Before I Forget

by Andre Brink

  Often I accompanied him to the two Wendy houses in Khayelitsha where he ran, with two assistants, workshops on photography for township kids. The enterprise was sponsored by a newspaper, and kept going largely through grants from a Scandinavian NGO. On several occasions they were on the point of withdrawing, as they were convinced that aid was more urgently needed in the fields of primary health care or education or poverty relief. But so far, every crisis had been resolved by a trip to the north, where George’s eloquence, backed by his tremendous international reputation, swayed the most hard-nosed sponsors.

  It was heart-warming to watch him at work: the endless patience with which he helped the handful of youngsters chosen for his courses; but even more than that, the enthusiasm with which, after the more formal sessions, he would play around with a whole swarm of smaller boys and girls who had gathered purely from curiosity. He would teach them games, joining in the fun like a huge, overgrown schoolboy, laughing with more joyous abandon than any of the children, catching them or allowing himself to be caught by them—while in between, with all the easy grace his Falstaffian hill of flesh was capable of, he would allow them to take turns with his cameras, to take snaps or be snapped, the products of which he would faithfully bring back to distribute among them the next time he returned to the township. It struck me only after several visits how remarkable it was that his Wendy houses, without any protection of burglar bars, remained untouched by criminals and vandals in an area where every commercial concern, formal or informal, from scrapyards to spaza shops to rickety stalls, was barricaded like a fortress; when I asked him about it, he merely smiled. Later, one of his assistants told me that the premises were under the protection of two of the most notorious gangs in the township.

  What a father he would make, I thought so many times. There was a line from Dostoevsky’s Idiot which kept on trailing through my head like a slogan on TV: It is through children that the soul is cured. But if that were so, how could he ever have consented to a vasectomy? I’d never, after that first wordless but eloquent gesture in response to my query, brought it up again; but I could only surmise that he had either plunged in much too rashly, or that there must have been medical reasons into which it would be too indelicate to enquire.

  But I did bring it up, with you, one morning when you were working at my house in your melodious and efficient way, systematizing all my documents, transferring everything to the new computer you had made me buy.

  ‘I was at George’s workshop again yesterday,’ I told you. ‘Every time I see him I’m amazed by his sheer energy.’

  ‘You’re not the only one to be amazed,’ you said with your enigmatic little smile.

  And again, as often before, as always before, I imagined the two of you in bed, or on the floor, engaged in a whole Kama Sutra of contortions.

  ‘There’s no end to those kids,’ I said quickly, to dispel my more lurid fantasies. ‘They’re enough to sap the energy of an Olympic athlete.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t love it.’

  ‘I’m sure of that.’ I paused very briefly, then for some reason decided it was the right moment to plunge in. ‘He really should make the most wonderful father. I wish he hadn’t been in such a hurry with the vasectomy.’

  You went on typing.

  ‘It must have been well before he met you,’ I said.

  You finished a long paragraph. Suddenly you dropped your hands; those long fingers. ‘George never had a vasectomy,’ you said.

  ‘What?! But he…’

  ‘I am the dud,’ you said very quietly. ‘A year after we got married, when nothing happened, we had ourselves tested. They said I could never have children. It’s… something with the tubes.’

  ‘Oh no.’ I didn’t know what to say. I felt such a fool. More than a fool: I felt I’d ventured into a space where I had no right to be. As on that day, a year later, when I had to look for your ID for the hospital and had to go through your cupboards and drawers. ‘This is terrible, Rachel. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ you said with what sounded almost like a tinge of humor.

  ‘I mean… Fuck it, Rachel. How do you manage?’

  ‘If it’s inevitable, one learns to manage.’

  ‘But why did George say…?’ I couldn’t complete the question.

  ‘Because in the beginning I was so devastated, I just cried all the time. I thought I should leave him, set him free. I knew how much he’d set his heart on children. Much more than I ever did. But he was so incredibly patient with me. And whenever it comes up, he covers for me. Pretends it’s all his fault, makes a joke out of it. Just to make it easier for me.’ There was a sudden choking sound in your voice. ‘But I know. I know what it does to him. Oh God, Chris, I love that man.’

  I took your face between my hands to look at you. You stared straight back, unflinching. But there were tears in your eyes. You suddenly put your hands on mine. ‘Don’t,’ you whispered. ‘Please don’t.’ Then you quickly got up. ‘I need some coffee. And I’m sure you can do with tea.’

  ‘Let me.’

  ‘No. I need it more than you.’

  I thought you would completely shy away from the subject when you came back; pretend the words had never been spoken. But instead, after you had put the tray down, and allowed a decent time for my tea to draw, and poured for us, you said brightly, ‘You know, actually, that blow brought us closer together. I can tell you one thing: it has made our lovemaking more passionate and more wonderful than ever before.’

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘It wasn’t easy in the beginning. Especially for George. But we worked it out. And since then…’ The frankness of the smile said everything.

  ‘Then I’m happy for you both.’ It could have been an unbearably feeble remark, but what I said was what I really meant; and you seemed to understand.

  You took one of my hands in both of yours. I looked down at them. The smoothness and youth of yours, the unevenness in the fingers making them more fascinating. And mine: it was as if I was discovering them for the first time. Not as part of me, but as an object divorced from me, a crab or lobster, unsightly and gawky, the joints knobbled and knotted, the nails horny, the skin blotched.

  ‘My dear, dear, old friend,’ you said raising my hand to your lips and kissing it. I closed my eyes in revulsion. How could you? And in my mind I heard those words over and over again.

  My dear, dear, old friend.

  That was it: that was why you felt so completely at ease with me, why you could confide in me like this, tell me such intimate things about yourself.

  I was old, old. Harmless, safe.

  An old confessor, ensconced in a cubicle of the mind, offering absolution, posing no threat. You could take off all your clothes before me, and I would not flinch, let alone sprout an erection; there would not be a frisson, nothing at all. That must be what you would think, wasn’t it?

  Poor old dodderer. Dear, dear old friend.

  I went out. I blundered into a doorpost. I couldn’t let you see that I was crying, could I? I loved you. Your dear, dear old friend loved you, you see.

  And that was what made it so unbearable when only a few days later the three of us went out to a restaurant to celebrate your birthday. How could any of us foresee that exactly a year later the atrocious thing would happen which would end in your stillness, lying there under the sheet with only a foot protruding; and in me here, writing in the notebook I had bought especially for the purpose; writing for the first time in God knows how many years?

  There were times in the past, the distant past, when I would come out of a love affair, aching and bruised inside and out, and try to console myself by thinking: At least I can get a book out of this. How threadbare, how appalling that now sounds to me.

  Every book I have ever written, every book I have ever read, cannot measure up to the sound of
your laughter, the movement of your breath, a look in your eye, or even, my God, your voice saying, My dear, dear, old friend.

  But let me not wander. What was I trying to say? The evening of your birthday. Yes. The three of us in La Colombe. The best restaurant in town. My treat, I had warned you in advance. It was not what I would have chosen, had I been free to choose, to give you. (What then? Something very fine, the finest gold, feather-like and exquisite and exorbitantly expensive, but understated, quiet and happy and beautiful. And, yes—allow me the momentary lapse—the sweetest and daintiest little thong I could find, spending hours and hours over the choice, amid the disapproving stares of shop assistants, particularly the more mature among them. Dirty old man. Who does he think he is? All of that fading away in the moment of giving. And then, oh certainly, the moment when you would try it on and spontaneously come to show me. Look! What do you think?)

  All right, then. The evening of your birthday, 28 February. And after the toast (the moment of contemplation and meditation, in due reverence: the characteristic ‘farmyard’ presence of a Pinot Noir, in perfect balance with the oak and spice and vanilla, the soupçon of coffee, of chocolate, the palate a vibrant cherry and youngberry, steeped in velvety tannins), midway through the unbelievably succulent Karoo lamb in its crust of herbs, George’s sudden announcement:

  ‘Chris, we have a favor to ask of you.’

  ‘It can wait,’ you whispered with some disapproval.

  ‘No, it can’t. Chris, I’m off again on a trip next week. Japan. We’ve had two burglaries in our street this week, and I’m not happy about leaving Rachel on her own. Could I prevail on you to keep an eye on her?’

  My heart jumped. But I kept my calm. ‘I cannot possibly take on such a responsibility,’ I said without batting an eyelid.

  It was quite something to see his face fall. But you caught on immediately and burst out laughing.

  ‘To say it will be a pleasure would be an unforgivable understatement.’

  ‘Even if it involves prising you from your own comfortable shell to come and sleep over in Camps Bay?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about that. You know I am an old man. I need my familiar space.’

  ‘I really don’t want to…’

  ‘Of course I’ll come. It will give me such pleasure.’

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

  ‘We can work out something,’ I said mockingly.

  ‘You’re a dear, dear friend.’

  Don’t forget the old, I thought. Oh, it rankled. It still did.

  ***

  There was a sequel to that encounter with Driekie in the fig tree, following her distressing story about the boy David who had spied on the swimming sisters and was so mercilessly thrashed for it. Most of the events of that summer holiday were framed by the family’s involvement in the centenary of the Great Trek, that blessed year of 1938. Uncle Johnny refused to have any part in it, even though that was regarded by most of his relatives and friends as a betrayal of the Afrikaner cause. Everybody else was drawn into the vortex of celebrations, which had begun months before with the departure of several ox-wagons from Cape Town, heading to the far north, zigzagging through the country, whipping up patriotic emotions to a state of frenzy; it was, people realized much later, the rebirth of a national consciousness which was to culminate, a decade later, in the National Party’s victory at the polls in 1948. On 16 December that year, the day traditionally celebrated to commemorate the triumph of the Voortrekkers over the pride of Dingane’s Zulu warriors in Natal, the arrival of the wagons in Pretoria sent waves of near hysteria throughout Afrikanerdom. (That no one else in the country, neither the English-speaking whites nor the vast majority of blacks, had anything to celebrate, was easily ignored.)

  A single small turbulence disturbed the even flow of the days leading up to the great celebration. One evening there was an argument between Father and Mam on the stoep, to which I was the only witness. I couldn’t make out what it was about, except that the name of one of the colored womenfolk in the kitchen came up several times. Eva. And that this seemed to upset him most violently. Throughout the next day, from morning till evening, he never emerged from their bedroom. All my anxious queries were met by a single terse response: ‘Your father is thinking.’ I was never told the reason, and not one of the grown-ups ever mentioned it. (When, later, I dared to broach it to Uncle Johnny, all he said was, ‘Sometimes wine should just be left to ferment on its own, so all the stuff can sink to the bottom.’ That word. Stuff.) But in an inexplicable way the weight of that day kept pressing down on most of my youth, the sum and summary of a man I would never be able to understand. (A man I’d have wanted so much to understand? For what was really behind it? Not just anger. Much rather, if you asked me, something like sorrow. But why?)

  When the hallowed day arrived at last, we all—Aunt Bella, her five pretty daughters, Mam and Father and I, but not Uncle Johnny—set out from the Franschhoek farm to the huge gathering in Cape Town. It was, if I remember correctly, some three days after Driekie had celebrated the rites of womanhood in the fig tree (even if what all the womenfolk had bewailed and celebrated as the first sign of blood turned out to have been no more than the juice of squashed purple Adam figs). It was a memorable day, in which religious fervor and patriotic passions combined in the kinds of scenes normally associated with being possessed by spirits. Time seemed to uncoil and turn back upon itself.

  The Parade in Cape Town was transformed into a laager of ox-wagons. All the men, their faces obscured by beards that had been tended for many months (in several cases assisted by the liberal application of foul-smelling potions, including chicken shit), were dressed in corduroys and moleskins, with crudely made veldskoens and wide-brimmed hats; all of them smoked pipes, and many carried ancient rifles or newly plaited sjamboks. The women strutted about, bedecked with full-length Voortrekker dresses worn over innumerable petticoats, with finely embroidered kerchiefs and huge pointed kappies, looking like occult birds with outsized beaks. I could not stop staring at Mam, Aunt Bella, and the girls, the latter of whom, though copiously covered from head to toe, I somehow found particularly alluring (for I now knew, and how, of the filimandorus hidden under each of those billowing skirts); and Father, with his trimmed beard and twirled moustache—once more, after his brief mysterious withdrawal, the undisputed lord and master of our clan—and his shiny heirloom pocket watch on a silver chain draped across his ample belly, was a godlike stranger arrived from another space and another time.

  The speeches, and the prayers, were many, and boring. But for me there was something heady about the spectacle as a whole. Unlike fourteen years later, at the van Riebeeck Festival, I was not put off by all the chauvinistic pretense. On my thirteen-year-old mind the propaganda was still working. The volkspele made me dizzy. I couldn’t keep my eyes off my cousins, whose ages, as I now try to recall, ranged from Wilmien (seventeen), down to Trienke (ten), past Fransie (sixteen), Alet (fourteen), and of course Driekie (twelve). Whenever the tiekiedraai, of which there was a lot, caused those long skirts to swirl and billow up, there were glimpses of slim ankles to be had (and even encased in veldskoens and socks those were still a privilege to the eye of the beholder, young or old); in fact, even slender or plump calves and the odd proverbial dimpled knee was in evidence if you knew how to anticipate the moves. In the course of the dances I took my turn with all five cousins, and that was enough, by the time we set out for Franschhoek again in the late afternoon, to make my head spin. Theirs too, I presume, judging by what happened in the night.

  We were so tired that it was all we could do to sit through the interminable prayers (said by Father in the stubborn absence of Uncle Johnny) that followed the evening meal of soup and home-made bread and bokkems. And after that we all headed straight to bed. Mine was up in the attic, as all the available space downstairs was occupied. In spite of the fatigue I couldn’t sleep. My head w
as still reeling with images of my cousins hopping and skipping with their flushed faces and bright eyes. I was in a state of unbearable excitement, trying to think up daring schemes to lure Driekie from the room she shared below with some of her sisters; wondering how she would respond to an invitation to return to our wise fig tree. As it happened, the moon was nearly full, and there was something particularly stimulating about the idea of a repeat performance in the night. But the only remedy was to wriggle out of my pajama trousers and reach down to my groin.

  I felt I was on the point of something momentous happening when there was a sound at the door, which opened on to a small wooden landing from where a steep ladder descended to the ground below. In a panic I scrambled back into my pajamas, just in time to sit up and recognize, in the moonlight slanting in from the door, Driekie’s silhouette. This was too good to be true.

  But it turned out to be not quite what I had for one wild moment believed: she hadn’t come to join me, but to call me outside, giggling and fidgeting so much that I had difficulty making out what she wanted. Trying my best to conceal the pointed pyramid in my trousers, I sidled after Driekie, down the ladder.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I whispered.

  But she just shook her head, put a finger to her pomegranate lips, and led the way, round the house to the back, across the moonlit backyard, and into the barn. Once inside, without warning, we were surrounded by a number of very black shadows that interposed themselves between the two of us and the wide, open doors. It took a few moments for my eyes to get used to the treacherous light inside: the moonlight made a dazzling white pool stretching from the door to about midway into the barn, but the rest was pitch dark. I was suddenly getting scared. But when I turned to go, the way was blocked. And then I heard a ripple of giggles, and realized that my captors—if such they were—were only my cousins, all five of them, as Driekie had by now joined their ranks.