Before I Forget

by Andre Brink

  It was Jenny who told me about the curious custom, which apparently was spread across all the old cultures of Europe, known as the moon-cloth. In some cultures, she said, it was known as the blood-cloth, in some as the woman-cloth, but its function was the same everywhere—and Jenny was a cultural anthropologist, she should know. (I shall never forget the light in her eyes, particularly in the moment of orgasm—she was one of the rare women I have known who keep their eyes open when they come—as if there was a candle burning deep inside her, behind them, a luminosity from within, not a reflection of anything outside. And I remember what they looked like as she spoke to me about this moon-cloth, which was, for us, the preferred term: it was not just a point of information she imparted, but a peculiar excitement, a prelude to sex.) In one way or another, this cloth, it seems, figures in most of the great quests and journeys of our civilization: Marco Polo took with him on his voyage to the Great Mogul, the moon-cloths of his wife and his three daughters; Columbus took one from the virgin Juana de Concepción, the young woman who had promised to wait for him. (There is even a hint, said Jenny, of such a cloth being entrusted to him by Queen Isabella, but this might be difficult to substantiate, for obvious reasons.) Sir Francis Drake had such a cloth, and so had Vasco da Gama. Jenny had a Greek scholar working on the Odyssey, and she was confident that an obscure passage in the First Book might be found, upon retranslation, to confirm that Penelope had provided her Odysseus with such an amulet. In the work of the French anthropologist Lucien Lefèvre she had found exciting indications, from tombs in the Valley of the Kings, that even the illustrious dead in Old Egypt were supplied with such a moon-cloth to accompany them on the long journey towards the realm of Osiris. Most earlier researchers had missed the references, for the simple reason that they had not been looking for them. But working back from Columbus and Marco Polo, all the way to Gilgamesh, it would now seem that these cloths fulfilled a crucial function, linking later voyages of discovery to primordial religious rites.

  What at first may sound crude, really contains a very basic and profound wisdom. For the moon-cloth was in fact nothing but a piece of fabric, a bandage, or a rag used by a woman during menstruation. Much still needs to be clarified about its function: was it a means of keeping the absent woman present in the wandering hero’s mind during his travels, and perhaps ensure that he was brought home safely to her? Or just a mnemonic device? A form of protection for the hero against harm that might befall him on his way, an exorcism of evil, or a simple token or pledge of love? What makes it particularly significant, Jenny pointed out, is that it runs against the grain of most anthropological views on early cultures, where menstrual blood is generally regarded as negative, a form of defilement, even pernicious. But her research was impeccable and her findings beyond reproach. She often spoke about this phenomenon, and I invariably found something particularly stimulating in these discussions—starting quite matter-of-factly, but leading to some of the most highly charged sexual encounters of my life. (And always those eyes to remember her by.)

  So I think of these notes as a collection of moon-cloths garnered along the way, and taken with me to wherever the journey may take me. Somewhere else. Somewhere not here. Perhaps no more than an old man’s fancy. Never without a smile, mind you, perhaps like Mam’s on that distant day when she tried to persuade me, without believing it herself, that sex was sinful. I think of it as a private celebration. Or could it be to ask some kind of forgiveness? I am not sure about that. Remorse, said Spinoza, is the second sin. Perhaps it is a kind of homage. In praise of women. What would I have been—how could I have been me—without each and every one of them?

  ***

  To begin with: the bright little Katrien, when I was barely eight years old and she was, at eleven, very much the older woman, my cousin, deposited in our house by the Great Drought of ’33 that swept away her parents, Mam’s sister and her hangdog husband, from Victoria West where they had farmed with dust and stones for much too long; and while they were scouring the streets of Johannesburg in search of work, part of the new wave of poor-whites, Katrien and her two older sisters, Marie and Annie, were dumped on us. (‘What else is family for?’ asked Mam, folding the sheets.) The older sisters were put in the spare room; Katrien was deemed young enough to share my room, which had two single beds. But on a shiversome and scary winter’s night she crept in beside me and, giggling and whispering wetly in my ear, took my hand and introduced me to an undreamed-of foreign land. An only and lonely child, I had no inkling of the way a girl was made, and the discovery left me breathless.

  That was how Mam found us in the morning, as we’d simply fallen asleep, exhausted with excitement, at an ungodly hour of the night, still in some kind of prelapsarian embrace, legs entwined, her long white flannelette nightie up to her neck and my blue-striped pajama pants lost in the bedclothes. I mean it literally: the pants were lost and never found again. Pure mystery. That night brought home to me two miracles of love that are always to be borne in mind: it giveth and it taketh away. What was given was the discovery that a tiny part of my anatomy, an insignificant pink worm, had the mysterious propensity to jump to attention at almost double its customary size (something I must have noticed before, but which only hit me with its full significance that night); what was taken away was my striped pajama pants, a loss I blithely accepted.

  Mam prudently chose to deal with the matter without informing my father, who might have maimed me for life in his righteous rage; and with a great show of piety (yet accompanied by the mysterious smile which set me wondering) she impressed upon me that the body was a sinful thing, inclined to all evil, undertook personally to intercede with God to fend off the dire wrath that would otherwise descend on me, and supervised the regrettable process of moving Katrien’s bed into the spare room with her sisters. I was made to swear an oath on the black Bible, a promise I had no intention whatsoever of keeping, that I would thenceforth avoid any repetition of such perfidious enterprises. Eight years old: and already I decided that if that really was what God thought of the body, He had no idea of what could make life worthwhile, and was not to be trusted. For the time being the sin remained unspeakable, without a name.

  It was at least a year before a name became attached to it. I had picked up at school the word cunt, without the vaguest idea of what it meant, but sensing it was better than most for swearing; and one weekend after the cousins, Marie and Annie and the unforgettable Katrien, had joined their parents in Sodom, Gomorrah, or Johannesburg, and erupting in a rage when Thys, one of the rare friends who were sometimes allowed to come and play with me, broke a little green wagon I had been given the previous Christmas, I yelled at him, ‘You cunt, you cunt, you bloody cunt, now look at what you’ve done!’ My father, working on the chicken run at the bottom of the garden, overheard. Thysie was sent away, blubbering, with a few smart slaps on the rear, for having broken the wagon, and then I was hauled into the house by the left ear. I was told to go and put on my church clothes, shoes and tie and all.

  Father was a ferocious disciplinarian, and there was a set formula for punishment. I would be taken to his study, and Mam would be summoned. Then a passage would be read from the Bible—usually something from Proverbs (He that spareth his rod hurteth his own son: but he that loveth him chastiseth him betimes; or—with an admonishing look at Mam—The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame)—followed by a prayer, from the length and histrionics of which I could gauge pretty accurately how grave the impending beating was going to be. After a drawn-out A-a-a-men we would all be expected to remain kneeling in silence while God provided him with the details of the chastisement to follow. Whereupon I would be instructed to fetch the instrument of torture—belt, strap, wire coat hanger, or a switch from the pepper tree—remove my pants and bend over the edge of his desk, which was by far the most humiliating part of the entire process, and count out aloud the number of blows administered. When at
last it was over, I was expected, for some unexplained reason, to kiss Mam, and to thank him (any lack of sincerity perceived in my expression of gratitude, might result in a continuation, even a doubling, of the punishment).

  On that particular day the instruction to put on my church clothes was daunting enough; but at least I wasn’t ordered to take off my pants. Unless he’d decided, I thought in trepidation, that putting on my Sunday best would make the taking off that much more momentous. Mam was summoned, and we all gathered in the study. This was evidently too serious for any ordinary hiding. My heart was quaking like a bird taken from a trap. I thought it might escape through my throat and fly away.

  My father read a very long passage from the Bible. Mam, who had been informed in an ominous whisper of the nature of the crime, sat noisily blowing her nose into her handkerchief. Only years later it occurred to me that she might have been smothering secret laughter.

  I was closely questioned about the word I had used: where I had heard it, who had used it to whom, what I knew about its meaning. Then we all had to kneel for the torture by prayer. The final Amen was followed by a long silence. We all sat down again.

  At last my father said, ‘Now, Chris, God has made it clear to me that you have spoken that word in ignorance, and that you have no idea of the magnitude of what you have done.’ I could not believe my ears. He went on: ‘The word you used, and which you are never, ever, to use again, whether in my presence or not—and don’t forget that God will always be there to listen—is one of the most evil and terrible words on this earth. It comes straight from hell and smells of fire and sulphur.’ I sniffed involuntarily, but caught no whiff. He went on, working up steam: ‘The reason why it is so terrible,’ he said, ‘is that it refers to that part of a woman’s body we do not mention by name.’ He cleared his throat, and hesitated, his face turning a deep purple, like the wattles of a turkey cock, which suddenly brought to mind an image I would have preferred not to think about just then, and concluded in a near whisper: ‘It refers to a woman’s filimandorus.’ He paused, allowing the word to sink in, before repeating it, slowly, emphasizing each syllable, almost with relish. ‘Fi-li-man-do-rus.’ Then he got up, clutching the Bible in his big hand with the dark bristles between the joints, and Mam rose to her feet with flushed cheeks, and they both looked down at me, and he said, ‘Now you may go. Think about it.’

  For the rest of my life I have seldom been thinking about anything else.

  ***

  This afternoon I went to the old-age home to visit Mam. Even though I knew she was unlikely to understand what I wanted to tell her, I had to speak to her. For a few minutes I remained at the door of her room, with sudden misgivings about the decision to come, and staring, with all the familiar pain, at the ancient, ugly little garden gnome huddled in the chair beside the tall hard bed. Her head looked like a decorated egg gone wrong, small tufts of hair stuck randomly to the fragile, bird-like skull. The bird image was enhanced by the beak of the nose. I know I’m beginning to look more like her by the day now, with most of my hair gone too. (And yet she had been beautiful. Everybody spoke about it. In past centuries men would have fought duels over her, or hanged themselves. But we live in less dramatic times.)

  A nurse pushed past me. ‘Look who’s here, Auntie Minnaar,’ she said brightly, hurrying to the chair to straighten the mohair rug on the little rag doll’s lap and pat the knees with a proprietorial air, like a girl trying to show off a Christmas doll which is not exactly the one she was hoping for.

  Eagerness lights up the faded eyes behind the daunting glasses. (‘You must have very good eyes, Auntie Minnaar,’ a nurse once told her, ‘to see through such thick glasses.’) ‘Is that really you, Boetie?’ she asks in her small dry voice which sounds like a crumpling of paper. (The patronizing endearment irks me, but I know she means well.) ‘I have been waiting for you.’

  ‘Sorry, Mam.’ I bend over to kiss her, stung briefly by her old sour breath. ‘I’ve been hellishly busy.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ She smiles happily. Then her eyes, momentarily so blue and bright, begin to fade again.

  I settle on the high bed. ‘I have bad news, Mam.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she says.

  I sigh, and wonder whether there is any point in going on. Wonder, too, as often before, whether she can turn her lucid moments on and off at will.

  ‘Tell me?’ she says eagerly.

  ‘Rachel died this morning.’

  ‘I see.’ She sounds disappointed. After a moment she asks, ‘And who was Rachel?’

  ‘A friend. A special friend. I told you about her many times.’

  ‘Of course you did.’ She nods several times. ‘Well, I’m happy for you, Chris. You know you’ve always been my favorite child.’

  ‘I am your only child, Mam.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Another series of pensive nods. ‘A difficult birth, you know. And I had no milk for you, poor little darling.’ Then a bright smile. ‘But then there was that girl, you remember, the one who had the baby they gave away. So she took care of you.’

  Nannie, her name was; I was told many years later. Sixteen years old, and disowned by her family. Perhaps, it has sometimes occurred to me, that is why I’ve had my lifelong penchant for small breasts.

  ‘I came to tell you about Rachel,’ I remind her.

  She looks up at me through the layered dust on her glasses.

  ‘She died,’ I repeat.

  ‘Yes, of course. You told me.’ A sigh. ‘They always do, don’t they? It is in their nature to die.’

  ‘Mam.’

  ‘I’m the only one who cannot die,’ she says with sudden vehemence. ‘You know what, Boetie? I think God has forgotten about me. And it isn’t fair. I don’t mind if He hears me. He has been very inconsiderate to me lately. After everything I’ve done for Him.’ Another sudden, disarming smile, her mouth a slightly deeper, moister wrinkle among the many others. ‘But I’ve been thinking a lot, Boetie. For how long was I married to your father?’

  ‘Thirty-five years, I think. But…’

  ‘That’s it. And that was enough, wasn’t it? Glad to see him go. Randy old goat to the end. Come to think of it, perhaps that’s why God is keeping me alive, out of harm’s way. I really can’t bear the thought of all eternity with your father.’

  ‘Were you happy?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course we were happy. We were married.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘Well, that’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘I’ve so often wondered about you. He had this habit of going for endless walks every day, remember? Rain or shine. Sometimes he was barely home, when he would set out again.’ It was like a compulsion. As if he couldn’t bear to be home. And yet neither of them ever said a word about it. He would invariably go out in the evenings too, I remember. But that was different: then he would go to meetings of the Church Council, or to make house visits with the dominee, or attend secret gatherings of the Broederbond or the not-so-secret meetings of the party. Or he would go back to the office to catch up with work. (How many years did it take me to discover that many—most?—of these nocturnal excursions involved women?)

  ‘Is that why you came?’ Mam interrupts. ‘To talk about your father’s walks?’

  ‘I came because Rachel died,’ I say through clenched teeth.

  ‘Did she? When?’

  ‘This morning. At seventeen minutes to ten.’

  ‘A strange time to die. But then she always was a bit perverse, wasn’t she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘She turned thirty-seven a month ago.’

  ‘You always went for the young ones.’

  Perhaps. Nannie again? But I think that has changed. My scope has widened. Or perhaps at my age one simply has less choice; you have to settle for what is on offer. If a
nything.

  ‘So your wife died?’

  ‘Not my wife, Mam. Rachel. She was married, but not to me.’

  ‘You never mentioned that to me.’

  ‘I did, Mam. I discussed everything with you. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember. And it means so much to me, Boetie, that even as a boy you always came to ask for my advice about girls, and sometimes my help.’

  That is true. I could not have wished for a stauncher or more helpful ally. This she would never broach with Father. It seemed to give her vicarious pleasure to pave my way towards seemingly unattainable girls, later women. Even when my entanglements became more serious. It never ceased to surprise me, given the curtailments marriage to my father had imposed on her, how much she seemed to know about relationships; even about sex. How much of it was intuition? How much based on the pure pleasure she seemed to have derived, especially in her early years, from making love with a man as dour and patriarchal as my father? (Unless I had totally misread him? There was so much misunderstanding and antagonism between him and me.)

  ‘Ever since that first time you did things with a little girl, you remember?’ Mam interrupts the pleasurable flow of my thoughts.

  ‘Katrien?’

  ‘No, the other one. What was her name? Driekie, I think. Uncle Johnny and Aunt Bella’s little daughter. A precocious little thing, if ever I saw one. In the fig tree, wasn’t it? You were such a sweet boy. So innocent. Even when you used such bad words, sometimes.’ She chuckles. ‘And I had to tell you about everything. Flowers and bees and people and girls and things.’

  Yes, I remember. Everything that is so inconclusively referred to as ‘the facts of life.’ About ‘the union of the bodies.’ An act, I gathered at the time, which tended to procure some satisfaction for the male of the species, while generally leaving the female unimpressed. But then, with that enigmatic little smile, she would add quite primly, ‘I guess I have been blessed in that regard.’