Before I Forget

by Andre Brink

  There is a full moon. The night is unreal. And we are both far gone.

  In the shadows of some tall shrubs, her back turned to me, she takes off all her clothes. It is a while before I realize what is happening. I half rise from the garden bench where she has made me sit; but she swings round to me and fiercely orders me back. Crestfallen, but not entirely surprised, I comply.

  She undoes, with considerable effort, the coarse, thick rope around her waist and flings it into the bushes. Even in the moonlight the angry dark circle of bruising across the gentle swelling of her stomach is visible; and in a way it fascinates me even more, certainly more morbidly, than the small dark patch below it, which I have never been allowed to see before.

  Daphne begins to dance in the moonlight. Something eerie about it, as she moves from patches of stark white light into the pitch black of the shadows. There is no sound. Even the usual shrilling of crickets and insects in the grass and frogs in the invisible stream that gurgles past the bottom of the garden with its shrubs and trees and flower beds and gnomes and nymphs, is hushed. And Daphne dances. Initially there is grace in her motion, the fluid marvel of her movements I’ve seen so often on the stage, as she flits across the lawn, makes her dazzling pirouettes, flings out her arms, kicks up her legs.

  But gradually the mood of the dance changes. It is no longer pure fluid grace, aesthetic agility, a moving demonstration of supreme artistry, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, it slides into defiance, challenge; it becomes more jarring, more raw, rude, angular, as if she were driven now by a kind of earthy rage. Now she is clearly wanting to shock me, to provoke me, to dare me, to anger me. Perhaps she wants to punish herself (but for what?), to drive herself to excesses she has never attempted before, as if to avenge some imaginary outrage by humiliating me, and herself. She becomes a creature possessed, a frightening, demonic thing that hurls itself into the shrubs and bushes, runs headlong into trees, stumbles and falls over rockeries and water features, trying more and more purposefully to hurt herself, to maim herself.

  Caught in the terrible spell of it, I stare at her in horror and fascination. Until at one stage she runs into a murderous thorn bush and gets caught there, and tries to struggle free like some terrifying night bird with flapping wings, and falls to the ground. I can hear the breath tearing from her lungs, gasping and moaning. And that is what finally releases me from the evil spell. I jump up and hurry to her, and pick up the dead weight of her. She is sobbing now, and trying to fight me off—‘No, no, no, let me go!’—and kicking and flailing about. But I hold on. Just hold her, very tightly, until the raging sobs subside and she goes limp in my arms.

  I carry her inside and lower her on to the thick carpet in the lounge with its forbiddingly formal middle-class Pretoria furniture. Here in the flat disillusionment of the light I can see that she is streaked with blood, all over her face and perfect body. Her long hair is matted, with burrs and thorns and twigs and moths and insects knotted into it. Her nose is bleeding. I find her frightening, hideous. And unbearably beautiful.

  Leaving her there, spread-eagled and trembling on the Vandyke carpet, covered with a woven cloth I’d stripped from a table, I go in search of a bathroom, and fill the tub nearly to the brim. Then go to fetch her and slide her into the warm water. She moans. I kneel beside the bath. Wait until slowly her body relaxes and she stops shaking. At last I start washing her, with infinite care, trying to move the sponge as gently as possible over the deeper cuts and bruises. From her face, all the way to her feet. Washing and sponging and daubing her shoulders and her tiny breasts with the lovely long pale nipples, her slender arms, each finger joint separately, bending her forward to reach the back with its muscles now relaxed and supple, and then the legs, the feet, the toes. And finally, at first almost too awed to touch, but with growing intent, her thighs, her sex like the imprint of a small antelope’s elongated heart-shaped hoof in the dense dark undergrowth of her pubic hair.

  At last I pick her up, and dry her, thoroughly but reverently, in a huge white towel from the rail; and then carry her through the house to a bedroom, where I lay her down on a big bed. She opens her eyes, and half smiles, and says, ‘I’m glad you’re here, Chris.’

  And then I make love to her. Very slowly and carefully at first, taking an infinite time to caress and explore every part of her, first with my fingers, then my lips, then my tongue, leaving snail tracks of saliva all over her. More and more passionately as I feel her body responding. As my tongue probes between the complicated folds of her sex, she starts to make small whimpering sounds and they increase in intensity until the night is ringing with her love-calls. At some stage it is over, I don’t remember when or how. I must have fallen asleep on her, still embedded—that word again—in her, in a state of near oblivion. But when I wake in the morning she has somehow shifted from under me and gone.

  I discovered her in the kitchen, dressed in fresh clothes, making toast.

  I swept away her hair to kiss her nape from behind; but when I tried to put my hands on her breasts she pulled away.

  ‘No, Chris.’

  Exactly like a hundred times before. I lowered my hands. Around her waist, under the thin plaid shirt, I could feel the knotted rope.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, teasingly. ‘Don’t pretend nothing happened.’

  She looked round at me with a blank, lovely face. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Now come on, Daphne…’

  But not once, neither that morning nor at any time during the few weeks our relationship still limped along to its now inevitable end, did she give the slightest intimation that she had an inkling of what had happened that night. The eyes she had fixed on me all the time I was inside her, wide open even in the moment of orgasm, were devoid of consciousness or conscience, a cloudless, birdless sky. To Daphne, that night had simply never happened. And with the passing of time I started wondering whether it could have been my imagination. Perhaps it had been the magic of the moon. But that was impossible. There were small crescents of bite marks on my body for days afterwards, a numbness in my tongue, luxurious little aches and stiffnesses all over my body. Surely I could not have imagined that?

  When at last we parted. I had the feeling that I would never know her, had never known her.

  ***

  With George Lombard it was as if I’d always known him, as if we’d been to school together—even though he was at least thirty-five years my junior. It was a month after that New Year’s Eve when I’d met you. Since then it had become a daily routine to speak to you on the telephone, seldom for less than an hour. This time it was in the middle of January. All you wanted to say was, ‘George is back.’ Your voice suddenly different, full of joy. And then silence for almost a fortnight. Until you called to invite me over for a meal.

  ‘Are you sure I won’t intrude?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Of course not. George wants to spoil us, he’s a great cook. Besides, he told me he’s been a fan of yours for years. I believe he’s read everything you’ve ever written.’

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘So will you come?’

  ‘If you really think so.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve missed you. And George can’t wait.’

  And so I returned to Camps Bay, where on New Year’s Eve you had first found me, desperate and smudged with grease. The driveway to your house dips steeply into the paved entrance, which is really the back door, as the front overlooks the sea. It is an area of sprawling villas, ostentatious hanging gardens of the Babylonian kind, pretentious columns and wraparound balconies, of glass and marble and stainless steel and wrought iron. But your house surprised me, as on the first night, with its ordinariness. A small old-fashioned seaside home that had somehow been overlooked by the developers and the nouveaux riches, and sat in a tumult of greenery like a little old woman in a floppy hat doing her shopping among the lapdog ladies of Constantia. And inside
(although that first time I had barely taken notice: I was too rapt in our endlessly unfurling conversation), the happy mess I would get to know so much better during the fifteen months that followed. Tables with books and dishes and CDs stacked on them, chairs in the most unlikely spots, a few curtains half taken down (or half hung?), paintings lined up on the floor along the walls. And your sculptures everywhere, some in resin or plaster, but most of them in clay, fired and unfired.

  Even before I could knock, George came to the door with you. He seemed huge beside you (and when I first met you I thought you were tall!). His mop of greying blond hair was unkempt as if he’d been streaking his long fingers through it repeatedly; and his face wore an expression of permanent happy bemusement. He looked like a big, huggable bear. Next to him you seemed like a girl, your short dark-blonde curly hair as unruly as I remembered it. There was something easy and relaxed about both of you; from the way you moved and occasionally touched it was obvious that you were at ease within yourselves, your bodies comfortable and happy with each other. Yes, I felt a touch of jealousy. Whenever I’m faced with a disproportionate couple like that, no matter how I try to suppress the thought, I cannot help trying to visualize how they would make love. In this case, I may as well say it, I imagined you straddling him. Your long athletic legs; your head thrown back, the expression in your wide-set black-chocolate eyes, the light caressing your cheekbones, the line of your breasts. Stop it. For heaven’s sake, stop it. You’re supposed to be dead, I am in mourning. George is somewhere in the Middle East, taking photographs.

  But that evening he was home, and the three of us were together. Except that the obvious closeness between your bodies, as he enfolded you protectively, lovingly, somehow set me apart.

  Yet both of you are eager, without in any way appearing to be forcing it, to overcome the first strangeness. In spite of the gentleness of his appearance, his easy movements, his handshake is pleasantly firm; in fact, it makes me wince. Which turns him humorously apologetic. Soon we are all laughing and joking together. Almost immediately you slip back into the uncomplicated sharing of our New Year’s Eve conversation; and from George’s interventions it is clear that you have already told him all about it. Instead of making me feel slightly embarrassed, the openness with which you draw our first talk into this one brings with it a feeling of generosity; we are really like old friends meeting again after a long absence. And once George starts talking about his recent photographic trips—the war zones of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, which brought about his absence over New Year; a new twist in the Pinochet saga in Chile; the state of Ground Zero in New York; and on the way back the penis museum in Reykjavik and the aurora borealis in Tromsø—the evening becomes a roller coaster that carries us at constantly varying speed along its loops and ups and dizzying downs. It is a repeat of that first night, only this time there are three of us talking together, not two.

  You are the one who tries to introduce some shape into the exhilarating confusion. ‘We still have to eat, guys!’ you call us to order.

  ‘It’s nearly done,’ George reassures you. ‘I’m going to the kitchen in a minute.’

  ‘What about the wine?’ you ask. ‘My throat is parched, and we have a guest, remember.’

  ‘He’s not a guest,’ says George. ‘He’s one of us.’

  ‘He still needs wine. And so do I.’

  ‘Pronto.’ He opens the best of white wines. A Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc. George raises his glass. But you quickly interrupt the ceremony. ‘Wait,’ you cry. ‘This is a special moment. Let Chris taste it first and tell you what he finds in it. You won’t believe this, George.’

  I try to protest, but you are not to be denied, and not wanting to spoil your fun I do my bit, like a circus dog you are putting through his hoops. (But then, you are doing the same with him, all evening. And somehow we are both eager to perform; and you are of course a superb ringmaster.)

  After I’ve said my lines about ‘a fresh fig-varietal fruit, green pepper and gooseberry, combined with an earthy straw-like flavor,’ you applaud spontaneously, and George joins in.

  ‘Where did you learn all that?’ he asks, clearly impressed.

  ‘From many people over many years in many places.’ I pause. ‘But it was my uncle Johnny who started it all. After that, I topped up on experience in France—Burgundy, Bordeaux… It was a long haul.’ My thoughts wander back over the years as I tell you about that early beginning. Yes, Uncle Johnny. Who must have been one of the first South Africans to go to France to study oenology, in the early years of the last century. When he came back after God knows how many years to take over the family farm in the Franschhoek valley he acted as guru to all the vintners in the area, at a time when hit-and-miss plonk was the staple drink. He became famous overnight. But then he married the wrong woman. Aunt Bella, Father’s younger sister, beautiful to behold, but as staid and God-fearing as they come. Which in due course she tried her best to inculcate in all her daughters, no fewer than five of them.

  My bewitching cousin Driekie told me how her mother had grimly warned them that until the day of his marriage a man should firmly be made to believe that a woman’s legs were joined together from the knees up. It was on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday afternoon in December of 1938, the year of the centenary of the Great Trek, in the fig tree at the bottom of Uncle Johnny’s orchard, behind the house. When I assured Driekie that I already knew better, she smiled knowingly, and shrugged, and said, ‘Oh well, then…’ The grown-ups were all comatose following the gargantuan Sunday meal, so we had all the time in the world. And when we went home much later her legs, from her knees up, were streaked with the sticky juice of dark red Adam figs.

  It nearly ended in catastrophe when her dour mother waylaid her in the kitchen and demanded to know what had happened. (I was following at a safe distance, ready to bolt.) But with all the wily innocence of her twelve years Driekie was a match for Aunt Bella. ‘It’s blood,’ she said without batting an eyelid, and without realizing what interpretation, at her precarious age, might be attached to it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ gasped Aunt Bella, not intending it as an exclamation but quite literally as a call for help to the Almighty. And turning to some of the other girls who were, as always, in the vicinity, she sobbed, ‘Our Driekie has just become a woman in the fig tree.’

  ‘I fell and got scratched by the branches,’ Driekie tried to explain. ‘I’m just lucky I didn’t break anything. I think God sent an angel to save me.’

  At that stage, I must confess, I had only a confused idea of the mysteries surrounding the female rites of passage; all I knew was that this was no time for me to be around. I didn’t mean to leave Driekie to her fate, but right then there was nothing I could do or say without further complicating everything. I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind: ‘I must take Uncle Johnny his coffee. He called me.’

  Avoiding the throng of chattering girls who were falling over their own feet in their eagerness to escort Driekie to the bathroom I blindly poured some coffee—the pot was always simmering on the Dover stove—and scurried off to my uncle’s secret chamber.

  This requires some explanation. From the beginning of their marriage Aunt Bella had complained to Uncle Johnny that, much as she loved him, his involvement with the products of the vine was a source of profound concern to her and an abomination in the eyes of God. There was ample evidence on all the farms around them, she argued, of the iniquities and destruction flowing from the abuse of alcohol. But not, Uncle Johnny reminded her, from proper use. What about Jesus himself who had turned water into wine? This made her withdraw for a while; but she soon called upon a daunting new phalanx of biblical references to flatten him. Uncle Johnny, a man of humor and understanding, weathered the storm. When it came to matters of the flesh, he’d already, in a manner of speaking, made some headway. (‘Look what happens to women joined from the knees up,’ he is reported to h
ave told her once. ‘You have five daughters to show for it.’) But he hadn’t counted on Aunt Bella’s perseverance or the power of her convictions where vines and wine were concerned. In the fullness of time her onslaught acquired a momentum that was irresistible. When my valiant uncle tried to use the cultural argument about the noble state of the civilization of France, where he had been taught his skills, she withered him with a tirade about all the naked women, let alone those evil French kings, a heathen lot, Catholics all, and an insult to the name of God. He turned a slightly paler shade of white, but still stood fast. Wine was his passion, he proclaimed; he’d spent years of his life, and most of his father’s savings, on preparing himself for his vocation, and he’d be damned if he were to give it all up now. But Auntie Bella persisted as only she could. She knew how to wear him down, ignoring even his shrewd quotes from the Bible to counter her tireless campaign (A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike…). And in the end there was no way out. He had to have all those hectares upon hectares of vineyard uprooted, every last stump. That the grapes could still be delivered to the table market carried no weight with her. Even the metonymy of evil had to be avoided.

  That was when he moved out of the conjugal bedroom and withdrew to the little room which used to be his study and where he slept on a single bed for the rest of his natural life, which was a hell of a long time; and hardly ever spoke a word to man or beast again. To ward off Aunt Bella’s predictable campaign of criticism and interrogation, he told her that he had resolved to immerse himself in the study of the Bible. When she reminded him of his responsibilities to his family, he quoted the wisdom of Solomon to her: ‘It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.’ That shut her up.

  Only on rare occasions did he ever leave the little room again, for the odd mysterious trip to Cape Town, once every month or two. ‘To see a man of God,’ he laconically explained whenever he was asked about it; and that was enough to keep Aunt Bella happy. In fact, she seemed to draw a morbid inspiration from his silence. (He was ‘in a struggle’, she happily explained to the rest of the world. ‘He is communing with God.’) She stomped through the house singing hymns without stop; she took over the farm, replaced the lost vineyards, all those fallow fields of sin, with orchards of peach and apple and quince trees, and made them unbelievably rich.