by Andre Brink
‘They’ve gone home. I came alone.’
‘That’s exactly where you should be going too. Anna will be waiting.’
‘I need a wife, not a mother.’
‘It’s my sister you’re talking about.’
‘You really don’t seem to appreciate all the trouble I’m taking to make sure you’re safe.’ He shielded his eyes against the beam from the torch. ‘Please turn that thing away.’
I kept it shining in his eyes. ‘Go home,’ I said.
‘How about some coffee?’
‘No.’
‘Come on. What’s happened to Boer hospitality?’
‘I’m a Brit now,’ I said. ‘Besides, I have work to do. I’m looking after Ouma. And your place is with your family.’
He changed his tone. ‘Ag, don’t be difficult, man. Good heavens, it’s not as if we’re strangers.’
He came down a few steps. A waft of his breath betrayed that he’d been drinking.
‘We’ve been through all of this before,’ I said brusquely. ‘On these very steps, if you remember. I hope I needn’t remind you what happened then.’
‘We’ve both come a long way,’ he cajoled. ‘We know what goes for what in the world, don’t we?’
‘You make me sick,’ I said, taking a step up, trying to move past him. But he caught my arm.
‘Not so quick,’ he said. Jesus, I thought, this is like a cheap thriller. We’re caught in some time warp. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t had the hots for me from the moment you stepped into our house again. Everything you’ve said, everything you’ve done. Think I can’t see through it?’
‘If you think this is the hots there’s a surprise or two waiting for you in hell,’ I flared. ‘Now let go of me.’
This is where the sequence has gone haywire in my mind. He was grabbing at me, I struck at him with the torch, we both lost our balance and stumbled down the steps, falling against the bottom door, where we continued struggling fiercely. The torch had fallen and rolled out of reach, its beam uselessly stabbing the darkness in the wrong direction, at an angle away from us. He was too strong for me, of course. In a moment he had my arms pinned behind my back and was tearing at the front of my shirt. And then the door behind me swung open and we both fell, Casper heavily on top of me; and I heard somebody shouting, and a heavy object – a chair, I discovered subsequently – came crashing down on Casper’s head. In the light coming from the room I could see Jacob Bonthuys. There was an expression of fear and pain on his face; how he’d managed to wield the heavy chair with his wounded arm I still don’t know.
With the kind of movement I suppose one is trained to perform in the army, Casper rolled out of reach and staggered to his feet again. He was bleeding from a cut on the forehead, but he wasn’t out of action yet; and there was a murderous gleam in his eyes. But he was in a panic too. He obviously hadn’t expected anybody there, and shock at being discovered must have outweighed even his dumb rage.
To make doubly sure I called out at Bonthuys, ‘There are guns upstairs.’
He hesitated, then made a move towards the door.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ cried Casper, quickly cutting him off.
He could easily have overpowered both of us; perhaps even Trui and Jeremiah, had I shouted for help, which I only now thought of doing. But of course Casper’s whole design had presumed privacy; there could be no satisfaction in beating up the lot of us.
‘You’re bloody overreacting,’ he growled, tucking in his shirt, sweeping back his hair and in the process plastering most of his face with blood. ‘For God’s sake, I only came round for a chat and a cup of coffee.’
‘Next time wait till you’re invited. And knock first.’ I was breathing heavily.
Studiously avoiding Jacob Bonthuys – and just as well too – Casper scrambled past me to the door, let fly with a kick at the torch, and started feeling his way up the stairs, stumbling once or twice.
‘And don’t think you can fool me!’ he shouted from the floor above. ‘I know a bitch on heat when I see one!’
He might well have worked himself up into enough of a rage again to return to me, but just then Trui’s voice came calling from above, ‘Miss Kristien, are you all right?’
An ornament or a vase was smashed to the ground as Casper bumped into something; then there was a fumbling at the back door and the next moment it was slammed shut.
‘It’s all right, Trui,’ I called.
A car pulled off outside.
I went upstairs to reassure her; there was no need to tell the whole story. Then I went down again to attend to Jacob Bonthuys. There wasn’t much I could do, except to rebandage the arm and give him some tablets for the pain. It could only have taken minutes but it felt like hours before I was able to go to the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea, trembling all over by now. In most unheroinely fashion I began to cry. But I didn’t want to leave Ouma alone for too long. And in the end it was the need to be vigilant and occupy my thoughts – even though she was sleeping quite deeply and required no particular care – that calmed me down again. At two o’clock I was relieved by Trui. And although I fully expected to lie awake for hours I slid into sleep almost as soon as my head struck the pillow.
2
THE NIGHT NOW a memory as unreal, and in retrospect as ridiculous, as a nightmare, it is time to face the new day. A special day, even though it looks deceptively ordinary on the surface. I remember Christmas Days in my childhood, here in this house, playing on the stoep or in the shade of the trees with my new presents; and stopping from time to time to look up, expecting to see something out of the ordinary that would mark it as Christmas, a deeper blue in the sky, an unusual sound in the birdsong, a different texture to the trees, but there was nothing to designate it as a day somehow set apart; and that never ceased to disappoint me. Today the delegation is coming from Johannesburg. Before it is out I shall have spoken to Sandile again. (How different things would have been last night if he had been here!) Yet through the open window, to which I hasten as soon as I have recovered my senses, the sky looks the same as always.
There is a ribaldry of birds in the trees. The day is ringing with their sound.
Jeremiah is busy outside, raking leaves. I haven’t realised how swiftly they have begun to fall, sifting steadily down on his head and shoulders from the deciduous trees in front of the house – the few oaks, a chestnut, a single plane tree, one or two others. Time is running out. Ouma’s. My own, too, here; two weeks from now, who knows, I may be in London again. By then I will have seen Sandile; the elections will be behind us, the country may be going up in flames. Does it concern me? Until a day or two ago it didn’t; now the expectation of his coming has shifted something, almost imperceptibly, and in this clear ordinary morning I acknowledge it.
It is time to cross the threshold of the day. I shower and dress, with more care than usual; three changes. I go to check on Ouma. She is sleeping fitfully; the nurse is there. Making sure that Trui is out of the way, downstairs, I return to the secret room and collect some of the bags that are patiently awaiting my arrival, like passengers huddling together in a third-class waiting room. From my bedroom I make sure that Jeremiah is no longer in the front garden before I steal downstairs with my burden.
On my way out, three doors from the kitchen, I pass the laundry where Trui is ironing sheets, her back to me. The smell of her ironing brings me to a standstill, briefly, before I tiptoe past. That clean, clean smell. And I remember a late Tuesday afternoon in there, among the piles of newly ironed laundry: one of the distant cousins, Laura, had been sent with me to collect the finished clothes and sheets and distribute them to the right relatives in their many rooms. I don’t know how it began; I think she offered to show me her newly sprouting tendrils of pubic hair, ‘seaweed’ she called it; and somehow we got carried away and removed our clothes and began to touch and inspect and fondle and compare, each a mirror for the other, all as innocent as the smell of the ironed garments still impr
egnated with the summer sun in which they’d dried. It was my only vaguely lesbian experience, but it opened a door to more momentous discoveries later. It ended in upheaval Not knowing that Ouma had already sent Laura and me to fetch the laundry, Mother came in to collect her underwear and found us among the toppled bundles of sheets and clothes. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. It must have been minutes before she found her voice – that voice – to take control. The spanking that followed was nothing. It was her tone, her attitude; the intimation that what we’d done so far exceeded the bounds, not of the permissible but of the imaginable, that caused me for many nights to wake up in terror. The event was regarded as so serious that the two of us were summoned to a conclave of all the mothers in one of the farthest bedrooms, not so much to be berated as to be lamented over, our souls consigned to everlasting hell.
This must be why the memory itself became repressed. Those other youthful transgressions – in loquat tree, attic, basement or wherever – were remembered; they were branded sinful, but not altogether evil, irreparable. But that Tuesday had to be excised from the mind. Until this morning. It must be Ouma’s story, yesterday afternoon, about Samuel and Marga, that dislodged it and brought it back to light. And I’m stunned to think it could have caused such horror at the time. Returning, now, to it, I find something sweet and innnocent and satisfying in the memory; and if it is unremarkable in itself the unexpected fusion with something else, beyond me, makes it more momentous. Even the action I am about to perform acquires more weight through it.
Almost reluctant to move away from the laundry, I venture to the kitchen door. In the distance I can see Jeremiah moving among the fruit trees near the graveyard with some of the other labourers, beyond the fowl run where turkeys gobble and chickens scratch and muscovy ducks hiss malevolently, Like a child on a guilty errand I hurry round the side of the house to the large heap of leaves he’s raked; watched only by a suspicious peacock – and fuck him anyway – I dig a hollow in the heap and shake into it the contents of the brownpaper bags I have brought from upstairs. I cover up the hollow again, take out my lighter and set fire to the heap.
Overhead the birds erupt in cacophony. Within minutes, Jeremiah comes running, panting. He stops when he sees me, then remonstrates angrily.
‘Miss Kristien, you can’t do that. We’ve had enough fire around this place.’
‘It’s all right, Jeremiah. The trees are safe.’
‘This is my job,’ he says stiffly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I apologise, not contrite at all, ‘but I can’t resist a heap of leaves. Don’t you remember?’
‘I remember. You make trouble all the time, then, now.’
‘It’s not so bad, Jeremiah.’ I wink at him. ‘When I go to town I’ll get you some Springbok tobacco. Okay?’ This is unfair advantage I’m taking, I know, but I have little choice. Ouma will demand a progress report any moment now, and that musty little room is still stacked high with the barren evidence of past fertility.
‘Ai, Miss Kristien, really, you making it very difficult for me.’
‘I’m a big girl now, Jeremiah.’
‘You?’ He shakes his head, screwing up his eyes against the smoke.
‘Thank you for letting me, Jeremiah.’
He hovers for a few more minutes, then goes off, mumbling angrily to himself as I turn back to supervise my bonfire. I draw in the smell of smoke. More memories: braaivleis here on summer nights, lamb ribs and ostrich steaks, Ouma in charge, disparaging about men who always scorch the meat; Namibia, that far-off visit, the confinement of space; an evening beside a suburban pool, a man erupting from the hedge and storming past, disappearing as suddenly as he has appeared. I prod the flaming leaves with a long stick, watching the sparks fly. Standing back to step out of the smoke which has changed direction I discover a small dead bird in the dry grass. Fallen from a nest? Caught by a cat? Recovering another childhood ritual I pick it up and deposit it in the flames, seeing the feathers turn to smoke. Years ago Ouma said, ‘Birds are the spirits of dead women.’
‘Then what happens when a bird dies?’
‘It becomes something else again.’
The smoke is transformed into fire, a small flare gathered into the others. There is a sense of achievement in watching the progress of this particular little transfiguration.
The heap is still smouldering, the bags reduced to glowing bundles, when I notice a grey Mercedes approaching along the farm road, and my breath catches in my throat. It must be them, it is he! But as it swings into the yard and comes past me, heading for the back, I realise it is the doctor.
He clearly has no intention of waiting for me, but I catch up with him on the staircase. He is not a good advertisement for his trade: flabby, red-faced, out of breath.
‘How is the patient?’ he asks without looking at me.
‘Much the same.’
‘I really think …’ But he gives up; and in silence we proceed to the room where the nurse is adjusting a new drip beside the bed. Ouma Kristina has woken up, but her head is moving to and fro on the pillow. The doctor stops when he notices the coffin still standing beside the bed. ‘I had hoped not to see this thing around again,’ he says, casting a reproachful look at me.
‘I couldn’t wait for you to come,’ Ouma cuts him short. ‘Today it’s into the box with me. I need the rest.’
‘Now look, Mrs Basson –’
‘You took the Hippocratic oath,’ Ouma reminds him.
‘What has that got to do with it?’
‘If you refuse to make me comfortable I shall die,’ she says. ‘It will be on your head. And I’ll come back to haunt you to make sure you never forget. Besides, I’ll make sure everybody knows about you and your receptionist.’
He gapes at her, his face flushing a deep granadilla purple. She watches with malicious glee.
‘Let’s have a look at your wounds,’ he says, busying himself with his medical bag at the foot of her bed. Like yesterday, I withdraw to the window, distracted by the muffled moans that escape from her as the two of them set about attending her.
When at last they have finished the doctor comes to join me at the window.
‘Her condition has weakened,’ he says in a lowered voice. ‘I really must urge you to let her go back to hospital.’
‘What for?’ asks Ouma Kristina, who must have strained to hear every word. ‘I’ve told you so many times: I’m going to die anyway. Why won’t you let me do so with a little bit of dignity?’
‘You can see for yourself,’ I say. ‘She won’t budge.’
And so, with disapproval evident in his every gesture, he helps us to ease her into the coffin (now thoroughly cleaned and disinfected), which is first stood on two chairs next to the bed to make the transfer as smooth as possible.
‘This is much better,’ she says, exactly as I said years ago when she fitted me with my first bra. And in spite of all the misgivings I, too, have had since yesterday, I now find it satisfactory to see her lying so serenely in the coffin – not because it confirms her imminent death, but because it restores her to her, our, lengthening past.
The doctor doesn’t bother to say goodbye to her as he withdraws into the passage with the nurse, obviously to issue stern instructions.
‘You’re being very naughty,’ I remonstrate softly with Ouma Kristina. ‘What do you know about him and his receptionist anyway?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she says, smiling. ‘Don’t all doctors have affairs with their receptionists?’
Before I can vent my indignation the nurse returns, and I run out after the doctor to steer him to the cellar. It is only with the greatest reluctance that he complies. This house is clearly becoming a chamber of horrors to the poor man. Thank God Jacob Bonthuys appears stable after the exertions of last night; there has been some new bleeding, but in spite of the pain it does not appear to be serious.
As we mount the stairs again the doctor stops briefly to look at me. ‘Miss Müller, I trust that what your
grandmother said this morning –’
‘Her mind is wandering,’ I say quickly. ‘Think no more of it.’
He beams with unexpected gratitude. ‘I knew you would understand.’
There are large halfmoons of perspiration under his arms. And as he goes out I notice that the back of his striped blue shirt also shows a dark patch. I consider following him, then decide against it.
‘Excuse me, Miss,’ says our house guest behind me in the passage.
‘Yes, Mr Bonthuys?’
‘No, I just wanted to thank you for all the trouble, with the doctor and all.’
‘It’s I who must thank you,’ I say. ‘You really saved me from a lot of unpleasantness last night. If you hadn’t been here –’
‘That man …’ He clicks his tongue. ‘Why do some people cause so much trouble?’
‘He’s scared,’ I say.
‘But why must we now all pay the price?’
‘He’ll get his due after the elections,’ I assure him grimly.
Bonthuys shakes his head. ‘That will still not put it right, Miss. We can’t go on paying each other back all the time, all the time. There has been too much badness already.’
Noticing the book reverently pressed against his chest, I ask, ‘How are you getting on with Langenhoven?’
He beams. ‘It’s wonderful, Miss. He keeps me busy, only the print is very small. But I read a lot last night. After the thing that happened I couldn’t sleep.’
‘The days must be long down there,’ I commiserate.
‘How long will I still be staying here?’
‘As long as you need to. As long as you wish.’
‘I must go back. But I don’t want to make trouble for Mr Joubert.’
‘There won’t be any more trouble. I told you they’ve caught the arsonists.’
‘Yes, but many white people don’t like him. They always make life difficult for him, because why, they say he cares about hotnots like us. And now he’s allowed all those squatters to live at his place. You know, the people who were thrown off the farms when money got short. Some was living there for generations. Now they got nowhere to go. The white farmers are angry, but what must the people do? And Abel Joubert is the only one who cares about them.’
