Imaginings of Sand

by Andre Brink

  ‘Samurai,’ I suggest with a poker-face.

  ‘Precisely. And so, with all the noblemen of Baghdad and their courtiers assembled in the main square, poor Jethro was unmasked, in a manner of speaking. And a great cry went up, “Infidel! Infidel!”

  ‘Now I’ve already told you that Jethro was a consummate swordsman. And what he did, with a single almost unnoticeable flick of his wrist, was to strike at Achim Sidi Achim’s manhood, deftly slicing off the foreskin, no more, no less.

  ‘“Now we’re equals,” he said. “Let us fight till death.”

  ‘But he didn’t stand a chance against that whole rabid multitude. I would have been willing to hurl my body on his to protect him against the crowd, but that would have been the totally senseless kind of bravery one finds only in stories, and the will to survive was uppermost in my mind. I ran home. There was no time to pack. All I could do was to throw over one of Jethro’s burnooses or whatever you call them, and I grabbed and concealed under its folds the one small painting of Jethro. Then I fled.’

  ‘But how did you get back here, all the way from Baghdad?’

  ‘I won’t bother you with that,’ says Ouma Kristina.

  ‘An elephant came and blew the story away?’

  ‘It was not as simple as that,’ she chides me. ‘I had to walk for hundreds of miles through the Gobi desert. Thousands. At last I joined a caravan. And so I made my way back to England, where I boarded a steamer. By that time, of course, I’d already discovered I was pregnant. Only then did I begin to wonder whether I shouldn’t have chosen to stay behind and die on the body of my lover. But it was too late for regrets. I had to face the future again. For the sake of the perfect love I’d known. And all I had to face it with was the baby in my womb and the one small painting, which is now lost. Like everything else.’

  13

  SHE IS SO weak now that I am beginning to fear she may not survive the night. But the indomitable will that helped her escape from the raging crowd in Baghdad and subsequently survive the ordeals of the desert, sees her through. That, and several slow deep breaths from the oxygen supply which I insist on placing on her tiny monkey face.

  ‘Where was I?’ she asks with a little gasp.

  ‘We can continue tomorrow night,’ I say. ‘Please, you must sleep now.’

  ‘Where was I?’ she repeats, and I know there will be no respite.

  ‘You came back from Baghdad,’ I say with a sigh of resignation.

  ‘That’s right. That’s right.’ She is trying, as far as I can make out, to arrange her thoughts.

  ‘Were you not rejected by your family when you came home?’

  When she starts speaking again her mind appears less confused. The brief pause must indeed have composed her. ‘Hermanus Johannes Wepener had died soon after I’d left, I think I told you, a stroke, the poor bastard had had it coming to him for a long time. But Petronella welcomed me back. She was overjoyed, in fact. She’d aged a lot while I was away. It was almost pathetic to see how dependent she’d suddenly become on me. In those last months of her life – she was already over eighty when I came home and she didn’t last much longer – we found a closeness that had never been possible before. As she approached death she even tried to talk to me about Rachel again. But she was very weak by then, and all those years of keeping quiet about it had made it almost impossible for her to discuss it. The night she died she tried, she really tried, but I think she’d lost the words for it by then.’

  ‘So you were still in the dark?’

  ‘More or less, yes. But there was one thing she said, quite inadvertently, I think, that suddenly opened a new window for me. Just before she died, it was a Sunday evening, Lizzie and I were with her. And she suddenly smiled, a strangely happy kind of smile, and said, “Yes, The two of you belong together. Like sisters.” And died.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither did I. Not right then, But it kept bothering me. And after the funeral I asked Lizzie whether she could shed any light on it. No, she said. But she’d been wondering about it too. And together we confronted her decrepit old grandfather Salie. He’d never spoken two words to me in his long life. Always treated me as if I were a contagious disease. But now his defences were down. His own wife, Nenna, had died while I was away, and I suppose Petronella’s funeral at long last set him free to speak. Especially when I persuaded him that she’d already told us everything before her death.’

  ‘But how could he possibly have known about it?’

  ‘Because he might have been my father.’

  I stare at her. ‘No, please, Ouma –!’

  ‘It was one of the strangest and most terrible things I’ve ever heard, Kristien. But I had no reason to disbelieve him. Even if it didn’t prove anything, we all had to face the possibility. Because at long last he’d spoken what he’d never dared to utter before. He had nothing more to lose, you see.’

  ‘But how – why –?’

  ‘Thirty-one years before, he told us, Hermanus Johannes Wepener had tried to seduce Salie’s daughter Lida who was then a mere child of twelve or thirteen. Tried to bribe her with beads, with a gold sovereign, even a ring with bright stones. She refused. She was terrified. He paid no attention. He had the droit de seigneur. So he raped her.’

  My face feels numb; at last I can see what is coming, even if it still impossible to believe.

  ‘When Lida came home with blood on her dress, Salie took a spade and went in search of Hermanus Johannes Wepener. But the farmer must have been expecting something like that and he was waiting with his gun cocked. There was nothing Salie could do. Not directly. The only revenge he could think of taking was to do the same to Hermanus Johannes Wepener’s daughter. That was Rachel.’

  It takes a long time to compose my thoughts. ‘Why didn’t Hermanus Johannes Wepener kill Salie?’ I ask at last. ‘At the very least he could have driven him from the farm.’

  ‘Until the day Salie spoke to Lizzie and me he’d never told a soul,’ says Ouma. ‘And Rachel, for reasons of her own, had kept it to herself as well. So neither Petronella nor Hermanus Johannes could ever be sure, whatever they might have feared or suspected. And he might well have had good reason to hide a guilty conscience of his own. In the end the two of them had each other by the balls. Which is the way men prefer to do battle, isn’t it?’

  ‘But how can you be sure that was what Petronella meant when she spoke to you and Lizzie?’

  ‘I can’t, and that’s the point. No one will ever know for sure. Perhaps in her own mind it was no more than a befuddled wish or a lingering suspicion. Perhaps she’d even looked up something in her encyclopedia. The means and coincidences are not important. Only the story. And that goes on.’

  14

  A NIGHTJAR CALLS outside. In the corner the yellow-eyed owls are fidgeting. One takes off through the open window. I can hear Trui moaning in her sleep near by.

  ‘What about you?’ I ask Ouma Kristina. ‘When you came home from Europe, pregnant and all: how on earth did you persuade Oupa – Cornelis Basson – to take you back?’

  ‘He needed no persuasion. The moment he heard I was home he hurried over to visit me. Said he’d been waiting for me. And insisted we get married as soon as possible, which suited me. His parents disinherited him, of course, which made things easier for all the other brothers. Anyway, what I stood to inherit was certainly enough for both of us.’

  ‘You moved in here after Petronella died?’

  ‘Even before she died. We couldn’t wait, you see. My pregnancy was beginning to show. And this house is big enough to hide a multitude of sins.’

  I pause, and shake my hand to ease the circulation. Then dare to ask, ‘How come Cornelis didn’t mind? What did he say? Or didn’t you tell him?’

  ‘Naturally I told him. He went a little pale, but in his eyes I could do no wrong. Greater love hath no one. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound callous. But it was a purely practical arrangement, and he knew it.’

>   ‘And then you lived happily ever after?’

  ‘I never slept with him, of course.’

  I find myself staring at her, but she keeps her eyes closed, imperturbable. It’s like the game we played as children to end an argument: you would pull the most hideous face imaginable, then avert your eyes and make sure that for the rest of the day you didn’t look at the other again, and so deprive your adversary of the satisfaction of responding.

  ‘You never slept with Oupa?’ I repeat, inanely. ‘Yet you had six children.’

  ‘Nine. Three died.’

  ‘So the Holy Ghost got going on you too?’ I say sarcastically.

  ‘Like Zeus, the Holy Ghost has been known to assume many shapes.’

  ‘I thought you were going to tell me the truth.’

  ‘No. I asked you to come so I could tell you stories.’

  ‘I’m no longer a child, Ouma,’ I say, more sharply than I meant to.

  ‘That would be a great pity.’ Now she opens her blue-veined paper-thin eyelids again.

  ‘Ouma Kristina –’ I make an effort to compose myself, reminding myself that she is dying; she has the freedom of imminent death, which I know nothing about. ‘If you felt so strongly about not sleeping with Oupa, why didn’t you just bring up Jethro’s child and leave it at that?’

  ‘That is exactly what I told myself afterwards. Hindsight is always easier, isn’t it? But right then, suddenly finding myself pregnant – I had to give the child a chance in life. I allowed myself, for once, to be bullied by what others would think. But that was the last time, I assure you.’

  ‘But then to have all those other children –?’

  The hint of a shrug. ‘Most women embrace devoutness and dedication as destiny. I suppose I decided I’d rather be judged for my sinfulness. At least it would be less boring.’ A tired but mischievous smile. ‘Also, I discovered I loved being pregnant,’ she says contentedly. ‘Not the bringing up of the children afterwards. And certainly not having the fathers around. So I’m afraid Lizzie saw to most of that. But being pregnant – that feeling of wholeness, of being totally self-sufficient, of folding myself around my own centre. To feel my body growing heavy and to ripen like a big fruit, the fruit of myself, to feel my breasts swelling and filling with milk – I loved lying on my back and seeing the milk trickle from my nipples across my body and under my arms, and when I pushed myself up on my elbows, over my belly and round my popped-up navel, and into my pubic hair, and down the sides – to imagine it flowing from me, over the floor and out of the doors and across the veld, and to see the ants following the trails and crawling all over me – That was a fulfilment I could never have in any other way. Call it madness again, I don’t mind. We all need our particular forms of madness, otherwise we’d just wither and die.’

  ‘I still find it hard to believe that you really felt you should marry Oupa.’

  ‘I married him for the same reason Petronella married Hermanus Johannes Wepener. For the same reason, I suspect, most of us marry.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Because we’re not permitted to lead a worthwhile life on our own. So we put up a front. As long as we can derive our worth, our authority from someone else, from a man, we are accepted. Mrs Cornelis Basson. How I fought and fought against that name. It was like cancelling myself. But what choice did I have, in 1921? With that name I could face the world. It would do for a safeguard and a passport, even for a widow, later, or at a push, for a divorced woman. But one is not free to go it alone. No, no. You see, when we try to do it on our own we can shout our heads off but no one pays attention. Not because we don’t speak, but because no one will listen. So we try to survive, by hook or by crook. The first step is the worst. The rest is subterfuge.’

  I gaze at her, uncertain about my own feelings.

  ‘Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you say something?’

  ‘What about love?’ I ask, thinking, How corny can one get?!

  She takes me seriously. ‘I loved Jethro. I think. And I once thought I loved Francois Basson. But love is not so absolute that it cannot be imagined with other bodies.’

  This time it takes a long while before I resume the conversation; she lies waiting patiently, with the faintest expression of amusement on her sunken face. (We must stop soon, I think; she cannot go on for much longer, she needs to rest now, she must be exhausted. But, like her, I suspect, I don’t know how much time we have left.)

  ‘Did you ever tell Mother – about Jethro? – about Oupa not being her father?’

  ‘That was my only real indiscretion, I suppose. Some things are better left unsaid. I used to think the truth was always better. But some people cannot face it, not readily. And Louisa was one of them.’

  ‘When did you tell her?’

  ‘When she was twelve or thirteen. The worst possible moment, I realised afterwards. But I paid for it. She never trusted me again.’

  ‘She never told me. She never told me anything.’ I hesitate. ‘Did you tell her about the other children too?’

  ‘No. When I saw how she took the first bit I kept silent about the rest. One learns, even if it comes too late.’

  For the first time in my life I become curious about my mother, that cold, aloof and secret woman I’d feared and resented so much; and Ouma Kristina is prepared to tell me; the little she knows, at least.

  15

  FROM THE VERY beginning it was obvious that Louisa was musical. Before she was two years old she had the habit of waking up at the crack of dawn and singing in her cot until well after sunrise before she would call for food. She would sing throughout mealtimes; when there were guests they sometimes had difficulty making themselves heard through the performance. She preferred singing to talking. For Cornelis she was nothing short of a miracle; he couldn’t have loved her more had she been his own child. What he enjoyed above all else was to go on his rounds to fields, bird enclosures, dams and sheep carrying the singing child on his shoulders. He pined when she went to school. It was hard for her too, but the opportunity of taking music lessons amply made up for it. Piano, recorder, singing, whatever was on offer. At home Kristina started a collection of records – all seventy-eights, of course, played on an old-fashioned His Master’s Voice gramophone that had to be wound up by hand – which was worthy of the feather palace. Like the white dog on the label Louisa could spend hours beside the trumpet loudspeaker, singing to the accompaniment of the music.

  ‘This child has too much talent for a small town like this,’ the music teacher, who was also the church organist, warned Kristina. This was not an expression of unqualified admiration: it also carried the subtle warning that Louisa was getting too big for her lacquered shoes. Other teachers, and most of the school children, shared the feeling. But Louisa paid no attention. And Kristina took a well-considered decision to construct the child’s whole future round her voice. As soon as she’d finished school she would go abroad to study with the best music teachers in Vienna. If necessary, Kristina would go with her. During the cavale with Jethro she’d seen something of Europe, and since then she’d collected enough books to have a fair idea of what to expect and what to do, and where. Her child wouldn’t grow up in such restricted circumstances as she had had to do. All the opportunities of the new age, after the Great War, would be grasped.

  Even the exorbitant expansion of the family – eight more children during the following seven years (five of which survived) – could not dampen the enthusiasm with which Kristina brought up her first-born. The only disruption of their relationship – unfortunately of a rather serious nature – followed her disclosure, with the very best of intentions, that Cornelis was not Louisa’s natural father. Kristina seemed to believe that the discovery of her exotic origins abroad, far removed from this unimaginative and narrow-minded little place on the bare plains of the interior, would act as an added incentive to the child. But for Louisa it was a shock from which she found it hard to recover. One might say
it was the only time in her cushioned youth when the outside world penetrated her active consciousness: previously she had been so lovingly protected by her family, her talent cherished with such dedication, that she appeared oblivious of anything else. That might also explain why the envy and viciousness of school friends and teachers left her so unruffled. Their world had nothing to do with hers. But Cornelis had always been a condition of her accomplishment, and the discovery that he was not her father affected her like a blight. Which explains why Kristina never repeated that sad mistake with any of her other offspring. Unless, of course, the whole account of the fatal revelation was fictitious, a cover-up, who knows, for something else that had gone wrong between mother and daughter, for which Kristina preferred not to take the blame?

  Whatever the real reason, something happened in those vulnerable teenage years that shook Louisa from her insulated equanimity. Not that outsiders would readily discover it: the full extent of her anxiety remained concealed. The only sign was an even more passionate devotion to her music, the one enterprise that was sure not to fail her. Previously her dedication had been spontaneous, like breathing or eating or drinking water; now she was driven by it as by an obsession; it seemed no longer healthy.

  The same tendency towards exaggeration became evident in other forms. During her puberty she tried to deny all evidence of physical development by tearing her vests into strips and tying up her breasts so tightly that they couldn’t be noticed; just before PT classes she regularly fell ill to avoid undressing in front of others. In later adolescence it became a form of self-denial, as she went about with knotted ropes tied very tightly around her body, practically cutting into the flesh, as if to punish it for being there. All her energies, her whole life, had to be dedicated to her music, and drastic measures were necessary to exclude all else. Her mother found out about it only when Louisa fainted one day and they tried to put on her pyjamas; by that time the gulf between mother and daughter had grown so deep that the girl refused to offer any explanation. When Cornelis, with the best of intentions, tried to coax something from her, she became hysterical and screamed at him that he was a dirty old man.