Bitter Eden

by Tatamkhulu Afrika

  Five minutes later, he is back, the flaming shape I had sensed in him quite gone. Or has it never been there, my mind alone the flaming giveaway? ‘I found the old staff that gave me his bunk,’ he says, his voice glad. ‘Same old sod he always was. Says to come over sometime so’s he can grab your hand.’

  That pleases me as much as it pleases Danny because the once bête noire had become the almost-friend that he would allow anyone to become, but we never saw him again after the Krauts took over and feared him dead as the poor Ite guards the Krauts left lying where they fell. That, I am thinking, completes a circle, chinks a missing link in place, and I am still feeling good about it when, washing on alone and Danny gone to fetch the chow, I have this feeling that I am being watched – not incuriously so, but with the intensity of a sorrowing or a rage – and I turn, quickly, to the grimy window close beside me and Douglas is walking away in the direction of the theatre with the stiffness of back and quickness of step of one who nearly waited too long.

  Autumn eases into winter and the first snow, then come the heavier and boringly endless falls that burden the branches of the pines till, sometimes in the crystal nights, they snap with the loudness of shots and their loads come whooshing down in a feathery roar. The cobbled paths turn smooth and slippery as glass and there are serious tumbles as we grapple with the clogs, and Danny soon learns that if he leaves the washing out to dry after the sun has reached a certain low, he will have to wrestle it into the barracks and stack it like boards to the accompaniment of furious cries. He also learns that when the temperature shafts us with a particular spite, the only solution is to clamber up into my bunk without a by-my-leave, shove me aside and wrap me round as though he would be my second skin, but I am not complaining, am in my secret self even now knowing that I will be missing this when summer comes.

  Winter also brings letters – shoals of them – as though all of autumn’s dammed-up leaves have suddenly broken free. Some of them are so old, tell of emotions, deeds, events, so long past, that they are more histories written by dead hands than the voices of the living reaching out to the still alive. But they are still read, smelt, carefully folded, as carefully again unfolded to be again read, then at last laid aside with the reverence due to icons, or the dead.

  Danny gets nine letters – five from his mother, four from his wife. They are his first letters since the Krauts hauled him, virtually unhurt, from his mangled tank. He stares at them, holding them, fanned, in both his hands, his eyes bemused with disbelief – then he very quietly gets up and goes away to some far corner of the camp, his letters tightly clasped as though they might take wing, and stays away for so long that I grow restless with a loneliness that is the other face of dread.

  Then he is back, incandescent with the need to share, and begins to read me passages from his letters, and goes on and on, but I am staring at my empty hands, empty because – because of what? – my never having given enough of myself to anyone for them to want to give me anything back? I shy away from the question and he reads on, and I’m thinking I will get up and walk out of here, but then understanding comes to him and he puts his letters away and does me a dozen small favours to show me that he understands, but I hold out for nearly too long, guiltily but unyieldingly aware that what I am now feeling is the sullen jealousy of the brat I have never outgrown.

  Some days later, Tony sends me a message that he would like to see me – the first such message to come from him since we arrived – and, curious, I lose no time in getting down to the theatre to which I have but infrequently been, and then only when there is a show, I not wanting to risk running into Douglas again. It is about the size of the one the Ites gave us, only longer and narrower, being half of a barracks with the backing ablution and laundry room serving as a storeroom for costumes, sets and general theatre bric-à-brac. The stage – contrived with the usual cunning from packing cases supplied by the Krauts and with a worn but authentic stage curtain also supplied by the Krauts who seem to be as weirdly culture-conscious as the Ites – is sited in front of the storeroom, which then also doubles as a dressing-room for the more brash than bashful performers and provides them with an easy entrance to the stage. In the other half of the barracks, Tony has ensconced himself in a private space behind a stack of sheets of cardboard that were supposed to have been converted into sets, while the considerable rest of the room has been turned into a dormitory of individual beds for stagehands, set designers, make-up artistes and an assortment of hangers-on who snuff the corruption-tainted air with the challenging brazenness of their kind.

  Arrived, I find Tony sitting reading on a chair he has taken from those stacked against the ‘auditorium’ walls, and he at once gets up, closing his book with the brisk snap that is his way and seizing my hand with an almost-unctuousness that is not his way. Then he leads me over the stage, arousing in me – purposely? – surprisingly sharp memories of the one and only show in which I have ever been, and on into his ‘space’ which contains no more than a bed that is no more than a cot, a crude bar stool and as crude a something like a whatnot that he has stuffed with books, papers, clothes.

  ‘Sit down,’ he says, hooking the stool forward with his foot, and I do and he goes out and comes back with two mugs of tea with sugar and milk, and hands me one before he sits down on the bed.

  ‘How do you like my pad?’

  ‘No frills,’ I say and cannot keep the surprise from my voice.

  ‘Typical of you straights!’ he snorts, then adds, ‘That is if you are still straight,’ and chuckles contentedly when I frown. ‘Always expecting fruits to be lolling on silk doodahs and indulging in orgies they wouldn’t mind trying out themselves.’ Then he looks at me, measuredly, as though seeing me for the first time, and, in his turn, frowns. ‘Happy,’ he says, addressing himself rather than me, ‘but going to seed,’ and I know that he is referring to my hair and beard which, although reasonably under control, are not as neatly trimmed as in that other time and place, the barbering business being the one activity that has only minimally survived as a result of the Krauts’ refusing to help out with equipment as did the Ites and the few barbers who managed to smuggle out their scissors having to use only these to lop off what they can.

  ‘But I can soon fix that. For Danny too, if he wants,’ and he looks at me expectantly, but I don’t answer him, knowing that I wouldn’t get Danny here even if I dragged him by his too long hair, and try to conceal my uneasiness as I sip my tea and listen to the chatter of voices and bustle of bodies the other side of the cardboard wall.

  But the owlish eyes behind the glittering pince-nez miss nothing, as I should have known. ‘He’s not here,’ he says, simply, almost sympathetically. ‘I sent him out on an errand, knowing how you would feel.’

  I should feel gratitude, but don’t, only say, my voice harsh with the shyness of being exposed, ‘OK, Tony. Cut the offers and the tea. What is it that you want to wheedle out of me?’

  Again he chuckles, this time appreciatively, but does not at once answer, looking past me as though I am not there, his face its usual glum façade. ‘I’m going to try something new,’ he at last explains. ‘So far, the shows we have put on – like the one you were in back there – were either serious plays with all-male casts or they were farces where the guys playing the parts of the women were clearly still guys doing it for the audience to laugh at and have fun. Now I want to put on a serious play with men playing the parts of women as though they were women and not men.’

  He looks at me, clearly expecting some profundity, but the presentation is still too sudden, too raw, and the best I can manage is, ‘Such as?’

  ‘Old Bill Shakespeare’s Macbeth,’ and now I do react, but with consternation and no small measure of distaste, and he goes on, ‘I know exactly what you are going to say – that Shakespeare is dead meat, that the audience will boo the cast off the stage and come wanting to cut off my balls. But I am going to do it like it’s never been done before – shove the bloodshed and the
witches and the ghost out front like a whore her cunt, and even slice out some of the lines if there is no other way. In short, my friend, I am going to turn Macbeth into the highfalutin thriller that it really is and have those slobs out there panting for the visuals, but also slotting into the lines because they will want to know what is going on.’

  I am listening, but with gathering admiration now, beginning to nod, beginning to see what he sees. Then I am thinking of the characters in the play, trying to remember the little that I learnt of it at school. ‘The head heavy that wanted to chicken out? The butch missus that didn’t give a fuck? Christ, Tony, these were psychos! You got guys that can handle them?’

  He is pleased, slaps my knee. ‘We already have Macbeth – long, sly shit that always looks that way and only has to narrow his eyes and he’s right. He churns out his lines like they’re a mantra, but, as I said, we’ll pile on the visuals till nobody cares a fuck what he says.’

  ‘And the wife?’

  ‘You,’ he says and looks at me with such a matter-of-factness that, for a moment, I do not grasp what he has said. Then I do and stand up, saying something like, ‘Thanks for the tea,’ and make to leave, but he holds me back, seats me again on the stool. ‘Wait, man, wait! Don’t be in such a hurry! At least think about it before you say “No!”.’

  ‘What is there to think about? Do you think I’m one of your pervs that’s going to prance around on that stage in a fucking dress?’

  Anger, I all too miserably know, is making me say things that I should not, that I will regret, but he does not take offence. ‘Lady M does not prance, Tom. She is a queen. What is more, she will be wearing a queen’s robe that we will see to it covers everything except your face and hands, and even your hands we will be shoving into gloves if they look too much like a man’s, which I am sure they do, and as for your face, we will do that over till, when you look in a mirror, you will feel inside that you are a queen rather than a woman, and everybody out there will be seeing you in that same way and not one, I can guarantee you, will be wanting to take you to bed after the show!’

  ‘So if it’s that easy, why don’t you try your tricks on some other goon? Why pick on me?’

  Quietly, his eyes insist that I listen, heed. ‘Do you remember your death scene in that other play and how I battled to make you whisper so that the whole audience could hear, and how, on opening night, you suddenly got it right and never looked back till the end of the run?’ I do not even bother to nod, and he goes on, ‘Well, one of the crucial scenes in Macbeth is when wifey walks in her sleep and speaks to the blood on her hands, and I want her to whisper those words as you did then, as only you can do now, and that is why I am begging you to not let me down, to say yes, you will do that for me this one more time!’

  ‘Great speech,’ I sneer, but already I am feeling the net of my vanity closing around me and I not trying hard enough to get out from under it, and already I am seeing myself playing the part of the Queen and hearing myself imposing only the one condition: that it be left to me to ‘go public’ – by which I mean to tell Danny – in my own time and my own way.

  ‘Sure,’ he says and shakes my hand, trying not to look as victorious as he feels. He also, on my way out, hands me two Red Cross parcels which a skivvy brings, explaining, deadpan, ‘To fatten you up a bit. Wifey was no pale Ophelia. Probably packed a wallop like a man’s,’ and he looks at me and I look at him, but still do not know which it is – the truth or a bribe? – but also do not really care, only ask him for something to put them in for carrying through a camp that’s all eyes.

  Danny’s not there when I get back, as I half-expected would be the case, he not one for lolling around in his bunk, even when it is as cold as it is now and most do. So I shove the parcels in under his bunk and sit down on it and ask myself how and when to tell Danny what, sooner or later, I must, and at once know that I have not even begun to think this thing through, that the ‘how’ – and ‘how much’ – may still demand of me an answering, but the ‘when’ is right now. How can I possibly delay telling him the nature of my business with Tony when we are so interlocked, the one with the other, that we even say, ‘I’m going for a shit’ when we are going for a shit? Not only that, but Tony has – knowingly or unknowingly? – trapped me with the parcels under the bunk. How can I remain silent about them? Panic mounting, I turn to the ‘how’ and ‘how much’ and am again trapped. I could tell him about the play without telling him what role I am going to play, but how long before it all leaks out in a camp that is as much all ears as it is all eyes and I then stand accused of a duplicity that will lose me Danny’s trust as though it had never been?

  I am still no nearer a solution, when he walks in, raised eyebrow asking ‘Well?’, and I hear myself saying, instinctively and without fuss, ‘Tony has offered me a part in his new play.’

  ‘So? Would he be wanting you for anything else?’ There is a snideness to the question that I do not miss, but I let it pass.

  ‘First payment,’ I add, scrabbling the parcels out from under his bunk, awkwardly offering them as to an unpredictable god.

  He nudges them with his foot. ‘Looks good. So you’re saying you said a “Yes”?’

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Nah, not much. You’re my mate and you know I don’t like sharing you with those theatre creeps, but you did fine in that other play and I can see it’s what you like to do, like I like to run. So, OK. Let the cameras roll.’

  Now he is almost jocular and I make for what I think is the gap. ‘I have to play the part of the queen in Macbeth.’ His face is a montage of flesh turning into stone and I hasten on, laying it on, my heart thrashing round like a frightened bird. ‘If you know the play, you will know she’s an evil witch, a real devil under those jewels and the fancy robe, blood all over her hands.’

  ‘But she’s got tits and a cunt, hasn’t she?’ My face answers for me and he goes on, ‘You got that?’ Again my face answers and he rubs it in, ‘So why does this Tony want you for the part? Does he think you’re one of his pervs that ponce around like they got a marble up their arse? Why do you want the part? For this?’ Now he kicks the parcels, so hard that the one skitters back under the bunk. ‘Only whores get paid for getting it shoved up their holes, back or front. You wanting to be a whore?’

  ‘This,’ I think, ‘is it,’ but raw anger seizes me before the as-raw pain, and, for once, the anger steadies me and I say with a calm that hacks through to him as finally as any blade, ‘Tony wants me to do the part because there is a scene in which the Queen whispers to the audience in the way I whispered in the play back there. That is all,’ and I want to add that it is all over between us – and a lot more besides – but don’t, partly because heartbreak is overwhelming me and partly because the ‘That is all’ is not all, the knowledge of my conceit, of my wanting to play the Queen, coming back to haunt me with the horrible resilience of a strangled child.

  He leaves then, wheeling hurriedly away, his face an expressionless shield, and does not come back till swill-and-extras time, when he collects his and I collect mine, and I make to climb up onto my bunk, but he unmistakably and unexpectedly moves over, indicating that I should sit in my usual place on his, and a gladness floods me that I know I must not show, and I sit down beside him and we eat in a silence that is more tentative than strained. Near the end, he takes out his slice of the morning’s bread that we always save, and I take out mine and open up the food parcel that I had left lying in the aisle, and find in it a small jar of strawberry jam which I then uncap and offer to him, and he takes it with the delicate hesitancy of a grown wild cat being tempted back into the ‘normal’ world, and spreads a little of the jam on his bread and hands back the jar. So I know, then, that I have scored a victory of a kind, but at a cost because he now often lapses into unaccountable silences during which I will sometimes find him watching me with a speculativeness that disturbs, and, no matter how cold the nights, he no longer clambers up into my bunk to seek
and give the warmth that was as much of the heart as of the bones, and there is a heaviness in me because of this that nothing heals.

  Right from the start, Tony insists that I rehearse in an ankle-length shift that he has stitched together from odd pieces of cloth for which he could find no better use. ‘So that you can get to know what it’s like to wear a robe,’ he says, and I ask him what the real robe will be like and he says that’s his business, which, indeed, it is, he being the theatre’s only costumier and an irascible and dictatorial one at that. Adept with the needle as with the clippers and blade, he does all his own sewing – although he says he may be taking on some casual ‘seamstresses’ this time round because of the many costumes that the production demands – and he is legendary for never exposing his creations to either the cast’s or the public’s view until the dress rehearsal, when they are trotted out with all the fanfare of a Parisian couturier.

  Macbeth would not have had to practise in any shift, he being one of Tony’s stable and, curiously enough, a civvy street cross-dresser who watches my antics with an infuriating mixture of amusement and contempt. ‘Forget him,’ Tony says. ‘On opening night, he will be a nothing, but the goons will be eating out of your hand.’ Then adds, ‘That is, of course, if you do what I say.’ And, truly, I try, but it is a trying by numbers, a constant warning myself not to spread my thighs when I’m sitting down, to scrunch up my buttocks when I walk like, as Danny put it, I’ve got a marble up my arse, to not bat my hands about as if I’m swatting flies, but to keep them supple and subtle as a thief’s or a lover’s – Tony’s words, not mine – but never – and Tony mercilessly parodies his own kind – like a queer.

  ‘Like what, then?’ I ask.

  ‘Like a wife, you ox! Like a woman who just is a woman and nothing else. And even she is not to be just aped. She it is who has always been a part of you, but you never knew it, and now you must know it and wake her and set her free, and she must move your parts and speak with your tongue, and you will look on from the sidelines like the rest of us and ask, “Is that me?” And it will be and yet it won’t, and that is the miracle – the birth – which every actor seeks but must not pursue or it is lost.’