Imaginings of Sand

by Andre Brink

  Anna looks down at her hands. For a long time no one says anything.

  ‘Why do you keep on talking of war, Casper?’ I ask at last.

  ‘If we let them get away with this –’

  ‘Some attacked him. Others helped him. Are you going to distinguish between them when your war breaks out?’

  He is ready, I can see, to let fly at me again; somewhat to my surprise he doesn’t. With unnerving directness he asks, ‘What do you expect us to do?’

  ‘If you ask me, those people attacked him because your commando nearly killed one of them.’

  ‘A terrorist.’

  ‘No. Just a man who walked into a pharmacy to buy medicine.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Must you always believe the worst?’ I challenge him.

  ‘Look, my girl, I’ve been around much longer than you.’

  ‘More’s the pity you can’t see what’s happening. You’re acting as if the world hasn’t changed at all.’

  ‘Kristien.’ There is a suggestion of pleading in his voice now. ‘A week from now will be the end of the world as we know it. Do you have any idea of what’s going to become of us?’

  ‘You think your little war games can make a difference?’

  ‘We’re fighting for our lives, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Nothing is threatening your life, Casper. You’re fighting for your ego, that’s all. And it’s a battle you have already lost.’

  ‘I’m fighting to stop what’s going to happen next week.’

  ‘You know,’ I say, ‘at the very least I used to think of you as a practical man. Now I’m beginning to doubt it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asks, offended, aggressive.

  ‘Can’t you see? No matter what you do, no matter how much violence you and your squad perpetrate, you can’t stop the world. In a week, in ten more days, you’ll have a new government in this country.’

  ‘And you think I’m going to accept that?’

  ‘That’s the point I’m trying to make, Casper. Whether you accept it or not, it’s going to happen. The only choice you really have is whether you’re going to break your shins and perhaps kill a number of people – or whether you’re going to help things run smoothly and make sure your family survives. So instead of being plain stupid, why don’t you rather try to make it work?’

  He glares at me from a place far behind his eyes, behind this moment, this time, this place.

  ‘You think you understand everything?’ he snarls at last, rising from his chair. ‘Well, you don’t. You have no idea what you’re talking about. How could you? You’re just –’

  ‘A woman? Is that why you’re angry? But shouting at me isn’t going to change anything. And it certainly isn’t going to make you win.’

  He stalks off, his shoulders hunched defensively. Anna sits biting the knuckle of her forefinger, giving me a quick nervous smile when she finds my eyes on her.

  ‘You shouldn’t upset him so,’ she says.

  ‘It’s bloody well time he heard the truth.’

  ‘He’ll just take it out on me,’ she says quietly, looking down.

  I draw my breath in sharply. I don’t want to know what she is telling me. I feel sick.

  ‘I probably deserve it,’ she says hurriedly, almost eagerly.

  ‘Don’t be damn stupid!’ I check myself, confused and guilty: now I’m the one who’s taking it out on her. ‘Anna, please, listen to me. You’ve got to start standing up to him.’

  She shakes her head, her eyes still averted.

  ‘Are you scared?’ I push on.

  ‘Of course I’m scared.’

  ‘It’s only because you make it so easy for him to bully you.’

  ‘Do you think it’s what I want?’ This time there is a flash of anger in her voice; and it gives me an unexpected sense of relief. All is not lost yet.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering.’

  6

  OUMA IS STILL asleep when I come back. The nurse is working her way through a photo romance, progressing relentlessly like a silkworm on a mulberry leaf. I offer to relieve her for a while, which she accepts with alacrity, taking the magazine with her.

  For the first time since I left London I get through to Michael, on the cordless telephone (another of Casper’s security gadgets) which I’ve taken through to my room; even so I speak with my hand folded round the mouthpiece, not to disturb Ouma.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he says, his voice dry and clipped, reproachful. ‘It’s been almost a week.’

  ‘I’ve been trying every day. You’re never there.’ Why, now that I’m finally through, is there no joy, only this pent-up frustration, this urge to accuse and wound? My mind is saying one thing, my voice another.

  ‘I was here all the time,’ he says in his I’m right, you’re wrong tone of voice.

  ‘No, you were not. Where were you?’

  ‘You don’t believe me? And where were you?’

  Oh God, this is not how I wanted it to be at all.

  ‘Be reasonable, Michael’

  ‘What about you?’

  I can strangle him when he’s like that. (And he me –?) I make an effort to return to normal.

  ‘It’s been a demented week.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Is he making an effort too? But I’m still too upset to let him get away with it. ‘No, you can’t,’ I tell him. ‘This is beyond imagination.’

  ‘You almost sound proud of it. Possessive.’ A small pause. Then, his voice less pinched than before, he says, ‘From here it looks as if the boat is sinking fast.’ For the first time I detect what seems like genuine concern. ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How’s your gran?’

  ‘Bad.’ I sigh. ‘But she’s holding out.’ I change my tone. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Working away on the paper.’

  This civility is almost worse than the irritation that preceded it.

  He’s saying something. I’m not even listening. Halfway through, I interrupt, ‘Michael, please –’ Then stop, annoyed, confused.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? That’s a fair thought.’

  What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I was quoting.’

  ‘Shit, Michael, can’t you drop the literary tone for once?’

  ‘Did you know,’ he says, ‘that in Elizabethan English “nothing” was a euphemism for “cunt”?’

  ‘Oh please!’

  He chuckles, and plunges into a quote. ‘Lady, shall I lie in your lap? – No, my lord. – I mean, my head upon your lap. – Ay, my lord. – Do you think I meant country matters? – I think nothing, my lord. – That’s a fair thought to lie between maid’s legs. – What is, my lord? – Nothing –’ I can almost hear him smiling. ‘See what I mean? And don’t you agree it’s a fair thought?’

  ‘Aye, my lord.’ Suddenly, all distance is foreshortened, time suspended; I see him, feel him, smell him the way he was – four? – five? – six days ago, on my floor-bed, the slanting light from the high window over his face, his unruly hair, his shoulder. I suddenly find myself dry-mouthed with desire. ‘It’s not thoughts I want, I want you.’

  ‘My love, my love.’

  ‘We mustn’t let this happen again, Michael.’

  ‘I need you,’ he says.

  ‘Michael, I don’t want to be here. I’m here because I have no choice. I promise you I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Have you spoken to my school?’

  ‘Yes. Saunders was a bit snooty at first, but I did some soft-soaping and he’s all right now.’

  ‘You’re a star.’

  ‘For you, anything. Just come home soon.’

  ‘As soon as I can.’ I try to contain the ache of missing him. ‘But you must understand, it may still be a while. Ouma –’ Now I can tell
him about all that has happened – the gathering storm in the district, Casper, Anna, Trui and her family, even our house guest – and the unfinished business, and Ouma’s preposterous idea about what is yet to be done.

  ‘Stay as long as you have to,’ Michael says when at last I have finished. ‘But no longer. And look after yourself. For God’s sake.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. I promise.’

  A pause; a chuckle.

  ‘And Lady, it is a fair thought, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sweet nothing, my lord.’

  7

  SOME TIME IN the afternoon I go down to the basement again. I don’t want to, but I go. I cannot stay away. I almost wish to find that the man has absconded, but I know it won’t be so easy to get rid of him again. And when I open the door at the bottom of the stairs he is there, in the dull yellow glare of the dirty bare bulb, waiting, crouching against the far wall. Behind him are the amorphous colour patches of the peeled paintings the Girl once splashed there to brighten the walls of her dungeon. I wonder who supplied her with paint and brushes? She was no Goya, no Michelangelo. But it must have taken months, not of patient but of furious activity. Not an inch to spare, from stone floor to cobwebbed ceiling, on any of the stained and mouldy walls. Impossible, now, to make out most of the shapes, yet they have a way of teasing one’s fantasy with lurid suggestions. Poor girl. What a cesspool of emotions must have been kept hidden away in this dark place.

  It takes quite a while before the cowering man shows any sign of relaxing. His eyes are red, his face swollen; he looks feverish.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ I tell him, impatient with his cringing. ‘Can’t you see it’s me? I won’t harm you.’

  ‘I just heard the footsteps coming. I didn’t know it was you,’ he mumbles.

  ‘Who else would come down here?’

  ‘I don’t know. But perhaps they come for me.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’

  ‘You know,’ he says. ‘Those people.’

  I approach him. ‘How is your arm?’

  He turns sideways so that I can inspect the bandage. The wound has been bleeding again. Is that a good sign, or bad? If it isn’t better by tomorrow I may have to bring the doctor down here. Swear him to silence. There is a Hippocratic oath, for whatever it’s worth. But I wouldn’t like to run the risk unless it’s a crisis.

  How do I know it isn’t a crisis yet?

  ‘Have you had something to eat?’

  ‘The woman brought me food,’ he says. ‘Trui.’

  ‘I shall bring you some pills.’

  ‘Thank you, Madam.’

  ‘Don’t call me madam, please.’

  He just looks at me.

  I leave him to himself again, reproaching myself without knowing why; ten minutes later I bring down a syringe with another dose of Ouma’s morphine, and a couple of the magazines the nurse has discarded after reading every square centimetre of them and filling in every crossword. A little bit more at ease I go out again. I wander through the house, room after room, trying in vain to pick up some thread from years ago; but today it holds no challenge, no adventure, only gloom and emptiness, a sense of redundancy. It has outlived its time.

  Is it the house or is it me?

  Wherever I roam in the house, or even outside in the yard, among the trees, in the unkempt rose garden, among the outbuildings, I am haunted by the knowledge of the wounded stranger in the basement. No matter what I’m doing, he is there. I have taken him at his word, yet I have no way of knowing who he is and why he is here. His sole power lies in the fact that I have no choice in deciding whether he should be there to face me, or not. And that power is daunting. I have taken responsibility for him and yet I don’t have the foggiest idea of what to do about it. I don’t want him here, but I cannot throw him out. And I’m terrified. Not because he is there but because he may die. And his possible death calls me into question.

  8

  AND NOW I’M sitting here, writing. There is a deep comfort in being here. I have turned out all the lights except the small reading lamp at the bed, trained on the new notebook on my lap. I must write, she has said, while she speaks, a small whispery voice, like the rustling of paper, but curiously persistent. The house is silent, except for an occasional creaking of old timber, now here, then there, downstairs or aloft. Trui and Jeremiah are asleep next door, one of them snoring lightly. The stranger, I presume, is down in the basement. In a corner of Ouma’s room, when from time to time I look up, I see three owls huddled on a mahogany whatnot, baleful eyes staring. Outside, from time to time, is the screeching of bats, the call of a nightjar, sometimes even a turtle dove half-awakening, then dozing off again.

  Ouma Kristina has begun to fidget so restlessly that I’m wondering whether she is delirious. Her unscathed hand keeps groping about in the air, but her eyes remain closed.

  ‘What’s the matter, Ouma?’

  ‘The picture,’ she says irritably without opening her eyes.

  ‘The house is full of pictures. Which one are you looking for?’

  ‘You know the one. It’s always been here on the dressing table.’

  Then it must be the small male nude, the one that used to be the object of so much annoyance among the grownups over the years, and of so much surreptitious fascination among those of us still growing up: the slender strong body in a David pose, the mane of wild black curls, the prominent circumcised sex. The style was Victorian, in the Pre-Raphaelite mould, and for that very reason its directness was all the more startling. We all knew that it was one of Ouma’s treasures, and that it was forbidden to ask questions about it. But why would she be looking for it now?

  ‘Where is it?’ she demands, her thin voice rasping like sandpaper.

  ‘But Ouma –’ I try to be as tactful as possible. ‘Have you forgotten about the fire then?’

  The hazy eyes flutter open, startled, before a film of resignation settles on them.

  ‘Burnt out?’

  I press her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Ouma. There was nothing left of the room. It’s a miracle you were saved.’

  ‘I should have gone too. But I had to talk to you first.’

  ‘I’m here, Ouma.’

  It’s like my childhood days again, sitting here with her in the night. For as long as I can remember Ouma Kristina has claimed to have recognised ‘something’ in me that marked me as the one chosen to receive all her accumulated stories. There always must be one, she used to explain, to hand them on, to prevent their getting lost along the way. I never took it very seriously, although I was proud, of course, of being the chosen one. But beyond the sheer enjoyment I derived from them I must confess I never saw any special significance in her jumble of stories. And being chosen came at a price too: sometimes when she was unable to sleep she’d suddenly appear in her long nightgown, carrying a paraffin lamp (even though the flick of a switch could turn on the electricity), to haul me from the wall-to-wall bed shared by all the children and instruct me to listen. She would either take me into her bed or lead me to the kitchen where we’d seat ourselves at the long scrubbed table, with mugs of milk or lemon syrup, and she would start telling stories and I would listen until I dropped off. I remember that gentle yellow light, the shadows on the walls, the awareness of the secret dark recesses of the house around us. Just like tonight.

  ‘Burnt out,’ she repeats after some time, opening her eyes again to stare at me, as if intent on not missing the slightest flicker of expression on my face. ‘Poor child. Now you have nothing left of your grandfather.’

  ‘My grandfather?’ Involuntarily I shake my head. ‘But that couldn’t have been Oupa. He would never –’ I stop, feeling guilty. ‘I thought Oupa was blond before his hair turned grey?’

  An amused grin. ‘I’m not talking about the man I married, Kristien. I’m talking about your grandfather.’

  It is hard to control the thoughts she has unleashed in me. We’ve always known Ouma Kristina’s inveterate outlawry, especially after old age
had conferred on her a liberty even she could not have imagined earlier; but surely there must have been – in those times – limits.

  ‘Such a good likeness too,’ she resumes, still refusing to look away. ‘The best I’ve ever done, I’m sure.’

  ‘But you never painted, did you?’

  ‘Not since you’ve known me. Not since that picture. But what do you really know about me?’

  ‘Then it’s time you told me.’

  ‘Yes. It’s time I let loose my idiots.’

  ‘Your idiots?’

  ‘Don’t you remember the story they tell all over the Little Karoo? About the ostrich times. The few top families of the district amassing all the wealth. Quite staggering. Vain people, who wouldn’t mix with the hoi polloi. So they started intermarrying, and in due course there were a couple of little idiots in every family. Kept locked up in the cellar, looked after by orphan girls from the cities. The shame of the great families, never allowed outside in God’s sun. Except for one hour a week, from two to three on Sundays, when everybody would be asleep, stupefied by the huge Sunday dinner. The hour of the idiots, they called it.’ A deep sigh; her eyelids droop again. ‘I think the time has now come for my own idiots.’ Another sudden change of tone. ‘I wish this whole damned place had burned down, Kristien. I hate it. I can’t bear it any longer.’

  ‘But I’ve always thought you loved the house?’

  ‘Of course I did. The way one learns to love one’s cell in prison, I suppose. And this was a prison, make no mistake. My own mother was locked up here.’

  ‘You mean she was –?’

  ‘Not an idiot, if that is what you’re thinking. Not like the others, at least. I mean, as our people see it, an idiot needn’t necessarily be retarded or a waterhead. It’s anyone who deviates from the norm. Anyone who dares to be different.’

  ‘I don’t understand. I thought your mother was Petronella Wepener, the one who built this place, one of the leading women in the district.’

  ‘She brought me up, yes. They told everybody she was my mother. How could they otherwise bear the disgrace? But she really was my grandmother. My mother was Rachel. I suppose many people guessed as much, but no one could ever be sure. They were given to understand that Rachel had run away.’