Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  Hilary braked the car, geared down into third. Jack … an informer …? Jesus frigging Christ. What wouldn’t the man stoop to? It was horrible but not entirely unexpected. She had some direct knowledge of the man, after all. She knew that no one would call him a faithful servant of the common weal. But what most impressed her now was something else. Not for the first time, she marvelled at the range and extent of Muletsi’s knowledge. He seemed to know everything that was going on.

  By now she understood what had drawn Muletsi to this menial post, a groom at her father’s farm. On the face of it the arrangement made little sense. A graduate in English literature working in a barn? To a certain degree, you could chalk it up to the inequities of life for young black men under apartheid. But in this case other factors were in play. He had explained it to her late one afternoon when they both were lying on their backs upon a bed of straw bales in the stable loft. Swallows darted overhead, flashing through the vertical shafts of light that shot between the wall planks. There’d been some graunching done and not for the first time. It was nothing serious, just hugs and nibbles, wholly different from the ordeals she’d been put through by Jack. Wholly different. Muletsi kept everything light, more talking and joking than actual touching. He seemed to understand, without her saying so, that she needed time to get her head clear. Clear of Jack.

  Besides, this was all too ridiculous, what was going on — she and Muletsi. Could there possibly be a more tired plot device than this: stable hand appears out of nowhere, meets rich man’s daughter, wins daughter’s heart? That story must have been written a thousand times before. She laughed aloud.

  “What …?” He shifted onto his side and peered at her, a few stray motes of straw spotted through his hair.

  She told him what she’d been thinking just now. Him. Her. Two players dispatched by central casting to act out this ancient charade yet again.

  At first he said nothing, but then, after a few seconds’ pause, he laughed, too — a warm and comforting sound, but a sound with a certain edge. “A charade, is it? Is that what you think?”

  “Not a charade, exactly. Just an oft-told tale.”

  “You think so?”

  “I don’t know.” She was unsure what to say. His tone was more serious than she’d expected. She brushed several flecks of straw from his hair and nuzzled her cheek against his. “It’s just that this story has been told before, or something very much like it. I’ve been reduced to a cliché. We have. You and I.”

  He shrugged. “And what if we have? Is that so bad? Your great Shakespeare wrote in clichés, too. Practically nothing else but. All of his comedies — they all end in a wedding. Every single one — or almost every one. But so what? The task is not to avoid clichés but to fashion them anew.”

  Anew — was that even a word, a word that people actually used? “Mister English Professor,” she intoned. She made a genuflecting sort of motion with just her head, and both of them laughed. They did some more in the way of graunching, and then she raised herself onto her elbows and gazed into his eyes. “Weddings,” she said, “is that it?” She frowned. “Difficult to see us ending that way.”

  He nodded. “Difficult is right. Illegal, too.”

  They were silent, both of them thinking of that. After a time he cleared his throat. In a hushed voice, he told her he had something else to say. It was time to come clean, time to fashion another cliché anew. She waited, no idea what he would say, and it was on that memorable afternoon in the stable loft that Muletsi told her he was himself with the ANC, a daring admission in any circumstances, but especially dangerous now. The African National Congress had recently been banned by the government. Mere membership was a crime. At first she didn’t believe him. She thought that this was a pretty good joke, so she joked about it, too.

  “How’s your mind?” she said. “Are you utterly mad? I could turn you in, hey.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “Not just now.” She gave him a kiss, smack on the lips, then rolled away and said nothing for a few moments. Then she frowned. “Is it true?”

  “It is.”

  “And you are here, right now, as a spy, is it? Not as my suitor at all?”

  “Must I choose? I cannot be both?”

  “That depends.”

  But it didn’t depend. Not really. That was just a joke she made, and it was no longer time for joking. She could tell that much. Now it was time to listen and not to speak, so that was what she did. She listened in silence while he told her what was what. The more he revealed to her about the ANC and the struggle, the more agitated she became. She knew perfectly well that there were tensions in the land. Of course she did. Anyone capable of drawing breath was surely aware of that. She wasn’t quite an idiot, you check? But to her the troubles had always seemed like so much background noise, something happening a good distance away rather than right bloody here. She had never regarded South Africa’s conflicts as a force affecting her own life, but now that began to change, thanks to Muletsi, who explained to her how the land really lay. No, she would not be turning him in. That was the exact opposite of what she had in mind. The transformation was not immediate. There would be more such discussions, more revelations, and more new takes on old clichés. In the end, however, she came around. She saw her country anew. Not only that, but she followed that same line of thinking, followed where it led. What she had in mind was to damn well join the man. Join the struggle. Nobody had ever accused Hilary Anson of half measures.

  Just now, Muletsi pointed ahead toward a small grassy space near what seemed to be the edge of Bruntville. “Turn left here,” he said. “You can park the car here. Don’t worry; it will be safe. People will see me getting out.”

  “Oh …? You mean that, otherwise, they would scale it? Is that what you mean to say?”

  “Not scale it.” He chuckled. “But strip it bare? Could be.”

  She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She didn’t know whether to be afraid or not. She’d never ventured into a world of black people before — this in a country where black people were practically everywhere.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They climbed out of the car and entered Bruntville on foot, picking their way down a narrow lane flanked by squat cinder-block dwellings with zinc roofs that were held in place by bricks or rocks. Goats pranced ahead, and pigs snuffled through smouldering mounds of litter scattered at uneven intervals along the way. A man in a brown fedora tottered past on an ancient bicycle. Small flocks of children suddenly appeared and, just as quickly, scrambled out of view. She had a sense that people were peering at her from beyond a multitude of windows — curtains pulled open for a time and then quickly drawn shut.

  “Is it all right?” she said. “Is someone going to shoot me?”

  “Not shoot,” he told her. “We don’t have guns in Bruntville, or precious few.”

  She looked up and realized that something else was missing. At first, she wondered what it was. Then she knew. Power lines. There were no power lines overhead. The people here would have to improvise their own sources of heat and light. She wondered how they managed it. Meanwhile, she kept close to Muletsi and tried not to show how unnerved she was.

  In all her life, she had never encountered a place such as this, or not at such close quarters. She knew that black townships existed — everybody knew that much — but they were always tucked beyond a ridge or a hill, places you sped past in the back seat of your father’s car, places you barely noticed — several filaments of smoke seen spiralling from a few tin chimneys, a fleeting image that quickly vanished as your father drove on. Now here she was, the only white person in a place that was evidently reserved for the exclusive use of blacks. Never in her life had she found herself so vastly outnumbered.

  For an instant, maybe two, she wanted to turn around, go back. “Muletsi …”

  “Here,” he said. With one hand on her shoulder, Muletsi guided her to the left, pointing toward yet
another of these low, weathered hovels, one that was indistinguishable from the rest. He smiled. “My humble domain — or my mother’s domain, I should say.”

  Mrs. Dadla proved to be a slender woman, smaller than Hilary had expected, given her son’s considerable height. She had a penchant for quoting from the Bible, which she seemed to have committed to memory, word for word. It seemed she held a position of some importance at a local church, an evangelical congregation. If the woman was put out in any way by having a white person as a guest, she contrived to disguise it. Immediately after making Hilary’s acquaintance, she invited the two of them to be seated — ordered them, really — and promptly set about boiling water for tea, setting the pot on a small charcoal stove. Charcoal, thought Hilary, in place of electricity.

  The visit did not last long — an hour or so, no more — but it was to be repeated on three more occasions in the weeks that followed. During those visits Muletsi would show her around the place, pointing out the local landmarks — the school he attended as a youth, the outdoor market where his mother did most of her shopping, the medical clinic that was always understaffed and ill-equipped, the dark, grotto-like shebeen, which he insisted he did not frequent.

  “Just special occasions, I suppose?” said Hilary.

  He nodded. “And Sundays, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  On each of her visits, he walked with her back to her car and then rode alongside her until they were once again on the main road to Mooi River. Then she was on her own, driving home to her father’s farm and thinking about Muletsi, her lone confederate. She didn’t bother to think about Jack. She would think about Jack some other time.

  Where Muletsi was concerned, she had already decided what she would do. Collaborate. It was that simple. He required information, and she had the means of providing it. In fact, she had already begun. A month or so after she and Muletsi first met — met properly — she had seen her first chance. That Canadian man had returned, the one who dressed always in black. True, he spoke with an English accent — Liverpudlian, she thought — but he insisted he was Canadian all the same. He was introduced as Quinton Vasco. One weekday afternoon he rolled up to the main house in the back seat of a hired car that had brought him up from Durban. This would be his second visit. Soon, more men arrived.

  Long meetings ensued, fuelled by tobacco, single-malt Scotch, mounds of fried potatoes, and planks of braaied steak. She didn’t sit in, not exactly. That would not have been welcome. But she wandered through the living room, more or less at will, munching on buttered toast and Marmite. No one seemed to object. For half an hour at a time she curled up in an empty chair and paged lazily through a magazine. Horse & Hound. No one said a word. She yawned, stretched, stood up, and struck off to the kitchen before returning a short time later, maybe with a mug of coffee — that and a novel by Nadine Gordimer. She repeated these or similar manoeuvres at least a half-dozen times.

  Not even her father registered a complaint about her comings and goings, assuming he even noticed her whereabouts. It was quite likely he did not. He rarely took stock of her — she being a girl and so on. He doted on his sons, Colin and Trevor, but they were gone, both living up in Joburg now, both bolstering their fortunes on that reef of gold. As for his only daughter, the man probably would have required a daily memo just to keep him cognizant of the fact he possessed such a creature. Sometimes he seemed to stumble when pronouncing her name, as if he’d only just heard it for the first time. This was her impression, anyway. Possibly, she was wrong.

  But it seemed that her very invisibility had its advantages, too. Merely by ducking in and out of the room, armed with a book or a magazine, she managed to inform herself about the cannons — the GC-45s, as they were called — that the Canadian, this Quinton Vasco, meant to sell to the Republic of South Africa. The weapons were still in the experimental stage, he admitted. But they would be operational soon. He explained that his company was building a testing range even now, in a place called Kelso, in a Canadian province called Ontario, somewhere northwest of Toronto. He himself had made his domicile nearby and was overseeing the entire show.

  But these were details. What was of primordial import, according to the man from Canada, was the question of South Africa’s national survival. He repeated this point, laying stress on certain terms. Primordial import. National survival. The plain truth, he said, was this: the country faced an existential challenge, one that could not be denied but only confronted — and he could provide the means. Guns. Big guns. The biggest there were. Best to arm now, he said, for the writing was already on the wall. Majority rule was coming to the region — coming sooner rather than later — and everything would change. The Portuguese would be ousted from Mozambique and Angola. Meanwhile, the blacks would take power in Rhodesia, in Bechuanaland, and beyond. Why, they had already taken over in Tanganyika, where they were imposing socialism even now. Dear God. The red tide was on the rise and, very soon, South Africa would stand alone. There was no denying it, not any longer. Time to get your heads out of the sand. The Canadian was on his feet by then. He held out his arms and raised his voice. War was coming, war on a multitude of fronts. Best to prepare for it. Prepare for it now.

  “Is it?” said Muletsi when she told him what she had learned.

  “What …?” She groaned. “Is that all you have to say? Just: ‘Is it?’ Frigging hell.”

  He looked at her with what she thought of as his steely gaze. Then he relaxed, smiled. “I’m joking. You did good. Better than good. You did great, hey.”

  That didn’t hurt too much, hearing him praise her like that.

  They were standing in the grooming bay in the stables, and they both started to graunch, just a little, nothing much. She felt love and revolution, all at once.

  Just then, she heard footsteps, a man clearing his throat, spitting. She knew right away it was Jack, returning after doing some chores in town. She’d barely seen the man in days. Muletsi pulled away and hurried off, back toward the stalls, while she turned around to hear what Jack might have to say.

  TWELVE

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  “BIG DAY,” SAID HILARY.

  I already knew what that meant. We’d be doing groundwork again, no saddle, no bridle. To be honest, I didn’t truly believe it was possible, what she was asking me to do, but Hilary swore it could be done. All I needed was practice.

  “I suppose you can do it?” I said. “Ride a horse without a saddle or bridle?”

  I was taking a sarcastic tone, almost always a mistake in my experience.

  “It happens I can,” she said. “It depends on the horse, I’ll grant you that. But, yes, I can.” She furrowed her brow. “Look. I know it’s difficult. I’m not pretending otherwise.”

  I didn’t need to hear Hilary say so. I already knew all about it. In a way, it’s just simple physics. There’s a far greater chance of falling off a horse if you are riding without a saddle. One brief error in balance can land you on your head whereas, with a saddle, you’ve got stirrups, you’ve got knee rolls, a cantle. You’re more stable. There’s more to it than that, but it comes down to the same thing. Riding bareback is hard, and riding without a bridle is harder — impossible, if you asked me.

  “Not ‘impossible,’” said Hilary. “It can be done. It takes some practice, I’ll grant you. But what doesn’t? Come on. Let’s saddle these two.”

  Ten minutes later, we both were riding out to the paddock at the back of Colonel Barker’s property. Once there, we untacked the horses. Hilary clipped a shank to Club Soda’s halter and looped it in a safety knot around one of the wooden panels that ran along the perimeter of the paddock.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”

  I already knew — ride with nothing but hope and faith. I couldn’t help thinking that today was as good a day as any for putting an end to my residence on earth. I was dressed for a casual sort of death — sneakers without
socks, blue jeans, a pale-blue polo shirt. Of course, I had brought no crash helmet. What possible purpose would a crash helmet have served? I anticipated a perfunctory flight through the sparkling air followed by a head-on collision with some large rock. Behold: a lethal concussion or a broken neck, one or the other. Either would do.

  Now I stood at Della’s side, expecting Hilary to give me a leg-up, the way she sometimes did. But she just stayed where she was, a few yards away.

  “You’re on your own, my boykie,” she said. “Really. It’s important to do this yourself.”

  No problem. I took a step back, bent my knees, and vaulted into the air, twisting around so that I ended up straddling Della’s back, immediately behind her withers. She shied to the side, but I managed to stay on. I kept my balance, not by gripping her mane or by clutching her neck, but by reaching out with both my arms like a tightrope artist. That seemed to be right, judging by Hilary’s reaction.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s perfect.”

  Stop the presses. The kid’s fifteen years old, he’s been riding horses for most of his life, and he can actually propel himself onto an animal’s back without immediately falling off. I shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “No, I’m serious. That was really good. And there’s another thing.”

  “What?”

  “Look at you. You’re sitting straight, with your weight deep and stable. The difference is amazing. Now squeeze your lower legs, then release.”

  I did as I was told, and Della immediately perked her ears and began to walk along the perimeter of the paddock.

  “Weight deep,” said Hilary. “Keep your weight deep. Pretend you’re just one creature, you and Della.”

  I did my best.

  “Now close your eyes.”

  “What …?”

  “You heard me. Close them tight.”

  “I won’t be able to see.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  Fine. I did as she said.