by Andre Brink
The music came to an end. A voice took over.
Ma turned up the radio. “Time for the service,” she said.
I would have preferred to find a sunny spot outside rather than to submit to Ma’s church service. But I knew it would irritate her. And if I allowed her to have her way now, it might be easier to have mine later.
The vicar was preaching and praying from Pretoria, obviously relishing the opportunity of impressing not only his own congregation but the rest of the country with the modulations of his voice. I submitted to 1 Corinthians 13, Grandpa’s favourite, And have not love, in its modernised form (but if I am without love). In his long prayer the preacher sounded profoundly moved, with carefully rehearsed use of the tremolo.
Ma was listening with closed eyes, passively prepared to accept implicitly whatever he wanted to say. And as I sat watching her, her noble face tense with concentration, I had the curious impression of actually envying her that faith as deep and dark and narrow as a well – the one quality which had made it possible for her to survive for so long, and still to hold on.
Outside there was the sound of a vehicle stopping, a door slamming. Probably Louis. For a brief moment Ma opened her eyes in irritation before she returned to her absorbed listening.
There was a knock on the front door.
She frowned and, without opening her eyes again, motioned with her head. I went through the small dark lounge to open the door. There was a police sergeant outside, a different one from last night’s, his red crew-cut as stiff as the bristles of a toothbrush.
“Morning, Mr Mynhardt,” he said, taking off his cap and offering me a large freckled hand. “We’ve just come for a statement on last night’s business.”
“Come inside.”
He waved to a young blonde constable who had been waiting at the end of the stoep.
“Ma,” I said from the middle door as we entered, “it’s the police. They’ve come for —”
“Sit down,” she said. “We’re just listening to the service first.”
“It won’t be long, Missus,” the sergeant apologised.
Ma pointed to two chairs opposite the table. “Sit down. The world can wait for the Lord.”
Clearly flustered, the two policemen glanced at one another, but her commanding gesture didn’t leave them much of a choice. Pulling out the chairs they sat down, their caps on the bare shining surface of the dining table. And without another word the four of us sat listening to the service.
In spite of myself I thought of the way Dad had deceived the Security Police in the war. But Ma had nothing to hide. With closed eyes, her head held high, she sat unmoving to the end. And writing it down now I can again imagine the light from outside respectfully modelling the prominence of her cheekbones, and her nose, and chin, the web of wrinkles of suffering and laughter around her eyes and mouth, the delicate brushwork of her hair.
Something in her attitude reminded me of Elise’s father. He’d had the same forceful yet gentle quality about him; to him the formalities of the church had been equally indispensable. Yet he could be surprisingly broadminded and generous.
Those last holidays they’d spent with us, just before their accident. The senior vicar in our congregation had been on leave and Elise’s father had volunteered to lend a hand with some of the services and prayer meetings. In this way he’d established a firm friendship with our junior dominee, Rev. Cloete. Often they would sit up talking until midnight or later; and several times Elise invited the Cloetes over for a meal. We found him quite a sympathetic person, in spite of his tense and nervous attitude: he was very young, barely thirty, with an exaggerated awareness of his “calling”. Extremely intelligent, very pale, with intense dark eyes rather too large for his narrow face. Apparently he’d been an outstanding tennis player in his time, but in their previous post in a very small backveld congregation, people had objected to the idea of a dominee taking part in something as worldly as sport, so he’d had to give it up. He had several blind spots too: for example, he was much too dogmatic for my liking, insisting on the Biblical foundations of apartheid. (Why justify from the Scriptures a system explicable in terms of basic economics?) Still, all things considered, he was quite a pleasant man, burning with ambition – the sort of stuff church moderators are made of.
But we were less taken with his wife. She certainly was attractive, perhaps even too beautiful for her role as mother of the congregation; and impressing one with a very cold and correct sense of propriety. Hardly a week before the catastrophe Elise had complained about the woman’s unsympathetic attitude at a meeting where the sisters of the congregation had assembled to discuss a young “fallen” girl’s plea for help. (“It’s no use being gentle and forgiving just because she’s one of us. The Afrikaner has a duty to set an example to others.” Etc.)
On the night in question I’d just arrived home from working late when the telephone rang. The rest of the family had already gone to bed.
“It’s the Randburg Police Station,” said the formal voice on the phone. “Sergeant Van Wyk. I’m looking for a Reverend Rautenbach.”
“Yes, he’s staying with me,” I said. “But he’s asleep now. Why do you want to speak to him?”
“Man, can you please call him for me?” He sounded ill at ease.
“If it’s really urgent. But what’s happened?”
“We got a Cloete here, says he’s also a dominee.”
“Yes, I know him. But —”
“He asked us to call Rev. Rautenbach to the station.”
“Certainly. But what’s the matter?”
“If you don’t mind, we’ll talk when he gets here, all right?”
Fortunately the old man was a light sleeper and he awoke the moment I touched his shoulder. After I’d left the room I could hear him conferring softly with his wife before he came out, in his gown and slippers. Ten minutes later we were on our way.
Some visual impressions seem to remain with one for ever; and in the heart of this London winter I can recall all the small particulars of that disturbing summer night. The blue lamp in front of the face-brick building. The flat white light in the charge office. The brown counter; the tables marked with white stencilled numbers; the files tied with pink ribbons. A few wooden cupboards and steel cabinets. The notice board with a map of the area and an assortment of official papers pinned to the green felt. Rev. Cloete on the wooden bench. He was wearing his black suit, but it looked as if he’d just crawled from a mealie bag. His tie was missing, his normally straightened hair dishevelled and the tail of his white shirt protruding, half torn off, over his trousers. He looked up quickly as we came in, then dropped his head. Elise’s father sat down beside him, putting an arm round his shoulders, as I went up to the counter. On the other side of a wooden partition a constable was painstakingly taking down a statement dictated by an immaculately dressed Black man. He seemed to have trouble with his spelling, as he scratched out every third or fourth word; and as he wrote his mouth soundlessly formed every syllable. Behind the counter a group of other policemen were lounging on and behind their tables, most of them in uniform, one wearing a black track-suit.
“Mynhardt,” I announced briefly. “I’ve brought Rev. Rautenbach.”
The big man in the track-suit came to the counter, offering his hand. “Evening, Mister. Sergeant Van Wyk. It was I who phoned. Sorry to bother you this time of the night, man.” He had an open, friendly, boyish face, with one front tooth missing. The zip of his track-suit top was unfastened, revealing, through the dark tangle of hair on his chest, the blue and red outlines of a tattoo. He appeared generous to the point of joviality, like a compère at a sports meeting.
“What happened?” I asked again.
He motioned me to come closer, as if he didn’t want the two clergymen on the bench to hear us.
“Immorality,” he said.
“My God!” I couldn’t hide my shock. “But it’s impossible!”
The sergeant pulled up his bull shoul
ders. “I wish I could say so, Mister. But in our sort of job you soon find out that nothing is too impossible to be true.”
“But – how —?” I still couldn’t believe my ears. Involuntarily I turned round at the very moment Cloete looked up in my direction. Those dark eyes burning in the pale narrow face. He quickly looked down again, but I still remember that expression of complete bewilderment, and the cringing attitude of a dog expecting to be beaten.
“We’ve been suspecting it for a long time now,” confided Sergeant Van Wyk in his hearty way, as if to say: “This way, boys, this way. Come and enjoy yourselves.” Propping himself up on his elbows on the counter he leaned even closer than before: “Been watching him for a month, you know. Once or twice a week. Regular as anything. Just after he’s done his rounds. Same servant girl every time. Picks her up at the back gate, house of one of his elders. Then it’s off to the bluegum plantation.”
“What’s going to happen now?”
“Well, he kept on asking for Dominee Rautenbach, so we’ll let them chat for a while to calm him down a bit. Then we’ll have to lock him up. Too late now to bother about bail and all that. Better to arrange it in the morning.”
As I turned round again, at a complete loss about what to do, my father-in-law was just getting up from the bench to come to the counter. Cloete didn’t look up.
“Well?” I asked. “Did he tell you?”
He nodded. He, too, was looking pale.
“Sergeant Van Wyk says they can arrange bail tomorrow. He’ll have to stay here for the night.”
“Oh, no, no,” he said. “It’s quite out of the question.” He came to the counter, his white hair shining in the unmerciful light. “He must go home tonight, Sergeant. Please.”
“Just look at the time, Dominee!” For the first time the policeman’s friendly face became sullen, suggesting an altogether different side to his character.
“I know, Sergeant. And I hate to give you any unnecessary trouble. But it’s imperative to arrange bail straight away. Here and now.”
I knew him well enough to predict that he wouldn’t leave the charge office before he’d had his way. In that respect he was just like Bernard.
Now I wasn’t being inhuman or anything, but to my mind, if a man went in for that sort of thing, he had to face the consequences. He’d gone into it with open eyes, knowing it was forbidden. In such circumstances sympathy was quite misplaced; it became a sickness. But I knew it would be useless to argue with my father-in-law.
In spite of all his protests, and openly resentful, the sergeant had to comply. The forms were filled in and signed. But even that wasn’t enough for the old man.
“Now for the woman you caught with him,” he said calmly.
“What about her, Dominee?”
“We can’t bail one of them out and not the other. After all, they were together.”
“But really —!”
“Please, Sergeant. We’re expected to do something for our neighbour, aren’t we?”
Not having enough cash with us for bail for both of them, we first had to drive all the way back home so I could fetch some money. And it was past two when we stopped at the vicarage.
In a way that was the worst moment of the night: seeing that normally so correct, prim woman coming from the house in a shapeless old gown, with curlers in her hair. The shock on her face as she recognised us. At first she thought there’d been an accident. When she saw her husband emerging from the car and approaching in the dark, her beautiful face hardened, distorted in denial and disgust.
My father-in-law put his hand on her shoulder. She tried to shake him off but he held on.
“Now, my girl, you’re going to make us all a nice cup of tea,” he said, “then we can calmly talk about it all and ask the Lord’s guidance.”
“What happened?” she asked her husband. “What have you done, Hendrik?”
“Don’t worry,” Elise’s father said soothingly. “We’ll get it all straightened out. And whatever we fail to understand we’ll entrust to God.”
My memories of the following hour or two are very confused. The comforting, imperturbable voice of my father-in-law. The hysterical tirades of the woman. The pale young man bursting into ignominious tears. I was bone-tired. The best we could do, I thought, was simply to leave the two of them to fight it out on their own. The old man could come back the next day when they’d had time to sort things out. But he insisted on staying until, out of pure exhaustion, a weary, blunted calm was restored.
The day was already beginning to break when we returned home. Because of my fatigue I was irritable.
“It’s just a waste of time,” I said, resentful. “The harm has already been done. That’s a nice sort of dominee for you! How do you feel about having to work with a man like that?”
“It’s a great help to one,” he answered tranquilly, to my surprise. “You know, one builds up an image of a dominee, just as you build up images of an ‘Afrikaner’ or anything else. Then a thing like this happens to teach you the humility to revise all your definitions and leave room for more understanding in future. It’s a great help to one, should the temptation ever arise to become too proud or too sure of oneself. Don’t you think so?”
I wonder whether he was still so convinced of it when, two days later, Cloete committed suicide.
Of course, it depended on how close we were to the enemy. If there was any fighting, Sunday would be just like any other day of the week. But on quiet Sundays there was church parade and it felt just like home, really. Except of course for the destroyed villages and the tropical scenery and the blown-up trucks and things on the road. Actually, the church routine made one feel O.K., sort of reassuring.
But gradually it changed, I’m not sure how or when, but it changed. Some time after the first battles, after the first landmines. The day I really became aware of the difference, Ronnie had already died.
We were camped on the outskirts of a dead village in the tropical jungle. It was steaming hot, we were sticky with sweat all the time, and there were bloody millions of flies and mosquitoes and things. And birds kicking up a row in the trees.
The day before, the Saturday, two of our jeeps’d been blown up by mines. And it was then, when church parade was called the Sunday morning, as if nothing had happened, I felt as if something was going to explode in my guts. There was a new soul-tiffy to do the job for us. You know, we used to call the mechanics “tiffies”, so the doctor was a “cock-tiffy” and the chaplain a “soul-tiffy”. Anyway, there was this new cunt, an elderly uncle with glasses, nothing could wipe the smile from his face: as if he wanted to sort of demonstrate to everybody that Jesus had saved his miserable little soul. And when he preached, his voice went up and down all the time like he was practising his scales. When he prayed, he damned near yodelled. There was nothing special in what he said: all the old crap about being in a heathen land to fight for our religion and our civilisation; and that everybody was fucking proud of us; and that we had to put on the whole armour of God, that sort of thing. And when he prayed, he asked the Lord’s blessing on our campaign against the enemy, the servant of Satan.
He prayed for “these young men in the prime of their youth, who have answered Thy call to take up arms against the forces of Evil”. Plain and simple shit. We hadn’t answered anybody’s fucking call, we were thrown headlong into it.
I sat thinking of Ronnie, and of that dead Cuban with his silly little snapshot. Perhaps his blokes were also having church parade that morning, asking for God’s blessing against their enemies, the servants of Satan. Us. And then – oh bleeding Jesus – it became fucking impossible to take it any more: that old soul-tiffy with the smile plastered on his face saying: “We’re here because the Lord called us to establish His kingdom in the wilderness.”
I thought: How? By destroying people the way we’d done with the Blacks who’d happened to cross our way the day before? By blowing up bridges and tanks and maiming people? Some kingdom!
&
nbsp; You know, Dad, I never used to bother much about religion before I went to Angola. I mean, it was all right, it didn’t hurt me. But over there God began to sort of worry me. I was a good Nationalist when we crossed that border. But when I saw what sort of war we were really fighting and what was behind it all – sorry, Dad. It taught me to puke on everything I’d believed in before.
People like Louis really tend to make life impossible for themselves. Perhaps it’s just a stage. One gets through it. You’ve got to, if you want to survive. A man like my brother Theo, for instance, has never encountered this type of problem in his life.
As a child he was never precocious or impudent. He never tried to take the initiative in anything. He was quite happy to follow me wherever I went and to do whatever I ordered him. Sometimes with nearly catastrophic consequences (when I told him to jump from the tree), often resulting in some loss to himself (poor chap, in our high school days I regularly took his girlfriends from him). Perhaps that is why he and Ma have never really got along very well. She once called him “a toes-together sort of man”. With her more aggressive nature she simply couldn’t understand his retiring ways, his tidiness, his gentleness: he must be as strange to her as Dad used to be.
Not that Theo is a weakling, don’t get me wrong. He is much too ingenuous for that. Or, if he is weak in any way, he knows how to camouflage it with organisation and planning and efficiency. Sometimes I get the impression that he became an architect only because it offered him the means of transforming his innate timidity into a lust for power, expressed in terms of the demolition of old buildings and the construction of colossal new edifices.
Dad sometimes blamed him for his lack of a ‘sense of history’, because of his lack of respect for old buildings. But Theo had no difficulty in refuting the accusation:
