Before I Forget

by Andre Brink

  Mam, Mam. I still couldn’t move, staring fixedly at her wizened little monkey face which I could no longer recognize, awed by the silent, silent slipping away. Beyond my reach. So much in my own life, I now know, has remained beyond my reach. Starting with her, the first woman of my too-long life. All the others? Have I ever really known anyone? Have I ever understood anything?

  ‘Mam.’ She didn’t respond, perhaps she hadn’t even heard me.

  I kept staring at her, willing her eyes to open, but to no avail. It is hard to understand this simplest of events: that a whole life can be reduced to such utter insignificance—everything she has heard, and said, and seen, everything she has tasted or felt, the wonders of the world, the bitterness she has outlived, what love she may have known, the pleasures of the flesh (those long-ago words: I guess I have been blessed in that regard), all of it shrunken now to this.

  I tried, randomly, to recall moments she had told me about, but they didn’t seem to add up to a whole. Her happy early years, happy because she was left alone to wander about on her parents’ farm and to dream—about going to university one day, studying abroad perhaps, living life to the full. Frail and small she might have been, but she had will and passion enough for three. And then to find her married off at seventeen, to a man she hardly knew, just because her father couldn’t cope with bringing up a girl-child with only a sickly wife to help him. All her dreams shattered in a blow. Instead, there were the demands and desires of a hard man, much older, to deal with. She fought against it; he treated her like a child or a small domestic animal, amusing and pretty, but not to be taken seriously. He’d awakened the passions of the body in her—at times they became so violent that she hid herself in shame; the very enjoyment she derived from love, made it suspect—but he had no regard for her other needs. In all fairness, his own harsh background, with—who knows?—another father straight from the Old Testament, had not prepared him to deal with such. All her bright dreams were turned inward on themselves, and soured, and became bitter and resentful. Her body itself seemed to revolt, in rejecting child after child until, out of sheer desperation perhaps, it brought her the son her husband demanded of her.

  But it was not the stout Boer boy he had expected: this son was puny and squeaky, and had to be nursed by another; if he later learned strategies for survival—rugby, athletics, top position in his class, choosing law as a career—it was never quite what the father would have wished. And there was no hope of another chance: Mam’s health was too frail to risk another pregnancy. Which meant no more marital relations during her years of precarious fertility. During which he found ample solace elsewhere (having already tasted it well before). But Mam? What recourse was there for her? To lock it all up inside, and feel rebellion surge and rage, but with no way of venting it—except through working for the Church, and feeding the poor, and leading the Women’s Auxiliary, and cooking and sewing and knitting like a woman possessed.

  Until, mercifully, he suffered his convulsive death on the prone body of his latest secretary. It was then that she turned to feeding—ever so discreetly—the pent-up passions of a lifetime on a few of the available and eager men from their circle. (Even of this I cannot be sure—it is hearsay, gossip, conjecture, perhaps wishful thinking.) I know that she received offers to remarry, but emphatically turned them all down. ‘I can never get used to the smell of another man again,’ was how she put it. One had been enough; too much. All she got out of it was a reputation. Stern men turning up with pious faces and blunt-nosed black shoes, solemnly to warn her, always in her own best interest, against the temptations of the world. She had to beware of jeopardizing the proud Minnaar name, dragging it through the mud. The Church elder, the party stalwart: Oh, do be careful, Mrs. Minnaar, be careful, Madeleine.

  In the beginning she took it all with demure submissiveness (though laughing her head off, with me, as she mimicked them after they’d left). Gradually she became angry. ‘Why the hell should I listen to them? I know the lot of them. Most of them have women in the location on the other side of the golf course. Most of them get rich on the money of others, they even steal from the Church. They’re like your good father, just a great deal worse. Nobody said a word about his philandering. They all looked up to him, envied him. But if I dare to go out with a man on a Saturday night, even if it is for a meal or a film, all the fingers point at me. Especially those I wouldn’t be seen dead with. Or the ones I turned down. They can all go hopping sideways.’ Then the unexpected wink accompanying the old line: ‘I have a lot of catching up to do.’ Both triumphant and sad. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  And now, at last, the dying had begun.

  While I was there beside the near empty bed with its tiny bundle in the middle, barely denting the pillow, I put my hand on hers. Unexpectedly she opened her eyes, an expression of bewilderment in them. With both hands she grabbed mine. She didn’t say anything, I’m not even sure that she knew it was me, but she held me in her grip and would not let go. Holding on, it felt, to life itself. Holding on, in the face of hell itself. I thought of my own attempts at holding on, my writing, these notes I am so compulsively making. Impossible to let go, because all will then be lost.

  She was mouthing something. I held my ear to her face. The voice was less than a whisper. All I thought I could make out, if that was what she muttered, was, ‘I don’t want to go, Boetie. I don’t want to go. Don’t let me go.’

  Holding on. After a hundred and two years. What could unleash such ferocity? What was there in life that could possibly make it worthwhile to hold on so desperately? The mere need to be in touch, to reach for another hand, to escape the terror of being left utterly alone?

  My own life again. All my women, all my loved and lovely women. Just part of this paroxysm of holding on? To touch the hand of someone else, to know that at least there’s someone? To plunge into that small sheath of flesh, that little abyss, that shimmering darkness of beginnings and origins, to lose myself in the illusion or the hope of another? Poor, poor Don Giovanni. This hell, I think, is worse than the conventional one of fire and flames into which he was plunged. To be alone is unbearable.

  ‘Goodbye, Mam,’ I whispered in her ear. I could no longer handle it. I loosened the grip of her little claws from my wrist. I knew it might be the last time. It was worse than abandoning her: it felt like a betrayal.

  ***

  I tried to lead a more exemplary life after the shock I had with Frances. Not exactly monastic, but I avoided any real involvement with women, knowing now that it would expose me—and them—to unnecessary, probing attention. A few fleeting flings—I could not possibly become a total recluse—but nothing to remember. Some of their names found their way into a notebook, but none really lingered in my memory. The only exception was Abbie. She was something special from the moment she approached me for an interview after a reading I’d given at a college in Johannesburg. I invited her for a drink in my hotel room; she stayed for three days. The only reason why we emerged after that, was the discovery that she was also from Cape Town, up north on an assignment for her newspaper; which meant that we could fly back together and continue here in the south without a break.

  After what had happened with Frances, we had to be very careful. Not just because of the constant surveillance, but because Abbie was colored. At that time, the Immorality Act had lost its edge; as a result of so many mounting pressures, particularly from its own ranks, the government had started turning a blind eye. But that didn’t mean we could do what we wanted (and we wanted, all the time): a charge under the practically defunct act could easily be laid as a simple strategy of intimidation, just to warn us that I was still being watched. It meant that she seldom stayed over at my house, even though we’d found a convenient alley through which she could approach, unseen, from the back.

  We developed a very complicated system of communication. Two rings on her telephone would mean that she had to be at a
particular public call box half an hour later; three sent her to another box. My own calls would always be made from a public telephone. We would meet at out-of-the-way places, and drive long distances to remote hideouts. This cloak-and-dagger business became part of the adventure, exotic spice to the relationship. And Abbie loved it. Some of her plans made Huckleberry Finn’s attempts to set Jim free look simple.

  On the nights I spent at her flat, I would have to set out almost an hour in advance, taking the most elaborate precautions to shake off would-be stalkers. She would be even more circumspect in her approach. Which meant that by the time we met, we would both be so highly charged that we could detonate the moment my hand moved between her thighs, or hers between mine. She had the most eloquent fingers. Her tongue was a small wet lizard. Even her hair was articulate—long and black and dense, a rope fit for hanging, a most consummate death.

  It was much more than sexual. While we were together, she put in an impressive effort to read everything I had ever written, beginning with A Time to Weep, the Sharpeville novel that had triggered it all, up to the most recent one, from which I’d done the reading in Johannesburg. Most flattering: but her intention was not to be a doting acolyte at all. She was invariably incisive and provocative in her comments; in particular, she could be scathing in her assessment of some of my female characters (especially those with the small breasts)—but she had the knack of doing it in such a way (rare in one so young: she was not yet thirty) that it did not rile me. We had endless discussions about the books: apart from the fiction itself, she was fascinated by everything that had gone into it. Where did you get the inspiration for this character? Is this episode based on fact? I bet you really loved this girl? Did this actually happen to you or to somebody else…?

  Intellectually, she was a constant challenge. And politically, she was a delight. Her opposition to apartheid was ferocious, born from the most personal experiences—of her parents whose early links to the SACP had landed both of them in detention for shorter and longer spells; of her older brother, who had left the country after 1976 for military training in East Berlin; of herself, who had been detained during the first state of emergency and humiliated and abused by her interrogators. She was the one who kept on at me: to do more, not to be content with writing as a form of opposition, but to get more ‘involved.’ As a political journalist, and within the UDF, she was someone to be reckoned with.

  Abbie was tall and slim, a high-tension wire charged with electricity. Merely looking at her as she walked about naked in my house or in her flat, could make my knees tremble. She had the most perfect shoulders, her buttocks had the dimples of a little girl, her navel would have sent King Solomon into raptures about a round goblet which wanteth not liquor. She had the most charming love-mound, shaped for a cupped hand, with a small wisp of sleek, black pubic hair, a perfect little cowlick. Her breasts were topped with unusual, elongated nipples, almost purple in color, and—it seemed—eternally erect. I was in Paradise.

  And yet those were difficult times. As if it wasn’t hard enough to avoid the constant surveillance, there were always ‘things’ to be done: to help comrades passing through Cape Town clandestinely to remain unnoticed, to put them in touch with the people who fabricated false passports and IDs and licenses, to provide them with a place to stay overnight—never more than one night in one place.

  From time to time I was tickled by an amusing memory: of Father, sheltering his far-right friends from the police during World War II. Now I was doing the same, at the other end of the spectrum. Perhaps we were not so different after all. I began to wish that I’d known him better. Now, as always, it was too late.

  The end came very suddenly. Abbie was supposed to come over and spend the night, after a particularly tough week with ‘customers,’ but at six that evening in October she telephoned to say, in our coded language, that ‘the new chapter of the thesis will not be ready in time; perhaps tomorrow?’

  Rather disconsolately, I spent the evening on my own, putting the final touches to the revision of a new novel. But it could not take hold of me, and in the end I put it down and went to bed with a book. Afterwards it took hours before I fell asleep. And promptly at three o’clock the front doorbell rang.

  It was the wake-up call I had been expecting for years, but had begun to give up on. As I opened the door, six men burst in, crowding the whole entrance hall. I was in my pajamas, which I would not have been wearing if Abbie had been there; they were in flannels and sports jackets, two of them in safari suits.

  For the next four hours they ransacked every inch of the house.

  ‘If you could tell me what you have come for,’ I said after the first hour, ‘I shall be happy to help you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Minnaar,’ said the officer in charge, Captain Willemse, a sugar-coated threat. ‘We shall know it when we see it.’

  In the end they filled two wine boxes with letters, drafts of manuscripts, newspaper cuttings, notebooks. The only thing that really upset me was that they also took my only two copies of the new manuscript, A Touch of Yesterday. I used to be very meticulous about keeping copies of all my writings (I was still working with carbon paper), but lately I’d become rather more careless. Also, that evening I had set out the carbon copy for Abbie to read, and did not bother, when she couldn’t come over, to put it away again.

  ‘I hope it will keep you busy for a while,’ I said as they prepared to leave.

  Captain Willemse gave what I presumed was intended to be a smile. ‘You will be coming with us, Mr. Minnaar,’ he said amicably in his broad Afrikaans accent. ‘You may get dressed if you want to. But you will of course understand that one of my men must go with you. Just in case, you know.’ He gave me a conspiratorial wink.

  It was only four or five days later, during my solitary confinement, that the full horror struck me. Abbie. All those interminable questions about the background to my books. Her involvement with providing accommodation for our ‘customers.’ Her last-minute excuse for that night. I couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it. It was not possible. I had so unreservedly, unquestioningly, trusted her. For God’s sake, I loved her.

  But as my detention lengthened into weeks, the tenor of their questions and comments during interrogation made it clear beyond all doubt that they knew every minute detail of my recent life, most of which I hadn’t discussed with anybody else at all. Only with Abbie. Betrayal never comes easy.

  ***

  There was a curious interim, between January 5 when you and George came back from the Drakensberg, and your birthday on February 28. Living in limbo. Decisions had been taken but had not been acted upon yet. George left for Kuwait only a few days after your return. You said the briefest of goodbyes while I waited at the door to take him to the airport. You did not come out to the car with us.

  As I moved in next to George, I asked, ‘Will she be there with you?’

  ‘She?’

  ‘The woman you spoke of.’

  ‘Danielle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘There’s no need to lie to me, George,’ I said. ‘Just say you don’t want to talk about it, or anything else. But don’t lie.’

  ‘I really don’t know. I haven’t tried to set up anything.’

  We drove to the airport in silence. As I stopped in front of International Departures, he suddenly put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry about all this, Chris.’

  ‘So am I,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘I had never meant this to happen.’

  ‘You could have avoided it.’

  ‘Are you blaming me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Will you look after Rachel for me?’

  I looked straight ahead. ‘No. I will look after her, but not for you.’

  ‘You don’t have anything to say to me, do you?’

 
‘What is there to say? All our lives are falling apart.’

  ‘Not yours.’

  ‘What would you know about that, George?’

  I did not mean to be hard on him. But I could not help myself. Everything inside me was in turmoil: but was that enough reason to turn my back on someone who had become so dear to me? For all I knew we might never see each other again. If that bloody war in Iraq materialized… But it seemed so far away, so unreal. (As it still does, and even more so now, in spite of—or because of?—the nightly spectacle.) And he seemed just as far away, even though he was sitting next to me. What had happened? What was happening?

  ‘There is a single thing I’d like to ask you,’ he said.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I know you are blaming me for a hell of a lot, and I suppose I deserve it. But is there one thing I have done which you have never done, or would not have done?’

  I had no answer to that. What choked me, as if a hand was tightening around my throat, was the question whether my obsession with you had so blinded me that I could no longer recognize or acknowledge a true friend? Was this the real reason—that in turning against him, I was really blindly trying to condemn myself, expressing all the fury against myself that I’d been accumulating all my life without even being aware of it? I remembered something you had said the very first time I’d had a meal with the two of you, something to the effect that nobody ever blamed George for anything. Now everybody was, I more than anyone else.

  ‘I’m sorry, George,’ I said at last, and gave him my hand. ‘I have behaved despicably towards you.’

  ‘We have all three been through a rather bad whirlpool,’ he said. ‘Let’s not dwell too much on that, but try to go on.’