by Andre Brink
I should have liked to deny or undo his words, that Friday in the car on my way to the farm; preferably, if only for a weekend, I wanted to forget about him entirely. But how could I, when Louis was there beside me? With him, I was really taking everything else with me. From time to time I glanced at him sideways, but he was staring fixedly through the messy windscreen, although he must have been aware of my eyes on him. A profile like my own, almost disarmingly similar; only much younger, of course. (That in itself was unsettling.) And consequently more stubborn, more arrogant. Above all, reserved, secretive and strange, just as he had been when, a couple of hours before, we’d met in the crowd surrounding the suicide.
Nineteen. At that age one would have expected him to be like his contemporaries, all emotion and eagerness, bravado inspired by the first fumbling discoveries of rampant sexuality, and stirrings of vulnerability, susceptible to the spell of the moon or the shape of a girl’s ear; all storm and stress. But Louis was different. In his eyes was something very old and disconcerting. Weariness? Disillusionment? Cynicism? At nineteen! It was more than that. One had the uncomfortable impression that there was nothing which could either shock or please him any more. As if he’d arrived beyond the territory to which I could offer him a map. And it was presumptuous, if not absurd, to expect that in the course of a single weekend I could diminish the distance between us.
I didn’t want to stop because of the gnats; through the smear one could still see enough of the road and it wasn’t dark yet, barely five o’clock. I don’t like interrupting a journey; I never did, not even when the children were small and wanted me to stop at the most impossible times and places. When I’m driving I want to continue until I reach the other end, finding something inwardly satisfying about the very momentum of motion. It’s like a swinging bucket of water: only by going on can one keep everything under control. Once one’s rhythm is disturbed one’s very mastery of the situation is in jeopardy.
“I think we can manage for the moment, don’t you?” I asked Louis. “One can still see, even though it’s through a glass darkly.”
He stared ahead without giving the slightest sign that he’d heard.
2
IT HAD, IN fact, gone wrong from the start. We were thirty miles from Johannesburg when I discovered that I’d taken the wrong road. I’d meant to travel on the customary, faster route via Vereeniging and Parys; now we were on our way to Potchefstroom, the road I’d driven several times that week to the mine at Westonaria. It wasn’t so much the reminder of the riot that annoyed me as the discovery that I’d made a mistake. As with the gnats, later, it made me feel, momentarily, that I wasn’t in complete control; as if something had taken its course against my will.
In the long run it couldn’t make much difference, except, of course, that it would have eliminated the gnats. But I hated the idea of changing my routine. That in itself was more annoying than the mere fact of an extra fifteen or thirty minutes’ driving. Time wasn’t all that important, especially since we’d set out earlier than I had anticipated. We’d stopped at Uncle Charlie’s outside Johannesburg for a quick snack.
“You order,” I told Louis, in a deliberate effort to mollify him. “Whatever you wish.”
“I don’t know what you like.”
My fake enthusiasm waned, but I insisted: “Anything you want.”
Shrugging, he turned down his window to order: a hamburger and Coke for himself, tea and a toasted cheese-and-tomato sandwich for me. Perhaps I’d hoped, secretly, that he would order the same for him and me; something boyish and outrageous like a double-malt or a cream soda float or a parfait. He probably didn’t even know that I couldn’t stand cooked tomato; but in order not to insult or disappoint him I finished my sandwich. I’m not sure that I achieved anything through it, still I wanted to do all I could to create at least the illusion of comradeship.
What is the “natural” relationship between father and son: friendship, rivalry, antagonism? Or doesn’t there exist such a “natural” relationship? Perhaps the problem lies in one’s very effort to determine what the relationship “ought” to be. It might be easier to approach the situation like any other, in which two strangers are introduced and either find their way to each other or don’t. But the circumstances surrounding a family suggest the presence of other factors, of something “natural”, integrally part of it from the outset. Then something happens quite by chance – an accident, a death, a touch of fortune, a war in Angola – and suddenly you discover that you know nothing of one another at all; there is no secret bond, no instinctive alliance. In different circumstances both would be free to go their separate ways. But because of the family set-up you feel the need to “do something about it”. Denying our private liberty in the process, if I may borrow Bernard’s terminology.
Between Bernard and me there had still existed a choice: we were free to become friends, or not; to get to know each other, or not. Or was that, too, an illusion? For many years, in answer to the question: Who is the person you know best? I would have said, without a moment’s hesitation: Bernard Franken. And yet I had to discover and acknowledge, time and again in the course of his trial, that I really knew nothing of that man in the dock; that he was a total stranger to me. And I actually blamed him for that. It felt as if he’d betrayed me by changing into someone other than the man I’d known.
Why am I always confronted by the strangeness of others: Elise, Louis, Bea, Charlie, Bernard? Without the break of these nine days in London I would have been able to contain it, as before. But having started this exploration I am forced also to take the trouble of asking: What is the reason or the cause of it all? Trouble, indeed. At my age, after the sort of shock I had, one becomes increasingly aware of the trouble involved in so many things; and one tries to eliminate it where possible. But of course it was futile even to hope for it now.
After his sensational arrest in the last week of February the newspapers began a systematic build-up of the story, carefully fed from “informed sources”. And by the time the trial opened in Pretoria in the middle of May the rumours had acquired a tone of hysteria.
During the past few years it had often happened in similar trials that after the extravagant expectations kindled by the press beforehand the actual court proceedings proved something of an anticlimax. But not in Bernard’s case. The charge sheet in itself was more than impressive: a list of twenty-three indictments under the Terrorism Act and the Suppression of Communism Act, referring to a countrywide organisation aimed at urban terrorism, sabotage and even political assassination; the recruiting and training of guerrillas abroad; the distribution of inflammatory pamphlets; the stockpiling of grenades and other arms, etc. – the whole book. In addition, there were rumours of accomplices who would be brought to court later (that is, apart from those who had already been caught and sentenced three years earlier).
A long row of witnesses played their predictable role in spinning out the case against Bernard: security men, including a few who had been planted in the organisation; recruits and accomplices who’d elected to give evidence for the State; and several prisoners who’d been convicted earlier and had to be brought from jail for the occasion, two of them even from Robben Island. (And all of this against the background of sensation caused by suicide and attempted suicide in detention.) The clear intention was to prove that far from being a mere cog in a vast machine Bernard had been the master mind and instigator of it all. That, at least, corresponded to the image I’d had of him.
“Aren’t you going to Pretoria for the trial?” Elise asked as soon as a date had been announced.
“Why should I? I’ve got too much work to catch up with.”
“But you were such close friends.”
“You were as close to him as I was,” I said. “Why don’t you go?”
She avoided my eyes. “I only thought it might mean something to him if he saw you there.”
“It’s out of the question. In my position.”
She didn�
�t broach the subject again and as far as I was concerned that was the end of the matter. But, of course, it proved to be more difficult than I’d thought. There were newspapers, radio bulletins, TV: wherever one went there were reports or rumours of the trial.
Still, in the beginning I managed to satisfy myself with the radio reports, which were the most concise of all. I steered clear of all conversations in which Bernard was mentioned. Only to Charlie, who insisted on discussing the case, did I speak my mind: “I can’t understand it at all,” I said. “Bernard is the last person who should have felt the need to do a thing like that.”
“What do you mean, ‘need’?”
“Haven’t you noticed? The only people who ever get involved in such matters are ones with private hang-ups. They play around with politics and violence for the simple reason that they’re trying to solve personal problems. But surely that doesn’t apply to Bernard. He had everything a man could wish for. Friends, women, money, travels, success in his career, recognition, fame, the lot. I fail to understand how a man in his position could willingly give up everything to go and fight for the sake of others.”
Charlie blinked behind his thick glasses. Was he mocking me?
“There’s one thing you forgot, Martin.”
“What’s that?”
“Morality.”
“What morality?”
“A matter of conscience. I’m just as bad a believer as you are. But on Bernard’s farm, where he and I grew up, the oubaas” – I’m sure he said that deliberately – “the oubaas loved to read us the text about gaining the world and losing your soul. Don’t you think that’s where you should go and look for your explanation?”
“Nonsense. Bernard will be the first to disagree with you.”
“If you really knew him so well, why did you say you couldn’t understand him at all?”
“Now you’re splitting hairs.”
But I had no peace of mind. I wanted to stay away from the court, I wanted to keep out of the whole thing, but something drove me back to it. I began to buy more and more newspapers, covering the whole political spectrum; and those I’d missed at first I dug up in the public library. I accused myself of going “soft”. I blamed Bernard for undermining my resistance. There were days when I actually hated him for it: it must have been the first time in years I’d felt so strongly about anything. But in the long run I couldn’t stay away any more. On the Friday of the third week I drove to Pretoria very early in the morning; but then I wasted so much time wandering through the streets that I was too late to find a seat in court. Much to my relief, really. It made it easier to stay away on the Monday and Tuesday. And the unrest at Westonaria gave me more than enough reason not to go to Pretoria again. But in the end I couldn’t resist it; and on the last few days of the trial I was there. The conclusion of the State’s case. The sensation when Bernard, conducting his own defence, announced that he would neither call witnesses nor give evidence himself. The argument. His own long statement from the dock. And, on that final Friday morning, the verdict; Bernard’s refusal to plead in mitigation; and the sentence.
Now, driving on through the drought-stricken land, all I knew was that I was moving farther and farther away from Johannesburg and Pretoria, from Church Square and the massive statue of Paul Kruger and the Supreme Court.
In the city one didn’t notice the drought so much. There were water restrictions, but secretly, in the evenings, we continued to water the garden. (Why not? I could afford whatever fine might be imposed.) That was all there was to it. But as soon as one reached the open veld on the road to Potchefstroom, and especially after Westonaria, it became oppressive. Once we’d crossed the Vaal River it got even worse. There had been no rains since the spring; some areas hadn’t had a drop in two years. Even in good winters the Free State appears bleak, but this time it was devastating. The tough white grass had given up, leaving the earth bare in large patches, dark red like dried blood on a carcass. No sign of life. Not even flies. Only, just after Theunissen, that plague of gnats from nowhere; the wipers refusing to move; and the two of us staring through the dirty glass.
3
WE WERE FORCED to stop at Brandfort to have the windscreen washed after all. Once again it was not so much the loss of time which irritated me as the disruption of a rhythm and a pattern. It frustrated my planning, because I’d hoped to reach Reddersburg to fill up with petrol before the service stations closed at six. With this delay we had to fill the two large plastic containers in the boot; an unnecessary risk I usually tried to avoid. Fortunately there was nothing wrong with the air-conditioning of the Mercedes so that we needn’t be bothered by fumes.
It was cold when we got out at the garage. The sun was still a short distance above the bare stony hills in the colourless sky; but the cold air cut one to the bone. On these plains there was no shelter. The village was an untidy assortment of square houses on bare plots surrounded by tumbledown fences; corrugated iron tanks in backyards, some of them corroded with rust; outdoor lavatories and fowl-runs; here and there a few pigeons, puffed and windblown on a rooftop. On the koppie behind the village, the unsightly red-and-white skeleton of an FM tower. Normally one whizzed past on the main road circling the village. But now it seemed as if the departure from routine forced me to take stock of – what? The scene remained irrelevant and incoherent. Here, in the luxury of my London hotel, the memory seems even more pointless and out of place.
At the corner of the garage, in a spot of sunshine sheltered from the icy wind, stood a group of Black youths, huddled close together for warmth, talking in earsplitting voices, while two younger ones were scavenging for food in a refuse bin. An African woman came past, a paraffin tin balanced on her head; by the time she was two blocks away she was still conversing with the youngsters at the garage, shouting at the top of her voice.
Across the street, on the dusty pavement in front of a dilapidated white gate, a little girl was skipping, on her face a frown of concentration as she went on monotonously, without the slightest variation in her step; while leaning against a verandah pole on the stoep of a house diagonally opposite, an old man stood watching her, his pipe lifeless in his mouth. He, too, was “taking stock” – of what? Bernard once told me of his grandfather in the North-West who’d sat on his stoep one morning watching a neighbour girl skipping, causing her dress to fly up at every jump. Apparently she wasn’t wearing any panties. Grandpa Bernard sat there, gripping his stick more and more tightly until the knuckles showed white through the skin. When he couldn’t take it any longer he called his wife out to the stoep:
“Woman, will you chase that child with her bare cunt out of my sight before she gives me a stroke?”
“Why don’t you look away?” she asked.
Whereupon Grandpa Bernard uttered his immortal word: “It’s no damn use. That thing’s like lightning. You see it without looking.”
Today I find myself wondering: Did I, too, see what I was trying not to look at that weekend?
Returning from the toilet, Louis thrust his hands back into his jeans pockets.
“Cold, eh?” I said.
“What time will we get to the farm?”
I looked at my watch. “About eleven. Are you tired?”
“This is chicken-feed,” he said, sneering. “That day we pushed on past Sa da Bandeira—”
“You know, you haven’t really told me anything about your whole trip to Angola yet.”
“What is there to tell? You blokes here won’t understand it.”
I felt insulted by “you blokes here”, but tried not to show my annoyance. It was no use antagonising him so soon. But already I felt the whole attempt was going to be futile.
The garage boy was still struggling with the mess caused by the gnats. Holding a watering can in one hand he aimed a thin jet of water on the windscreen while wiping furiously with a bundle of newsprint in the other.
“How are you getting on?”
“It’s sticky, Baas.” He grinned bri
efly.
Men in blue uniforms washing bits of human bodies from the tar. Charlie had told me what it had looked like immediately after the riots. Bodies hacked to pieces with pangas. Tongues torn out and eye-holes gaping. The pulped faces smeared with excrement. Just as well they kept this sort of violence hidden behind the barbed wire of compounds. In a civilised community it would be unbearable.
Right in the beginning, after Bernard had first brought him to me, I’d said to Charlie: “For God’s sake, man, why did you come back to South Africa? Over in England you had all you could wish for. Even a university post. Why didn’t you stay there?”
He smiled with bare gums. “You also went overseas, didn’t you? Would you have preferred to stay there?”
“No, of course not. But—”
“Well?”
On a certain level I can accept it. But it remains an emotional reaction with nothing logical about it. And although I know one is tempted to react emotionally to Africa, I find it hard to credit Charlie with such an unreasonable decision.
Still, there was the day in Gibraltar, on our honeymoon. We were standing on the rock looking out across the sea to the blue of the African coastline against the even paler blue of the sky. Not once in all the time I’d been away had I missed it as much as at that moment.
In the end I took Elise by the hand, saying: “Let’s go.” We had to reach Malaga before nightfall. As we turned to go, we noticed the Black man behind us, also staring across the strait. And with sudden unashamed pride, like a child announcing his birthday to a total stranger, he said: “That’s my land over there.”
