by Andre Brink
Obviously I can no longer recall our dialogue in detail, only the general drift. (Perhaps I should use the opportunity to practise for my novel! At least I can try.)
She said, “I thought perhaps you’d driven right past.” And when I shook my head she went on: “That’s what happened to me. It was several blocks before I suddenly realised … So I turned back, and once again I drove past, looking for Dullabh’s building. How can they do a thing like this?”
“Didn’t you see the papers?”
“Yes, but I never realised. It used to be our place, Martin!”
I couldn’t help smiling. “You didn’t expect them to first ask our permission, did you?”
“You know very well what I mean.” Through her dark glasses I could see the darker burning of her eyes. “It’s as if they’ve taken something away from us.” And after a moment, almost resentfully: “We’ve got little enough as it is.”
“We’re still the same, aren’t we?”
“Are we? Can we even be sure of that?” She turned her head as if to look at the excavation, then looked away. “I know we don’t come here very often. Once every few weeks or so. And then we go off again. But still: Dullabh’s Corner – I suppose it’s ridiculous of me, but this place has always been here, always exactly the same, an ugly old landmark, comforting, reassuring. I used to think: one day you and I will be gone, but some things will remain and keep something of us alive in a way. Dullabh’s Corner will remember us. And now it’s just a hole.”
“I suppose one has to learn to live with holes,” I said, deliberately trying to sound light-hearted. “Intimations of mortality.”
Strange I should have said that. (Did I really? Or am I making it up?) In the light of what happened later the same afternoon, when mortality suddenly became very real.
To continue with the dialogue:
“Please let’s go,” she said. “I don’t ever want to come back here. I’ll go with you in your car.”
“What about yours?”
“I left it over there.” She motioned. “I’ll fetch it later, it’s not important. At the moment I feel too shaky.”
“Aren’t we going to the curry place?”
“No, let’s get out of town. As far away as possible.”
In the car she lit a cigarette and sat smoking in silence. Traffic was bad and it took a long time to reach the M1.
“Strange,” she said after a while, more subdued, “the way one keeps on trying to find things to hold on to. Proof of the passing moments. One never learns that a mirror can’t hold an image. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Does the mirror on the wall really matter? Provided you yourself know who you are.”
“Are you really so sure about it?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t.” With a wan smile she blew out smoke. “It’s part of your illusion. Part of your arrogance. That’s what drives me up the wall about you. And perhaps that’s why I love you.”
“At least I’m not such a merry mixture as you are!”
“No,” she said, staring at me through her dark glasses. “But you’re an Afrikaner. And that may be worse.”
“We are Afrikaners and that identity we shall never renounce. We shall not be dictated to by anyone. Even if the rest of the world, like Gadarene swine, prefer to plunge into the abyss of permissivity caused by lack of identity we shall remain steadfast.” In the freely paraphrased words of Minister Calitz at the press conference following our withdrawal from the conference this morning.
We had some problems with His Excellency. Things may have turned out differently if he’d attended last night’s reception for delegates, which still offered an occasion for last-minute lobbying. But at the cocktail party in the Embassy preceding the reception his over-enthusiastic consumption of KWV brandy, in spite of our frantic efforts, forced his early withdrawal to his hotel. (From where, it was reported, he later slipped out to Raymond’s Revue Bar et al.) That put paid to our attendance of the conference.
I should briefly explain our mission. The British United Nations Association organised the conference on economic development in the Third World, with an emphasis on the exploitation of mineral resources. The Afrikaans Institute of Commerce regarded it as an excellent opportunity for pushing South Africa’s leading role in this field; at the same time it could be used to negotiate a few mineral export contracts and attract new investment capital. As chairman of the Mining Chamber of the AIC I gave my wholehearted support to the project and also initiated arrangements to negotiate with a number of major importers in Stockholm etc. But the moment Calitz learned of the conference he indicated in a very unsubtle way that he would be “available” to accompany the mission – with the praiseworthy objective of political bargaining under the cloak of a commercial enterprise. So it was only natural for the president of the AIC to invite His Excellency to take over the leadership of the mission.
These developments were only publicised upon our departure from Johannesburg, causing immediate repercussions in London and elsewhere: accusations of our trying to turn a meeting of economists into an international political forum etc., the sort of argument to which a British Labour government proves particularly vulnerable. From that moment the further course of events was clearly predictable. Calitz had no credentials for the conference but obviously assumed that our Embassy would arrange everything for him. When this proved impossible and he was refused admission, our entire mission had to withdraw in a show of loyalty. The sort of incident provoked regularly by people like Calitz at a stage when, God knows, we bloody well can’t afford it.
What else could one have expected of the man? When he became Minister his only claim to fame was a Hitler moustache, which had shrunk with the years until it resembled nothing so much as a blotch of silver snot on his upper lip. It must be conceded, I suppose, that he did his best to serve the interests of the South African economy by acquiring directorships in various companies, as well as a wine farm in the Western Province, a sheep farm in the Free State, a hunting farm in the South-West, and a strategic block of land in the Eastern Cape. At one stage he also owned a hotel and a holiday resort in Transkei, but those he soon sold, at three times the original price, to the South African Government who promptly transferred it, at twenty per cent of the amount, as a gesture of goodwill to two prominent members of the Transkei Cabinet.
After Calitz had left on his Soho exploits last night a few of us delegates met with the Ambassador to compose a diplomatically worded statement to be issued in the event of our forced withdrawal from today’s conference. And when the foreseeable happened I handed the document to His Excellency. Perhaps it would have been better for someone else to have done so, as there isn’t much love lost between Calitz and myself (see later, when the Eastern Cape affair is discussed: for on the practical level that was the motivation for the entire “apocalyptic” weekend I am concerned with). Deliberately ignoring our cautious formulation and obviously playing to the gallery at home, he called a press conference “to make it clear to these bastards once and for all that we won’t be trodden on”.
I had to swallow my annoyance, knowing better than to clash with a man like him in public. I’ll get even with him in good time, just as I got even with him that weekend. But I must admit that his performance thwarted me personally. The paper I was to have read at the conference (The Strategic Value of South Africa’s Mineral Resources to the West) was aimed at the sort of reaction, abroad as well as at home, which would have aided me in becoming president of the AIC within about two years. For twenty years, ever since Elise and I returned from my studies overseas, I’ve been planning my career like a game of chess. Legal adviser; PRO for the mining house. And when the moment came to take the plunge and become an entrepreneur in my own right (the details are of no concern), I was ready for it. The rest was simple logic: buying out small worked-out mines which had become unprofitable for the large companies; prospecting and buying options until I could field my own team of geol
ogists; shares; moving in at the right moment with takeovers and consortiums; property deals: all the time, thanks to my contacts in the Cabinet and elsewhere, staying just one step ahead of the others. The constant careful manoeuvring within the AIC, based on the calculation that the Afrikaner was still a newcomer to mining, which meant that competition was less fierce than in other areas of industry. So I chose that as my field of action, attending AGMs to be “seen”, supporting key figures, seconding proposals, later introducing my own motions, and getting elected to the executive. Like a general planning his strategies. Until I have now reached the top, with my headquarters on the eleventh and twelfth floors of the premises in Main Street. My own building (one of my shrewdest coups in a take-over). My personal domain. The spacious office, modernised with carpets and perspex and potted plants, watched over by my eagle-eyed secretary (fortyish and efficient: ever since the episode with Marlene I prefer a middle-aged lady in this position), and the rest of my staff within immediate reach. Public officer, chief accountant, personnel manager, consultant geologist, consultant engineer; and the juniors, ranging from draughtsmen to typists (these are both young and attractive, and eagerly at the disposal of the Boss). None of this came to me by chance. Nothing has happened through fate or fortune. Everything has been planned and worked for. And this London conference had been intended to give me another indispensable push, now temporarily undone through Calitz’s criminal bungling. (And I am not his only victim: the country as a whole will suffer the results.)
Still, in public one remains “loyal”. We Afrikaners have our own way of doing things. And in the eyes of the world our delegation stood by our leader. Immediately after the press conference all the other members of the mission returned to South Africa with His Excellency.
I moved to this hotel. Not that I had much against the first one in “fashionable Mayfair”, except perhaps that, at twenty-five pounds a day (plus VAT) they did not even offer a cup of morning tea without charge (only the cockroaches were free). But with what in my early romantic period I would have called a “blinding clarity” I just knew the time had come for me to be alone and incognito until I must fly to Tokyo.
In a curious state of elation about this sudden freedom I cabled my secretary not to expect any news from me until after Tokyo; next I phoned my wife to tell her that I was off to the Lake District for a week. She was less resigned than I’d expected.
“Why don’t you rather come home, Martin?”
“It’s too close to the office. You know very well they won’t leave me in peace.”
“We can go away together for a few days.” There was an unexpected fervent note in her voice. “It’s such a long time since we last—”
“Do be reasonable, Elise. I’ve got to be in Tokyo before the end of next week.”
“If you catch the plane tonight you’ll be home tomorrow morning.”
“I just can’t face another trip. I’m tired. And I’m not getting any younger.”
“Nonsense, Martin. You’re forty-five. That’s nothing.”
“You know what the doctors said.”
“As if you’ve ever paid any attention to doctors. Or to anyone else for that matter.”
“That’s an unkind cut.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, well, that I’m also getting uptight and smothered here.”
I could guess what she really meant to say. “Having problems with Ma again?”
“What else did you expect? I know she doesn’t mean it. But she insists on taking everything out of my hands and I can’t stand it. I still think it was a terrible mistake to bring her back from the farm. She’s much too independent to live with other people.”
“We discussed all that long ago, Elise.”
“Did we? You said what you thought and that was that.” A short pause. “Don’t let us go through all that again on the telephone, Martin. It’s no use. I’m just upset because I thought you’d —”
“How’s Ilse?” I interrupted.
“Cavorting in the pool with her friends. Refusing to listen to anyone. She knows you’ll take her side when you come back.”
For a moment I hesitated before asking: “No news of Louis, I suppose?”
“Of course not.” Her voice was strained. “I wonder whether we’ll ever hear from him again. Unless something—But you’re wasting your money now, you’d better ring off.” More quietly she added: “Do look after yourself, Martin.”
“Of course. Goodbye.”
Strangely discontent I sat looking at the receiver, trying to imagine Elise at home as she put down the phone (but where would she be? Bedroom or study?), following her through the house. The clear placid stone surrounding one with its reassuring coolness in these summer months; subtly heated in winter. The woolly flokatis in the bedrooms, terracotta and ceramic tiles elsewhere; the few antiques Elise had skilfully harmonised with large and comfortable modern module pieces. A few of her pots on shelves or in alcoves; her roughly woven mohair curtains covering the windows. On the walls, paintings by South African artists, including two early Pierneefs and a Wenning; also a Picasso litho and the Klee drawing I picked up in Cologne. Slasto surrounding the fireplace, built-in bookshelves on either side.
Outside, the “flowing lines” characteristic of most of my brother Theo’s designs, functional and satisfying in their Mediterranean echoes. The garden with its lawns and terraces, shrubs, trees (strelitzia, proteas, wistaria on the pergola, three precious cycads smuggled from the farm on the back of Dad’s truck, years ago, before the cancer and the funeral, when we still had the farm; before that fatal weekend). The tennis court behind the poplar row, the aquamarine curves of the swimming pool where Ilse and her friends were splashing at this moment.
The curiously unsettling incident of her last birthday, her fifteenth, when she and a dozen other girls were fooling around the pool in their tiny tangas (Ma: “It’s just two milk doilies and a cookie cloth they’re wearing these days”), as I lay in my deck chair with one eye on the newspaper and the other on those pert provocative nymphs. I suddenly glanced up to catch Louis watching them just as eagerly. (That was before Angola; before everything.) For a moment our eyes met. He blushed, and smiled to cover his embarrassment. And for the first time I realised what it meant to have a son of eighteen sharing my stealthy fervent interest in those budding bodies. But instead of feeling solidarity, I found the discovery had stirred something like guilt inside me, even resentment, as if it had revealed something much too secret of myself to him.
There was an even less wholesome sequel to the episode. While Louis and I remained in our chairs, he with his Coke and I with my beer, both pretending to be unaware of each other and those smooth girl-women, I noticed a movement behind some shrubs on the far side of the pool and saw the Black gardener. He too was peering at the scene, his spade forgotten in the ground. We’d only hired him the week before after his predecessor had left without warning. Had I known him better I might have been willing to give him another chance but these days one cannot take any risks, not with a teenage girl about the house. So I had to fire him. In any event I paid him two months’ notice, so he really had nothing to complain about.
It wasn’t easy to find a replacement. They’re asking such exorbitant wages, yet they’re reluctant to offer anything in return. Years ago one could still rely on convict labour, which was how we managed to get the garden laid out in the first place. A team of twelve once a week really works wonders. It was the same when I was a child, except then we only had them once a month: in that arid region of Griqualand West there was no point in any fancy gardening. Fourteen inches of rain a year, if it was a good year. Three inches more often than not. And when it stayed away everything just shrivelled up and only dust and stones and thorn-trees remained. Our team of convicts used to eat their lunch in the sparse shade of such a thorn-tree, taking a long time over their mealie porridge and their thick slices of brown bread. Often, when the guard was not looking, they
asked Theo or me to smuggle them cigarettes from Dad’s box of C to C. There was one who used to ask for methylated spirits. He would up-end the bottle in his mouth and gulp it all down, just like that. Took away all his fear, he said. With that stuff down his throat they could try anything, he didn’t care a fuck. The language he used. Then came the day he tried to run away. Who ever thought a convict would try to escape in that little village with its dusty streets and pepper trees, surrounded by an infinity of barren plains? But he did, true as God. And just as he was climbing the fence the guard emerged from the outdoor lavatory, buckling his belt. I was standing in the back door with a slice of bread and golden syrup; Theo was still spreading his in the kitchen. The convict looked round and began to run, followed by the guard. Consternation in the backyard. Ma’s red and black fowls jumping up from where they’d been lying with spread wings under a broombush, their yellow eyelids half-closed. The guard was much too corpulent to catch up with the convict. So he shot him. The meths drinker dropped down in the dust, kicking like a sheep with its throat cut. The guard waddled towards him, tearing his khaki uniform as he scrambled through the fence, and started kicking him where he lay with his back broken, kicking and kicking until, unable to take any more, I fled into the kitchen. There was a commotion of people and voices. The Black Maria came. Through the kitchen window I saw them pick him up, hurling him into the back of the van like a bag of potatoes, a ragged little bundle of blood and dust. When I turned round all I saw was the cluster of black flies on the slither of flypaper hanging from the bulb.
“Why did the man kick him like that, Dad?” I asked the next day. “He couldn’t run any more.”
“One can’t take chances with a kaffir, my boy.” His kind, vulnerable eyes looked at me through his spectacles. “He was a criminal and he tried to escape. If you go back in our history.…”
That was his stock defence and solution to everything. If you go back in our history. It was his subject, after all; he was one of the few people I’ve ever known to be completely happy in their work. Very few outsiders could understand how on earth a man could take pleasure in teaching the same dreary span of history year after year. Most of the other kids at school found him boring; the only thing that kept them working was their fear of the cane with which he tried to impress his authority on boys and girls alike – something I never managed to reconcile with a person as meek as he was. Personally I drew a measure of inspiration from him, but whether this was due to the history he taught or to a quality in himself I don’t know. In a sense he always remained remote from us, with an absence in his eyes as if he was staring right past us to those distant battles and great men who seemed to suggest some sense or stature of life to him: all those causes and consequences of war, the achievements of ancient civilisations, which appeared so much more ordered and understandable at a distance than the confusion surrounding oneself. History to him was as clear in line and meaning as the shape of a fish; whereas the present appeared wild and aimless and absurd. At the same time, through an interest in history, it seemed possible occasionally to break through to him and grasp something of his silences and his absence, lending sudden and startling meaning to the word “Dad”.
