna and Casper (who surprisingly arrives in time for supper, and is kept in ignorance, for the time being, about the theft of the car radio) roll up the carpet in the lounge, raise a trapdoor below and proceed – solemnly and without saying a word – to stack in a cavity under the floor an astounding amount of provisions: candles and small gas cylinders, cartons of long-life milk, tinned food, powdered milk, an assortment of Tupperware containers filled with flour, sugar, tea-bags and instant coffee, bottles of mineral water, a multitude of toilet rolls, spare blankets, dog food, boxes of vitamin pills and basic medicines, and even – honest to God – a spare Bible. Afterwards Anna and I are laconically instructed to accompany Casper to a far corner of the backyard, where by the light of gas lamps held aloft by the two of us he laboriously digs a trench in which he subsequently buries, carefully wrapped in black plastic refuse bags, another hoard of tins containing all manner of meat and vegetables.
‘Can you think of anything else?’ Casper asks when all is done, wiping his brow in evident satisfaction.
‘What about condoms?’ I suggest with a straight face. ‘You wouldn’t want to produce a few more children in a state of siege, would you?’
‘You just watch out!’ Anna suddenly erupts. ‘You come back here for a few days to help Ouma into her grave and then you buzz off again, leaving us to pick up the pieces –’
‘I was only joking, Anna,’ I answer limply, unnerved by the vehemence of her outburst.
‘Oh no,’ she storms. ‘From the moment you arrived you’ve been criticising and attack
ing everything that’s important to us. Shit, it’s so easy! When things became too hard to handle you turned tail and ran away, expecting us to sort out the mess. And now that you’re safe and far away you think you can gloat. But to us it’s life or death, in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘I never ran away,’ I say, restraining the fury that is leaping up in me, a dog straining at the leash. ‘Do you think it was easy for me to leave everything behind, to start again from scratch, to build a new life, to try and deny what I was?’
‘Don’t fool yourself, little sister,’ she says viciously. ‘You’ve taken the easy way out every time. When you didn’t like it here, you cleared out. When you felt cramped with a man who loved you, you just dumped him. When you couldn’t face being a mother, you killed the child –’
‘Jesus, that’s below the belt, Anna,’ I say mechanically, feeling the needles in my face. ‘I had an abortion. It was perfectly legal.’
‘Call it any fancy name you want, in my book it’s murder.’
I’m tempted to hit back in anger: Don’t you think I call it murder too, and wake up in a sweat at night? But this I dare not share with her, not here, not now. To defend myself I must be vicious too. ‘You should have murdered a few of your litter,’ I hit out blindly, even as I desperately think: For God’s sake, cut it out before it’s too late. ‘You might have been a woman still, not just an incubator and a slave.’
‘Now stop it, both of you,’ Casper intervenes peremptorily. Stung to the quick, I am ready to turn on him; but I’m held back by the look of abject guilt on Anna’s face. ‘How about some coffee?’ he says breezily. ‘We can all do with some refreshment.’
Almost automatically Anna turns to go. I cannot bear the thought of being left alone with him; but to follow her to the kitchen and obediently make his coffee will be worse. So I stay.
‘That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to your sister,’ he says when she is out of earshot; but his tone is amused rather than reprimanding.
‘We’ll sort it out between us,’ I answer curtly. ‘We don’t need you to tell us off.’ I start walking towards the house.
He follows on my heels. ‘As hot-headed as ever!’
‘And you like that, don’t you?’ I ask as we reach the lounge. ‘That’s what you told me on your wedding day.’
For a moment he looks nonplussed; then, evidently, he remembers. ‘So you haven’t forgotten.’
‘Damn sure I haven’t.’
‘Good.’ Now he’s turning on the male charm, his tanned face crinkling in a smile. ‘I’ve been thinking quite a lot about you too over the years.’
The extent of his audacity stuns me. ‘If I’ve been thinking about you,’ I say, ‘it’s been with relief at how far away you were.’
‘You’re not serious,’ he says. There is nothing quizzical about it: for him it’s a simple statement. ‘Come on, Kristien, you’re much too beautiful to have so much venom in you.’
‘And you, I’m afraid, are even dumber than I remember.’
‘You may be in for a surprise.’ He winks.
I walk away from him, then stop to turn again. ‘One day, when you’ve finished playing games, we can sit down and have a proper discussion.’
‘I’m not playing games, Kristien.’ Suddenly he is very serious; and hurt, I imagine.
‘What else do you call your commando, your driving up and down through the district, your CB radio, your schoolboy fights with anybody that’s smaller or weaker than you?’
‘You don’t seem to realise what is at stake.’
‘If there is so much at stake, why don’t you try to find a solution rather than just fuck it all up?’
‘If you’re referring to that kaffir –’
‘What you need is to have your mouth washed out with soap.’
‘Oh I see. We’re finicky about language now, are we?’
‘I just hoped we could have an adult conversation. In adult language.’
He flushes. For a moment I wonder whether he’s going to strike me: it is in that same moment that I know, quite illogically, but without any doubt at all, and with the taste of bile in my mouth, how he must be with Anna. Then, unexpectedly, he changes tactics. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘So we overreacted. But can you blame us? Haven’t you seen what they did to your own grandmother? Do you realise she’s the fourth elderly person attacked in this district in the last three weeks? The others were not so lucky.’
‘And you think violence can be solved with violence?’
‘What other language do they understand?’ he asks in quiet anger. And then turns on the noble rhetoric. ‘This is a bloody tough land to survive in. But we’ve managed, for over three centuries, even if it meant we had to be tough too. Not because we liked it, but because we were driven to it. And why? Because we love this bloody place, that’s why. We’ve paid for it in blood and shit. It’s the only place in the world we can call our own. Now they want to take it away from us. But we won’t let them. We have nowhere else to go, Kristien, damn it!’
My first thought is: Please, not again. How many times have I heard all this pious ranting before? But the strange thing – and this is what hits me like a boot in the stomach – is that I know he means it; he really means it desperately. And I try to reason with him. ‘Who wants to take it away from you, Casper?’
‘The kaf –’ – he checks himself, somewhat to my surprise – ‘the blacks. The communists. They’ve failed everywhere else in the world, so now they’ve got to make it work for them here. But I tell you, we won’t let them. And we’re prepared to die for it if we have to.’
I cannot restrain a sigh. And I say, as much in resentment against the weakness in myself as against his passion, ‘Don’t you think it is better to live for a cause than to die for it?’ (This, too, I know, is a cliché, but having waded in so far, why not go all the way? They wouldn’t have been clichés if they hadn’t been pronounced – and believed – by so many.)
‘Not if living means sacrificing everything that matters to us.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like – our whole way of life, man!’
‘And you’re absolutely sure your “whole way of life”, whatever in God’s name that may mean, will change if “they” take over?’
‘Haven’t you seen what happened in the rest of Africa?’
‘I’ve seen millions of people left to rot because the West turned its back on them.’
‘And corruption, genocide, violence, famine? Is all of that caused by the West too?’
‘Much of the famine and the genocide, yes. As for corruption and violence, Africa has simply followed the example of its colonial masters.’
He makes an irritable gesture. ‘You’re too clever by half. You’re trying to argue like a man. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘That’s the last-ditch argument of a loser, Casper, And I won’t fall for it. You can’t send me to the kitchen, you know.’
Anna comes in with the tray.
‘We’ll talk again later,’ he says.
‘You bet.’ I meet his gaze without flinching.
‘All I want you to remember,’ he says, ‘is that we are serious.’
‘Not serious,’ I say. ‘Desperate, yes.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asks Anna, without looking at us. Her eyes are red and puffy. I feel a pang of guilt.
‘Man-talk,’ says Casper, helping himself to three teaspoons of sugar.
As soon as he has finished his coffee he gets up from the sofa where he has sprawled. ‘Well, duty calls.’
‘You’re not staying out all night again, are you?’ Anna asks apprehensively.
‘No.’ He gives her a perfunctory kiss. ‘Just a short round. To make sure everything is quiet.’
‘Please be careful,’ she says.
Then we’re left alone. But it is too soon to face each other; and after I’ve helped her wash up I go to the passage, quite deliberately, and dial Michael’s number in London.
&n
bsp; It rings and rings, but there is no answer. And suddenly, unreasonably, I feel weepy and let down. As I reluctantly put down the receiver, she comes past me, hesitates, briefly presses my hand, then moves on towards the master bedroom. The gloom of a failed, miserable evening settles in me. I’ll have a bath, I decide: the easy way out again?
16
I AM JUST stepping out of the tub when there is a knock on the door, so hesitant that for a moment I’m not sure whether I have imagined it. Then Anna calls softly, ‘It’s me. May I come in?’
‘I suppose so.’
I start drying myself. It is only when after several minutes of vigorous rubbing I hang the towel over the rail again that I realise she is scrutinising me like a buyer at an auction. Involuntarily I reach for Michael’s old T-shirt which I wear to bed.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean to stare. But you’re – you’re rather good to look at, you know.’
‘You think so?’ I strike an exaggerated show-off pose to hide the embarrassment I feel. ‘Don’t be silly, Anna. You used to be the swan in the family.’
‘Used to be,’ she says quietly. Then, ‘I’m sorry I was so bitchy tonight.’
‘I was too. I didn’t mean to say what I did.’
‘It’s a bad time for us, you know.’
I close the toilet lid and sit down on it, the T-shirt draped over a shoulder. ‘You mean Ouma? The mess in the country?’
‘I mean Casper and I.’ She starts fidgeting with her dress. ‘Mind if I have a bath too? I’ll use the same water.’
The economies of a harsh climate? Or a transparent attempt at sisterly bonding? But I gesture grandly. ‘Be my guest.’ And watch her, even though it makes me feel like an intruder, as she undresses and lowers herself into the still warm water. Varicose veins at the backs of her knees, lemon-peel cellulite, stretch marks on buttocks and belly, the once stunning breasts now sagging, the unkempt beard of her sex. And I feel my throat contract in pity. I would rather have spared her this. What a long way we have come since the time when I was small and she would come, uninvited and often to my spitting anger, into the bathroom when I was there; her snide comments on how skinny I was, my knobbly knees, my lank hair, and worst of all, the likelihood of never growing breasts. I, in turn, snooping little mouse, had strict orders to keep out when she was having her bath. But once, when I was only five or six, I had to use the toilet and barged in, and surprised her shaving her bikini line. Pubic hair was a phenomenon of which until that moment I had been oblivious. I still remember how I stood and stared, and pointed, and asked in awe, ‘What’s that thing with the feathers?’
