Imaginings of Sand

by Andre Brink

  16

  ALREADY THE EARLY birds are causing a racket in the trees around the house. Trui comes in from the passage, shuffling on bare feet, yawning, her head a bargain basement of green and pink curlers.

  ‘Why you didn’t call me, Miss Kristien?’ she scolds me in a guilty tone of voice. ‘Here the night is almost over. You must be dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Trui. I meant to. But we’ve been working –’

  ‘Working?’ She looks, openly incredulous, at Ouma Kristina who seems to have sunk right into the bed, in a deep sleep. For the first time I discover how exhausted I am. I sleepwalk round the bed to help Trui change the drip and pat down the bedclothes. On automatic pilot I head for the chair again, but Trui resolutely pushes me towards the door. ‘You go to catch some sleep now. The nurse will soon be here.’

  From the door I look back in a sense of amazement that seems remote to myself. How fitting, after all, I think, that Lizzie’s child should be taking over from me. All in the family. But I’m too flaked to control my thoughts. Sleep; I need sleep.

  Yet when I do collapse on my high single bed in the adjacent room, too tired even to undress, sleep eludes me. There is simply too much on my mind. The stories Ouma Kristina has told me: old ones, new versions of old ones, new ones; but what used to be stories has suddenly begun to coalesce into a history, hers, ours, mine. Ouma and her Jethro on their magic carpet; Ouma and Oupa, a lifetime beside one another, yet never together; the Girl who has now been named, Rachel, the paintings on the crumbling walls, down below where a stranger hovers, dangerous perhaps, or merely in fear; the mystic Petronella, fraud or fanatic?; her daughter who swallowed glass and left the date of her death embroidered on a square of cloth; my mother and a stranger, Papageno, on a misty morning, a pile of diaries, now burnt, the truth masquerading as so many sad lies; immaculate conceptions and revenge rapes; the fantasies of a frontier world, all larger than life, the exaggerations of a mind on the threshold of death, or a vision of some deeper darker truth? Does it matter, does it make any difference? I have listened to her, I have written it all down, I’ve appropriated it, claimed it as my own.

  And the stories, history, mingle with the stream of events that has carried me through the past day, from the nocturnal discovery of Jacob Bonthuys on the stairs, past Casper’s dawn visit, his proprietary eyes on my breasts; breakfast in the kitchen with Trui and her family, Jonnie’s smouldering aggression; Jeremiah’s stung pride, his anger at having to drive me to town in the hearse; the rediscovery of all those places from summers I’ve come to think of as lost and possibly invented, butcher’s and baker’s, chemist, the church with its memories of mice devouring the sacred body of Christ, green figs in the Home Industries and the news of the new atrocity in the township, Casper’s desperate rage. What has really happened here, is still happening around us, or waiting to break on us tomorrow, today, any moment? A whole country in the grip of madness, drifting like flotsam on a churning flood towards that event, mere days away, which may seal our collective fate. And what am I doing here, in the midst of it all, drawn into the vortex of a history I’d prefer to deny? This is no place for me; no place for anyone who wants to preserve some sanity. I must get out while it is still possible. Yet I cannot move before Ouma Kristina, a whole virulent past made flesh, releases me.

  To sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream. Jesus, Michael.

  THREE

  Among Strangers

  1

  I WAKE UP to find Anna beside the bed, in a crisp white embroidered blouse and navy skirt; she has done something to her hair and looks groomed. I cannot believe my sleep-heavy eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says in her apologetic way. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you up.’ She evidently finds it necessary to explain herself: ‘But it is past ten o’clock, you know.’

  ‘Is Ouma all right?’

  ‘She’s sleeping. The nurse is with her. She says the doctor’s already been.’

  ‘What did he say?’ I ask, reproaching myself.

  ‘She’s still serious. But he thinks she’s doing okay, in the circumstances.’

  I relax. For a moment I study her, not quite sure how to react. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  She blushes like a teenager. ‘Is it all wrong? I just felt like putting on some make-up. Haven’t really had time for it lately. And I had my hair done.’

  ‘You look ten years younger. You should do it more often.’

  ‘Ag, well –’ She brushes imaginary dust from her shoulders. ‘You sure it doesn’t look too mutton-dressed-like-vixen?’

  ‘I rather fancy the vixen look.’ I push myself up against the head of the bed, yawn, stretch. ‘You really look good, Anna. I’m afraid I must be a sight.’

  ‘Did you have a bad night?’

  ‘Late. But not bad. In fact, it was wonderful. Ouma started telling me the family history.’

  She pulls a face. ‘Haven’t you heard it all before, over and over?’

  ‘Not like this. Not all these skeletons in our cupboard. And even the parts I’d heard before now sound different.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, what I used to take for stories she’d made up now turns out to be –’ I hesitate. I meant to say ‘real’, but that is not true. The mere memory of the trip to Baghdad makes me smile. Yet even as I smile I feel caught out: Ouma was trying to tell me something and if I failed to understand the fault was not hers, but mine. Anna’s gaze exacerbates my dilemma. How can I defend Ouma’s stories against this level-headed woman who is my sister and who comes from a world where blood and violence and fear are everyday realities, not fantasies or nightmares? Is this what it is about? – that the very fabric of our fictions betrays the predicament of a culture? ‘She held me spellbound,’ I protest, not very convincingly.

  ‘But her mind is wandering. How do you know she’s to be trusted?’

  ‘I have to trust her, Anna. This is the last chance.’

  ‘Even if it’s true, what’s the point? A lot of useless baggage.’ A touch of mischief: ‘And I thought you always travelled light.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve been travelling too light.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re developing a conscience.’ Her face immediately betrays consternation. ‘That’s not what I meant. I – I’m sorry, Kristien. I was just being flippant.’

  ‘Many a true word …’ There is an awkward silence between us. I feel inexplicably naked. ‘It wasn’t easy to come back, Anna. I’d thought – hoped – I’d freed myself from everything I left behind here. But it’s not that easy.’

  Almost in spite of herself, it seems, she approaches and sits down at the foot of the bed. ‘What did she talk about?’

  ‘Herself, her parents, grandparents. Mother.’

  ‘And me? Did she turn me into a story too?’ Before I can answer she says, more vehemently than I would have expected, ‘But of course I’m not interesting enough, I have no story. I was born, and did my best to please everyone, and experimented a bit at varsity, and then met and married Casper.’

  ‘And then he took over?’ I say pointedly.

  She draws her breath in sharply and presses her hands to her face.

  It is my turn to say, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ I feel genuinely contrite. ‘But for Christ’s sake, Anna, why are you always so hard on yourself? You have a life of your own. You’re not just part of Casper’s.’

  ‘Have you sorted out your own life?’

  ‘At least I’m trying.’

  ‘I know so little about you.’

  I find her frank eyes unnerving. Trapped in bed like this, dishevelled and befuddled, aware of my own stale smell, I feel at a disadvantage. Resolutely I get up, shaking back my tangled hair. ‘I must have a bath and get dressed first. I won’t be long.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she says. Pressing her advantage? – the right of the older sister again, denying me a right to privacy. But I try to put up a bland front as I rummage self-consciously
through the drawer in which, on moving in, I dumped the contents of my suitcase. I’ve been meaning to tidy it up, but somehow I haven’t got round to it yet. Story of my life.

  Through the window, on my way past, I check the weather; a habit I must have picked up in London. The sky is sunny and flat, without depth, a day not so much tranquil as placid.

  Anna follows me to the bathroom.

  ‘Any new developments?’ I ask as the water begins to run – but it is cold, fuck it. So I resign myself to a shower.

  ‘Actually, yes. They’ve arrested the arsonists.’

  ‘What? Why haven’t you told me before?’

  ‘It was on the early news. Casper has gone off to find out more.’

  ‘Who are they? How many? Where did they find them?’

  I strip off my clothes and draw the skimpy plastic curtain, stained with ancient mould, in front of the bath.

  ‘“The police are still continuing with their investigations.” That was all they said. But at least it’s something.’

  ‘So the brave farmers of the district will start calming down now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She sounds defensive. ‘There’s still all the unrest in the township after yesterday’s attack. And now the ANC are sending down some of their top people. To defuse the situation, they say. Whatever that may mean. There’s a whole new language developed in the country these last few years.’

  I shampoo and rinse my hair; I soap my body, sponge it off, more vigorously perhaps than necessary. It isn’t only to resist the shock of the cold water, but to try and work up some indignation about Anna’s news. Why does it all continue to sound so remote, as if nothing really concerns me? I’m not involved; whatever I discover is communicated to me by others; by Anna, in that restrained voice. Yet how can I feel so untouched by it? Here I am only a few metres away from Ouma’s room: an old woman in the process of dying, slowly and painfully, from the wounds she sustained in an attack; I’m in the remains of a house that was practically burnt down. So why am I not outraged, why do I feel no urgency, not even anger, or anguish, or fear – as if I’m still ten thousand kilometres away? Can one really lose touch so totally? Or is there an entrance fee to be paid, in kind, in pain of one form or another, in suffering, before admission, readmission, is permitted? But surely this is the kind of reasoning Anna might indulge in, not I. Am I so out of touch that I’m not even sure about my own reactions any more?

  When I step out of the bath, dripping, shivering, my skin glowing, I avoid Anna’s eyes as I briskly go about the business of drying myself and getting dressed. Only much later, dressed in my shirt and jeans, my hair dried, the tea made (Trui is bustling about somewhere else on a spring-cleaning spree clearly designed to extend, in due course, to the whole house), I face Anna across the breakfast table in the kitchen.

  As I spread my bread with Ouma’s home-made apricot jam salvaged from the pantry, her eyes caress Michael’s watch on my wrist – I have a weakness for men’s watches, as I have for large-buckled belts – and follow the motion of my hands.

  ‘You have nice hands,’ she says.

  ‘Practical.’ I briefly spread them out: the fingers longish but square-tipped, short nails. No-nonsense, I suppose. ‘Not like those exquisite tapering fingers Mother had. Remember?’

  She gets up to pour the tea. ‘What was it Ouma told you about her?’ she asks, nonchalant, but I notice the underlying tenseness.

  ‘Did you know about Mother’s diaries?’

  ‘What are you talking about? Mother was not the type to keep a diary, and you know it.’

  ‘What do we really know about her?’

  ‘If she kept them, where are they now?’

  ‘Destroyed in the fire.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Anna, I’m sure Ouma told the truth.’

  ‘Scandal. She’s always thrived on scandal.’

  ‘Why should you try to protect Mother? She’s dead now. And it’s not as if you were close. She never allowed anyone close to her.’

  She makes an effort. ‘All right. Tell me.’

  I offer her a brief account of Ouma’s story: the diaries; the inexplicable accident.

  ‘So what does it all come down to?’ she asks. ‘That she sacrificed all her ambitions for our sake? To fulfil her duty towards her family? But hell, she certainly made us pay for it.’

  ‘Sure. That’s what I’ve always reproached her for. But last night – Ouma suddenly made me realise that there was another side to it. She had a whole secret life of her own which we knew nothing about.’

  ‘So? Who doesn’t?’

  I take the bait: ‘You too?’

  She takes her time over a sip of tea, then puts down the cup. ‘Did you know,’ she asks in a wry, self-mocking voice, ‘that I once wanted to become a doctor?’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Father asked the dominee to come and talk to me. He explained that if I really was interested to help the sick and suffering I should become a nurse. That was more suitable for a girl.’

  ‘And was that why you wanted to do medicine? To help the suffering?’

  She sniffs. ‘Not really. I suppose I just wanted to do something that would get me away from home. To learn more about the world, to dissect, to speak with some kind of authority.’

  ‘And after the dominee’s visit you resigned yourself?’

  ‘Of course. I always did, didn’t I? I did the next best thing, became a teacher. It was good to be liked. By Mother, above all. As a child I thought she was perfect. All I wanted was to be like her. So I became her devoted slave. I’d do everything and anything as long as she approved. It’s odd to think, now, that she probably needed my adulation as much as I needed her approval.’ She is silent for a while. Then she looks at me with a crooked smile. ‘Even that wasn’t enough. I wanted to be liked by everybody – by Father, by the teachers at school, by friends.’

  ‘By boys,’ I remind her with a smile. ‘Because you had the boobs.’

  ‘Sure.’ Her frankness surprises me. ‘It was the most remarkable discovery of my life. I was the first in our class to have them. In the beginning it was painfully embarrassing. Until I discovered there was another side to it. Suddenly boys began to notice me. Even bigger boys. It was not like the teachers who liked me because of my good marks or my exemplary manners or the neatness of my homework or whatever. For the first time in my life people seemed to be looking at me, however dubious their reasons might have been. I began to think I mattered. It was extraordinary to discover what boys were willing to do in exchange for the smallest favours.’

  ‘What kind of favours?’ I push her.

  For an instant she is flustered. But with a touch of bravado she looks at me again. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Anna, you?!’

  ‘I wasn’t always the goody-goody you thought.’ She busies herself with her tea cup, spilling on the table. ‘But don’t get me wrong. I might offer one of them a glimpse. Or perhaps a feel. It never went beyond that. I was much too straight-laced. The fear of God kept me on the straight and narrow. And every time I did grant a favour I prayed for days afterwards, dreaming of fire and brimstone. At the same time it was such an exquisite feeling to know I was liked, I wasn’t worthless, I could turn the boys round my finger. It certainly made up for a lot.’ A nervous smile flickers across her lips. ‘In a sense it made me believe I was actually real.’ She puts down her cup. ‘While the only things that were real about me were my boobs.’

  ‘They must have been an asset at university too,’ I say lightly.

  She gets up, goes to the washup, picks up a cloth, looks round aimlessly, puts it down again and comes back to the table.

  ‘That made it all the more humiliating in the end,’ she says. ‘To admit that whatever I achieved was due only to the shape of my boobs. Not because I was a woman, but because I was made to feel like a kind of female impersonator.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing special. It was
the whole experience of being away from home, suddenly feeling free, exposed to so many new things, that made my head turn. I thought I was queen of the castle. Almost literally: when I was crowned Jacaranda Queen …’ A disparaging little laugh. ‘Can you imagine anyone whose highest achievement in life is becoming Jacaranda Queen? What a future I have behind me. That was also when I met Casper.’

  ‘I’ve always wondered how he came into the picture.’

  ‘At the coronation ball. He took me home. Except we only got there the following morning. It was the first time I’d ever gone all the way with a man. Although I must admit that by that time I’d come pretty close. But you know how it is: you come to persuade yourself that as long as that little membrane is more or less intact it’s still okay. Anyway, that was that. And so naturally I had to marry him.’

  ‘Shotgun?’

  ‘No, not at all. Nothing as melodramatic as that. We only got married two years later. But that’s beside the point. It was just that I believed I had no other choice. You sleep with a man, you marry him. Otherwise it’s straight to hell.’

  ‘Not that you escaped it altogether.’

  She fastidiously lines up her teaspoon with the angle of the handle on her cup. ‘No,’ she says at last, almost inaudibly. ‘But then that’s where responsibility comes in, isn’t it? You transgress, and then you pay. You can’t expect to go scot free.’

  ‘That’s shit.’

  ‘Shit is very real.’

  ‘Anna, you’ve got to get out of this rut.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to talk.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘You always did things your own way.’ She chuckles, in spite of herself. ‘Remember when you were small, one summer when we were here with Ouma, and you were climbing trees? Then Mother told you to stop it. You wanted to know why – you always did. She said you shouldn’t let the boys see your panties. So you promptly took off your pants, and hid them where the boys wouldn’t see them, and went up the tree again.’