Before I Forget

by Andre Brink

  ‘Every war has atrocities on both sides,’ said George, ‘And I know that what I saw could only have been one observer’s view. Subjective, one-sided, biased. Call it what you will. But this is what I saw. Can you deny it?’ A rhetorical question, but I realized that it was specifically addressed to you, and guessed that his absence from your exhibition must have come up for discussion.

  On the surface, it seemed to me that all was well again. That was until, a few weeks later, I helped him to put up a small exhibition about his visit which the Muslim Council had invited him to mount in the District Six Museum. Afterwards we went for tea. And that was when, without any prelude, he asked, ‘Chris, do you think Rachel is okay?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  He put sugar into his cup and stirred it for a long time. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.’ He went on stirring. ‘There’s a kind of distance in her these days. As if she’s not quite with me. As if she’s holding something back.’ He put the teaspoon down, but kept staring at it as if deliberately to avoid my eyes. ‘Even when we’re making love.’

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. This was too intimate. ‘I cannot judge about that,’ I said evasively.

  ‘Ever since I came back, Rachel is not the same,’ he persisted.

  ‘I’ve had the impression that the two of you are as happy as ever. She loved the presents you brought.’

  There was an unexpected bitterness in his voice: ‘Do you know what she told me afterwards, when we were alone in the bedroom?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing directly. But she just, without any reason, started telling me about her first trip to Europe, years ago, as a student. About the jolly Dutchman who drove their bus, all the way from Holland, through Belgium and France and Italy. He had the habit of buying presents for his wife in every town they came to. And when the students teased him about it, he used to say that it was his way of keeping her happy. “A present for every time I’m unfaithful to her,” he used to joke.’

  ‘She told you this about your presents?’

  He nodded. ‘There were no accusations. But why did she have to tell me that?’

  ‘It could have been pure coincidence. She was probably just embarrassed about being showered with gifts like that. I know she missed you terribly.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ he said testily.

  ‘She did feel very bad that you couldn’t be at the exhibition,’ I said as noncommittally as I could.

  ‘She couldn’t have felt half as bad as I did. But she knew it couldn’t be helped.’ He started stirring again. ‘You think she still blames me?’

  ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘I have. She ducks the questions. It has never been Rachel’s nature to avoid things.’

  ‘It may blow over.’

  ‘You’re not being honest with me, Chris,’ he said. He spoke very quietly, but it made me cringe.

  I still don’t know why I came out with it like that, but I decided to meet his challenge and said, ‘Is there another woman, George?’

  He flushed a deep red, but it might have been from anger.

  ‘What the fuck kind of a question is that?’ he asked. He had difficulty controlling his breath.

  ‘Is there?’ I asked in desperation. Why had everything suddenly become so unbearably complicated?

  ‘Is that what she says?’ he asked. It sounded as if he was ready to burst into tears.

  I took a very deep breath, knowing that this might ruin everything between us, for ever. Then I nodded.

  ‘How did she…?’ He brought himself up short.

  ‘She went to see an astrologer.’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re not serious?’

  I shrugged. ‘You know Rachel better than I do.’

  He started saying, ‘But she…’ Then stopped, with a helpless gesture. ‘So she knows.’ This was even worse than his initial show of shock.

  ‘You mean it’s true?’ I asked.

  He said nothing.

  I couldn’t say anything either.

  He sat with his head in his hands. I wanted to put out a hand and touch him, but I couldn’t. He was too far away, in a space where I could not reach him. And I felt sick about everything.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to happen at all,’ he said. This time he made no attempt to hide his tears. ‘I suppose it was the unbearable pressure we were working under. We literally didn’t know from one day to another whether we were going to get out of there alive. And she was there too. A French photographer. She would go into the most dangerous places with me. No fear at all. Just rage, a rage so pure it was unsettling to see, like a white-hot iron. And afterwards, in Jerusalem, in the King David Hotel, just before I flew out again…’ He looked at me as if crying for help. ‘I didn’t mean to, Chris. For God’s sake, don’t you understand?’

  ‘It’s not for me to understand.’ I sat in silence, unable to touch my tea. Then I asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell Rachel?’

  He shook his head. After a while he asked, ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘I think it is most unfair of you to ask me, George.’

  ‘I am asking you.’

  ‘All I can say is that Rachel is not the kind of person who can live with a lie.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Are you still in touch with… the other woman?’

  ‘Danielle?’ A long pause. Then he shook his head, but he was still avoiding my eyes.

  ‘Are you serious about her?’ I asked.

  There was another long pause before he said, ‘I was attracted.’ Adding hastily, ‘But I think it was the circumstances. I love Rachel. I swear I do.’

  ‘It’s not I who need your assurances.’

  ‘You condemn me.’

  ‘I don’t. I am deeply sorry for you. But even more for Rachel.’

  ‘You love her, don’t you?’ he asked unexpectedly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, meeting his stare without flinching. ‘Like a father.’

  ‘An incestuous father.’

  This was getting out of hand.

  ‘That’s a despicable thing to say, George.’

  ‘It would be a despicable thing to do, don’t you think?’

  For some time I really didn’t know what to say. I’d already betrayed your confidence by telling him about your visit to the astrologer. I thought of you, that evening when we discussed whether I should come to stay with you while he was in Palestine; and how you’d said, Is it really for the two of you to decide? Don’t I have any say? I knew it was not so easy to get out of it; but I had taken my decision, for better or for worse.

  ‘My love for Rachel, like my love for you, has never been anything to feel guilty about.’

  He remained staring at me for a long time. At last, almost reluctantly, he sighed and said, ‘Then I’m sorry for having thought what I did.’

  The moment he yielded, I went on the attack. ‘You’d rather hoped you would have something to accuse her of, didn’t you? That would have made it easier for you, given you an excuse.’

  Seeing the unmasked pain in his eyes made me feel lower than the proverbial shark shit on the bottom of the sea. Whatever happened after this, our friendship could never fully recover from what had been said between us. It was like losing a limb from my body.

  After that—I have no clear recollection of time or sequence here—I still had to face you. We went for a walk along one of our old routes, the path winding from Kloof Nek above the Atlantic. George was working in his darkroom; he was the one who’d proposed the walk. With a hidden purpose to it? Nothing among the three of us was innocent any more. You were leading the way; from behind I was watching your easy stride, the motion of your body in the skimpy top, the frayed shorts, the sturdy walking boots. Alluring? Of course. Yet it was not as
before. It no longer shortened my breath with desire to look at you. Something had indeed shifted, as George had said, and it was affecting not only him, but me too.

  It was you, as I might have expected, who opened the conversation in your disarmingly forthright way: ‘So you spoke to George?’

  I was conscious of my own sharp intake of breath, but I did my best to play it cool. ‘He asked. I couldn’t avoid it.’

  ‘Exactly what did you tell him?’

  ‘About your astrologer. And your suspicion about another woman.’

  ‘And he confirmed it.’

  This was unfair, and I told you so. But you shrugged it off, with a hint of annoyance.

  ‘I’m not trying to wheedle anything out of you. But you spoke to George about things that concern me, intimate things, and I think I have a right to know.’

  I repeated what I’d already told you.

  ‘What did you tell him about us?’ you suddenly asked. ‘You and me.’

  ‘There was nothing to tell.’

  You stared very hard at me, but said nothing.

  ‘Was there?’ I asked.

  ‘Only you can decide on that.’

  Dear God, what had become of us? Where were we heading for?

  ‘I wish everything could be in the open among all three of us, like before,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think we can ever go back to that,’ you said with quiet determination.

  ‘That morning in your studio…’ I began.

  ‘There’s no need to talk about it, Chris,’ you said, your eyes becoming distant. ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘I know nothing really happened, Rachel. Except in our minds. Or at least in mine. I don’t know about yours.’

  A long silence. The sea an unbelievable, Homeric color below.

  Then you said in a whisper, ‘In mine too. And in a way it does complicate things, doesn’t it?’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  You sat down on a large grey rock and stared out over the ocean so far below us. ‘I agree with what you said,’ you remarked at last. ‘About how good it would be to go back to how we were. But can we ever, really? There are things one cannot talk about. One just has to live with them.’

  ‘A loss of innocence?’

  Her shrug looked like an expression of contempt, and I decided not to argue.

  ‘What has happened, in all three of our lives, has happened,’ I said at last. ‘Nothing of it can be undone. What we should look at is the future. What to do next.’

  ‘What do you propose?’

  ‘I’m not a counselor and I have no wish to be drawn into it.’

  ‘You are in it, whether you want to admit it or not.’

  You were right, of course. I remained silent for some time, then said, ‘You and George have to find time to be together. Just the two of you. And not at home. Go away somewhere.’

  ‘You think that will help?’

  ‘I cannot think of anything else. You could of course go and talk to a proper professional counselor.’

  ‘What a bourgeois thing to do, Chris. Would you go for counseling?’

  ‘I’m a writer. I provide my own therapy.’

  ‘You used to be a writer. You are no longer.’

  That bit to the quick. But I could see you didn’t mean to be cruel. It was a simple truth, and I myself had said it often enough.

  ‘Do you still love George?’ I asked, with a suddenness that surprised myself.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ The briefest pause. ‘But it is a sullied, wounded love.’

  ‘Is there any other kind?’

  ‘We shall have to see.’

  We saw. Not immediately, for none of us spoke openly about it for some time. But early in December, when the two of you came over for a meal at my home—I had left the cooking to Frederik, and he’d done a splendid job—George made a low-key, matter-of-fact announcement over dessert: ‘Rachel and I have decided to go away for a while over the Terrible Season.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There’s a resort in the Drakensberg,’ you said. ‘Guaranteed to turn old lovers into new ones.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  ‘What will a wine for such an occasion taste like?’

  I looked hard at you, forced a little smile, and avoided the challenge: ‘Let’s each make up our own mind. All I know is that I hope it has the capacity to mature.’

  ‘Chicken.’

  ‘At least this old chicken crossed the road and learned to survive.’

  Once you had left, I wandered aimlessly through the house, without bothering to put on lights. Although I did not want to admit it, I was upset by the news of your holiday. For purely selfish reasons: I’d looked forward to a celebration for just the three of us. To recover, perhaps, some of our old camaraderie. And to commemorate, on New Year’s Eve, our first meeting. Now I might have to join other friends, and I have less and less of a stomach for such things, especially if everybody is straining to make them seem festive. Then I’d rather stay home by myself. Not my preferred company either.

  At least you wouldn’t be away for too long: from just before Christmas to just after New Year. And I knew it was indeed the best thing by far you could do. Perhaps the beginning of a new year might restore some of the old hope.

  And when you came back and I went to pick you up at the airport, you both seemed so relaxed that I felt convinced it had all been resolved. Over lunch the next day, you confirmed my impression; except that it was not the conclusion I had naively foreseen.

  ‘Well, I know you want to know if the plan worked,’ you made the announcement. ‘George and I have sorted everything out.’

  ‘I have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice,’ I said, pushing back my chair.

  ‘Wait,’ you stopped me. ‘It may not be quite what you expected.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I could feel my jaws go numb. I knew, from the way you said it.

  ‘This one and I have decided to split up,’ said George. I think he was close to tears, but he was smiling. So were you. I was the only one who cried.

  ***

  Mam, this morning. I spent just over an hour with her, but she hardly spoke. Most of the time she slept, quite peacefully, it seemed. And I sat gazing at her as I have looked at so many sleeping women in my life. But this was different. All the others have come and gone. Some stayed for a night only, or a few nights, or not even a whole night; some for weeks or months, a few of them stayed for years. But in the end they went. Only Mam has always been there. Soon it will be a hundred and three years, if she lasts until August, which I am now beginning to doubt. Nearly eighty of those she has spent with me. That is an almighty long time. I know she has often wondered about me, sometimes despaired of me; she never thought writing was an acceptable occupation for a self-respecting person. But she has always been there. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Mam. Today she lay there, so unbelievably small, smaller even than before. From time to time she half woke up, smiled vaguely at me, but showed no sign of recognizing me. This had never happened before. And when she spoke—a few random rambling sentences—she once addressed me as Father, and then as the doctor who had treated her for dyspepsia forty years ago, and then again as a woman I couldn’t place. Quite, quite undone.

  For years I have been expecting this to happen. Yet I still feel wholly unprepared. What distresses me is the prospect of losing touch with much of myself, of my own memories: that part which is invested in her and which will go with her. Most of all it is the simple fact of losing her which I find so hard to grasp. She has always been here: how can she, suddenly, not be here?

  All the predictable questions and self-recriminations. Why had I not done more for her? Not just these last few years of incapacity, but right from the beginning. I knew how desperately unhappy she had been
with Father, his infidelities, his arrogance, his cruelties, his hypocrisy; yet I had never showed much understanding. In the beginning I was too scared of him; later, after Bonnie, too angry. The strange thing is that if she really slips out of reach, I will have lost him too, irrevocably. Was it enough to have played chess with him, or to know he was standing on the sideline of a rugby match? What was he doing that long day on Uncle Johnny’s farm when he withdrew into the bedroom to ‘think’? Why did I not try to find out? It was easy to blame him for everything. But what have I done? Or not done?

  There must be things about him I should have known or tried to know. Whence this need for cruelty and domination in him? Where did his insecurities—for that must have been at the root of much of it—come from? Had he really loved Mam? If so, why and how had it spilled out and gone away? And if not, what had really been behind his decision to marry her, this young girl not yet out of her teens, placed in his charge, rebellious, ultimately helpless?

  What had driven him to be unfaithful to her?

  And after his death, when she was set free, if that is what it was: what had driven her? Surely not revenge, a desire to offer tit for tat.

  What has driven me?

  Is there something essentially, constitutionally, wrong with us? Is there something lacking in our make-up as Afrikaners? How far back does it go in history?—this insecurity, this unresolved anger, this wretched need to prove ourselves? Or is it a human failing? Yet not all humans fall victim to it. Where have we failed them—we three as a family, and as a man, a woman, and again a man? Could anything have been repaired in time? Can anything still be repaired, now, at this late hour?

  I sat there and sat there, and couldn’t move. Partly because I was scared that if I went away it would really turn out to have been the last time. In an utterly illogical way I felt that if that happened, if I forsook her in this extremity, I would be ultimately responsible for her death. How can I possibly take responsibility for another death?

  Even her lying there, so quietly that more than once I thought with a sudden onrush of fear that she had already died, became a silent accusation.

  Mam. Mam. Mam. I looked at her, willing her to open her eyes, to acknowledge me. Yet if she had, what was there I could say, could do? Even a last sip of water, I thought, to moisten her sunken lips. What was there I could have said? I love you, Mam? What would that have meant? What does it mean? Have I ever really known? Have I ever cared enough?