Rumours of Rain

by Andre Brink

  His bed creaked; he probably sat up. “I wish one could be sure,” he said. “But the sort of change we need in this country, going right down to the roots – I think of it the way I think of rain these days. Just rumours and no more.” He was silent for a moment. “But of course,” he added, “when it really starts raining it’s like Pa said: a Flood sweeping everything along with it.”

  Only later, when in my twelfth year I was sent away to boarding school in town, did I begin to react consciously to the difference between White and Black. Back on the farm during holidays my relationship with my erstwhile companions seemed to change automatically to that between master and subordinate. The only exception, up to a point, was the friend I referred to earlier; but even towards him I acted in a different manner. We no longer swam or played together. When we went hunting, he was my servant. Above all, I regarded myself as his teacher, conveying to him as much as I could of what I’d learned at school during the term. Later my parents made arrangements with a missionary to have him sent to school and eventually to university. By that time he regarded me unequivocally as his master, and himself as the humble recipient of alms.

  At university one of my first interests became a study of the theory of racial segregation, which at that stage appeared to me to provide the ideal solution to South Africa’s problems. In due course I became the local chairman of the youth movement of the National Party. After obtaining my law degree I went to Holland for postgraduate research at the University of Leiden. There, for the first time in my life, I met Blacks on a basis of social equality. I had to sit down at table with them, something which, I found, required an enormous effort of will on my part. In fact, in the cultural and emotional sense, I believe it was the greatest shock I’d had to accommodate up to that point.

  It forced me to spend many hours in thought trying to account for my strange revulsion. I remember how easy it had been to communicate with my boyhood friends. I’d never felt this embarrassment or resentment in their company. What became abundantly clear was that it was I and not the Black man who had changed; that I had developed an antagonism for which I could find no rational basis whatsoever.

  I do not wish to burden the Court with personal reminiscences. But the outcome of my reflections in Europe was the beginning of a process which I had to see through to its logical conclusion – philosophically, morally and, in the final analysis, in practice.

  4

  THE WINDSCREEN WAS clean and we were free to go. It was only half an hour’s drive from Brandfort to Bloemfontein. From there it was five more hours to the farm, but knowing one had passed the halfway mark made it easier to accept the rest. Outside, the wind flattened the white grass to the ground; but inside it was warm and comfortable. The sun sank slowly, suggesting an infinite night ahead. Would the lights be working? For a moment I panicked and had to try the switch to make sure. It was still too light outside to notice the headlights, but the blue indicator on the dashboard was reassuring. Everything was under control after all.

  As we drew closer to Bloemfontein the approaching traffic grew denser. And just after the Winburg road had joined ours – the way we would have come if I hadn’t allowed the memories of Westonaria to distract me – the accident happened.

  On a rise, soon after the single road had widened into a dual carriageway, a large, black, old-fashioned Chrysler came speeding towards us in the wrong lane. Like so many other times in my life I could see the disaster coming but was unable to do anything about it. There was a green sports car ahead of us. It missed the Chrysler by inches, swerving wildly, and disappeared over the hill, still zigzagging across the road. But the driver of the Chrysler lost control altogether, veered right off the road, struck a sandbank in the rough strip between the two carriageways, and started rolling, landing right in the way of an oncoming Volkswagen in the other road. With a curious impression of slow motion, bodies were flung from the Chrysler, landing in all sorts of contorted positions in and alongside the road.

  “Jesus!” said Louis. “It’s like that land-mine we struck the day when—” He stopped.

  “Bloody lot of Blacks again,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “Might have expected it.”

  “Aren’t you going to stop?”

  “There’s more than enough other cars on the road. If we stop now, it’ll cost us another half an hour at least.”

  With the two wrecks out of sight, obscured by the hill behind us, the accident appeared as impossible and remote as the morning’s suicide in the parking lot. Surely one ought to feel shocked. It seems to me, writing it down after so many months, that I’m shocked more deeply by it now than I was at the time. Then I kept my cool, as Louis would say; in fact, I was so concerned about making contact with him that the accident as such didn’t upset me.

  I remember saying something like: “You know, I have a philosophy about road accidents.” Continuing, as he refrained from answering: “I mean, as a peculiar syndrome in the sort of society we have, where different races in various stages of development are forced to share the same space.”

  The sun was almost down by then, quite watery and weak; and traffic was increasing.

  “I don’t think your philosophy will bring those blokes back to life again,” he suddenly said.

  I turned my head to look at him, stung, but his face was expressionless.

  “Can you tell me what earthly use it would have been for us to stop?” I asked angrily. “I can’t wake up the dead and I know no first-aid to help the injured. I didn’t have anything to do with the bloody accident and I have no desire to gape at the misery of others. We would have been a nuisance to them, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t accuse you of anything, Dad,” he said.

  Ahead of us the monstrous concrete torch appeared, marking the entrance to Bloemfontein.

  “Bernard would have stopped,” Louis said, without looking in my direction: not challenging in any way, a mere statement of fact.

  This time he really angered me. Not so much the remark as such (I can make allowances for youthful antagonism), as the familiar reference to his godfather. I’d been brought up to treat my elders with respect and I expected my children to do the same. I knew that he and Bernard had got very close during the years. Perhaps Bernard had used the relationship to compensate for the lack of a family of his own. At least twice a year Louis had spent his school holidays with Bernard in the Cape. Even so, it didn’t give him the right to drop the “Uncle” in referring to him.

  For the rest I had no quarrel with his statement. Sure, Bernard would have stopped. I don’t think he ever missed an opportunity of getting involved in others’ lives. What else did his whole career as an advocate come down to if not constant interference in the affairs of others? Not that I doubt for a moment the sincerity of his motives. But what did he get out of it in the final analysis?

  It was this very tendency of his which first brought us together. (More than just a “tendency”: it was as much a peculiarity of Bernard’s to get involved with others as someone else might have big ears or bandy legs or moles.) It was after a weekend I’d spent in the Cedar Mountains with a girlfriend, early in my fourth year. Her name was Greta, and to her sex was as natural and as indispensable as water. She was my first proper lay; and with all the boundless enthusiasm of an explorer I became addicted to her the way others get hooked, as the phrase goes, on alcohol or drugs. Our weekend in the mountains was one long-drawn-out fuck (it’s impossible to use euphemisms in connection with Greta) in all conceivable variations and postures and positions, in the cold of night and the heat of day, in rain which drenched us to the bone and sun which scalded the tenderest and most intimate spots of our bucking bodies. We returned in a state of total exhaustion, but it was worth it. Until the news leaked out a week later: then rustication, if not total expulsion, loomed.

  Racked by worry and resentment and remorse (How could I face my parents? What was going to happen to my future? Why did the bloody little nympho broadcast it all o
ver the place?) I neglected to hand in a major assignment to Bernard. After the lecture he asked me to stay behind.

  “What’s come over you, Mynhardt?” he asked. “I’ve never known you to do this before.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Sir,” I said. (By that time we were already on very good terms, but still formal.) “It really was – well, vis major.” I couldn’t help grinning.

  “Sounds interesting,” he said. “But I doubt whether a court would accept it.”

  Without meaning to, I told him the whole story – or enough of it to give him a good idea of the gravity of my position.

  “I see,” he said at last. “Doesn’t look good, does it? But I’ll tell you what: if you promise to let me have that assignment by tomorrow I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Hell, Sir!” I stammered. “I mean: thanks, Sir.”

  As I reached the door of the lecture-room he said quietly! “Mynhardt, I’m not so much older than yourself. My name is Bernard.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The future still looked pretty bleak to me. Yet he managed to sort it out, with an ease – I should say a panache – which amazed me. I never found out exactly what he’d told the rector; all I knew was that I was let off with a severe reprimand and Greta was gated for a month.

  Apart from anything else it cured me of Greta. I broke off the affair before she could land me in any further trouble. In any event, the self-assurance and technical know-how I’d acquired through her made it easy for me to pursue my explorations elsewhere.

  As far as Bernard and I were concerned, the incident was the beginning of a lifelong – or nearly lifelong – friendship. How many times he got involved in similar situations with other people during the more than twenty years that followed, I don’t know. I can specifically recall one very characteristic incident, about four years ago, when he was up North on one of his periodic visits. We’d just sat down to dinner one evening; it must have been about nine-thirty, and we had quite a collection of guests, all invited specially to meet Bernard. So I was annoyed when the commotion erupted in the backyard – doors slamming, followed by people shouting, screaming, cursing. It was before we’d acquired the Alsatians.

  When I reached the back door the whole yard seemed to be overrun by police. A van and a car stood in the driveway, all doors ajar; from the servants’ quarters a couple of constables appeared, dragging between them a struggling Black man, while one of our kitchen servants went on screaming and wailing until a Black policeman knocked her to the ground. Several others stood looking on.

  “Good evening,” I said, going nearer. “What is going on here?”

  “This your place?” asked a young White officer, fiddling with his gun holster.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know this Kaffir?” He pushed the prisoner towards me.

  “No,” I said.

  “We caught him in your yard.”

  The servant hurried towards me and grabbed my arm, sobbing hysterically: “He’s my husband, Baas. He only came here to sleep with me.”

  “But you know it’s against the law, Dora,” I said.

  “It’s my husband, Baas!” she repeated blindly. “We were married by the moruti.”

  “But it’s against the law, Dora. He’s not working in this area.” I sighed, shaking my head, and turned back to the officer. “Well, I suppose that’s that.”

  “Put him in the van,” he ordered.

  As they flung him into the back and slammed the metal doors shut, I discovered for the first time that Bernard had followed me outside.

  “Just a moment,” he said. “Isn’t this a totally unnecessary thing you’re doing?”

  “The law’s the law,” insisted the sergeant.

  “But there’s no need to apply it in just this way, is there? The man is not a criminal. He didn’t try to resist. So why rough him up?”

  “Look here,” the officer exploded, touching his holster again. “If you don’t watch out I’ll arrest you for interfering with the law, hey?”

  “That’ll be the last time you try to throw your weight around,” Bernard said frostily. “I think I know the law a bit better than you do.”

  I could see trouble brewing: a few of the other White constables – none of them older than nineteen or twenty, it appeared – were edging nearer.

  “Sergeant,” I said hurriedly, “this man is an advocate. He’s just trying to make it easier for all of you.”

  “You can come round to the station in the morning if you got anything to say,” he replied scowling, turning away from us. “We’re off now.”

  “Which station?” asked Bernard.

  For a moment it seemed as if the officer wasn’t going to answer. Then he said: “Randburg,” and started revving the engine.

  “See you there,” said Bernard. He looked at me. “May we use your car? Dora, you come with us.”

  With a roar, tyres squealing, the car and the van drove off, nearly taking one of my gate posts with them. All of a sudden it was quiet again. One could even hear the crickets in the garden.

  “There’s no sense in following them, Bernard,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do now which can’t wait for tomorrow. Whether you like it or not, he did commit an offence.”

  “There’s no reason why he can’t be let out on bail tonight,” he said.

  Some of the other male guests were calling from the kitchen door to find out what was happening; behind them the women stood in a small nervous crowd, several of them clutching their glasses.

  “We can’t leave the party like this,” I remonstrated with Bernard. “They’ve all been invited specially to meet you.”

  “They can wait a while.” He went back to the kitchen and spoke to Elise for a moment, giving her a playful kiss before he returned to me. “Won’t be long,” he called over his shoulder to the assembled guests.

  There was no sign of the van or the car when we reached the police station. Bernard, who’d memorised one of the registration numbers, went inside to make sure the vehicles really operated from that particular station. While I remained behind the steering wheel, listening to the small sobbing noises Dora made from time to time, he walked to and fro in front of the station’s blue light, ten yards left, ten yards right. After half an hour there still was no sign of the van.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Look at the time.”

  But when Bernard had set his mind on something nothing would get him off it. He went into the charge office again. From what I heard later he insisted on speaking to the station commander on the telephone, and got permission to have the van recalled by radio. When it finally turned up and the prisoner was taken from the back, it was obvious at a mere glance that he’d been severely beaten up since we’d last seen him. Bernard was furious. When he was really angry, like that night, his self-control was quite formidable. With cool, quiet efficiency he telephoned the home of the station commander once again to report the matter; fifteen minutes later the officer arrived. Bail was arranged for the prisoner and a charge of assault was laid against the sergeant and his accomplices. Afterwards, Bernard insisted on driving Dora’s husband to the district surgeon for a thorough medical examination and a signed report.

  It was past midnight when we got home. All the guests had gone. Surrounded by empty glasses and dirty ashtrays and plates littered with bones and other remains, Elise was waiting for us. She didn’t say anything in reproach; she even offered me her cheek for a kiss, her mouth taut in a weary functional smile. But I could see that she was mad at us. If Bernard hadn’t been there she would probably have gone on nagging for hours to come. (But then, if he hadn’t been there, nothing would have happened to start with.)

  “Sorry, my girl,” he said. “You know I hate doing this to you. But it’s a matter of priorities.” He poured himself a cognac from my cabinet and slumped into one of the large easy chairs. I recalled that he’d told me earlier he still had to prepare for the next day’s court hearing; but I was too angry to care.
/>
  “To hell with your priorities!” I said, pouring myself a drink too; whisky. “All you did was to bugger up the whole evening for everybody.”

  “At least I got the man out on bail before they could beat him up any further,” he said.

  “Do you think they would have beaten him in the first place if you hadn’t taunted them? That’s all this sort of confrontation invariably leads to. All for the sake of soothing your conscience.”

  He said nothing. He merely sat there, watching me with a hint of a smile over his glass; both of us were too tired to argue. I can’t remember what happened about the case later. I presume he proved his point. To what use? As far as I was concerned, at least I did something practical: at the end of the month I asked Dora to go, to avoid a recurrence of that sort of incident; and I bought the two Alsatians.

  There is no let-up in the London winter. Nothing to lure me outside or to influence me in here, so I can go on writing undisturbed. It’s incredible, the things that come back to one once you abandon yourself to it like this – things you never even knew you remembered. In a way it’s made easier by the game I’m playing with myself, half cynically, half in amusement: pretending this really is the “novel” I’ve always planned to embark on. It helps me to observe myself as an outsider. Objectively.

  I’m trying not to judge or even to interpret too much at this early stage. My main concern, right now, is to get it all out of my system. Could it be argued that, like Pilate, I’m trying to wash my hands? Possibly. But I have no illusions about it at all. Years ago Elise’s father and I had many arguments about it. Under normal circumstances I suppose I had a sneaking respect for the old man; however conservative and narrow-minded he could be (“Inside these walls, alone with Calvin and with God, I feel myself secure”), there was in him an essential and unmistakable humanity, a humility which couldn’t but impress one. A man of love, one might call him.

  As far as Pilate was concerned, he subscribed to the traditional view that the man was irredeemably guilty, something I have never been able to accept. I have just looked it up in the Gideonite Bible in my hotel room (St Matthew 27, St Mark 15, St Luke 23, St John 18 and 19) and I’m more convinced than ever that Pilate was completely justified in acting as he did in his particular circumstances.